The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs about 10,000 civil servants and contractors. Named for American rocket propulsion pioneer Robert H. Goddard, it is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place; it has a Greenbelt mailing address.
The Nimbus satellites were second-generation U.S. robotic spacecraft launched between 1964 and 1978 used for meteorological research and development. The spacecraft were designed to serve as stabilized, Earth-oriented platforms for the testing of advanced systems to sense and collect atmospheric science data. Seven Nimbus spacecraft have been launched into near-polar, Sun-synchronous orbits beginning with Nimbus 1 on August 28, 1964. On board the Nimbus satellites are various instrumentation for imaging, sounding, and other studies in different spectral regions. The Nimbus satellites were launched aboard Thor-Agena rockets and Delta rockets.
Terra is a multi-national scientific research satellite operated by NASA in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth. It takes simultaneous measurements of Earth's atmosphere, land, and water to understand how Earth is changing and to identify the consequences for life on Earth. It is the flagship of the Earth Observing System (EOS) and the first satellite of the system which was followed by Aqua and Aura. Terra was launched in 1999.
MOPITT is an ongoing astronomical instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite that measures global tropospheric carbon monoxide levels. It is part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), and combined with the other payload remote sensors on the Terra satellite, the spacecraft monitors the Earth's environment and climate changes. Following its construction in Canada, MOPITT was launched into Earth's orbit in 1999 and utilizes gas correlation spectroscopy to measure the presence of different gases in the troposphere. The fundamental operations occur in its optical system composed of two optical tables holding the bulk of the apparatus. Results from the MOPITT enable scientists to better understand carbon monoxide's effects on a global scale, and various studies have been conducted based on MOPITT's measurements.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a US nonprofit consortium of more than 100 colleges and universities providing research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences. UCAR manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and provides additional services to strengthen and support research and education through its community programs. Its headquarters, in Boulder, Colorado, include NCAR's Mesa Laboratory, designed by I.M. Pei.
Atmospheric chemistry is a branch of atmospheric science in which the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere and that of other planets is studied. It is a multidisciplinary approach of research and draws on environmental chemistry, physics, meteorology, computer modeling, oceanography, geology and volcanology and other disciplines. Research is increasingly connected with other areas of study such as climatology.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a United States information and referral center in support of polar and cryospheric research. NSIDC archives and distributes digital and analog snow and ice data and also maintains information about snow cover, avalanches, glaciers, ice sheets, freshwater ice, sea ice, ground ice, permafrost, atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology, and ice cores.
The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), a federal research laboratory, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), located in Miami in the United States. AOML's research spans tropical cyclone and hurricanes, coastal ecosystems, oceans and human health, climate studies, global carbon systems, and ocean observations. It is one of seven NOAA Research Laboratories (RLs).
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). CIRES scientists study the Earth system, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, and communicate these findings to decision makers, the scientific community, and the public.
The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) is a worldwide system established by the World Meteorological Organization – a United Nations agency – to monitor trends in the Earth's atmosphere. It arose out of concerns for the state of the atmosphere in the 1960s.
The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NCAR has multiple facilities, including the I. M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Studies include meteorology, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, solar-terrestrial interactions, environmental and societal impacts.
Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president Al Gore in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is georeferenced and connected to the world's digital knowledge archives.
Over the last two centuries many environmental chemical observations have been made from a variety of ground-based, airborne, and orbital platforms and deposited in databases. Many of these databases are publicly available. All of the instruments mentioned in this article give online public access to their data. These observations are critical in developing our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere and issues such as climate change, ozone depletion and air quality. Some of the external links provide repositories of many of these datasets in one place. For example, the Cambridge Atmospheric Chemical Database, is a large database in a uniform ASCII format. Each observation is augmented with the meteorological conditions such as the temperature, potential temperature, geopotential height, and equivalent PV latitude.
Scientific literacy or science literacy encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories. Scientific literacy is chiefly concerned with an understanding of the scientific method, units and methods of measurement, empiricism and understanding of statistics in particular correlations and qualitative versus quantitative observations and aggregate statistics, as well as a basic understanding of core scientific fields, such as physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, geology and computation.
The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) is a research institute where scientists study the use of data from geostationary and polar orbit weather satellites to improve forecasts of weather (including tropical cyclones and severe storms. CIMSS was formed through a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. CIMSS parent organization, the Space Science and Engineering Center is a primary developer and operator of environmental satellite technologies.
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is a NASA environmental monitoring satellite that measures soil moisture across the planet. It is designed to collect a global 'snapshot' of soil moisture every 2 to 3 days. With this frequency, changes from specific storms can be measured while also assessing impacts across seasons of the year. SMAP was launched on 31 January 2015. It was one of the first Earth observation satellites developed by NASA in response to the National Research Council's Decadal Survey.
Rebecca Suzanne Hornbrook is an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She currently holds the position of Project Scientist II while also belonging to a variety of groups based out of NCAR, UCAR, and NASA. She is notable for her work as one of the leading experts in Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) while possessing an interest in air quality, biosphere-atmosphere interactions, chemical kinetics, and photochemistry.
Maura E. Hagan is a Professor of Physics and Dean of the College of Science at Utah State University. She is a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Lin Chambers is an American physical scientist. She has developed and contributed to multiple international programs around science education and citizen science at NASA Langley Research Center.
