Close Menu
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
  • News
  • Phones
  • Laptops
  • Gadgets
  • Gaming
  • AI
  • Tips
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Global
    • Press Release

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

What's On

Linda Yaccarino Tried to Tame X. Now She’s Out as CEO

9 July 2025

Samsung Unpacked 2025: Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE With 3.4-inch Cover Display, Exynos 2400 SoC Launched

9 July 2025

Ninja Cheerleader Brawler Ra Ra Boom Gets August Launch Date

9 July 2025
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Just In
  • Linda Yaccarino Tried to Tame X. Now She’s Out as CEO
  • Samsung Unpacked 2025: Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE With 3.4-inch Cover Display, Exynos 2400 SoC Launched
  • Ninja Cheerleader Brawler Ra Ra Boom Gets August Launch Date
  • The 19 Best Prime Day Coffee Maker Deals on Brewers, Grinders, Espresso Machines, and More
  • Lava Blaze AMOLED 2, Blaze Dragon to Launch in India This Month
  • Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE – Specifications, Release Date, Latest News (9th July 2025)
  • 10 Best Prime Day Kitchen Deals for Elevating Your Meals in 2025
  • China Has Attempted What Might Be the First-Ever Orbital Refueling of a Satellite
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest Vimeo
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
  • News
  • Phones
  • Laptops
  • Gadgets
  • Gaming
  • AI
  • Tips
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Global
    • Press Release
Subscribe
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
Home » NASA’s New PACE Observatory Searches for Clues to Humanity’s Future
News

NASA’s New PACE Observatory Searches for Clues to Humanity’s Future

News RoomBy News Room8 February 20244 Mins Read
Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Reddit Telegram Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

Way up in the sky and sprinkled across the seas, two of the littlest yet most influential things in the world have stubbornly guarded their secrets: aerosols and phytoplankton. Today, NASA launched its Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem mission, or PACE, to unravel their mysteries. The mission’s findings could be a key to understanding how drastically the world is changing as it warms.

Aerosols are little bits of dust, wildfire smoke, and fossil fuel pollution floating around the atmosphere, which both absorb and reflect the sun’s energy and help build clouds—wildly complex dynamics that climate models still struggle to account for. And phytoplankton are the microscopic, plant-like marine organisms that form the foundation of the food web. They also sequester carbon, keeping Earth’s climate from warming even further. “Phytoplankton are basically moving carbon around, and we need to understand how that changes with time,” says Jeremy Werdell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

PACE is a satellite observatory that’ll provide scientists with unprecedented views of these ultra-important denizens of the skies and seas, to help them try to predict how our world will evolve. “The warming atmosphere and warming oceans have a cost, and that cost from a biological point of view is that the base of the food chain will unequivocally change,” says Werdell, who is the project scientist of PACE.

Plankton come in all shapes, sizes, and shades of green, filling all kinds of different roles in the ecosystem.

Photograph: Alamy

Though phytoplankton are minuscule, they bloom in such numbers that they smear great green streaks across the oceans. That’s been easy enough to monitor by satellite, sure, but up until now what’s been observed has been more or less a uniform streak of green. But PACE is equipped with an extremely sensitive instrument that can see in high resolution across the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to the near infrared. (The visible spectrum, which we can see, is in between the two.) The effect is that PACE can see all kinds of different greens.

Think about what you see staring into a forest. “All the leaves on the various trees are green, but they’re very subtly different greens, which means they’re different plants,” says Werdell. “Really what we’re searching for are these very, very subtle changes in color.”

That’ll allow scientists to determine not just where phytoplankton are blooming and why, but what kind of community that creates. There are thousands upon thousands of phytoplankton species—some that act as food for tiny animals known as zooplankton, others that are highly toxic, some that sequester carbon better than others. What modern satellites can see from space is like drawing with a box of eight crayons, but the species will look different to PACE’s eye. “What we’re getting with PACE is a box of 128,” says Werdell.

Video: Andy Sayer/NASA

Better understanding these phytoplanktonic communities is critical because of how rapidly the oceans are transforming. They’ve absorbed something like 90 percent of the excess heat humanity has added to the atmosphere, and over the past year or so in particular, sea surface temperatures have soared to record highs and stayed there. The high temperatures themselves might adversely affect the growth of some phytoplankton species, but might actually benefit others that thrive as the mercury climbs.

More subtly, warm water acts like a kind of cap at the ocean surface, with cooler waters swirling below. “It’s kind of like drinking a half and half at your favorite Irish pub: Guinness floating on top of Harp,” says Werdell. “That creates a barrier in this huge stretch of real estate in the upper ocean, where nutrients in the cold water underneath this layer of warm water can’t penetrate.”

Phytoplankton need those nutrients to grow, so if the cap of warm water persists in a given area, that’ll further shake up the community of photosynthesizing species. If there’s less of the species that zooplankton need for food, their numbers may decline too. And then the larger predators like fish that eat the zooplankton will be impacted, on up the food chain. That could eventually affect the food species that humans rely on for protein.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleThe Knuckles Paramount + Series Gets A Full Proper Trailer
Next Article Like the hit Netflix show Fool Me Once? Then watch these three shows right now

Related Articles

News

Linda Yaccarino Tried to Tame X. Now She’s Out as CEO

9 July 2025
News

The 19 Best Prime Day Coffee Maker Deals on Brewers, Grinders, Espresso Machines, and More

9 July 2025
News

10 Best Prime Day Kitchen Deals for Elevating Your Meals in 2025

9 July 2025
News

China Has Attempted What Might Be the First-Ever Orbital Refueling of a Satellite

9 July 2025
News

The 191 Best Prime Day Deals On Stuff We’ve Tested and Love

9 July 2025
News

The 17 Best Prime Day Apple Deals on iPads, AirPods, and MacBooks

9 July 2025
Demo
Top Articles

ChatGPT o1 vs. o1-mini vs. 4o: Which should you use?

15 December 2024101 Views

Costco partners with Electric Era to bring back EV charging in the U.S.

28 October 202495 Views

Oppo Reno 14, Reno 14 Pro India Launch Timeline and Colourways Leaked

27 May 202582 Views

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

Latest News
Laptops

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE – Specifications, Release Date, Latest News (9th July 2025)

News Room9 July 2025
News

10 Best Prime Day Kitchen Deals for Elevating Your Meals in 2025

News Room9 July 2025
News

China Has Attempted What Might Be the First-Ever Orbital Refueling of a Satellite

News Room9 July 2025
Most Popular

The Spectacular Burnout of a Solar Panel Salesman

13 January 2025124 Views

ChatGPT o1 vs. o1-mini vs. 4o: Which should you use?

15 December 2024101 Views

Costco partners with Electric Era to bring back EV charging in the U.S.

28 October 202495 Views
Our Picks

The 19 Best Prime Day Coffee Maker Deals on Brewers, Grinders, Espresso Machines, and More

9 July 2025

Lava Blaze AMOLED 2, Blaze Dragon to Launch in India This Month

9 July 2025

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE – Specifications, Release Date, Latest News (9th July 2025)

9 July 2025

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
© 2025 Best in Technology. All Rights Reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.