CANBERRA (Reuters) - Scientists in Australia hope a giant cardboard image of a kangaroo, photographed from space on Tuesday, will help them better understand how the earth reflects sunlight and give them new clues about global warming.
Similar images are due to be photographed from space atsites in the United States, France, Belgium, Finland, Sweden,Norway, Israel, Wales and Singapore as part of the experiment,involving science centres and the American space agency NASA.
The 32-metre (105 feet) tall kangaroo, an Australiannational symbol, was placed in the southern city of Melbourne,and was photographed by satellite in parkland to measure theAlbedo effect, or the amount of sunlight reflected by theearth.
"The sun's rays come in and they either get reflected orthey get absorbed," Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, fromMelbourne's Monash University, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"If the sun rays get absorbed, then things heat up. If theyget reflected, things either stay the same or things cool offand you can have a glaciation."
Professor Vickers-Rich said melting ice caps meant lesssunlight would be reflected, which could lead to more sunlightbeing absorbed and an increase in global temperatures.
"Ice is like our big kangaroo. The ice reflects the light,so it gets rid of a lot of the heat that comes in," she said.
Images collected during the experiment will be comparedwith similar images from a year earlier to help measure changesin the Albedo effect.
(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)