If you stay up on the Scientific Magazines and Journals you will know that NASA has come a long way in their research to study our Earth. They now have more data than ever before and can use this data with the aid of super computers to process it. In the past computers could not crunch the numbers fast enough to handle the massive data sets and numbers of data sets. Now super computers have changed all that, now we can develop models to answer questions, which help us know the future. To many these models appear like magic.
Such modeling can help us understand the effects of an asteroid or god, forbid a comet hitting the earth and what will be the most likely outcome of such. Which regions will be devastated by the blast and which regions will receive its long-term effects and where life will survive conquer and adapt.
We can use such modeling to predict pollution coming from Fires in CA or China and how they affect the entire Earth Atmosphere Grid. We can know the currents of Volcanic Ash as it sweeps and dissipates around the planet. We will even be able to predict what this ash will most likely do to the current and near future weather patterns and what such a chain reaction will do to our surface plants and animals long term. We can also understand the climate changing effect of burps of Earth through volcanic activity and the extent that space weather, solar flares and our own pollution contribute or take away from the whole of the atmospheric earth system. Super computers are making this a reality today. Think what this means to the future of mankind?