So what my role is as a scientist at NASA is to work with satellite data from rainfall and topography so looking at the slopes
and the soil types, to really figure out where and when landslides are occurring.
Now landslides tend to occur where we have steep slopes, we have some loose soil
that's been saturated. This is an example of a major landslide that was in El Salvador, but landslides all around Central
America and South America and in the U.S. - nearly every state has landslides.
So it can be caused by heavy rainfall, earthquakes and even freezing and thawing.
Now floods occur when the soil has already been pretty saturated and the ground really can't absorb any more water
from overflowing rivers or runoff from mountains. And so it causes a buildup of water that we can actually see from space.
By looking at - this is an example of some Thailand floods -
we're able to see these images and different data from space
to get a broader picture of Earth and try to anticipate where we might have floods and landslides in the future.
Now GPM is building off of TRMM's capabilities so we're actually able to use higher resolution or more detailed measurements
to get a much better understanding of where and when we might experience floods and landslides in near real time, which means right away.
This is just an example of some ideas of models that we're currently developing at NASA and other places to tell us
what might happen with these extreme events and how they might be changing in a changing climate.
Exellent. And really this is not only fascinating information for the science, but it's also great for community safety as well.
Absolutely. So NASA and the researchers here and elsewhere
try to take this data and provide it for decision makers to make informed
decisions about evacuations and where to relocate people when there's a disaster.