NASA visualisation tracks CO2 movement, highlights Climate Change dynamics

NASA has introduced a new high-resolution model that visualises the global movement of carbon dioxide, including over India, offering unprecedented insights into the behaviour of this crucial greenhouse gas.

Created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), the model provides a detailed look at CO2 concentrations from January to March 2020.

Leveraging supercomputers, the visualisation merges billions of data points from ground observations and satellite instruments to generate a map over 100 times more detailed than typical weather models. This high resolution allows users to zoom in on specific emission sources, such as power plants, fires, and cities, and observe the spread of CO2 across continents and oceans.

“As policymakers and as scientists, we’re trying to account for where carbon comes from and how that impacts the planet,” said climate scientist Dr Lesley Ott at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.”

Dr Ott noted that the model revealed persistent plume structures and interactions with weather systems that were not visible in coarser simulations.

The map shows that most emissions originated from power plants, industrial facilities, and vehicles in China, the United States, and South Asia. In contrast, emissions in Africa and South America were primarily due to fires related to land management, agricultural burns, and deforestation.

This visualisation comes at a critical time, as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, driving global warming. NASA reports that 2023 was the hottest year on record, with most of the ten hottest years occurring in the past decade. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from about 278 parts per million in 1750 to 427 parts per million in May 2024.

While some CO2 is necessary for maintaining Earth’s temperature, the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past half-century has led to accelerated warming.

This new model provides valuable data for understanding and potentially mitigating the impact of CO2 emissions on our planet’s climate.

Reference: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/watch-carbon-dioxide-move-through-earths-atmosphere/