Head of NASA requests international cooperation on climate change

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson expressed the agency's desire for enhanced international cooperation on climate change, including greenhouse gas emissions.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated on Tuesday that the space agency hopes to see increased international collaboration in the future on issues like climate change, which includes greenhouse gas emissions. There are existing ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the earth quickly and causing the climate problem; they just need to happen more quickly and on a larger scale.

In addition to being extremely useful for researching climate change, satellites are now being used by scientists all around the world to identify greenhouse gas emissions — like methane leaks — that would have gone unnoticed otherwise. Nelson continued, saying that NASA was trying to make this data available and teach people how to use it. Satellites were continuously gathering data about the climate. Natural gas' primary ingredient, methane, is the second biggest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.

Satellite data has made it possible for scientists to identify the source of significant methane leaks. Because it traps more heat in the atmosphere per unit of energy than carbon dioxide, it is a considerably more powerful short-term driver of global warming. Nelson and Melroy, both astronauts, met with lawmakers and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador earlier in the day to talk about potential areas of cooperation.