Climate Variability & Change

The Climate Variability and Change program seeks to deliver new knowledge and applications for decision-making in climate-sensitive industries and to understand and project climate variability and change and its impacts to improve adaptive responses and to inform policy and decision making. As such, research in the CVC program covers time-scales from weeks to decades, and includes multi-week prediction, seasonal prediction, and climate change projections. The program interacts strongly with the operational sections of the Bureau of Meteorology, particularly the National Climate Centre, and with a number of the CSIRO National Research Flagships. Observing Climate Variability and Change The Earth's climate is dynamic and naturally varies on seasonal, decadal, centennial, and longer timescales. Each "up and down" fluctuation can lead to conditions which are warmer or colder, wetter or drier, more stormy or quiescent. Analyses of decadal and longer climate records and studies based on climate models suggest that many changes in recent decades can be attributed to human actions; these decadal trends are referred to as climate change. The effects of climate variability and change ripple throughout the environment and society - indeed touching nearly all aspects of the human endeavor and the environment. These factors underlie NOAA's mission to observe, understand, and predict climate variability and change. Importance of Climate-Change Research to the Nation Climate influences every aspect of life on Earth, affecting human health and well-being, water and energy resources, agriculture, forests and natural landscapes, air quality, and sea levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 summarizes overwhelming evidence that global warming, due to human activities since 1750, is unequivocal. In addition to increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, observations find widespread melting of snow and ice; rising sea levels; widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, and wind patterns; and increasing occurrences of extreme weather, including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves, and intensity of tropical cyclones. Objective and interdisciplinary science is needed to understand more clearly the complexity of global climate issues. The science will play an essential role during the next decade in helping communities and land and resource managers understand local and regional implications, anticipate effects, prepare for changes, and reduce the risks of decision making in a changing climate.

About Magnetosphere

The study of the region of space near the Earth helps to determine changes in the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere in order to enable specification, prediction, and mitigation of their effects. Heliophysics seeks to develop an understanding of the response of the near-Earth plasma regions to space weather. This complex, highly coupled system protects Earth from the worst solar disturbances while redistributing energy and mass throughout. A key element involves distinguishing between the responses to external and internal drivers, as well as the impact of ordinary reconfigurations of environmental conditions, such as might be encountered when Earth crosses a magnetic sector boundary in the solar wind. This near-Earth region harbors spacecraft for communication, navigation, and remote sensing needs; conditions there can adversely affect their operation. Ground based systems, such as the power distribution grid, can also be affected by ionospheric and upper atmospheric changes. Key near-term investigations emphasize understanding the nature of the electrodynamic coupling, how geospace responds to external and internal drivers, and how the coupled middle and upper atmosphere respond to external forcings and how they interact with each other. History of magnetospheric physics Theories about the solar plasma stream and its interaction with Earth were published as early as 1931. During the next several decades multiple scientists, including Sydney Chapman and Hannes Alfvén, proposed a variety of mechanisms and explanations.The Earth's magnetosphere was first measured in 1958 by Explorer 1 during the research performed for the International Geophysical Year.In August and September 1958, Project Argus was performed to test a theory about the formation of radiation belts that may have tactical use in war. The Earth's Magnetic Field The Earth has a magnetic field with north and south poles. The Earth's magnetic field reaches 36,000 miles into space.The magnetic field of the Earth is surrounded in a region called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere prevents most of the particles from the sun, carried in solar wind, from hitting the Earth. Some particles from the solar wind can enters the magnetosphere. The particles that enter from the magnetotail travel toward the Earth and create the auroral oval light shows.

About Heliophysics

The term heliophysics was coined in 1981 to denote the physics of the entire Sun: from centre to corona. It is a direct translation from the French ‘he ?liophysique’, which was introduced to provide a distinction from physique solaire (solar physics) which in practice was then confined to only the outer layers of the Sun. It is a subdiscipline of heliology. Recently the meaning of the term has been extended by Dr George Siscoe of Boston University to include the physics of the heliosphere (the space around the sun beyond the corona, in principle out to the shock where the solar wind encounters the interstellar medium, but excluding the planets and other condensed bodies). It has subsequently been used by the NASA Science Mission Directorate to encompass the study of the heliosphere and the objects that interact with it—most notably, but not limited to, planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres, the solar corona, and the interstellar medium. Heliophysics combines several other disciplines, including several branches of space physics, plasma physics, and solar physics, including stellar physics in general. Overview Heliophysics is all of the science common to the field of the Sun-Earth connections. This fast-developing field of research covers many traditional sub-disciplines of space physics, astrophysics, and climate studies. The NASA Living With a Star program, with its focus on the basic science underlying all aspects of space weather, acts as a catalyst to bring the many research disciplines together to deepen our understanding of the system of systems formed by the Sun-Earth connection. Focus Areas Earth moves through the heliosphere, the exotic outer atmosphere of a star. The space beyond Earth’s protective atmospheric cocoon is highly variable and far from benign. The Sun, our solar system, and the region of the galaxy just outside present us with a complex, interacting set of physical processes. It is the one part of the cosmos accessible to in situ scientific investigation, our only hands-on astrophysical laboratory. Building on NASA’s rich history of exploration of Earth’s neighborhood and distant planetary systems, we are poised to provide a predictive understanding of our place in the solar system. We do not live in isolation; we are intimately coupled with the Sun and the space environment through Earth’s climate system, our technological systems, the habitability of planets and solar system bodies we plan to explore, and ultimately the fate of Earth itself. Variability in this environment affects the daily activities that constitute the underpinning of modern society, including communication, navigation, and weather monitoring and prediction. Because the space environment matters to humans and their technological systems both on Earth and in space, it is essential as a space-faring Nation that we develop an understanding of these space plasma processes.

The Weather System

The weather system includes the dynamics of the atmosphere and its interaction with the oceans and land. Weather includes those local or microphysical processes that occur in minutes through the global-scale phenomena that can be predicted with a degree of success at an estimated maximum of two weeks prior. The Weather theme is important to the NASA Earth Science for two reasons. First, the improvement of our understanding of weather processes and phenomena is crucial in gaining an understanding of the Earth system. It is directly related to the Climate and Water/Energy Cycle Themes. In both cases, the dynamics are to a large degree controlled by "weather processes." Second, there is an infrastructure in the U.S. for operational meteorology at NOAA, the FAA, the DoD, and others that requires the introduction of new technologies and knowledge that only NASA can develop. Monsoon A monsoon is a periodic wind, especially in the Indian Ocean and southern Asia. The word is also used to label the season in which this wind blows from the southwest in India and adjacent areas that is characterized by very heavy rainfall, and specifically the rainfall that is associated with this wind.

About Planets

Planets:

New Worlds, New Discoveries NASA is at the leading edge of a journey of scientific discovery that promises to reveal new knowledge of our Solar System’s content, origin, evolution and the potential for life elsewhere. NASA Planetary Science is engaged in one of the oldest of scientific pursuits: the observation and discovery of our solar system’s planetary objects. With an exploration strategy based on progressing from flybys, to orbiting, to landing, to roving and finally to returning samples from planetary bodies, NASA advances the scientific understanding of the solar system in extraordinary ways, while pushing the limits of spacecraft and robotic engineering design and operations. Since the 1960s, NASA has broadened its reach with increasingly sophisticated missions launched to a host of nearby planets, moons, comets and asteroids. History All eight planets can be seen with a small telescope; or binoculars. And large observatories continue to provide much useful information. But the possibility of getting up close with interplanetary spacecraft has revolutionized planetary science. Very little of this site would have been possible without the space program Planet Order The Sun Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune