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COP 22 – JT Reager – NASA climate monitoring abilities

COP 22 Exclusive – JT Reager from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains the abilities of NASA climate monitoring capabilities utilising satellites at COP 22. He covers almost every basic area of climate science and justifies their position on global warming. This is an extremely honest frank discussion. As a hydrologist he was able to provide some insights into the meaning of each of the types of satellite data and how they assemble that to form their position. He makes no sweeping claims and stands solidly upon verified data. Of interest at the end he is asked how reliable is satellite data when compared to ground data. This has been a big point with denialists who claim an inconsistency between ground measurements and satellite data. NASA spends a great deal of time and energy verifying live ground measurements that are in the satellite tracks for calibration purposes, thus its fairly simple to assume that the reading from satellite also collaborates with ground recordings obviously within a margin of error.

From the perspective of a non scientific viewer he covers NASA ‘s actions very well. He also covers future satellite planning up until 2019 where they plan to utilise the space station to monitor certain ground conditions. Also from a skeptic’s point of view it offers great insight into the detailed and comprehensive underlying data of climate science. Perhaps more importantly, all the information derived from every satellite in NASA’s employ allows public access to the obtained data, thus should anyone want to utilise the raw data feeds they are already available online. A question asked from the gallery asked whether such information would be made available in a format that is more digestible for public consumption, which is a project that NASA is already working on.

More information on JT Reager can be obtained here: https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Reager/

More information on NASA climate change standpoint here: http://climate.nasa.gov/

Access to NOAA satellite datasets here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/satellite-data/satellite-data-access-datasets

This COP 22 exclusive is a much watch and really worth the 22:43 minutes of viewing

About Jason Sole

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