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Inflation Was Still Hot In January; New NASA Mission EMIT Launched. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired February 16, 2023 - 04:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hello, lovely people. It`s Thursday. So happy Friday Eve. It`s your boy Coy, aka Mr. Clean.
Let`s aim to be a little better today than we were yesterday and we can start by fueling our minds right here on CNN 10.
First up, the inflation situation. Headline is: inflation surged in January, and by the most we`d seen in three months. As a reminder,
inflation is a rise in prices and decline in the ability to purchase. It`s like if someone gives you twenty dollars, you go to the movies. But the
cost of a movie ticket is now $17 and last year, it was only $15 for a movie at your local theater.
Rising inflation means that your twenty dollars just won`t get you as much as it used to. But despite the fact that inflation costs grew this month,
they`ve continued to slow for the year overall. But economists are bracing for uncertainty and it seems like no one not even the experts have any clue
what`s going to happen next. And part of this is because so many factors contribute to what makes up inflation.
All economists know is that inflation has changed household budgets and altered American spending habits, especially in terms of discretionary
spending. That means extra money to spend on entertainment, eating out and travel.
We`ll hear now from CNN business and politics correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich who has more on what`s happening in the market.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: It`s been a bumpy road to cool inflation and a longer road than many Americans would
like to see. But some good news, year-over-year inflation cooled to 6.4 percent falling for seven straight months. But inflation in January rose
0.5 percent and inflation and the economy have been key issues for President Biden. And coming off this report, he said that it is good news
but there is still work to do as inflation remains too high.
So the biggest inflation drivers were energy costs, which includes gas, up 1.5 percent from a year ago, shelter which contributed to nearly half the
increase last month, that rose 7.9 percent year over year.
And food costs remaining extremely high, up 10.1 percent year over year. Some key items at the grocery store costing more eggs up 70 percent, butter
up 26.3 percent, and lettuce up 17.2 percent year over year. But you`ll see some savings on a couple items at the grocery store -- beef, veal and
bacon, all down year over year.
So how does this translate to Americans budgets? Well, according to Moody`s Analytics, families are spending nearly four hundred dollars more a month
this year than they did last year on the same goods and services because of inflation. So this signals that there is still work for the Federal Reserve
to do. We can expect continued interest rate hikes to try to bring down inflation in the months to come.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUBTITLE: A deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake created this chasm in the middle of a Turkish olive grove.
The chasm is 130 feet (40 meters) deep and more than 900 feet (274 meters) long.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This earthquake was beyond belief. Of course, you might get some mild tremors or an average earthquake. But
we`ve never seen anything so explosive, or tremors of these proportions.
SUBTITLE: One in every two buildings in this region have either collapsed, are damaged or need demolition.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Ten-second trivia:
Which of these words comes from a Latin term meaning "to send out"?
Edify, embody, emit or encompass?
Meaning to throw or give off, emit is your answer here. It`s derived from the Latin word emittere.
Up next, we`re going to meet a climate scientist who`s been researching and tracking dust for decades. That`s right, dust. She tells us that those tiny
particulates can essentially create change of Brobdingnag in proportions across the globe. The company SpaceX just launched with EMIT on board, a
special instrument from NASA that`ll help scientists learn more about how dust is affecting our atmosphere.
CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar shows us how we`re going to learn more about dust from space.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST (voice-over): In July 2022, this SpaceX rocket launched with a new NASA instrument called EMIT on board.
NATALIE MAHOWALD, PROFESSOR OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE/CORNELL UNIVERSITY: Well, EMIT is going to revolutionize what we can do. So it`s just going to
provide such amazing new data to help us understand the surface and the atmosphere.
CHINCHAR: Now, over 250 miles above the Earth, attached to the International Space Station, its purpose is to shed light on an important
weather phenomenon -- dust.
MAHOWALD: Desert dust or mineral aerosols is a mineral soil particle that`s suspended in the atmosphere. And so, these come out mostly from
desert regions that are dry and unvegetated with strong winds.
CHINCHAR: For over two decades, climate scientist Natalie Mahowald has been tracking dust across the globe and how it impacts climate change.
MAHOWALD: I love looking at a globe and thinking about how dust is getting from one place to another.
CHINCHAR: She`s been working with NASA on this new instrument to find out how different colors of dust in the atmosphere can heat or cool the planet.
MAHOWALD: So different soils actually have really different colors. So the white ones reflect incoming solar radiation and the red ones and the dark
ones absorb it. So one of the problems we have in understanding the impact of desert dust is we don`t know the composition very well.
CHINCHAR: Using a device called an imaging spectrometer, EMIT scans the Earth`s arid regions to detect different colored soils, creating a mineral
map.
MAHOWALD: Already, EMIT has taken millions or billions of observations of what`s going on in the arid regions in terms of the composition. And then
we can use that to put into our models, to better understand what actually the impact of the desert dust is.
CHINCHAR: Dust and sandstorms have dramatically increased in recent years due to climate change, land degradation, and drought, according to the U.N.
These storms are causing respiratory illnesses, damaging livestock, disrupting transport and even melting arctic ice.
MAHOWALD: We`ve also watched dust plumes really just travel across oceans and be deposited in Greenland or even in the Alps.
CHINCHAR: EMIT can also detect another factor impacting climate change -- methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It`s detected 50 super emitters across
the world, mostly coming from fossil fuel, landfill and agricultural facilities.
NASA hopes this knowledge can help countries stem the emissions and shine a spotlight on how our planet is changing.
MAHOWALD: So you can think of the EMIT project as really testing the waters and really showing what is possible.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: And for today`s story getting a 10 out of 10, the ghost yacht. A 53- foot ship sat eerily abandoned in a marina at Kent Narrows, Maryland, for decades. It was nicknamed the "Ghost Yacht". But now, the mysterious yacht
is being reimagined. The state`s artificial reef program sunk the vessel to the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay this past week as one of Maryland`s
artificial reefs. The hope is that it`ll become a habitat for all sorts of fish and underwater creatures and provide an underwater treasure for scuba
divers. Kind of like a sunken pirate ship.
All right. Dad joke alert, what did the pirate say when he turned 80? I`m 80.
I want to give a special salute to all of you lovely people who made a #YourWordWednesday submission. Thanks to the likes of @laurensandrasrq.
Today`s word was Brobdingnagian if you didn`t notice, which means gigantic.
And we want to give a Brobdingnagian shout out to Woodbridge Middle School in Bridgeville, Delaware, rise up. Have an awesome day, lovely people, or
maybe an all a lot day.
I`m Coy Wire and we are CNN 10.
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