WASHINGTON – A tiny NASA satellite was launched Saturday from New Zealand with the mission of improving climate change prediction by measuring heat escaping from Earth's poles for the first time.'This new information -- and we've never had it before -- will improve our ability to model what's happening in the poles, what's happening in climate,' NASA's earth sciences research director Karen St. Germain told a recent news conference.
'This is critical because it actually helps to balance the excess heat that's received in the tropical regions and really regulate the earth's temperature,' said Tristan L'Ecuyer, a mission researcher affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison.'And the process of getting the heat from the tropical regions to the polar regions is actually what drives all of our weather around the planet,' he added.