NASA offers high-res look at carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

NASA offers high-res look at carbon dioxide in the atmosphere Today’s video of the day comes from NASA and provides a never-before-seen look at how carbon dioxide moves through Earth’s atmosphere. NASA used existing satellite measurements of carbon dioxide combined with an extensive model of the atmospheric gas movement.

The hi-resolution imagery was created by the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland using data from their Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite.

The video illustrates how carbon dioxide moved around the Earth from September 2014 to September 2015. This type of model is a major step for scientists in the understanding of how much carbon dioxide is released in which ares and how long it stays there. More specifically, researchers are looking to better understand what is called “carbon flux,” the passing of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere, land, and ocean.

According to Leslie Ott, carbon cycle scientists at NASA Goddard, “We can’t measure the flux directly at high resolution across the entire globe. We are trying to build the tools needed to provide an accurate picture of what’s happening in the atmosphere and translating that to an accurate picture of what’s going on with the flux. There’s still a long way to go, but this is a really important and necessary step in that chain of discoveries about carbon dioxide.”

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Credit: NASA