NASA to track climate change as global temperatures soar

New York: US space agency NASA aims to keep track of and find possible solutions to climate change even as global temperatures are reaching record highs.

From wildfires, flooding, heatwaves, a record-hot June, and July likely to be the warmest absolute month on record, millions of people over the globe are experiencing the effects of extreme weather. NASA said it is tracking it all, and sharing its data.

"The data is clear: Our Earth is warming, and NASA is committed to empowering scientists, decision-makers, and people around the world to make data-based decisions when it comes to climate," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, at a recent media roundtable, highlighting the agency's climate work.

"With more than two dozen satellites, instruments aboard the International Space Station, and commercial and international partnerships, NASA uses our unique vantage point of space to observe our planet. To put it another way, NASA is bringing space down to Earth," he added.

NASA experts pointed out quite a few of the agency's endeavours to combat climate change, including missions to improve our understanding of how global warming is changing biological systems, looking into next-gen technologies like unmanned aircraft to monitor wildfire response mechanisms and deploying satellites to track greenhouse gas emissions across the globe.

They also discussed how artificial intelligence and deep learning could aid the agency with getting climate data that are as precise and accurate as possible. The experts also argued the urgency to step up efforts to tackle climate change.

"The heat waves that we're seeing in the US, in Europe and in China are demolishing records left, right and centre," Gavin Schmidt, director, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies was quoted as saying by Space.com

"There has been decade on decade of increasing temperatures -- throughout the last four decades."

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