Giant kangaroo helps climate scientists

Scientists in Australia hope that photographing a giant cardboard image of a kangaroo from space will help them to understand more about global warming, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
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Similar images are due to be photographed from space at other sites across the globe, the report said. The 32-metre tall kangaroo was placed in the city of Melbourne, and was photographed by satellite in parkland to measure the Albedo effect: the amount of sunlight reflected by the earth.

"The sun’s rays come in and they either get reflected or they get absorbed," Patricia Vickers-Rich, from Melbourne’s Monash University, was reported as saying. "If the sun rays get absorbed, then things heat up. If they get reflected, things either stay the same or things cool off and you can have a glaciation."

Melting ice caps mean less sunlight will be reflected, Vickers-Rich said, which could lead to more sunlight being absorbed and an increase
in global temperatures.

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