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Science Focus

Science Focus

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) has created a scientific strategy to provide a quantitative, useful answer to the following question:

How is the Earth changing and what are the consequences for life on Earth?

To address this profound question, the ESE has created a scientific strategy organized around five guiding questions, which appear below. Each of these is followed by Web links to information and programs that are focused on aspects of these questions.

1. How is the global earth system changing?

   • Sea Surface Temperature Measurements of the MODIS and AIRS Instruments Onboard of Aqua Satellite. (08/09/2004)
   • Why do we need a global measuring system of Ocean Color (OC) and Sea Surface Temperature (SST)? (Spring 2004)
   • SeaWiFS shows shows an area of low ocean productivity north of the Antarctic continent. (Spring 2004)
   • NASA's SORCE Satellite Celebrates One Year of Operations (Spring 2004)
   • TRMM Improves Rainfall Data Assimilation (Spring 2004)
   
   
   

2. What are the primary causes of earth system variability?

   • An assessment of the Indian Ocean, Monsoon, and Somali Current using NASA's AIRS, MODIS, and QuikSCAT data (Summer 2004)
   • TRMM for Monsoon Study (Spring 2004)
   • First Chapter of Earth's "Biological Record" Documented from Space (Spring 2004)
   • The Colors of Life (Spring 2004)
   • A Bloom By Any Other Name...Might Never Be a Bloom At All (Spring 2004)
   
   
   

3. How does the earth system respond to natural and human-induced changes?

   • Africa to Atlantic, Dust to Dust (Spring 2004)
   • The Use Of The NASA-GAC Pathfinder Global Data Set For The Extraction Of Burned Areas (Spring 2004)
   • Drought and Vegetation Monitoring in the Arid and Semi-Arid Regions of Mongolia using Remote Sensing and Ground Data (Spring 2004)
   • Mysterious Black Water off Florida's Gulf Coast (Spring 2004)
   • Washington University Researchers use ENVI to Identify Aerosol Pollution: Research proves that SeaWiFS data can be used successfully to analyze cloud-free air pollution over land (Spring 2004)
   
   
   

4. What are the consequences of change in the earth system for human civilization?

   • Predicting the Distribution of West Nile Fever in North America using Satellite Sensor Data (Spring 2004)
   • Navy Enlists NASA In the War on Terror (Spring 2004)
   
   
   

5. How well can we predict future changes in the earth system?

   • Climate driven increases in global terrestrial net primary production from 1982 to 1999 (Spring 2004)
   • Cloud and Precipitation Formation (Spring 2004)
   • Tropical Cyclones: New views (Spring 2004)

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