Posthuman Blues

Monitoring Global Warming From the Moon

Not everyone thinks we should be investing so much time and money in the ISS, but there's more than one reason to return to the moon: while it's a source of a potentially perfect fuel to some nations, to climate change researchers, it represents the ideal place from which to study climate change on Earth.

Researcher Shaopeng Huang has found that surface temperatures on the near side of the moon accurately record important information about Earth's climate system. Based on his analysis, he is calling for an international effort to develop and deploy monitoring stations on the moon for the study of global warming here on earth.