![]() They also discovered that Greenland’s west coast is generally more vulnerable than its east coast. In one OMG study, scientists discovered that many Greenland glaciers extend deeper (some around 1,000 feet, or about 300 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface than once thought, making them quite vulnerable to the warming ocean. ![]() ![]() OMG will also collect data on the sea floor’s shape and depth, which determines how much warm water can reach any given glacier.Īs the OMG crew and scientists collect data around 27,000 miles (over 43,000 kilometers) of Greenland coastline over that five-year period, each year scientists will analyze the data to see how much the oceans warmed or cooled and how the ice changed in response. Over a five-year period, OMG will survey Greenland by air and ship to collect ocean temperature and salinity (saltiness) data and take ice thinning measurements to help climate scientists better understand how the ice and warming ocean interact with each other. OMG hypothesizes that the oceans are playing a major role in Greenland ice loss. How does the scientific method work in the real world of climate science? Let’s take NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign, a multi-year survey of Greenland’s ice melt that’s paving the way for improved sea level rise estimates, as an example. The story goes back to the late 1800s, but in 1958, for example, Charles Keeling of the Mauna Loa Observatory in Waimea, Hawaii, started taking meticulous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the atmosphere, showing the first significant evidence of rapidly rising CO 2 levels and producing the Keeling Curve climate scientists know today. Using the scientific method, scientists have shown that humans are extremely likely the dominant cause of today’s climate change. “And I use it to learn something about how the world works.” “The way science works is that I go out and study something, and maybe I collect data or write equations, or I run a big computer program,” said Josh Willis, principal investigator of NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. You might have learned about it in grade school, but here’s a quick reminder: It’s the process that scientists use to understand everything from animal behavior to the forces that shape our planet-including climate change. Without a formal method of determining questions and their answers, we wouldn't have science or the knowledge we have today.The scientific method is the gold standard for exploring our natural world. The scientific method is the cornerstone to modern science. They wrote papers and discussed how using experiments and changing variables can help to determine if a guess (or hypothesis) is correct. For something that sounds so simple and basic, there are still long scientific papers written about the method and scientists who disagree on exactly the best way to implement it.įrancis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton all helped contribute to the development of the scientific method as a good way to learn about nature and science. The scientific method wasn't invented by one person, but was developed by different scientists and philosophers over the years. ![]() Retest (often done by other scientists).Gather information and observe (research).Another scientist can take a look at your tests and add some more tests and continue to refine your answer to the question.Īs described above, there are specific steps that should be taken when using the scientific method. If you find that the results do not fit with your original hypothesis, you can now change your hypothesis and run more tests, if necessary.īy going through this process, scientists have a way to verify their guesses and to double check each other. Carefully controlling your experiments is an important part of the scientific method.įinally, after running all the tests you can think of, you analyze your data. This way you can check your results and know what you changed that changed the answer. A key to good experiments is to only change one thing, or variable, at a time. Next, you run experiments to see if your guess is right. Next you need to observe and gather information in order to come up with a guess (called a hypothesis) or a number of guesses to the answer. You can't find the answer until you know the question after all! The first thing to do with the scientific method is to come up with a question. It doesn't matter what the scientist is trying to learn, using the scientific method can help them come up with an answer. In simple terms, the scientific method is a way for scientists to study and learn things. The scientific method is defined as a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data is gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from this data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |