from the land sea and air scientists bill computer models that help them simulate cost and future conditions. talk to peter conoco is one of the team studying particles in the atmosphere so this is an animation from a global earth system model that we run here at nasa. what we're simulating in this are the distributions of what we call aerosols or particles in the atmosphere and the different colors row. present different kinds of these particles and they come from all kinds of different sources so the blue colors are from seaspray that's blown up by the winds at the surface of the sea the greener colors come from smoke sources and so there we have individual fires that are going off in the model and emitting smoke into the atmosphere and it's transported over long distances the whiter colors correspond to what we call anthropogenic pollutants so things that come from power plants or car emissions and so you can see places especially in china or on the east coast of the united states or even in europe were