Michelle Williams Media Portfolio » NASA

Supercomputing the Climate

michelleann86 — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:48:51 +0000

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

Filed under: NASA, Uncategorized

Climate Essentials Gallery

michelleann86 — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:57:27 +0000

This Climate Essentials multimedia gallery brings together the latest and most popular climate-related images, data visualizations and video features from Goddard Space Flight Center on one web page.

Together with the Earth Science Storytelling Team and specifically the producers and writers working on the Warming World campaign, I created this go-to space for science-based climate visuals.

Browse our top ten most popular climate resources, or select from the categories below. You can download the imagery in a variety of formats directly from this site. For more multimedia resources on climate and other topics, search the Scientific Visualization Studio. To learn more about NASA’s contribution to understanding Earth’s climate, visit the Global Climate Change site.

Filed under: NASA

Water, Water Everywhere!

michelleann86 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:38:12 +0000

This video was produced for Earth Science Week 2009 (Oct 9-16th). It was one of six videos. The rest of the videos produced by our team can be found here: http://climate.nasa.gov/esw/videoseries/

Water is all around us, and its importance to nearly every natural process on earth cannot be underestimated. It is vital to life, but it is also tightly coupled to climate, helping to carry heat from the tropics to higher latitudes. Changes to the water cycle affect climate and vice versa. The water cycle is the movement of water around the Earth in all its forms. Imagine the path a molecule of water might take after it evaporates from the salty ocean. It might condense and return to the ocean as rainfall, or it might move through the atmosphere as water vapor and fall onto the land surface as freshwater rain or snow. Snow may become part of an ice cap or glacier, where the water molecule could remain for centuries, or it might soon melt and enter the soil or a stream. Rain wets the soil, becoming available for plants to use. The water molecule may drain into an aquifer, where it could remain for many years before feeding into a stream. Streams flow into lakes and rivers, but along the way the water molecule might be captured for use industry, agriculture, or drinking and other domestic needs. Ultimately, the water molecule will return to the ocean where the journey begins anew. This video explains what the water cycle is and how important it is to life on earth.

Posted in NASA

Coming soon…

michelleann86 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:17:23 +0000

This summer we are working on a few really interesting projects. In mid-September look for a six episode podcast series and Google Earth Tour about remote sensing and the global food system. We’ll talk to NASA scientists to find out how satellite images are helping farmers, businesses and governments around the world predict who will have productive yields, who won’t, when to harvest, and how to predict where to distribute food aid in the immediate future. The Google Earth Tour will present a case study of the Global Food Crisis of 2008, explaining why we saw such a sharp increase in commodity prices in 2008, what the contributing factors were, and how we can prevent such a thing from happening again. The podcast series will be published on nasa.gov, facebook, YouTube and the Earth Observatory. Check back in September!

October 11-17th is Earth Science Week! Sponsored by the American Geological Institute, the theme of this year’s Earth Science Week is “Understanding Climate.” To help celebrate, NASA Goddard is producing a podcast series about oceans and climate, plus a few other exciting activities like live webcasts and educational materials.

In the meantime, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, NASAexplorer. It has videos covering everything from Apollo to Earth Science. Also, check out the Earth Observatory blog, Journey to Galapagos, by NASA oceanographer Gene Feldman (http://tinyurl.com/kwjjbw).

Posted in NASA

Observations of Our Changing Earth from Space

michelleann86 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:51:55 +0000

Come to the National Academy of Sciences auditorium on Tuesday, June 23rd at 5:15 pm for an exciting evening with NASA scientists and a stunning performance by Bella Gaia violinist Kenji Williams.

This free event will feature lively discussion of four scientists, and will be moderated by Kathy Sullivan of Ohio State University. Featured scientists include Jim Yoder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass.; Waleed Abdalati, Colorado State University, Boulder, Colo.; Christopher Justice, University of Maryland at College Park, Md.; and J. Marshall Shepherd, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.

The scientists will discuss new developments in research and benefits to society made possible by the Earth system science approach pioneered by the agency during the last 20 years. Topics covered will include oceans, wildfires, frozen areas of earth, weather and climate.

Contact me for more info!

Posted in NASA Tagged: Earth System Science, ESS@20, NAS, NASA

Celebrating 10 years of the Earth Observatory

michelleann86 — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:49:16 +0000

On April 29, 2009, NASA’s Earth Observatory (www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov) celebrated 10 years of sharing beautiful images of our home planet. This video commemorates the accomplishments of the Earth Observatory team and celebrates the success of the site. [Producer/Editor, 2009]

Posted in NASA Tagged: Earth Observatory, NASA