NASA Holds Media Opportunities to Discuss Rising Sea Levels

In a series of media opportunities Wednesday, Aug. 26, through Friday, Aug. 28, NASA experts will present an up-to-date global outlook on current conditions and future projections of sea level rise.

From fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet this summer, to new satellite views of sea level changes around the world, NASA's "Rising Seas" events will provide the latest assessment of scientific understanding of this global environmental issue.

NASA will host a media teleconference at 9:30 a.m. PDT (12:30 p.m. EDT) on Wednesday, Aug. 26, to discuss recent insights on sea level rise and the continuing challenge of predicting how fast and how much sea level will rise. The panelists for this briefing are:

-- Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington
-- Steve Nerem, lead for NASA's Sea Level Change Team at the University of Colorado at Boulder
-- Josh Willis, oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
-- Eric Rignot, glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and JPL

Audio of the briefing will stream live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

At 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on Friday, Aug. 28, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will host a live TV program about agency research into how and why the massive Greenland ice sheet is changing. The event features scientists actively conducting field work in Greenland, along with extensive video footage of their work performed over this summer.

Panelists include:

-- Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist with NASA's Earth Science Division
-- Laurence Smith, chair of the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Geography
-- Mike Bevis, professor of geodynamics at Ohio State University in Columbus
-- Sophie Nowicki, physical scientist at Goddard
-- Josh Willis, JPL

The Friday program will air live on NASA TV and stream online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

To ask questions via social media during the televised event, use the hashtag #askNASA.

Follow the conversation about NASA's ongoing research into sea level rise on social media with the new @NASA_SeaLevel accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ and the hashtag #EarthRightNow.

As Earth's oceans continue to warm, and its ice sheets continue to show signs of accelerated change, NASA is pursuing answers to how quickly seas could rise in the future. Scientists worldwide use NASA data to tackle some of the toughest questions about how our planet is changing. Using the vantage point of space, NASA is pioneering research into how changes in the ocean, ice sheets, glaciers and Earth's surface combine to produce global changes in sea level.

For more information about NASA's Earth science programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earth