A new website from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is devoted to educating the public about Earth’s changing climate. The Global Climate Change website provides easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it.

The new Global Climate Change website may be found at: http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov .

Highlights of the new website include:

* A continuously updated snapshot of our planet’s health, built from NASA data on such climate indicators as the condition of Earth’s ice sheets, global average temperatures, sea level change and concentrations of key greenhouse gases.

* Interactive visualizations of current climate data, including a Sea Level Viewer that provides views from space of ocean surface topography data and related phenomena such as El Nin?o; and a Global Climate Change Time Machine that takes users back in time to see how Earth’s climate has changed in the past, and how it is projected to change in the future.

* A downloadable desktop widget that allows users to track key indicators of climate change as measured by NASA satellites.

* Easy-to-understand background articles on the evidence, causes and effects, and uncertainties of global climate change, as well as links to selected resources that provide information about possible solutions.

* NASA’s Eyes on the Earth: An overview of ongoing NASA JPL missions to study our planet’s oceans, atmosphere, land, ice and biosphere.

* The latest news and features from NASA JPL on climate change research.

For more information on NASA’s Earth Science Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

JPL studies all aspects of the Earth system — our oceans, land, atmosphere, biosphere, and cryosphere — to identify how Earth’s climate is changing, understand the causes of these changes, and support development of models used to predict future global change. Currently, JPL has six dedicated Earth science spacecraft in orbit, with another five instruments flying aboard NASA’s Terra, Aqua and Aura spacecraft. JPL’s newest Earth mission, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2, launched June 20. Several more missions are planned for launch in the next few years, including the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, scheduled for launch in January 2009. Decision makers around the world use JPL Earth science data to support policy-making and resource management decisions.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.