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Observing Climate with Satellites
Are We on Thin Ice?

glacial-melt stream
A glacial-melt stream on the top of the Greenland ice sheet in late summer. The stream is falling into a moulin where it travels to the base of the ice sheet.

Compton Tucker
Goddard Fellow
Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA

Friday, June 6, 2008
(RESCHEDULED from April 11, 2008)
10:30 a.m., Green Auditorium
VTC to Boulder will be Room 4550


The Earth's climate is determined by irradiance from the Sun and by properties of the atmosphere, oceans, and land that determine the reflection, absorption, and emission of energy within our atmosphere and at the Earth's surface. Since the 1970s, Earth-viewing satellites have complemented non-satellite geophysical information and led to an unprecedented understanding of the Earth's coupled ocean-land-atmosphere system. I will describe the Earth's climate system, as understood from data from earth-viewing satellites and ground-based geophysical monitoring stations, review arguments against global warming, and show the unprecedented convergence of evidence for global warming in the past few years. I will also discuss recent concerns about warming-induced instabilities to the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.


Colloquia are videotaped and available in the NIST Research Library.