Addressing the climate crisis is one of the top priorities of President Joe Biden, and NASA has created a new role that matches.
The senior climate adviser will report directly to NASA’s administrator and work with a series of agency departments touching on climate. Gavin Schmidt, who led NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York for 14 years, will serve as acting senior climate advisor until the role is permanently fulfilled.
“He’s been doing climate change research and modeling for many years, I think he’s going to do an excellent job,” Steve Jurczyk, acting NASA administrator, told Space.com.
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As for the position for the long term, it will wait until the Biden government is appointed and the Senate to new NASA administrator, he said.
“Our plan is to hopefully have a NASA administrator named and confirmed in the not too distant future and get that person on board and then see how they want to fill the position,” Jurczyk said.
NASA is one of the major providers of federal government observations about our planet and its atmosphere and climate. The agency operates nearly two dozen Earth-observing satellites and various instruments attached to the International Space Station dedicated to the study of the earth according to NASA; more than a dozen missions are designed. These projects study everything from ocean temperatures and ice cover to atmospheric composition and vegetation.
But the senior climate adviser will not be limited to the missions, Jurczyk said. The post is also intended to work with, for example, NASAs aviation department to use fuel more efficiently or together with other institutions to develop energy technology for use in space as well as on earth.
In addition to working within NASA, the senior climate advisor will also work with other offices in the executive branch, notably the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget, according to a NASA statement about the position.
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