by Until recently, people were limited by the horizon. Climate scientists from the early 20th century could see data from the world around them and maybe from a hot air balloon or plane. But the really big picture – the global snapshot – remained out of sight.
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The first satellite of any kind was Sputnik 1 of the USSR, which was introduced in 1957. It was not until the 1960s that satellites specially designed to observe the earth and its climate in the orbit and gave us the first overview of weather patterns. In the 1970s, the Landsat satellites of NASA were able to monitor things like tree coverage.
Jonathan Bamber, a climate researcher at the University of Bristol, said that this “revolutionized our ability to carry out a comprehensive and timely health check on the planetary systems that we rely on for our survival”. Data that once needed months or even years of field research were suddenly available during the time when a satellite was surrounded for the planet.
Nowadays this data can be remarkably precise and detailed. Bamber says: “We can measure the changes in sea level up to a single millimeter, measure changes in the underground rocks, the temperature of the country and the ocean and the spread of atmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases from space.”
Here is a map of the climb of the sea level from Bamber’s articles in which five satellite images are highlighted, which show how quickly our planet changes:
“This picture,” writes Bamber, “shows that the trends of sea level over 13 years, in which the global average increase was around 3.2 mm per year. But the rate was three or four times faster in some places, such as in the southwestern Pacific east of Indonesia and New Zealand, where there are numerous small islands and atolls that are already very susceptible to sea level rise. “
Read more: Five satellite images that show how quickly our planet changes
In recent years, scientists have used AI to search and analyze satellite data. Bamber’s latest research published in January of this year shows this well.
A team of scientists led by Tian Li from the University of Bristol collected millions of satellite images of glaciers in Svalbard, a remote and icy archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. In your letter you find that human researchers once looked carefully through this type of data.
“This process,” they write, “is very labor -intensive, inefficient and especially not producing, since different people can recognize different things in the same satellite image. In view of today’s number of satellite images, we may not have the human resources to map every region for every year. “
Their solution was to use AI to “quickly identify glacier patterns in large areas”. The satellite AI combination meant that they were able to examine Svalbard’s back glacier-proof for the least accessible places on the planet-in “unprecedented scale and scope”.
They found that 91% of the many glaciers that flow around the archipelago around the sea shrink “significantly”. They find that the same types of glacier can be found in the Arctic and “what happens to glaciers in Svalbard is likely to be repeated elsewhere”.
Read more: We have a AI
Many of these glaciers can be found in Greenland, home to the largest ice shield in the northern hemisphere. In the research published at the beginning of this month, Tom Chudley from Durham University used satellite images to evaluate divisions (cracks in the glaciers) in Greenland.
Chudley also combined satellite images with computer -aided analysis. “Arcticdem” used his work, three -dimensional maps of the polar regions based on high -resolution satellite images.
“By using image processing techniques to over 8,000 cards, we can estimate how much water, snow or air are required to” fill “every gap via the ice shield. This enabled us to calculate and examine their depth and volume as it develops. “
His conclusion was very blunt: the Greenland ice sheet falls apart.
Read more: The Greenland ice sheet falls apart – new study
Health guards
Many of them will be aware that satellites are used to monitor the health of the planet. The role that you can play in monitoring human health is less well known.
Dhritiraj Sengupta, a satellite scientist in the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, says that satellites have become the new health and nature guardians of the world. His article describes how satellite mosquito breeding sites can map malaria to combat, e.g. B. air pollution hotspots in cities.
In his own research, he used chlorophyll data derived from satellites to evaluate the risk of a cholera. Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plants that helps them use sunlight to make their food and grow.
“Many bacteria like Vibrio cholerae This means that cholera thrives in standing water, ”writes Sengupta. “My team worked with the European space agency to show that his presence can be modeled using the concentration of chlorophyll on the surface of water bodies.”
Read more: How satellites have become the new health and nature guardians of the earth
So far, so good. Satellites were undoubtedly useful for climate researchers. In the long term, the satellites can have unforeseen effects on the climate themselves.
Last year SpaceX announced that there would be 100 of his Starlink satellites “Deorbit” to burn in the atmosphere. Fionagh Thomson is space expert, also at Durham University. She says that “atmospheric scientists are increasingly concerned that this type of obvious flows will cause a further climate change on earth by the space sector.”
Compared to the “440 tons of meteoroids that enter the atmosphere every day, as well as the pollution of volcanic ash and people from industrial processes on earth” have particles from the satellites themselves.
But a team “recently and unexpectedly found potential ozone switching metals from space vehicles in the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer in which the ozone layer forms”. “The concern is that satellite waste can help form certain types of clouds that lead to loss of ozone and contribute the greenhouse.
She notes that all of this is uncertain and needs more research. “But,” she writes, “we also learned that it is too late when we are waiting to be unquestionable evidence available, as with the loss of ozone. It is a constant dilemma.”
Something for SpaceX scientists in which you might have to look at if you have saved stranded astronauts from the international space station.
Read more: Satellites burn in the upper atmosphere – and we still don’t know what effects this will have on the earth’s climate
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