NASA Holds Media Briefing on Carbon's Role in Earth's Future Climate

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4749

IMAGE:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/climate/20151109/m15-162b.jpg

IMAGE CAPTION:

NASA is advancing new tools like the supercomputer model that created this simulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to better understand what will happen to Earth's climate if the land and ocean can no longer absorb nearly half of all climate-warming CO2 emissions.

IMAGE FILE DESCRIPTION:

NASA hosted a media teleconference at 9 a.m. PST (noon EST) on Thursday, Nov. 12, to discuss the latest insights into how Earth is responding to rising levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and what this means for our future climate.

Earth's land and ocean currently absorb about half of all carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, but it's uncertain whether the planet can keep this up in the future. NASA's Earth science program works to improve our understanding of how carbon absorption and emission processes work in nature and how they could change in a warming world with increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from human activities.

The NASA briefing presented new observations from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission, NASA's first satellite dedicated to measuring carbon dioxide, and preview field work planned in the North Atlantic and Alaska.

Panelists included: • Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington • Mike Behrenfeld, principal investigator for NASA's NAAMES field campaign, Oregon State University in Corvallis • George Hurtt, lead for NASA's Carbon Monitoring System, University of Maryland in College Park • Annmarie Eldering, deputy project scientist for NASA's OCO-2 mission at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California • Lesley Ott, research scientist in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

Audio of the briefing streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 The public asked questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

CONFERENCE FOLLOWUP:

• REPLAY LINK (Audio; 66:01)^[1][2] => http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/77531778 - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 19:51, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• SUMMARY (see below) - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 12:59, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

NASA scientists report that human-made carbon dioxide (CO₂) continues to increase above levels not seen in hundreds of thousands of years: currently, about half of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and is not absorbed by vegetation and the oceans.^[1][2][3][4]

UN CLIMATE MEETING (PARIS):

[In November, 2015], a United Nations climate meeting in Paris focused on setting limits on future levels of human-produced carbon emissions. (see => "2015 Paris Climate Agreement")

For more information about NASA's Earth science programs, visit: