WASHINGTON DC – We know human activity is inflating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record rates, restricting the radiation of heat into space and contributing to the overall warming of the planet.
Invisible as they are, the ebb and flow of carbon emissions can be hard to wrap our heads around – but not so with new visualizations released by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
These jaw-dropping videos demonstrate precisely where the majority of this critical greenhouse gas is being released, and how that changes over the course of a single year.
There are three videos to look at, covering different regions of the world. They show CO2 being released in 2021, with emissions colored orange for fossil fuels, red for burning biomass, green for land ecosystems, and blue for the ocean.
Blue dots show where carbon is largely being absorbed by ocean waters, and green dots by producers on land.
There are a few particular areas to look out for in the above video: over North America and South America, look out for the pollution hotspot in the northeastern region of the US, and the green pulsing of the Amazon rainforest as the trees absorb carbon during daylight hours.
Note how the color orange dominates the atmosphere, and how the fossil fuel emissions it represents spreads to envelop the entire planet as the months roll by. If you ever needed a stark reminder of the effect of burning coal, gas, and oil, here it is.
“New computer modeling techniques in NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office allow us to dissect our atmosphere and understand some of the major contributors to this runaway insulator,” explains NASA in the accompanying blog post.
More at Science Alert.
