NASA Dataset: Implications for Climate Change

NASA Dataset: Implications for Climate Change

Question: NASA scientists have recently released a fresh dataset that displays how temperature and rainfall patterns across the globe may change through the year 2100 due to rise of GHG emissions and concentration. Discuss the implications of this scientific data.

• Dataset by NASA displays projected changes worldwide on regional level in answer to varied scenarios of increased CO2 simulated by 21 climate models

• This is high resolution data

• It will help scientists and planners to carry out climate risk assessment

• It will also help them to understand local and international effects of hazards such as massive drought, heat waves, floods and losses in agricultural productivity

• Dataset also is a tool for coping with global warming

• The new dataset is the latest from NASA Earth Exchange within the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Centre in Ames Research Organisation

• In 2013, similar data for continental US was released by NEX to quantify climate change risks to the agriculture, forests, rivers and cities of the nation

• This dataset has a wide range of applications

• It integrated actual measurements from across the globe with data from climate simulations fashioned by international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project

• Climate simulations use the top physical model of climate change to provide forecasts of what global climate may look like in the extreme and usual scenarios both

Facts and Stats

• In the past 10 decades, global average temperature has risen by 0.74 degree celsius

• Temperature increase accelerated over the course of the 20th century. 20th Century witnessed 14 of the hottest years on record in the last 16 years.