In that poll, 50% of respondents said that monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system should be a top priority, second only to planetary defense at 60% (respondents could select multiple top priorities.) Climate science, though, may be an exception.Ī poll released July 20 by the Pew Research Center found that the overall public continues to consider climate science as a top priority of NASA. Nelson said the agreement to raise the debt ceiling and enact budget caps was a bipartisan one, and he has previously noted that support for the agency in Congress transcends traditional partisan divides. It’s a huge priority for me personally, having lived through this as the senator from Florida.” “We’re going to have the least possible effect on any climate science,” he said. He vowed to protect NASA’s climate activities from the brunt of any cuts. “There are many twists and turns before this final agreement,” he cautioned. He predicted that NASA’s overall budget for 2024 will fall somewhere between the Senate’s $25 billion and the House’s $25.4 billion. “There is going to be less money,” Nelson acknowledged. That austerity is linked to budget caps enacted for the next two fiscal years as part of an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Some in the science community fear sharper cuts in Earth science in the House bill, particularly if it does not follow the Senate bill’s plan to cut spending on Mars Sample Return. House appropriators have yet to disclose details about Earth science spending in its bill, but the overall amount allocated to science, $7.38 billion, is only $40 million more than the Senate bill. However, a bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee July 13 would provide NASA with $2.22 billion for Earth science, effectively flat funding from 2023. Most of NASA’s climate-related work is funded through its Earth science division, which requested $2.47 billion in fiscal year 2024, a 12% increase from 2023. That urgency to study the climate, though, risks colliding with new fiscal realities. “We anticipate that 2024 will be an even warmer year,” he added, because of a warm climate pattern known as El Niño that is just getting underway. That warmth is increasing the chances that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, odds he set at 50/50 but others have estimated to be as high as 80%. “We anticipate, with the understanding of what’s going on on a day-by-day basis, that July is likely to be the warmest absolute month on record,” he said. Last month was the hottest June on record globally, noted Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a leading climate scientist. and Canadian wildfires that filled skies thousands of kilometers away with smoke. The attention to climate science comes during a series of recent extreme events linked to climate change, such as heat waves in the United States and Europe, flooding in the northeastern U.S. Nelson said on the call that those data displays in the center will soon be available on the NASA website. Among other efforts, NASA opened last month an Earth Information Center at its headquarters building, a facility open to the public that shows real-time Earth science data from NASA and other satellites. While NASA has long been involved in climate science and related activities, it has gained new prominence in the Biden administration, which has made climate change an administration-wide priority. “At NASA, we provide end-to-end research about climate, from observations to models and applications to technology,” said Kate Calvin, NASA chief scientist and senior climate adviser. Officials discussed the various activities at the agency related to studying climate change and providing resources for other agencies and the general public. NASA is also a climate agency,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the briefing. You think of NASA as an aeronautical research agency. In a July 20 media briefing, NASA leadership highlighted the agency’s work in studying the climate and addressing climate change, efforts that range from Earth science missions to aeronautics research into sustainable aviation. WASHINGTON - In a summer of extreme weather events, NASA is emphasizing its role in studying the climate, efforts that face both fiscal headwinds and partisan divides.
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