NASA’s Climate Resilience Program Strengthens the Adaptive Capacity of NASA Centers and Surrounding Communities

Ian Bohachek is an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Geography, Cartography/Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Environmental Studies. Ian is a fall 2024 intern with NASA’s Climate Resilience program, where he supports capacity building efforts related to climate resilience and climate adaptation.

Eman Sadig is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of South Florida studying International Studies, Geography with a concentration in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Environmental Science and Policy. As an intern with NASA’s Climate Resilience program, she has contributed to capacity building efforts through producing and analyzing climate projections across varying time periods and emissions scenarios. Eman is passionate about advancing climate resilience and informing policy to support sustainable development around the world.

What is NASA’s Climate Resilience Program?

Resilience speaks to a system’s ability to absorb and recover from changes. NASA’s Climate Resilience (CR) program advances this concept by utilizing Earth observation (EO) data to help communities adapt to the changing climate, withstand the worst of its impacts, and inform public and private sector decision-making. With over 60 years of Earth science data, NASA studies how the Earth’s climate is changing over time, and the CR program seeks to answer the following question: how can communities build resilience to the impacts of  these changes?

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13.1— aimed at strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters— is at the heart of the CR program and its pursuit to apply EO data to best serve community needs in resilience planning. Satellites and other space-based instruments can provide regional and global context that is unique from other data sources, and our program provides communities with the data and models needed to reduce climate risks, as it relates to human and natural systems.

Increasing Climate Resiliency at NASA Centers

One of the main activities of the CR program is to enhance the resilience of NASA centers and their surrounding communities. A project conducted by CR intern Eman Sadig in collaboration with the Climate Adaptation Science Investigators (CASI) was the creation of a comprehensive climate report card for the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Merritt Island, Florida. This report utilized downscaled CASI EO to produce climate projections, identifying risks to KSC across different emissions scenarios.

These projections informed the Office of Strategic Infrastructure’s (OSI) development of climate adaptation strategies and evaluation metrics to enhance center resilience, supporting SDG 13. KSC is no stranger to heat and rainfall, but as these extremes and others are projected to increase over time, the use of EO is critical to ensure workforce safety, center operations, and deliver effective resilience measures to surrounding communities. 

Enhancing Climate Resilience Data Accessibility

Another recent project undertaken was the formulation of a Climate Resilience Data Pathfinder by intern Ian Bohachek to increase the accessibility of climate resilience EO. The data pathfinder is of interest to the Earth observations community because while NASA climate resilience data and tools can be found on NASA’s Earthdata website, they are distributed across many different webpages, making it difficult to identify what EO are available specifically for climate resilience.

The new pathfinder will provide a comprehensive resource for NASA’s climate resilience-related data and tools, enabling users to more easily identify what is available to them, and in turn, more useful to them. Making climate resilience EO data more accessible will enable scientists and professionals to more effectively by strengthening resilience in the face of climate-related disasters.

Looking Ahead: Explore Future Projects

NASA’s Climate Resilience program is undertaking important projects and initiatives to use EO to build climate resilience and achieve SDG 13, with many more efforts on the horizon. Learn more about the CR program HERE. 

Date Published: December 9th, 2024