“Mother Nature is Sending us a Warning,” says NASA During Climate Briefing

Map of temperature data presented during NASA’s climate briefing.

Image credit: NASA broadcast.

Temperatures are soaring. As the world sweats through the hottest July since at least 1880, NASA, known for space missions, is busy positioning itself as a climate agency with an incredible mountain of environmental data gleaned from a constellation of orbiting satellites.

“Mother Nature is sending us a warning,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during a climate briefing Monday, August 14th. July’s heat shattered the previous record set in 2019 by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius.

It’s not just the temperature that’s changing. More of the world, especially along the coasts where 40 percent of humans live, is seeing the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, declines in Arctic sea ice, wildfires, and wilder weather events.

“At NASA, we’re observing the Earth so we can understand not only what’s happening today but also how that’s changed over time so we can observe the impacts of climate change like sea level rise, wildfire, and extreme heat,” Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said at the conference.

Keeping an eye on Earth

To help combat climate change, more and more space missions are dedicated to studying the Earth. TROPICS, for example, was launched in 2023 to help scientists study hurricanes and typhoons.

“We’re trying to bring space down to Earth,” Nelson said.

Other missions collect data on the drivers of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, and how the increased burning of fossil fuels is releasing them to trap heat in the atmosphere.

“By observing this,” said Calvin, “we can understand both what is happening now and why it’s happening, and provide that information to inform decisionmakers in the public, so all of the data that NASA collects is publicly available. We’re working to make it easier to use so that people can understand what’s happening in their communities and help plan for the future.”

And if you think it’s hot this year, next year could be worse, said climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. That’s thanks to El Niño. During El Niño, trade winds weaken, and warm water is pushed toward the east toward the west coast of the Americas. This shifts weather significantly, causing the Pacific jet stream to move south, leaving the northern US and Canada dryer and warmer than usual. The US Gulf Coast and Southeast also experience more rain and increased flooding.

“The biggest impact of El Niño will actually occur in 2024 so we’re anticipating that not only is 2023 going to be exceptionally warm and possibly record warm year but we anticipate 2024 will be warmer,” he said.

Still, El Niño’s effects in North America aside, there are other things going on. Scientists are also seeing extreme temperatures in the North Atlantic.

“Not only are we seeing an increase in the frequency of coral bleaching, but we’re also seeing coral, fish, and seagrass die off,” said Carlos Del Castillo, who’s part of the Ocean Ecology Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Del Castillo says the oceans experience 90 percent of global warming, with increases in temperature felt not only at the surface but also deep in the ocean. As temperatures rise, water expands which, combined with the melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, compounds the rise of sea level.

“We are planning to launch the PACE mission which will provide unprecedented measurements on the biology of the ocean not only to understand how it works but how it will react to global warming and simultaneously it will collect measurements of the atmosphere so we can look at how these atmospheric ocean system works we’re working,” Del Castillo said.

Another mission, called GLIMR, planned for 2026 or 2027, will provide detailed measurements of the coast. GeoXO, planned for the 2030s, will provide continuity of measurements so scientists can study how the planet is evolving as existing satellites are retired.

Shattered records

This July was the warmest July on record by a long shot, Sarah Kapnick, a chief scientist at NOAA, said at the press conference.

“Specifically, by more than a third of a degree Fahrenheit,” she said. “That may not sound like a lot but the margin for most global records is on the order of a hundredth of a degree or two so last month was way, way warmer than anything we’ve ever seen.”

An important thing to remember, she says, is that July 2023 is just the latest in a long run of extremely warm months going back several decades. And this trend marches on and on, even for the oceans. Global ocean temperatures high record highs for the fourth consecutive month and as El Niño progresses, 40 percent of the world’s oceans are experiencing excessive marine heat. This contributes to the lowest global July sea ice extent on record, she said.

NASA and NOAA scientists also look at whether natural variability of Earth’s climate could be to blame for the extreme weather and heat.

“El Niño only increases temperatures by about 0.1 degrees Celsius, and the warming so far exceeding those models,” said Kapnick.

Therefore, natural factors can’t possibly explain the ways the climate crisis is currently manifesting in extreme weather and heat. The only way to get those temperatures is if emissions from greenhouse gases and land use changes from humans are factored in, she said.

“We’ve been looking at this attributional problem for many decades now and what we found is that the long-term trends that we’ve been seeing since the 19th century, particularly since the 1970s, they are all due to anthropogenic effect,” Schmidt added. “The impacts of El Niño, the impacts of volcanoes, all of these things are very, very small compared to the anthropogenic component driven mostly by greenhouse gases. All of those things are human created, and so without those human contributions to the drivers of climate change, we would not be seeing anything like the temperatures that we’re seeing right now.”

“The last nine years are the warmest on record,” Nelson said. “And folks, Mother Nature is sending us a message, and that message is we better act now before it’s too late to save our climate. In other words, to save our planet. And the bottom line also is there’s no political boundaries and there are no geographical boundaries. We are all in this together.”