Tag: NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office

Simulated Clouds and Aerosols

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Tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere are called aerosols. Windblown dust, sea salts, sulfates, smoke from wildfires and pollution from factories are all examples of aerosols. Depending upon their size, type and location, aerosols can either cool the Earth’s surface or warm it. They can help clouds form or inhibit cloud formation. And if inhaled, some aerosols can be harmful to people’s health.

To study aerosols and their impact on clouds, researchers from NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office ran a simulation of the atmosphere that captured how winds transport aerosols around the world. This simulation, produced by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model Version 5 (GEOS -5), shows clouds (white), dust (brown shades), sulfates (purple shades) and organic black carbon (green shades) at 7-kilometer resolution from September 1, 2005, to December 31, 2005 (hourly). Simulations like this allow scientists to better understand how different types of aerosols travel in the atmosphere, impact cloud formation and influence weather and climate.

Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

The Present is Warmer than the Past

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The Present is Warmer than the Past: Difference from 1980-2015 annual mean (℃)
This animated figure shows the seasonal cycle in global temperature anomalies for every month since 1880. Each line shows how much the global monthly temperature was above or below the annual global mean from 1980–2015. The column on the right lists each year when a new global temperature record was set. These seasonal anomalies are drawn from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) model run by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens