2001 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| NASA BEGINS MONITORING GLOBAL AIR POLLUTION FROM SPACE | G01-044 | 05/30/01 | 00:13:04 | The most complete view ever assembled of the world's air pollution churning through the atmosphere and crossing continents and oceans has been produced by NASA's Terra spacecraft. Policymakers and scientists now have, for the first time, a way to identify the major sources of air pollution and closely track where the pollution goes all year round and anywhere on Earth.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): New Earth Portrait: First Global Views Of Air Pollution - The most complete view ever assembled of the world's air pollution churning through the atmosphere and crossing continents and oceans has been produced by the MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (2): Where The Pollution Goes - The swirling colors in these images paint a remarkable new portrait of our planet. For the first time, scientists have a powerful new tool to track immense clouds of air pollution, shown in red, as they travel across the Earth. The observations represent a powerful new tool for identifying and quantifying pollution sources and for observing the transport of pollution on international and global scales.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (3): What The Colors Mean - These measurements show concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) at altitudes of 15,000 feet. Red colors in these images indicate highest levels of CO (450 parts per billion). Blue colors indicate lowest levels of CO (50 ppb). Terra sees CO in the atmosphere from 2-3 miles above the surface, where it interacts with other gases and forms ozone. This pollutant can move upward to altitudes where it can be blown rapidly for great distances or it can move downward to the surface. CO is an air
pollutant that also produces ozone, a greenhouse gas that is a human health hazard. The data are combined with wind measurements to produce the final image sequences.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (4): Cross The Pacific - Terra detected strong sources of CO in Southeast Asia during April and May 2000. The air pollution plume from this region moves over the Pacific Ocean and reaches North America, frequently at fairly high concentrations. Scientists say that fires and possibly industrial sources are major contributors to these events. Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (5): Africa And South America - Much of the air pollution that humans generate comes from natural sources such as smoke from large fires that travel great distances and affects areas far from the source. The most dramatic features in the first set of MOPITT global observations from March to December 2000 are the immense clouds of carbon monoxide from grassland and forest fires in Africa and South America. The plumes travel rapidly across the Southern Hemisphere as far as Australia during the dry season in this part of the world. Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (6): U.S. Close-Up - A major source of air pollution during the wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere is the burning of fossils fuels for home heating and transportation, which can be seen wafting across much of hemisphere. Although Terra cannot distinguish between individual industrial sources in the same city, it can map different sources that cover a few hundred square miles. This is accurate enough to differentiate urban air pollution from smoke from fires. About half of the global emissions of carbon monoxide are caused by human activities. Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (7): Western Fires - Terra also captured the extensive air pollution generated by the forest fires in the western United States last summer. Note how high concentrations of CO drift over the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region. This sequence covers a period from August 2 to August 30, 2000.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (8): Western Fires (FROM SEAWIFS) -
This image showing dense smoke plumes from the fires in the western U.S.
was captured by NASA's SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor)
instrument onboard the Orbview-2 satellite.Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (9): TERRA Animation - The new global air pollution monitor onboard Terra is the innovative MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) experiment. The instrument was developed by scientists at the University of Toronto and the data processed by a team at the U. S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). MOPITT is making the first long-term global observations of the air pollutant carbon monoxide as Terra circles the Earth from pole to pole 16 times every day.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (10): Earth System Science - Terra is part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), a suite of spaceborne instruments and interdisciplinary research dedicated to improving our understanding of global change. The EOS Project is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, Md.) for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research program designed to study the Earth's land, oceans, air, ice and life as a total system.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR
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Earth Science Gallery