- The role of clouds, radiation, water vapor and precipitation.
- The primary productivity of the oceans, their circulation, and air-sea exchange.
- The sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and their atmospheric transformations.
- Changes in land use, land cover, primary productivity, and the water cycle.
- The role of polar ice sheets and sea level.
- The coupling of ozone chemistry with climate and the biosphere.
- The role of volcanoes in climate change.
In addition to EOS and research satellites such as UARS and TOPEX, MTPE will include
Earth Probes — discipline-specific satellites with instruments that will gather observa-
tions before the launch of the EOS platforms. Earth Probes will include the Tropical
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM ), Sea-Viewing Wide Field Sensor (SeaWiFS), which
will measure ocean vegetation, reflights of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
(TOMS), and a NASA scatterometer designed to measure ocean surface winds (NSCAT).
Data from these missions will be complemented by other datasets. Space Shuttle exper-
iments; Landsat data; data from U.S., European, and Japanese-operated polar and
geostationary environmental satellites; and ground-based observations from ships,
buoys, and surface instruments all contribute to MTPE.
MTPE Information is not only critical for scientific re s e a rch, but can also play an import a n t
role in science education. Through educational materials such as
NASA encourages teachers to use a space perspective to spark their students’
imagination, and capture their interest in and knowledge of Earth system science.