You may already know that carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and such emissions contribute to global warming.
What you (and most scientists) probably don’t know is what happens to the carbon dioxide once it is in the atmosphere.
To help answer this question, scientists at NASA plan to launch a satellite to help measure and track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and on the surface of the Earth. Analyzing how carbon dioxide moves around the globe could be a crucial piece to improving climate models. Scientists also hope to learn more about “carbon sinks,” the places were carbon dioxide absorbed including the oceans and forests. While human activity accounts for a very small percentage of total carbon dioxide emissions, we do enough to put the system out of balance and it is the excess carbon from us that is in part responsible climate change.
