NASA's OCO-2 mission reveals new study on climate change

Climate change occurs due to several human activities like excessive use of fossil fuel, cutting down trees. These changes have disturbed the Globe Carbon Cycle. The journal Science published five papers on Thursday based on the study of climate change on Earth, conducted by NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), according to a report by Los Angeles Times.

NASA launched OCO-2 on July 2, 2014, after the failure of the first OCO satellite.

OCO-2 has been studying Earth's climate change for the past three years and collected lots of information about carbon emission and other toxic gases which caused the rise in global temperatures.

Value of OCO program

OCO-2 has been orbiting Earth at 438 miles above the surface of the planet. The 5 papers were published to show the importance of OCO program to the Trump administration, which cut the budget for follow-up missions on climate change and Earth Science. The research team of OCO-2 said that emission of carbon was in excess during the 2015-2016 El Niño, Los Angeles Times reported.

The deputy project scientist of OCO-2 Annmarie Eldering believes that half of the carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, and half of it stays in oceans or is used by plants during photosynthesis.

She said, "But there are still these questions of which parts of the land are doing that."

The observations by NASA's scientists

Out of 5 studies, two studies were about 2015-2016 El Niño's impact on the carbon cycle, and one study was done to track carbon emission from Volcanoes and cities, according to Motherboard (magazine). Eldering's team said that combining all these studies together helps to understand the impact of various factors which contribute in the disturbance of global carbon cycle. The team also added that these studies would help them to understand the future changes in climate.

The amount of carbon that pulls up into the atmosphere has increased from 20 to 80 percent in recent years.

The infrared sensors of OCO-2 found that forests in the tropical region of South America, Africa, and Indonesia have stopped pulling carbon like they used to do in past.

Los Angeles Times wrote that around 3 billion more metric tons of carbon emission occurred from land after 2011 El Niño's, and out of those extra emissions, 80% carbon emission occurred from these tropical regions. NASA's OCO-3 mission is focused to observe the effects of fossil fuel consumption and growing population in urban areas on climate change.