PACE-PAX

Times of India - The North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW), one of the most critically endangered mammals on Earth, continues to be threatened with several dangers despite the prohibition of commercial whaling. Entanglement in fishing nets and collisions with ships are now the greatest dangers to their existence. To help protect these whales from these dangers, scientists have come up with creative ways of monitoring their habits and reducing these dangers.

ABC News - Last year, 2024, was the warmest year on record for the planet, easily breaking the previous record set just a year earlier.

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research- On February 8, 2024, NASA launched its PACE climate satellite with the Dutch aerosol instrument SPEXone onboard. A full year of observations now yields a world map of aerosols.

It shows the distribution of fine and coarse aerosols and of particles that reflect or absorb sunlight. The latter respectively have cooling and warming effects on the climate. SPEXone was built by SRON and Airbus Netherlands, with support from TNO.

NASA Explore - The American Geophysical Union (AGU) returned to the nation’s capital in 2024, hosting its annual meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC from December 9–14, 2024. NASA Science upheld its long-standing tradition as an AGU partner and exhibitor, leveraging the meeting as an opportunity to share NASA’s cutting-edge research, data, and technology with the largest collection of Earth and planetary science professionals in the world.

Union Rayo - No calm sea ever made a skilled sailor, or so they say. Now that we’re talking about the sea… could you tell what colour the sea is? Does it depend on where you are? Or is it always blue? Green? Light blue? We know that none of us really know what colour the sea is, we know that it has light blue and light blue tones, and that if it rains it turns green, but… what if we saw the oceans of our planet from space for the first time, just as they look from up there?

NASA - EarthData Are you looking for data learning resources to work with NASA's ocean color datasets, services, and tools? The new Help Hub, released by NASA's Ocean Biology Distributed Active Archive Center (OB.DAAC), provides access to many helpful ocean color resources including:
 

JPL - The ocean is an engine that drives Earth’s weather patterns and climate and sustains a substantial portion of life on the planet. A new animation based on data from two recently launched missions — NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites — gives a peek into the heart of that engine.

satnews - “We see great opportunity to dramatically accelerate our scientific understanding of our oceans and the significant role they play in our Earth system,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This visualization illustrates the potential we have when we begin to integrate measurements from our separate SWOT and PACE ocean missions. Each of those missions is significant on its own.

JPL - One Earth satellite can see plankton that photosynthesize. The other measures water surface height. Together, their data reveals how sea life and the ocean are intertwined.

NASA’s SWOT and PACE missions offer unprecedented insights into the ocean’s role as a climate engine and life-supporting system. By combining SWOT’s physical measurements with PACE’s biological observations, scientists can better understand how ocean dynamics impact marine ecosystems, fisheries, and carbon cycling.