We’re not the only ones who need to keep a balanced budget. Just like we all have budgets, the Earth has one too. If we spend too much money, our household budget gets out of balance. Likewise, with tons of excess carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, the Earth’s energy budget gets out of balance. Lin Chambers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center spoke with us today about how changes in the atmosphere (like humans adding literally tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year) can affect the climate.
So it works both ways – humans can affect the climate, and the climate affects us. We went outside and proved that for ourselves, and used Vernier temperature probes to record the temperatures of a variety of different materials and colors. Higher temperatures were recorded for darker colors, proving that old piece of advice you always get in the summer – wear a white shirt in the sun, not a black one. And what is one of the great things about the icy, white polar regions? They are like a white shirt for the Earth. If they melt, it unbalances the Earth’s budget even more. We all have to work on balancing this budget!
Comparing temperatures in sun and shade, and with different materials
Every time we take a breath, we inhale gazillions of tiny solid and liquid particles in the air. These particles are called aerosols. It’s incredible that something ranging from the size of a virus to the width of a human hair can have major effects on our health, and on the Earth’s climate. Aerosols are not completely understood – but what scientists do know is that there are many kinds, both human-caused and natural, and that they definitely can affect the climate.
A lot of aerosols are natural – like sea salt, dust, or the kind ejected up from volcanic eruptions. But then there are the kinds that we humans spew into the atmosphere – like from fossil fuel combustion, cars, and power plants. We learned that these aerosols affect the atmosphere and climate because depending on the type, they can reflect or absorb the sun’s radiation.
Delivering a climate presentation
There seem to be lots of kinds of aerosols, and lots of ways they affect the climate. So we split into groups and each took one kind to research. At the end of the day, we all got to teach each other what we learned about aerosols. Check out the pollution above Beijing, China in 2009 – that’s not clouds!
Pollution above Beijing
Through Second Life, we also got to talk to Dr. Compton Tucker, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He talked about his work in studying an 200m diameter impact crater in the Amazon. The impact released 500 to 1000 megatons of TNT. Imagine the aerosols thrown into the atmosphere by that event!
Investigations, Speakers | admin | 
March 27, 2011 2:15 pm | 
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