From the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) Blogs: Environmental Capital-Daily analysis of the business of the environment by The Wall Street Journal
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PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA panel that investigated the unsuccessful Feb. 24 launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, has completed its report.
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Dr. Michael Freilich, Director for Earth Science Division, National Aeronautics and Space Administration testified on 4/22/09 which also happened to be a agency wide celebration of Earth Day. To read his witness testimony, please follow the link to the science and technology page for the US House of Representatives.
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With rising temperatures altering a variety of ecological and weather systems on Earth, the current patchwork of sensors can't answer all the questions that scientists are asking. Land-based sensors have provided a conclusive picture of rising CO2 levels worldwide, for example, but researchers don't fully understand where all the carbon that humans and natural sources are pouring into the atmosphere ends up. How much is being absorbed and where?
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Want to know how quickly climate change will warm the Earth or how fast sea levels will rise? Don't rely on a steady stream of data from the United States' aging stable of weather and climate satellites, the president of the National Academy of Sciences told Congress yesterday.
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WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected the members of the board that will investigate the unsuccessful launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, on Feb. 24. Rick Obenschain, deputy director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will lead the mishap investigation board.
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WASHINGTON -- NASA's Rick Obenschain, deputy director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will lead the investigation board for the unsuccessful launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory on Feb. 24.
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A few hours ago I had the privilege to watch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The creativity, effort and dedication of many, many people were sitting on the launch pad.
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Here are some quick facts about the Earth-orbiting satellite, scheduled to launch on Feb. 24, 2009.
-- It will study carbon dioxide sources (where it comes from) and sinks (where it is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored). Carbon dioxide is a major contributor to global warming. The new data will help scientists more accurately forecast global climate change.
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The challenge: very precisely measure carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere all over the world, especially near Earth's surface.
For Orbiting Carbon Observatory Principal Investigator David Crisp of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and his team, the logical solution was an Earth-orbiting spacecraft. But shopping for a science instrument that could accomplish these objectives was no easy task.
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In their studies of global climate change, NASA's science teams are using Earth-observing satellites to map everything from floods and wildfires to El Ninos and phytoplankton. They track sea ice breakups and make daily scans of temperatures from the bottom of the troposphere to the top of the stratosphere. Wonder where smog-producing ozone is concentrated? Data from NASA's spacecraft reveal the ugly picture.
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A NASA satellite sleuth set to launch this month will soon be hot on the trail of the elusive greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced cause of global warming. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's mission is to find the vast warehouses of carbon dioxide that are "missing" - hidden in "sinks" around the globe. Finding them will help scientists better predict how our climate will change in the future.
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Recent years have seen an increase in record-setting events related to climate change. For example, 2005 was the warmest year globally in more than a century, and in 2007, Arctic sea ice retreated more than in any other time in recorded history. A new NASA mission set to launch later this month will help scientists better understand the most important human-produced greenhouse gas contributing to climate change: carbon dioxide. Called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, the satellite may help us better predict how our climate may change in the future.
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NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide is in final preparations for a Feb. 23 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate.
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Picture a tree in the forest. The tree "inhales" carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming that greenhouse gas into the building materials and energy it needs to grow its branches and leaves.
By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the tree serves as an indispensable "sink," or warehouse, for carbon that, in tandem with Earth's other trees, plants and the ocean, helps reduce rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air that contribute to global warming.
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Every time we get into our car, turn the key and drive somewhere, we burn gasoline, a fossil fuel derived from crude oil. The burning of the organic materials in fossil fuels produces energy and releases carbon dioxide and other compounds into Earth's atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere, warming it and disturbing Earth's climate.
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The occasionally acrimonious debate about the planet's climate has been missing a key component: accurate measurements of how much carbon dioxide is in the air and how it is being recycled by Earth.
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NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate, has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final launch preparations.
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Since the start of the industrial age, the concentration of carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere has increased by about 25%- from 280 parts per million to over 370 parts per million. As concerns over climate change increase, scientists are being asked difficult questions about the extend to which carbon is being put into, and taken out of , the atmosphere. Precise answers to questions like these are necessary to reliably forecast changes in earth's climate. But massive gaps remain in our understanding of what happens to carbon dioxide after hit has been produced.
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After 1 year of side-by-side tests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the OCO flight instrument and the FTS, installation of the FTS mobile laboratory at the SGP site began this summer.
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Today, 2 September, marks the 1 year anniversary of the 1st Light experiment when we recorded atmospheric spectra with the heliostat and OCO flight instrument.
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Best seller paper "Experimental intensity and lineshape parameters of the oxygen A-band using frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy" is holding the top spot for most downloaded paper in the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.
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Talk of the Nation, January 25, 2008 · A satellite observatory designed to map the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere will be launched in 2009.
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The "Carbon Club" began meeting on Fridays about a decade ago, setting up shop in whatever spare meeting places it could find at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Read more of the article written by Amanda Haag which appears in the 6Dec2007 issue of NATURE....
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Release of CO2 due to human activity is increasing faster than ever while "carbon sinks" - CO2 uptake by oceans and land - are weakening, according to a new report (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702737104).
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On August 18, after a 42-day journey from the California Institute of Technology campus in Pasadena, CA, USA, the first of the OCO mission's Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) mobile laboratories arrived in Darwin, Australia.
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Charles David Keeling, the world's leading authority on atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and climate science pioneer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), died Monday, June 20, 2005, while at his Montana home, of a heart attack. He was 77 years old. Keeling has been affiliated with Scripps since 1956.
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Follow the carbon - this is the mantra of researchers seeking to understand climate change and forecast its likely extent. A workshop heard how improved detection of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from space promises to revolutionise carbon cycle understanding.
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Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in the US, show that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased yet again in the last year. They are now up at 378 ppm.
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Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could make rice and wheat grow faster but be less nutritious, say Chinese scientists. The impact on agriculture could be profound.
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