"Just look around you and you'll see what's happened," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during the conference."We have record flooding in Vermont. We have record heat in Phoenix and in Miami. We have major parts of the country that have been blanketed by wildfire smoke and, of course, what we are watching in real-time is the disaster that has occurred in Hawaii with wildfires.
Monday's discussion also touched upon the effects climate change is having on marine health."The oceans are experiencing about 90% of global warming," Carlos Del Castillo, Ocean Ecology Laboratory chief at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said during the conference."As the oceans heat, the water expands. When you combine that with the melting of ice overland, that contributes to increases in sea level rise.