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Music.

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Narrator: Earth Science; we should look

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at it as Earth System Science. There are a lot of

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interconnecting systems that all require measurements to

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try to understand. So, if you are looking at the sea surface temperature;

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how does that relate to the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, which

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then changes the weather, which then changes land use, which then changes

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the amount of dust. So, these are all connected things that we are trying to understand.

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So, by making all of these individual measurements, that helps us

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get a sense of what the whole picture is.

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NPP is going to make

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a whole suite of observations. It observes the entire globe once a day.

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It has five instruments on it and it spans the entire

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spectrum of observations required for

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short-term weather forecasting, as well as observing

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environmental events such as forest fires or volcanic eruptions,

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as well as putting together long-term data records.

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NPP is a continuation

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of the existing Earth-orbiting satellites. For weather prediction

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and for climate monitoring purposes, you need to have continuous

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observations. These are all multi decades

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of data sets and we want to just keep on adding to that so we can

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answer: Is the sea surface changing? Is it getting warmer or

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colder? Is it getting dustier? Is the size of the ozone hole getting

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larger or smaller? So, there is a whole series of “what is happening”

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observing questions, which can then be used in models

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so we can answer: Is the climate changing?

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The purpose of NPP is;

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essentially it’s the prototype of the next generation weather satellite.

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It’s the nation’s first attempt to really combine weather

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monitoring and climate observing in the same platform.

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Music.