1 00:00:08,390 --> 00:00:12,560 NASA satellites 2 00:00:12,580 --> 00:00:16,740 constantly circle the globe, using a range of ingenious instruments to monitor the 3 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:20,910 weather, climate, and biosphere. But just like our eyes, 4 00:00:20,930 --> 00:00:25,050 there's one thing many of them can't do - see through clouds. 5 00:00:25,070 --> 00:00:29,150 Luckily there are a few instruments that are here to help. 6 00:00:29,170 --> 00:00:33,280 The AMSR-E instrument is a microwave radiometer 7 00:00:33,300 --> 00:00:37,420 That's sort of like a radar in reverse. It has a big dish, 8 00:00:37,440 --> 00:00:41,530 kind of like one of those TV dishes that you see out in people's 9 00:00:41,550 --> 00:00:45,610 yards. It sits up on the Aqua satellite kind of like a hood ornament 10 00:00:45,630 --> 00:00:49,680 and it measures all kinds of important things that we need to know to understand 11 00:00:49,700 --> 00:00:53,730 the water cycle. You know, where the water goes, from 12 00:00:53,750 --> 00:00:57,740 evaporation in the ocean to rainfall 13 00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:01,920 over ocean and land, and sea ice, and snow cover and all of the 14 00:01:01,940 --> 00:01:06,100 different things that we can measure with this instrument and 15 00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:10,290 they're important to understand the Earth's system, the climate system to see how 16 00:01:10,310 --> 00:01:14,460 everything interacts with everything else. 17 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:18,640 One of the things that we can measure with AMSR-E is sea ice cover. 18 00:01:18,660 --> 00:01:22,810 In the Arctic and around the Antarctic. And one of the cool things you can do 19 00:01:22,830 --> 00:01:26,960 with this imagery that we have in the microwave - and we're looking through clouds - 20 00:01:26,980 --> 00:01:31,110 at the sea ice - is, since we cover the Arctic and Antarctic every day, 21 00:01:31,130 --> 00:01:35,260 day after day after day after day, and sea ice changes kind of slowly 22 00:01:35,280 --> 00:01:39,400 as it melts or as it freezes and as the wind pushes it around, 23 00:01:39,420 --> 00:01:43,540 you can make an animation of this which ends up showing you very nicely 24 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:47,640 how sea ice evolves during, let's say, the freeze portion 25 00:01:47,660 --> 00:01:51,720 of the winter. Or during the summer melt season. And how the ice 26 00:01:51,740 --> 00:01:55,780 flows as the wind pushes it down past Greenland in between Greenland and 27 00:01:55,800 --> 00:01:59,800 Canada. It shows us dynamically what's happening. 28 00:01:59,820 --> 00:02:03,990 And what's really cool is that with an instrument like AMSR-E, you can see 29 00:02:04,010 --> 00:02:08,170 all this even if there are clouds in the way. 30 00:02:08,190 --> 00:02:12,390 Sunlight issue becomes big because 31 00:02:12,410 --> 00:02:16,510 in the wintertime, there are months without sunlight. 32 00:02:16,530 --> 00:02:20,640 So for all those months where a visible satellite instrument 33 00:02:20,660 --> 00:02:24,830 would not allow you to get information because you didn't 34 00:02:24,850 --> 00:02:29,010 have sunlight, the AMSR-E microwave instrument 35 00:02:29,030 --> 00:02:33,210 will allow you to get the information, so with the AMSR we can get information 36 00:02:33,230 --> 00:02:37,360 daytime or nightime or cloudy or not cloudy 37 00:02:37,380 --> 00:02:41,480 about the Earth surface. 38 00:02:41,500 --> 00:02:45,590 One of the products from AMSR-E that's being used more and more 39 00:02:45,610 --> 00:02:49,740 is sea surface temperatures that we can measure right through clouds because 40 00:02:49,760 --> 00:02:53,820 the hurricane centers around the world, using sea surface temperatures from 41 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:57,890 AMSR-E to see how warm the water is out ahead of the hurricane, but then also 42 00:02:57,910 --> 00:03:01,940 as the hurricane goes by it leaves behind a cold wake of water. 43 00:03:01,960 --> 00:03:05,980 Which if there's a hurricane that's coming behind it, that will tend to kill the 44 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:10,150 hurricane coming behind it. And the hurricane forecasters are excited about 45 00:03:10,170 --> 00:03:14,330 the information they have that they didn't have before. 46 00:03:14,350 --> 00:03:18,510 AMSR-E data also help us understand our changing climate. 47 00:03:18,530 --> 00:03:22,710 AMSR's contribution to the science of climate change 48 00:03:22,730 --> 00:03:26,890 has been, for example, a long term record 49 00:03:26,910 --> 00:03:31,060 of global sea surface temperatures in all weather conditions through 50 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:35,250 clouds, so we have this very important long-term data set 51 00:03:35,270 --> 00:03:39,410 showing how much is the Earth warming? What happens with the Earth 52 00:03:39,430 --> 00:03:43,560 cools during a La Niña event? We can ask the question, what caused 53 00:03:43,580 --> 00:03:47,680 the cooling, how did the cooling affect cloudiness? These are things that we can