The internet was ablaze on Sunday in anticipation of the premiere of the final season of “Game of Thrones” — and NASA made sure not to squander the opportunity of the return of “fire and ice” to promote its favorite issue.
“While you’re waiting for the new #GameOfThrones episode, you can check out a real landscape of ice ️and fire,” NASA Earth tweeted in a post noted by Twitchy. “Last week, @NASA_Landsat captured this image of a fire burning in Siberia between frozen land and lakes.”
In a follow-up tweet, NASA Earth underscored for its followers that, yes, global warming is the cause of the wild scene (which, by the way, is only causing more global warming): “As the Arctic continues to warm even faster than the rest of the planet, fires in the region are likely to become more common and intense, releasing increasing amounts of carbon in the atmosphere.”
That NASA Earth would tweet about climate change on Sunday is no surprise, since a significant percentage of the account’s posts are global warming-themed, a result of its connection to NASA’s climate change research wing.
“NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of Earth and improve lives,” the account says in its description. The primary means of “improv[ing] lives” for the account is to promote climate change awareness. Some examples of its recent tweets below.
Here’s an image from NASA Landsat used to carbon footprint-shame cities on Sunday:
“Foehn winds—which are at their strongest outside of the summer season—have caused significant late-season melting on the Larsen C ice shelf in each year since 2015,” NASA Earth tweeted. “During Antarctic summers, patches of meltwater appear bright blue on the white snow and ice. In 2016, @NASA_Landsat images showed unusual, late-season melting on the Antarctic peninsula,” the organization explained in another post.
Some more carbon footprint-shaming:
“Alaska jumped from mid-winter right into late spring, setting monthly temperature records in many cities and towns,” the account warned last week.
Just a quick reminder that this isn’t even NASA’s celebrated official climate change account: “Have you heard? This year marks the 10th anniversary of NASA’s Global Climate Change website, and we’re up for a Webby Award in the ‘Green’ category!”
“Though the end of winter and start of spring have brought seasonal floods here since ancient times, this spring has been severe in some areas of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan,” NASA Earth noted last week.
“ICYMI In the lee of picturesque Alaskan mountains, glaciers are melting rapidly. Fly along with #NASAExplorers in a bonus episode through the beautiful — and changing — landscape,” reads another recent post.
“The mission of [NASA Climate] is to provide accurate and timely information about Earth’s changing climate, along with current data and visualizations, from NASA’s unique perspective,” NASA Jet Propulsion Labrotory (JPL) explained in a recent tweet.
As Bloomberg reported in August 2018, while the Obama administration poured resources into NASA’s climate change research wing, the Trump administration has presented far different priorities for the space program. “Under the Obama administration, NASA’s Earth Science program saw the fastest growth of any science division at the agency, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” the outlet reported. “The Trump administration, meanwhile, has sought to revamp NASA’s $21 billion budget to foster private-sector commercial activity in low Earth orbit and deeper forays into the solar system.”