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Pinpointing the Cause of Earth’s Recent Record CO2 Spike

A new NASA study provides space-based evidence that Earth’s tropical regions were the cause of the largest annual increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration seen in at least 2,000 years.

What was the cause of this?

Scientists suspect that the 2015-2016 El Niño – one of the largest on record – was responsible. El Niño is a cyclical warming pattern of ocean circulation in the Pacific Ocean that affects weather all over the world. Before OCO-2, we didn’t have enough data to understand exactly how El Nino played a part.

Analyzing the first 28 months of data from our Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, researchers conclude that impacts of El Niño-related heat and drought occurring in the tropical regions of South America, Africa and Indonesia were responsible for the record spike in global carbon dioxide.

These three tropical regions released 2.5 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere than they did in 2011. This extra carbon dioxide explains the difference in atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rates between 2011 and the peak years of 2015-16.

In 2015 and 2016, OCO-2 recorded atmospheric carbon dioxide increases that were 50% larger than the average increase seen in recent years preceding these observations.

In eastern and southern tropical South America, including the Amazon rainforest, severe drought spurred by El Niño made 2015 the driest year in the past 30 years. Temperatures were also higher than normal. These drier and hotter conditions stressed vegetation and reduced photosynthesis, meaning trees and plants absorbed less carbon from the atmosphere. The effect was to increase the net amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

In contrast, rainfall in tropical Africa was at normal levels, but ecosystems endured hotter-than-normal temperatures. Dead trees and plants decomposed more, resulting in more carbon being released into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, tropical Asia had the second-driest year in the past 30 years. Its increased carbon release, primarily from Indonesia, was mainly due to increased peat and forest fires -  also measured by satellites.

We knew El Niños were one factor in these variations, but until now we didn’t understand, at the scale of these regions, what the most important processes were. OCO-2’s geographic coverage and data density are allowing us to study each region separately.

Why does the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere matter?

The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is constantly changing. It changes from season to season as plants grow and die, with higher concentrations in the winter and lower amounts in the summer. Annually averaged atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have generally increased year over year since the 1800s – the start of the widespread Industrial Revolution. Before then, Earth’s atmosphere naturally contained about 595 gigatons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Currently, that number is 850 gigatons.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it can trap heat. Since greenhouse gas is the principal human-produced driver of climate change, better understanding how it moves through the Earth system at regional scales and how it changes over time are important aspects to monitor.

Get more information about these data HERE.

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Renewable energy

Humans have been harnessing water power for thousands of years, but in the past century, advancements have made water an integral part of the energy mix in the U.S. From hydropower to the new frontier of marine energy, here are five things you should know about water power. 1. Water power is everywhere Did you know that hydropower projects are in just about every state? Hydropower accounts for about 6% of the nation’s electricity, generating renewable energy for American homes and businesses. It’s projected that U.S. hydropower could still grow from 101 gigawatts (GW) to nearly 150 GW of combined electricity generation and storage capacity by 2050 by unlocking untapped hydropower resources. Marine energy has the potential to generate electricity for millions of homes from predictable and consistent waves and tides along our coasts. Since marine energy is an early-stage market, the Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) makes investments supporting key technology innovations to harness this new frontier of energy. 2. Hydropower plays a major role in maintaining the reliability and the resiliency of the U.S. power grid Hydropower has long been the nation’s largest source of renewable electricity, providing not only baseload energy, but energy storage and essential services to the electric grid. In short, hydropower is the ultimate grid stabilizer — it quickly delivers power after an outage, addresses peak demands, and maintains proper voltage levels and frequencies across the grid, which are all necessary to ensure our energy security. Also, because hydropower can act like a battery by storing energy, it’s complementary to other forms of generation such as wind and solar. Hydropower makes sure power supplies stay constant. The Azura wave energy device at the U.S. Navy's Wave Energy Test Site in Hawaii Northwest Energy Innovations 3. Marine energy can revitalize infrastructure along our coastlines Marine energy is an emerging science and technology sector, with potential to stimulate new industry opportunities, create jobs, and increase manufacturing. Just this year, the Energy Department announced its partnership with Oregon State University to build a world-class wave energy testing facility in the coastal community of Newport, Oregon. This new facility can test up to 20 wave energy converters, allowing smaller nearby ports to take advantage. For example, the Port of Toledo can leverage its maritime resources to support the manufacturing and maintenance of marine equipment needed for the test site. Marine energy can be a source of economic revitalization to communities across the United States as the industry grows. 4. There’s room for more pumped-storage hydropower (PSH) 36 GW of it, in fact. The U.S. PSH fleet provides 97% of our nation’s utility-scale storage—all generated from 42 plants across the country. Because PSH has the ability to function as a battery and integrate variable renewable energy or excess electricity from base-load sources such as coal or nuclear, more storage like it is needed to support the grid. WPTO is funding early-stage research on new, transformative PSH designs that would improve sustainability and environmental performance and shorten development timeframes for new facilities. 5. Marine energy has the potential to provide power in remote locations By converting the energy of waves, tides, river, and ocean currents into electricity, marine energy technologies have the potential to provide cost-effective energy for remote or coastal areas military bases and smaller communities —where electricity costs are high from a reliance on imported fuels. Marine energy can also assist with a number of distributed ocean applications, including charging for ocean-based sensors and underwater vehicles, and non-electric uses like desalination-- the process of removing salt from seawater. These opportunities could more rapidly allow industry to develop and reduce technology costs in the near term while providing domestic energy independence from imported fuels.

Cassini Mission: What’s Next?

It’s Friday, Sept. 15 and our Cassini mission has officially come to a spectacular end. The final signal from the spacecraft was received here on Earth at 7:55 a.m. EDT after a fateful plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere.

After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft burned up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.

Although bittersweet, Cassini’s triumphant end is the culmination of a nearly 20-year mission that overflowed with discoveries.

But, what happens now?

Mission Team and Data

Now that the spacecraft is gone, most of the team’s engineers are migrating to other planetary missions, where they will continue to contribute to the work we’re doing to explore our solar system and beyond.

Mission scientists will keep working for the coming years to ensure that we fully understand all of the data acquired during the mission’s Grand Finale. They will carefully calibrate and study all of this data so that it can be entered into the Planetary Data System. From there, it will be accessible to future scientists for years to come.

Even beyond that, the science data will continue to be worked on for decades, possibly more, depending on the research grants that are acquired.

Other team members, some who have spent most of their career working on the Cassini mission, will use this as an opportunity to retire.

Future Missions

In revealing that Enceladus has essentially all the ingredients needed for life, the mission energized a pivot to the exploration of “ocean worlds” that has been sweeping planetary science over the past couple of decades.

Jupiter’s moon Europa has been a prime target for future exploration, and many lessons during Cassini’s mission are being applied in planning our Europa Clipper mission, planned for launch in the 2020s.

The mission will orbit the giant planet, Jupiter, using gravitational assists from large moons to maneuver the spacecraft into repeated close encounters, much as Cassini has used the gravity of Titan to continually shape the spacecraft’s course.

In addition, many engineers and scientists from Cassini are serving on the new Europa Clipper mission and helping to shape its science investigations. For example, several members of the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer team are developing an extremely sensitive, next-generation version of their instrument for flight on Europa Clipper. What Cassini has learned about flying through the plume of material spraying from Enceladus will be invaluable to Europa Clipper, should plume activity be confirmed on Europa.

In the decades following Cassini, scientists hope to return to the Saturn system to follow up on the mission’s many discoveries. Mission concepts under consideration include robotic explorers to drift on the methane seas of Titan and fly through the Enceladus plume to collect and analyze samples for signs of biology.

Atmospheric probes to all four of the outer planets have long been a priority for the science community, and the most recent recommendations from a group of planetary scientists shows interest in sending such a mission to Saturn. By directly sampling Saturn’s upper atmosphere during its last orbits and final plunge, Cassini is laying the groundwork for an potential Saturn atmospheric probe.

A variety of potential mission concepts are discussed in a recently completed study — including orbiters, flybys and probes that would dive into Uranus’ atmosphere to study its composition. Future missions to the ice giants might explore those worlds using an approach similar to Cassini’s mission.

Learn more about the Cassini mission and its Grand Finale HERE.

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

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We cannot see the shape of the secret future, and uncertainty brings worry. Our lives look overwhelming when we lose the focus of today.

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