[Light piano music]
[João Teixeira] Every person in
world is affected by AIRS.
It's the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder;
a revolutionary instrument that is able to look at
the infrared, the thermal radiation
that is emitted by the Earth and by the atmosphere.
AIRS is the first instrument to actually be able to do
something like this.
[Announcer] ...and, we have lift
NASA's Aqua spacecraft...
[Vasquez-Ray] It was designed to
to help improve weather
forecasting and help us understand
what's going on with climate.
[Teixeira] Because it lasted so
it allows us to have
a record of climate change that is completely unique.
So it shifted from being
a revolutionary weather mission to being a revolutionary
climate mission.
[Vasquez-Ray] Climate is all about understanding trends.
The longer the data set is, the better
you'll be able to understand what's going on.
[Pagano] Now we have a 20 year data record.
That data set in itself will be looked at
for the next hundred years or so or longer.
It will give people a glimpse into this real critical time
period in our history.
[ice crashing into water]
[Fetzer] The Arctic's gone
from being what it was 30 or 40 years ago
to what it is today, which is a lot warmer,
a lot less cloudy,
a lot more water vapor,
(which AIRS observes)
a lot less ice.
[Payne] There's also this wealth of information
in the AIRS spectra
about many different trace gases:
carbon monoxide,
ozone,
ammonia,
carbon dioxide,
also methane.
One thing we can see in the AIRS
data over time is large fire events throughout the world.
Air pollution is a global problem.
We can see those plumes moving across the world.
[Vasquez-Ray] Air data are used in the development of the U.S.
drought monitor.
[Teixeira] We do produce results
from AIRS to understand
how flu is spreading.
When the atmosphere is drier, there appears to be
a tendency for people to get the flu.
[Fetzer] All those have enormous economic consequences
and social consequences.
And this is why it matters.
[Vasquez-Ray] AIRS is about decision making.
It's about using the data that we get from these
spaceborne instruments and applying them
to critical challenges we have on Earth right now.
[Teixeira] The data that we have from AIRS is vastly unexplored.
Future generations will be able to extract much
more important information and get a lot more insight
into the climate system by looking at AIRS data.
The best is yet to come.