Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Research at the GISS emphasizes a broad study of global change, the natural and anthropogenic changes in our environment that affect the habitability of our planet. These effects may occur on greatly differing time scales, from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal/annual effects such as El Niño, and on up to the millennia of ice ages.

The institute's research combines analysis of comprehensive global datasets (derived from surface stations combined with satellite data for sea surface temperatures) with global models of atmospheric, land surface, and oceanic processes. Study of past climate change on Earth and of other planetary atmospheres provides an additional tool in assessing general understanding of the atmosphere and its evolution.

GISS was established in May 1961 by Robert Jastrow to do basic research in space sciences in support of Goddard programs. Formally the institute was the New York City office of the GSFC Theoretical Division but was known as the Goddard Space Flight Center Institute for Space Studies or in some publications as simply the Institute for Space Studies. But even before it opened, the institute had been referred to in the press as the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It was separated from the Theoretical Division in July 1962. Its offices were originally located in The Interchurch Center, and the institute moved into Columbia's Armstrong Hall (a renovated apartment building previously known as the Ostend apartments and subsequently the Oxford Residence Hotel) in April 1966.

From 1981 to 2013, GISS was directed by James E. Hansen. In June 2014, Gavin A. Schmidt was named the institute's third director.

On April 25, 2025, NASA announced that it was cancelling the lease on the Armstrong Hall as part of the Trump administration's review of federal leases. Since June 1, 2025, GISS personnel have been working remotely.

History of scientific research

In the 1960s, GISS was a frequent center for high-level scientific workshops, including the "History of the Earth's Crust Symposium" in November 1966, which has been described as the meeting that gave birth to the idea of plate tectonics.

At a GISS workshop in 1967, John Wheeler popularized the term "black hole" as a shorthand for "gravitationally completely collapsed star," though the term was not coined there. Hong-Yee Chiu is credited with introducing the term "quasar" while working at GISS in 1964.

In September 1974, at a seminal meeting led by Patrick Thaddeus at GISS with John Mather (his then post-doc) and others discussions began on the possibility of building a satellite to measure both the spectrum and possible spatial fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. This led directly to the COBE satellite project and a Nobel Prize for Mather.

GISS personnel were involved as instrument and science team scientists in multiple historic NASA Solar System missions, Mariner 5 to Venus, Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager program, Pioneer Venus, Galileo to Jupiter, the unsuccessful Mars Observer and Climate Orbiter, and Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

Polarimetry has been a speciality of GISS since the Pioneer, Voyager, and Galileo missions, and has been adapted to Earth observing missions as well. Notably, Michael Mishchenko of GISS was project scientist for the Glory mission, which failed to reach orbit after launch in 2011. Glory would have employed the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS) developed by GISS scientists had it reached orbit. More recently, Brian Cairns of GISS is one of the deputy project scientists of the PACE mission, which launched in February 2024 and has two polarimeters on board.