Physics Colloquium: Watching the Earth Breathe from Space: What Glowing Plants Tell Us About the Global Carbon Cycle

Prof. Taylor Jones, Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown University

Abstract: As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, it is critical that scientists are able to accurately quantify the current and future magnitudes of photosynthesis in forests, oceans, and grasslands. New breakthroughs in remote sensing have shown that Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF), a faint red glow produced by active chloroplasts, can be measured from current and proposed Earth observation satellites. We will explore this phenomenon, and how we scale measurements made at the leaf-level to the entire planet.