As Earth’s surface continues to buckle from the burdens of climate change, its upper atmosphere faces different troubles altogether as greenhouse gases threaten space sustainability. A new study warns that the future could bring a sharp increase in space debris as satellites start to get stuck in Earth’s orbit because of climate change.
The study, recently published in Nature Sustainability, cautions that greenhouse gases are causing the upper atmosphere to cool and shrink, leaving satellites unable to sink to lower altitudes where they should burn up. Instead, they are stuck orbiting in a less dense atmosphere, and they could now begin to collide more often. Projections from the study envision a dangerously crowded upper atmosphere in the years to come.
