FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 04/14/2008

Climate Is Focus Of NASA Scientist On Earth Day At BC

BRIDGEWATER, Va. — A NASA scientist who helped build the space-based Earth Observing System and has spent the last 27 years measuring the Earth using orbital technology will speak at Bridgewater College in observance of Earth Day.

Robert Wolfe, a 1980 alumnus of Bridgewater College, will speak on Monday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Spoerlein Lecture Hall in the McKinney Center for Science and Mathematics. His talk, which will focus on global measurements of Earth from space and how they help us understand climate, is free and open to the public.

Wolfe is a scientist at NASA'S Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland who, after graduation from BC, began working with scientists to measure the Earth's gravitational field by bouncing laser beams off satellites. He then spent a number of years building ground stations that receive data from U.S. and international Earth-viewing satellites.

In the early 1990s, Wolfe and other scientists built NASA's Earth Observing System, which helped measure the Earth's land, oceans and atmosphere from space with high accuracy.

"These measurements, along with ground-based measurements and longer-term measurements from previous satellites, are a key to understanding the Earth's climate and our impact on it," Wolfe said. "Also, advanced computer models have allowed us to use this data to make prediction of future changes."

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