Feature December 17, 2007
NASA Climate Change 'Peacemakers' Aided Nobel Effort
It's not every day that a NASA scientist can wake up and think, "Hey, I did something for world
peace." But on Monday, Dec. 10, many NASA Earth scientists did exactly that.
In Oslo, Norway, the King of Sweden presented the shared 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to former
U.S. Vice President Al Gore and to representatives of a United Nations panel that has spent two
decades assessing Earth's changing climate and predicting where it is headed. Hundreds of
NASA scientists, including some from JPL, contributed to the United Nations effort, working
with thousands of their colleagues from more than 150 countries.
Announcing the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said the scientific reports
issued since 1990 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human
activities and global warming." The peacemaking value of this scientific finding, according to
the committee, is that human-induced changes in climate may cause "large-scale migration and
lead to greater competition for the Earth's resources" and an "increased danger of violent
conflicts and wars."
The Fourth IPCC Assessment, released this year in four reports, presented the strongest findings
thus far that human activities are altering Earth's climate and that the impacts of climate change
are occurring already.
When the First IPCC Assessment was reported in 1990, NASA was building on a history of
Earth remote sensing, developing and preparing to deploy the Earth Observing Satellite system
to determine the extent, causes and regional consequences of global climate change. In the
recent Fourth Assessment, scientists were informed by more than eight years of systematic,
global observations of the Earth system. Satellite measurements have revealed fundamental
changes in Earth's climate, including temperatures and rainfall, ice extent and properties, and sea
levels, as well as physical, chemical, and ecological impacts of climate change. NASA satellite
measurements contributed immeasurably to enable the IPCC's strongest conclusions thus far.
"NASA is best known for its cutting-edge satellite instruments and global measurements of Earth
from space, but we contribute a lot more than that to climate change science," said Michael
Gunson, acting chief scientist in JPL's Earth Science and Technology Directorate, Pasadena,
Calif. "NASA's role extends far beyond space-based measurements into the research to build our
understanding of climate change, enabling the critical work of the IPCC."
NASA instruments, data, analysis and modeling all contributed to the bedrock of the IPCC
report: the hundreds of papers published each year in scientific journals, many authored by
NASA scientists and many others using NASA observations. The authors of the report draw on
this ever-growing body of new knowledge to form their conclusions about climate change.
"The most remarkable thing about the process of assembling an IPCC report is that you can
actually get thousands of independent-minded and critical scientists to work together without
killing each other," said Bruce Wielicki, senior scientist for Earth science at NASA's Langley
Research Center in Hampton, Va.
Wielicki contributed a portion of a chapter in the latest science assessment on how Earth's
"energy budget," the ebb and flow of radiant energy from the sun and our planet, has changed as
measured by satellites. He began the project in October 2004 and, working with a team of 10
scientists, completed a compact summary of the latest research on the topic 20 months later. Like
each section of the IPCC reports, Wielicki's section went through repeated rounds of critiques by
other scientists.
NASA's Cynthia Rosenzweig, a plant and soil scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, New York, N.Y., coordinated a key chapter in the new report on the impact of climate
change -- an effort that took four years. "There were many, many late nights as we worked under
strict deadlines to draft the chapter and revise it based on thousands of comments from
reviewers, each of which had to be documented and responded to," Rosenzweig recalls.
"But the toughest part of the entire effort was the last step: reviewing our final draft with
government officials," Rosenzweig says. Before each IPCC report is published, the lead authors
sit down with diplomats, lawyers and environmental officials from around the world to review
their findings, page by page. "These week-long meetings are very challenging as you respond to
all sorts of concerns and questions. But this process is the real beauty of the IPCC. The final
documents that emerge represent a consensus view of the world's scientific community and
government delegates."
The Nobel-winning IPCC reports have no parallel as the most authoritative source of climate
science, says Wielicki. "When I give public lectures on climate, I tell my audience that there are
three laws of solid information on climate change: IPCC, IPCC and IPCC."
The IPCC effort has also boosted public awareness of this critical area of science. "By collecting
together the current scientific thinking on climate change, the IPCC showed the world the value
of the type of science we are doing at NASA," said JPL's Gunson. "And that has really engaged
the public, many of whom were surprised that NASA does climate research. It has really
motivated a new interest in the work we do here day in and day out."
Related Links:
Nobel Peace Prize 2007:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
NASA's Earth science program:
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/earth-sun/index.html
Written by Stephen Cole/Goddard Space Flight Center
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