NASA has released a dataset setting out how rainfall and temperature patterns are likely to change in the coming decades. The data covers 21 climate models, mapping how our environment could change due to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The information for the dataset was compiled as part of the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) – a collaborative analytical platform that harnesses the power of state-of-the-art supercomputing, combining it with NASA remote-sensing data to provide scientists with direct access to huge pools of data. Essentially, the idea is to help scientists better understand and make contingency plans for the multiple risks presented by changes to the climate, from drought and floods, to heat waves and agricultural issues.
The dataset itself is available to the public, allowing users to view the potential environmental changes on a daily timescale and in great detail – from globally down to individual towns and cities. The climate projections provide a view of future precipitation and temperature patterns at a 25 km (15.5 mile) resolution, spanning the years 1950 to 2100.
To build the tool, NASA combined real world historical measurements with climate simulation data from the international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project – a global, collaborative effort to study and better understand our changing climate. The predictive models range from "business as usual" scenarios up to worst-case conditions with hugely elevated greenhouse gas emissions.
The agency believes that the dataset will provide scientists and planners with a much better understanding of the risks facing our fragile world.
"NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future," said NASA scientist Ellen Stofan. "With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet."
The dataset can be downloaded here.
Source: NASA
Oh - except I guess they already have, because it will look exactly identical.
Our race is so arrogant, fanatically believing we have the power to change our behavior so much that it would actually make any measurable difference.
Future generations, if there are any, are going to laugh just at hard at us now, as we laugh at ancient ones who sacrificed virgins on alters to change stuff. And, LOL, most of the time, they too were hoping to influence the weather as well.
You almost had me ;)
It is like turning on the engine of the car in you box, trying it for a few seconds and saying it has no effect whatsoever... and then saying its all right to leave the engine on. For hours. These petrolheads say: "You box-environmentalists, shut up. You'll be fine, I tested the engine for 1 minute and it gives no problems. Carbon monoxide poisoning it's a lie and a scientific invention."
Good luck to us all when petrolheads and carbonheads are in power. They crave the power that comes from burning the rotten corpses that only half- decayed during the Permian extinction due to climate change (petrol). Then, 250 million years ago, life nearly disappeared and the earth was dead for 100000 years.
For the sake of easier and faster life for themselves they are going to kill us all. It can happen again. It's a moot argument if it is our fault or not (it is). The real question is: are we going don that path again ? (yes, probably but cannot be sure). Can we do something to prevent it? (scientists believe we still can but in a few years the climate change might become unstoppable.)
Yes, by burning, waiting, denying and doing nothing our actions probably will soon become irrelevant as we kick exponential runoffs in high gear. And then we will suffer and die.