Cool Science Radio's guest in this episode is Director Gavin Schmidt, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies . Each year, NASA and NOAA undertake the huge task of measuring the average temperature of the Earth, using an impressive fleet of satellites in orbit, interrogating hundreds of buoys as well as scientists making local measurements all around the globe. Understanding these long-term changes is vital to how we interact with our environment, from planting different crops to managing water resources to predicting the strength of hurricanes.