This is 40 minutes. We are getting so excited for earth day. We want to share some of the exciting Earth Science missions we have coming up and some announcements. Today we have nasa administrator bill nelson, karen shake jermaine, Division Director for nasa Earth Sciences, tom waggoner, associate director for earth action within our Earth Sciences division. We have some exciting thing to discuss with you today. We will announce a new airborne science mission, new elements in our Earth Science strategy, as well as a new visualization from our mission, pace, plankton, aerosol, cloud, ocean ecosystem. First, administrator nelson will give us more information about what we are here for today. As you know, we are a Climate Agency in addition to being a space agency, Aeronautical Research agency, and that is because we have these two dozen instruments and satellites on orbit that look at the earth, look at it, bring us data realtime within a matter of seconds that it takes the transmission from the satellites back to earth. We have all put together this Earth Information Center to try and bring this information to the public. Not only in a physical structure such as here at nasa headquarters, but also at one of these smithsonian institutions. But we bring in virtually as well to people. Up to the minute, Realtime Data on what is happening to the earth, as seen by our spacecraft. We are trying to bring the understanding that this is a precious, precious planet. It is one in our solar system around our star called the sun. We can see from space what is happening to the earth. When i flew in space 38 years ago, even with the naked eye, i could see the effects on earth coming across brazil. I could see the color contrast in the upper Amazon Region where they were cutting down the trees. In the same window of the spacecraft, i can look to the east, to the mouth of the amazon river, and i could see the result of that extra silt that was flowing hundreds of miles out into the atlantic. Same thing coming across the island nation of madagascar, the southeast corner of africa. Back then, they had cut down all the trees. When the rains came, there were not any roots to hold the topsoil. The topsoil and running down the rivers. From space looking down on madagascar are, you could see the results of that so easily, all of that silt coming out from the rivers into the bright blue waters of the indian ocean. One of the effects that happen to me personally, i became more of an environmentalist when i went into space. Today, on the occasion of earth day coming up, we have a couple of major announcements. We are going to show you, and our experts here are going to tell you about this new spacecraft that we put up called pace that is showing us all of the phytoplankton in the waters of planet earth. You are going to see some of that phytoplankton that is stirred up by the currents. You will see in one case well, there it is. That is the tip of africa. Look at all of that phytoplankton that hugs the coast until you get to the very southern tip. Low and behold, that is the confluence of two oceans. The indian ocean to the east, atlantic to the west. When they meet, the waters swirl. All of that phytoplankton is caught up in that swirl. By the way, is it any wonder, at the tip of africa, it is a place where there is a concentration of great white sharks and also whales . I think you can see realtime from pace, our instrument in space, why that is. Pace it also looking at aerosols. That is one announcement. We have another announcement today. And it is that it is a, earthventure program that will fund six new airborne missions. Dr. St. Germain go into the detail but i will tell you on the north slope of the alaska, the arctic slope of the chains, that is one. What happens when we get all of these wildfires that we have had and all of that smoke goes up and creates clouds . Clouds created by fire. What about the urban air pollution . Sometimes if you go to a place in other parts of the world, you dont want to breathe, certainly do not want to go outside on you have got a mask, witch by the way i have been wearing recently in my jogging in washington, d. C. Because there is so much pollen here. And you can hear it in my voice right now. We are also looking from our airborne platforms how drought and rainfall are affecting and shaping land. What about glacial ice . I will never forget, 15 years ago, i went to greenland, went up on that glacier. I could see how that glacier, as the scientists were telling us, how it was moving, coming into the sea. And then agricultural admissions emissions. We take our agriculture very seriously. We can help farmers, tell farmers what is the moisture, sent of the soil content of the soil. How much water you want to reserve. What kind of crop ought you to plant on this soil with this water content. That is all a part of what we are going to announce today. Thank you, sir. As you can see we have a lot of exciting things to talk about today. Karen, i know earlier this year we launched our pace mission. Last week we got to see the exciting new images but we have a new visualization that we will see today. Tell us why that is so important, tell us more about pace. Karen thanks, faith. We were super excited for the pace launch and now even just a few weeks later to see the first data coming out of the mission. We just released a data into the Science Community which is really where the power of these observations begins to be unleashed. Pace is a mission that measures some of the tiniest things that have some of the greatest impact. In the oceans, phytoplankton. These are small, plantlike organisms that are some of the earliest organisms on earth. There are hundreds of thousands of types of phytoplankton. They form the base of the food web in our oceans. They also are responsible for taking Carbon Dioxide out of our atmosphere. The Carbon Dioxide combined with the nutrients in the water and the suns light create the plant matter itself, how the plants grow, but also releases oxygen into our atmosphere. The other thing that pace observes is aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols come from a lot of different sources, from smoke from wildfires, from dust blowing off of the sahara. Aerosols in our atmosphere form the nucleus for clouds, they reflect the suns light, and actually they can form some of the nutrients that phytoplankton need to eat, to grow, sorry. By the way, the word phytoplankton comes from two greek words and it means wandering plant. Phytoplankton moves through the oceans but they play as an Important Role in our global system as all of the animals on land play. Pace is giving us our first really detailed look. Now we have animation that we will tee up for you to show you for the first time, some of the global data. Can we run that animation . This is the pace instrument, ocean color instrument. It is mapping in great detail the color of the water below. We will zoom and off of the coast of the u. S. The first thing we are looking at is the greenness, a measure of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is that component of the plants that converts the suns energy into plant mat ter. We cannot only see that that is growing but what kind of things. These two animations, we are showing you different types of phytoplankton. They behave differently in the environment. Those polar limiters that detect aerosol, they can detect smoke, different types of aerosols, and they can determine how large those aerosols are, where they are in the atmosphere and all of these different attributes, characteristics of aerosols matter a lot when we talk about how much sunlight they are reflecting, what kind of clouds they will create and so forth. Pace is giving us this unprecedented view of the tiniest critters in the ocean, tiniest particles in the atmosphere, but in both cases, they play an enormous role in aquaculture, in fisheries, inhuman health, in our everyday lives. Faith definitely amazing that weve been able to progress so much i know we also launched swat not long ago that is studying some of the same things. How will those work with each other to increase the data we are getting . Karen great question. In fact the visual that administrator nelson opened up with actually shows how biology and the physical movement of the oceans, which is what swat sees, how those Work Together to drive the phytoplankton into other regions. Because they form the basis of the food web, where the phytoplankton go, where the ocean carries the phytoplankton, that is where the fish, the whales, the sharks go. Faith that is exciting. I know a lot of what we are talking about today is so important to let people be aware of. In our communities, we announced our Earth Science strategy action. Tom, if you could talk about what that means for nasa. Tom if you want to go on the web, you can see the strategy itself. What is important is that we are going to build on what we do at nasa with innovation and collaboration so that we can help users get the right data that they need at the right time. Also, too, it increases our focus on being usercentered. We want to coproduce with users on what they need. The important thing about this now, we are at a pitiful moment. We have the challenges faced by climate change. At the same time we have our 25 Nasa Missions on orbit, International Partners, and the commercial data. So we have this unprecedented view of the earth. When you add to that all the Amazing Things that have happened in the Information Technology world, advanced physical models, potentials with ai and machine learning, we cannot really answer questions at a very high level. I want to give you an example of this. Think about if you have ever made a fire, how wet or dry the wood is really affects how you can get the fire started, how fast it burns. It turns out farmers need this kind of information and firefighters need this kind of information but they need it in very different ways. Lets take the farming example. Farmers need to know how much water they need to irrigate their fields and how much fertilizer to go along with this. We partnered with a group called open et to take satellite data, especially land sat, to give farmers a field level view of the dryness of the field so they can make very precise decisions about how much water to put onto the field. That saves them money directly. It also preserves water, that precious resource, especially in drought stricken parts of the country. Now take the firefighting case. They are trying to think about the status of the fuel itself. How dry is the wood, how much wood is out there . We assess for firefighters what is out there ahead of time. During the fire itself, we will track where the fire is and think about where its going. Afterwards we look at the intensity of the fire to think about what the restoration will look like. Did the fire get so hot that it destroyed all the seeds . Which of the effort look like to restore all those areas . We also work in health and air quality come disasters, sea level rise, energy, a host of other areas. We work with our critical partners at noaa, department, National Science foundation, and we are working at the user level. Our goal is to create solutions that people use, and we want to coproduce those. Faith that is fantastic. Administered her nelson mentioned some of those new airborne Science Missions we are announcing today. That plays a part into that, how we can truly see around us, the way this is affecting us. Karen, if you dont mind diving into some of those new missions. Karen this is a very exciting announcement for us. Of course, much of what we do uses that unique Vantage Point of space to see the whole globe. But we perform science at multiple levels, including from aircraft, and that gives us inability to do detailed studies, to understand how phenomenon are operating, how the earth is operating at the local scale. That can be really important to help us understand what our satellites are seeing from space but it can also be really important to understand very specific questions. So, we run regularly these competitions for the best ideas airborne campaigns, science questions we should go after, what instruments we should use to go after those questions. And then also but partners should be involved in those experiments, as well. Today we are announcing six new selected airborne campaigns. They will take place over the course of the decades. They are staggered out over time. Some of them take more than one experiment to accomplish the science. I will walk you through quickly through with a little more detail the six that we selected. The first one is really going after arctic coastal change. What are the things that we are seeing with a warming climate, changes in weather patterns is also changes in the way that water flows across our landscape. It is nowhere more true than in the north slope of alaska. The city college of new york is leading these observations to really understand the changes to the River Systems on the north slope of alaska. One of the cool things about this one, it is not just aircraft. This campaign will also include helicopters, boats, drones. It will be a major campaign. The second one is looking at and i think you mentioned this, tom the fact that if a wildfire is hot enough, it can create its own weather. We call these clouds pyro cumulonimbus. Pyro coming from the fire and these are really tall clouds. The research leading this study on how clouds form, when wildfires burn hot enough to make their own weather. These experiments will be principally over the western United States and canada. The third one is really going after our urban air pollution. This will be led by Langley Research center, capitalizing on the synergy between another launch that we had recently which was the tempo mission. Really understanding, at the neighborhood scale, what are the pollutants that can affect human health, and how can we get better at forecasting those conditions, informing Public Health policy . The locations for this one will be north america. One location is over mexico city, which youll be visiting, sir. Another thing that is happening that we are seeing more and more, these changes in weather patterns that we are seeing, are also changing the landscape itself. One of the ways this can happen, for example, wildfire clears vegetation but when precipitation comes, we see landslides, and those kinds of major events that change the shape of our earth. Shifting mother, shifting land is the name of this one. The jet Propulsion Laboratory will look at droughts and rainfall and how they affect the stability of hillsides, the soil, rock, vegetation, the landslides that can result from these changes in the way that water is moving around the planet. Really exciting and really important at the local level. The fifth one is, you mentioned retreating glaciers. We are looking at retreating glaciers, this one run by the university of arizona, leading this project to track retreating glaciers and ice sheets in ways that will help us improve our predictive capability there. We will be traveling to alaska, greenland, canadian arctic, and even one of my Favorite Places to really understand how these glaciers, the rates of flow, weights of retreat are changing. The last one is focused on culture, called farm flux, run by goddard space flight center. Researchers will measure Greenhouse Gases and other emissions, absorption from our farmlands. A set of six very different airborne campaigns. They will take place over a number of years and give us some really targeted insights held everything from how we understand how the earth works to how we put that science into action for people. Faith thanks, karen, for laying all that out. So important, a testament to how nasa is a Climate Agency, how we are doing all of this to help everyday people. We are doing this all in anticipation of earth a day next week. Just wanted to hear from each of you what earth day means to you. Sir, do you want to start . Bill from there we have the perspective of our planet which is so beautiful. Then i think of one of our early Space Missions that went to the far reaches of the solar system and is now, weve got to spacecraft that are really out in interstellar space and are still communicating with us, by the way, on those to spacecraft. It takes 22 hours for the signal to reach our dishes in canberra australia. As this spacecraft is starting to go into the outer reaches of our solar system, the scientists decided to turn the camera around and look back at earth. Carl sagan describes it as a pale blue dot. And thats home. Thats the place that is our home, our planet. Its the only planet we have. And we want to keep it. So thats why we are trying to offer nasas expertise and the other agencies of the federal government to give us the information we need in order to be better stewards of what we have. What about you, karen . Karen i cant top that, boss. What i will say is i love earth day. I was talking with a group of students this morning and i was saying that its a shame there is only one earth day per year but there is a sunday every week. Not cool. Anyway, i love earth day because of it its an opportunity for us to show people how the earth works and its unique perspective and how it looks from space. You talked about how beautiful our earth is and it surely is that it only gets more beautiful when you understand how it works. At least to me, thats part of the beauty that adds depth to the beauty. This is a day when we get specially to share that with many more people. When i go down to our Earth Information Center right here at nasa headquarters and opening soon at the museum of Natural History and at Kennedy Space center, again, this is one of those ways we can show people the earth as we see it, share what