NASA's Visualization Of Atmospheric Aerosols Is A Breathtaking Picture Of A Terrifying Truth

Climate change may be causing things like heat waves and cyclones around the world, but they¡¯re far from the only signs of it. In a new visualization, NASA shows us patterns of aerosols in our atmosphere, both caused by and contributing to global warming.

Images courtesy: NASA

Aerosols are airborne particles or droplets, though they come in different forms. In the visualization above, it shows the picture of aerosols on just one day, August 23. Black carbon particles are shown in red, from things like the recent wildfires in the US and Africa, as well as dust and volcanic ash. Dust meanwhile is in deep purple while sea salt is in blue.

This isn¡¯t a direct representation of satellite data, as NASA points out, but a combination of data from the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) as well as other satellite data. In addition is also night light data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to show the locations of towns and cities.

For our benefit, NASA has also marked some serious events in the map that we might just mistake for nondescript swirls otherwise, like the dust storms over the Sahara and tropical typhoons near Japan and South Korea.

All of these events have worsened in recent times thanks to global warming. And with each wildfire and cyclone, the cycle of aerosols getting into the atmosphere degenerates further, hurrying along global warming even more.