While the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted everyone’s focus, many scientists have continued to keep one eye on another one of Earth’s most pressing problems: climate change.

         Recently, NASA found concrete evidence that humanity is directly affecting the Earth’s temperatures. According to Sofie Bates from NASA’s Earth Science News Team, humans mainly influence the Earth’s warming through “radiative forcing” in which the heat coming into the atmosphere from space does not reflect back out but rather gets absorbed by the planet, contributing to both its temperatures and “an energy imbalance”.

        With this data, NASA will be better equipped to make more accurate predictions for how climate change will impact the planet whether it be through a rise in floods or an emergence of droughts. On the other hand, hopefully this new insight will encourage people to bring the issue of climate change back into the main picture as governments around the globe continue to face pressure to obtain that net zero carbon goal set by the 2016 Paris Agreement.