2024 was a record year, and not in a good way. In July, Earth’s average temperature was the warmest in at least 175 years; July 22 was the hottest day on record. Last summer was the hottest since about 1880; This year’s hurricane season kicked off with Beryl, the first Category 4 hurricane on record, and a report published in June confirmed that human-caused global warming is at an all-time high.

But scientists aren’t just worried about the record holders making headlines. Due to all these human-induced temperatures, glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate starting this year, sea levels are rising irreversibly as a result of the melting of these glaciers, and storms that are worsened by rising sea levels combined with high temperatures are devastating coastal communities. Animals are being displaced from their homes because the world is changing so much and so fast. Just last month we saw Hurricane Helen destroy cities and take lives; its power was indeed linked to climate change.

It is certainly difficult to see the facts being laid out in this way, especially considering how much is left unsaid in these paragraphs. However, this feeling brings something very important to the fore: It is valuable to have this information at a basic level. Perhaps the most limiting step in the fight against climate change is to translate facts into practical tasks and, in turn, persuade politicians to initiate radical changes in the way our world is structured. The climate crisis is an insidious political problem; So the future of the Earth depends on data; And depending on how you look at it, that data comes from an unlikely source: space exploration.

“The only way to connect the diverse phenomena that drive the complex workings of our planet, to explore the natural and the human, is to connect the dots between them,” said Cedric David, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (JPL) in Southern California, Space.com reported.

“For this we need a permanent space sentry fleet high in space,” he said. “Just as we do annual check-ups with our family doctor, we should also diagnose the health of our own planet.”

What exactly do climate satellites do?

The word “satellite” is used frequently today, but basically it refers to any object sent to orbit our planet to perform a specific mission. We have communications satellites to keep our cell phones working, navigation satellites to keep Google Maps pointing in the right direction, and experimental satellites for pure science purposes, like this one that is currently testing solar sail technology.