NASA In Brief -- Climate still warming, study finds

    This research hinges on a more detailed calculation of the sensitivity of Earth's climate to the factors that cause it to change, such as greenhouse gas emissions. Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, found Earth is likely to experience roughly 20 percent more warming than estimates that were largely based on surface temperature observations during the past 150 years.
    Shindell's paper on this research was published March 9 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

RESEARCHERS COLLECT ICE DATA: Researchers aboard NASA's P-3 research aircraft left the agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., March 10 for Greenland to begin a new season of collecting data on Arctic land and sea ice.
    The mission, known as Operation IceBridge, is to gather data on changes to polar ice and maintain continuity of measurements between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite missions.
    By flying yearly campaigns, IceBridge provides valuable data on rapidly changing areas of polar land and sea ice. Flights run through May 23 from Thule Air Base and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, with a weeklong deployment to Fairbanks, Alaska.
    During the past five years, IceBridge has surveyed large portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, as well as sea ice in both polar regions. IceBridge data have been used to build detailed maps of bedrock in Greenland and Antarctica, calculate changes in Arctic sea ice thickness and volume, and improve our understanding of the rate at which glaciers in Greenland are flowing into the sea.

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