October 4-10 is World Space Week. This year’s theme is Space & Climate Change. Each year, World Space Week aims to celebrate and bring awareness to space science and technology. This year celebrates how space technology and climate science are working together to help battle climate change.
Climate is changing around the globe. We are seeing record high and low temperatures. We are seeing more destructive storms. We are seeing changes to the environment that impact everyday life. Satellite technology is being used to monitor these environmental shifts and weather patterns in order to better plan responses to the changing climate. By tracking what happens on Earth from space, we can see a total picture and understand what the future will hold. Having this information will help plan and mitigate the damage caused from climate change.
Satellites have been orbiting Earth since 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Its purpose was to act as a radio transmitter. In 1960, NASA launched Tiros-1 as the first weather satellite. It took infrared images of Earth’s clouds and beamed them back down to Earth. It was also able to track hurricanes. From then on, satellites have been used for a variety of purposes. They have evolved in their technology to become more efficient and effective at monitoring and tracking weather patterns and environmental changes. To learn more about satellites, print out this reading passage on the subject.
In 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite—renamed Landsat—was launched. Its purpose was to track natural and human changes to the Earth. It’s no secret that one result of global climate change is extreme weather. This is an extremely dangerous outcome of climate change. Scientists estimate that average temperatures for the Earth as a whole will rise about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2100. This rise in temperature can cause more extreme weather events, like storms, floods and droughts.
Warm air holds more water than colder air. Therefore, Earth’s atmosphere can hold more water as temperatures rise. More water in the atmosphere leads to more precipitation. This then leads to more stormy weather. Some areas may get much higher rainfall than usual. This results in flooding. Storms, such as hurricanes, can carry more rain than usual. This makes them larger and more destructive when they move onto land and through areas where people live.
For the air to carry more water, it must be close to a source of water, like an ocean. Air that is over normally dry areas, like the middle of continents, can actually become drier. With higher land temperatures and no source of water for evaporation, masses of air over dry land can become hotter and drier. This can lead to droughts, or periods of unusually dry weather. Deserts can spread as the air above them becomes hotter and drier over time. Spreading deserts can overtake forests and farmland. There is little that people can do to stop the movement of sand. One way that satellites are helping in this area is to better predict when the next extreme weather event will occur and provide adequate time for us on the ground to prepare.
How will climate change affect the extreme weather in your area? List the types of extreme weather that your area experiences. Use the library or Internet resources for help. Research ways that climate change may affect the types of extreme weather that your area experiences. Contact your local government emergency management offices. Ask for information about how to prepare for extreme weather in your area. Ask whether the office is making any plans for increased extreme weather due to climate change. Design a poster to report your findings. Share with the class and post in your school.
Visit the World Space Week website to learn more about this year’s theme and get ideas on how to engage participation.