Following are links to some research project and group homepages located on the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies websites.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Astrobiology — NExSS ROCKE-3D Project
The GISS Astrobiology group is an interdisciplinary team of scientists interested in understanding our solar system through time — from the early configuration of the planets nearly 4 billion years ago to their modern state. Our focus is on characterizing the habitability of rocky planets, extending that understanding to the climates of extrasolar planets, but also includes understanding environments as diverse as Titan and Archean Earth.
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Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP)
ACCMIP aims to better evaluate the role of atmospheric chemistry, both gases and aerosols, in driving climate change. In particular, the intercomparison is designed to facilitate analyses of the driving forces of climate change in simulations being performed in the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) in support of the IPCC AR5. ACCMIP consists of a set of experiments designed to provide insight into the CMIP5 simulations of historical and future climate change, along with additional simulations to better understand the role of particular processes and to constrain uncertainties.
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Climate Impacts
The Climate Impacts group at NASA GISS seeks to improve understanding of how climate affects human society through assessment of the effect of current climate variability and of potential climate change impacts caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Impacts research includes development of a framework to analyze complex interactions among biophysical and socio-economic processes.
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Education Global Climate Model (EdGCM)
The Education GCM project at the Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research couples the GISS Model II with a user-friendly interface that runs on desktop Macintosh and Windows PCs. EdGCM allows students to experience the full scientific process, from designing experiments to setting up and running climate simulations, processing output, displaying results, and creating scientific reports.
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Ent Dynamic Global Terrestrial Ecosystem Model
The Ent model is a dynamic global terrestrial ecosystem model (DGTEM) developed specifically for coupling with atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs). Ent will be capable of predicting the fast time scale fluxes of water, carbon, nitrogen and energy between the land-surface and the atmosphere and the resulting diurnal surface fluxes, seasonal and inter-annual vegetation growth, and decadal to century-scale alterations in vegetation structure and soil carbon and nitrogen.
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Global Aerosol Climatology Project (GACP
GACP was established in 1998 to extract an improved multi-decadal aerosol record from existing satellite measurements. The main objective was to develop advanced global aerosol climatologies for the full period of satellite data, supplement them by improved modeling results, and make these aerosol datasets broadly available and suitable for use in studies of the direct and indirect effects of aerosols on climate.
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Global Climate Modeling
The climate modeling program at GISS is primarily aimed at the development of 3D general circulation models (GCMs) and coupled atmosphere-ocean models for simulating Earth's climate system, although some research may include the use of regional climate models, 2D energy balance models, and 1D radiative-convective models. Primary emphasis is placed on investigation of climate sensitivity, including the climate system's response to forcings such as solar variability, anthropogenic and natural emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, etc.
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Goddard Institute Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)
Surface air temperature change is a primary measure of global climate change.
The GISTEMP project started in the late 1970s to provide an estimate of the changing global surface air temperature which could be compared with the estimates obtained from climate models simulating the effect of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, volcanic aerosols, and solar irradiance.
The continuing analysis updates global temperature change from the late 1800s to the present.
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International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (SCCP)
ISCCP was established as part of the World Climate Research Programme to collect and analyze satellite radiance measurements to infer the global distribution of clouds, their properties, and their diurnal, seasonal, and interannual variations. The resulting datasets and analysis products are used to improve understanding and modeling of the role of clouds in climate, with the primary focus being the elucidation of the effects of clouds on the radiation balance.
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Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) Airborne Science
GISS operates the two most accurate polarimeters in the world on a range of aircraft, at altitudes from 200 m to 20 km. These instruments, called Research Scanning Polarimeters (RSP), retrieve aerosol and cloud properties. Aerosol data obtained include the size distribution and complex refractive index of particles, their optical depth, and an estimate of layer height. Cloud retrievals include layer average particle size, cloud optical thickness and cloud top height, as well as droplet size distribution at cloud top for water clouds and aspect ratio and level of distortion of crystals in ice clouds.
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Stable Water Isotope Intercomparison Group, Phase 2 (SWING2)
The Stable Water Isotope iNtercomparison Group (SWING) 2 project is the second phase of an international intercomparison of current state-of-the-art water isotope general circulation models and related observational isotope data. It brings together scientists with a common wide range of interest in both modelling and measuring stable water isotopes (H218O, HDO) and their application to Earth System problems.
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