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Climate Change Impacts

As environmental change influences transportation, it will be paramount to see how transportation base may be affected over the short- and long haul. This segment gives assets on the conceivable effects of environmental change on U.s. transportation frameworks. Resources Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region (2009) Ecological Protection Agency. A report by the U.s. Environmental Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. This report is proposed to give data about the affectability and flexibility of distinctive characteristic and oversaw environments and human frameworks to atmosphere and related worldwide changes by giving a nitty gritty appraisal of the impacts of ocean level climb on beachfront situations and showing a portion of the difficulties that need to be tended to adjust to ocean level ascent while ensuring ecological assets and supporting financial development. Variables Affecting Airport Weather Delay and the ...
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Earth’s average surface temperature

Global Warming is the rise of Earth’s average surface temperature due to result of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels or from deforestation, which trap heat that would otherwise get off from Earth. This is a type of green house effect. Since the early 20th century, Earth’s mean surface temperature has risen by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with just about two-thirds of the increase happening since 1980.  It's supposed that by the time a baby born today is 80 years old, the world will be 6 and a half degrees moderately hot than it is at the present.
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HOT OR COLD - GLOBAL WARMING

While there is still some disagreement about global warming, many scientists believe it is the result of changes in the earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere creates a blanket that surrounds the earth. Sunlight passes through the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to reach the earth’s surface and is absorbed. Once this energy is absorbed it goes through various natural processes, such as photosynthesis, and is re-released back into the atmosphere. Some of the energy escapes the atmosphere, but a considerable amount becomes trapped by the greenhouse gases and causes the earth to warm in temperature. This is known as the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is naturally occurring and vital to our survival. Without it earth would not be warm enough to sustain life. However, many scientists believe the growth of industry and urbanization has had a direct impact on the earth’s atmosphere, resulting in an unhealthy build up greenhouse gases. The general consensus about global warming point...
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China Olympics Traffic Measures Cut Carbon Emissions

A new NASA-funded study of the impacts of China's traffic restrictions for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing shows how widespread changes in transportation patterns could greatly reduce the threat of climate change. New research by an international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colo., indicates that China's restrictions on motor vehicles designed to improve air quality during the games had the side benefit of dramatically cutting emissions of carbon dioxide by between 26,500 and 106,000 U.S. tons (24,000 and 96,000 metric tons) during the event. To put this in perspective, the authors note that this reduction by a single city represents more than one-quarter of one percent of the emissions cut that would be necessary worldwide, on a sustained basis, to prevent the planet from heating up by more than about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century. That is the amount of heating generally cons...
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Storm sentinels

Beginning this summer and over the next several years, NASA will be sending unmanned aircraft dubbed "severe storm sentinels" above stormy skies to help researchers and forecasters uncover information about hurricane formation and intensity changes. Several NASA centers are joining federal and university partners in the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) airborne mission targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. NASA's unmanned sentinels are autonomously flown. The NASA Global Hawk is well-suited for hurricane investigations because it can over-fly hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet with flight durations of up to 28 hours - something piloted aircraft would find nearly impossible to do. Global Hawks were used in the agency's 2010 Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) hurricane mission and the Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) environmental science mission. ...
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Mild fire forecast

Forests in the Amazon Basin are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model developed by university and NASA researchers. Fire season across most of the Amazon rain forest typically begins in May, peaks in September and ends in January. The new model, which forecasts the fire season’s severity from three to nine months in advance, calls for an average or below-average fire season this year within 10 regions spanning three countries: Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. “Tests of the model suggested that predictions should be possible before fire activity begins in earnest,” said Doug Morton, a co-investigator on the project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “This is the first year to stand behind the model and make an experimental forecast, taking a step from the scientific arena to share this information with forest managers, policy makers, and the public alike.” Gauges convey the fire severity foreca...
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NASA's new carbon-counting instrument leaves the nest

Its construction now complete, the science instrument that is the heart of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) spacecraft — NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide — has left its nest at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and has arrived at its integration and test site in Gilbert, Ariz. A truck carrying the OCO-2 instrument left JPL before dawn on Tuesday, May 9, to begin the trek to Orbital Science Corporation's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, southeast of Phoenix, where it arrived that afternoon. The instrument will be unpacked, inspected and tested. Later this month, it will be integrated with the Orbital-built OCO-2 spacecraft bus, which arrived in Gilbert on April 30. Once technicians ensure the spacecraft is clean of any contaminants, the observatory's integration and test campaign will kick off. That campaign will be conducted in two parts, with the first part scheduled for completion in ...
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