Heading South…

Tomorrow, I’m off to Punta Arenas, Chile for the Antarctic 2010 campaign of Operation IceBridge.  I’m leaving DC tomorrow evening…6,426 miles and 22.5 hours later, I will arrive in Chile.

I’ll spend the next ten days aboard NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft, collecting footage of Antarctic sea and land ice.  We will hold a teleconference at 2pm on Monday, November 15th from Punta Arenas to discuss the campaign and provide an overview of the multi-year mission.  Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

Here is a video I released when the campaign kicked-off in October:

I’m hoping to edit and post short videos from the field, depending on connectivity.  Keep an eye on this site as well as www.nasa.gov/icebridge and twitter.com/icebridge for updates.

Chris Palmer on Good Morning America

Chris Palmer, my thesis advisor from the Center for Environmental Filmmaking at AU was on Good Morning America this week discussing his new book, Shooting in the Wild.  The book discusses the business of making wildlife documentaries and addresses the use of staged situations and captive animals being portrayed as real and spontaneous.  Check out the interview by clicking on the image below or by clicking here:

Blast from the Past

My friend and former co-worker, Olivia, reminded me of one of my favorite projects from VideoTakes.  I thought it was a nice Monday morning post. Enjoy (and check out the FRESHFARM market near you!).

Robots on the Roof

This is a fun little piece that I helped shoot and produce.  My co-worker, Brooke Harris, did the editing and I think it’s a nice evergreen piece about aerosols.  The scientist was great to work with and I think this proves that NASA science can be local!

Protecting Parrots

This video is the result of my recent trip to Belize with my friend and colleague, Melanie Sorensen.  We traveled to the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area in the pine savanna of Belize in May 2010 to meet with Programme for Belize (PfB).  PfB is working on several conservation projects for the Yellow Headed Amazon Parrot, and we partnered with them about a year ago to help raise money and awareness for the bird and its habitat.  Sponsored by the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders, Melanie and I were fortunate enough to spend a few days with PfB, getting to know their organization and understanding the purpose of their efforts.

This video underscores the importance of their efforts and provides a brief introduction to our group and our project.

Many thanks to the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders, the Minnesota Zoo, Programme for Belize and the other members of our group:  Nav Dayanand, Matt Kirby, Eliot Levine and David Tucker.

For more information, please visit the PfB website at http://www.pfbelize.org/

Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth

A breakthrough paper, published today in the journal Science, uses NASA data to explain the connection between plant growth and climate change.  Plants remove carbon from the air in the first step of the carbon cycle, so it is critical to understand how warmer temperatures affect plant growth.

Since measurements began in the 1880s, the previous decade is the warmest on record.  Until this paper was published, scientists believed that warmer temperatures were generally good for plant growth because of more sunlight and increased levels of precipitation.  However, when Zhao and Running from the University of Montana used NASA satellite data to compare the past decade with the previous two decades, they were surprised to find out that warmer temperatures have led to extreme drought conditions, thereby offsetting the benefits of a warmer climate.

It turns out that all of that carbon absorption going on by plants may not be happening as quickly as we thought.  The areas affected by drought are mostly in the southern hemisphere, where so much of the carbon absorption takes place.  The tropics alone account for 93% of all carbon intake from plants, and almost all of this occurs in regions affected by prolonged drought over the past ten years.

Watch the video to find out more and be sure to check out a great feature article, written by NASA’s Kathryn Hansen.

Multimedia materials for the public and the media are available here.

Snowpocolypse Revisited

This is a recent post I wrote for NASA’s What on Earth blog.  They finally figured out what caused all that snow this past winter.  Check out the post here.

Check out the cool visualization from the Scientific Visualization Studio:

Greenland footage on CNN

Tom Wagner from NASA’s Cryosphere program was interviewed today on CNN.  During the interview, they used some of my b-roll from Operation IceBridge in Greenland this past March.

Click here to see the interview on CNN.

Large Slab of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier Breaks Off

On August 5, 2010, an enormous chunk of ice, roughly 97 square miles in size, broke off the Petermann Glacier along the northwestern coast of Greenland.   The glacier lost about one-quarter of its 40-mile long floating ice shelf, the Northern Hemisphere’s largest.  It’s not unusual for large icebergs to calve off the Petermann Glacier, but this new one is the largest to form in the Arctic since 1962.

Click here or the image below for more.

Supercomputing the Climate

Debuting in spring 2010, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is the new name for a Goddard Space Flight Center organization that has provided supercomputing resources to NASA scientists and engineers for over 25 years.

This is a video I produced to explain weather and climate modeling, and how supercomputers help us understand our changing planet.

More information can be found here and here