No, the Earth-Moon distance doesn’t stay relatively stable. The distance is increasing, and this has been measured by laser (Apollo missions left mirrors on the moon just for this purpose). See this article or search for “Tidal Recession Earth Moon”.

A reasonably good site for Cosmic Ray trends is available here. http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/mosc/main.htm

The Oceans are the local “flywheel” for Earth bound climate variations and current graphics of the respective temperature conditions is represented here,
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
And here,
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html

If we could launch a probe, set it to face the earth, and take continuous pictures, unhampered by cloud, atmosphere, and pollution problems.

It would see the entire face, all 360 degrees, and radio that data back to earth.

I would add that inevitably, the Earth based telescope – earthshine measurement integrates everything reaching that part of the moon from that side of the earth, and would also tend to filter out higher frequency noise. Sounds pretty good to me!

I’ll check a couple of other sources to see how the CERES critique holds up.

After looking at the DSCOVR mission page
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/missions/satellite_53.htm

I see a design life listed of only TWO YEARS! Jeez, comm satellites have longer lives than that and do a lot more.

A two year albedo plot does not a trend make, no matter how accurate. I’m really surprised at such a short life span. It seems almost pointless to launch it then.

It’s one of the few things, perhaps the only thing, that Gore came up with that I agree with.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_%28satellite%29

and its official NASA page: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/missions/satellite_53.htm

1. Surface readings limited by view (cloud cover, moon phase, etc) and satellites not effected.

2. Satellites get a “spot” or swath of an area, while the surface readings get more of a “global” reading.

3. It could be a carry-over “error” like the one that affected the satellite temp readings: they forgot to take into account orbital decay (apogee/perogee). Earth-to-moon distance stays relatively stable, doesn’t it?

http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/STM/2005_05/loeb_earthshine.pdf

I guess that’s our tax dollars at work. By the way, NASA has also made outlandish predictions for solar cycle 24.

From “RTFR” that rabett recommends, we find that it was Pallé et al. [2004] that modified the chart. Which makes it even more strange, because the “et al” includes the folks at BSSO.

Note to Anthony: When the researcher replies, ask if he knows if the old (1920 – 1960) data by Danjon and Dubois is available. Pallé et al didn’t say anything about the old data.

The earth based telescope albedo method has been in use for almost 100 years, and hasn’t been shown problematic. Satellite albedo measurements are much newer, and we don’t know if they are problematic or not.

I would point out that with a satellite measurement, the environment and instrumentation platform sometimes has unknowns or things not thought of. A perfect case in point was John Christy’s satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature which initially showed a cooling trend, until someone pointed out that he hadn’t factored in an orbital decay issue [ I think that's what it was] on the measuring platform, and the cooling trend turned into a slight warming trend.

NASA has been known to make huge blunders over simple things, like launching the flawed Hubble mirror into space without first testing it, or losing a mars probe because one group worked in metric and the other in English units, resulting in a navigation error which crashed the probe into the surface. Then there’s the shuttle incidents, both products of an inflexible hierarchy that refused to see problems. Then we have the .15 degree temperature error in NASA GISS surface temperature data found on August 8th.

For all we know, the satellite albedo sensor system may have a sign error or there could be some other factor, or it may be absolutely right. My hunch is that they are using sensors on the spacecraft not specifically designed to sense albedo, but are putting other sensors into service for the purpose. Correct me if I’m wrong.

The point is, space based measurement is not easy and has many complexities over ground based measurement.

My money is on the earth based telescope method because it is a simpler and established technique, and more importantly, there’s less to go wrong when you have a small group of dedicated scientists working on a single ground based measurement than when you have a whole far flung government bureaucracy working on a space platform.

Simplicity is not a strong attractor of entropy.

Darned good question. Let’s ask them. I suggest putting a comment in the

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/cloudy-outlook-for-albedo/

They’ll see it in the incoming moderation que. So even if the discussion is old, it will be seen right away.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/cloudy-outlook-for-albedo/

Correct??

In other words, according to this chart, the albedo of the Earth was actually increasing through 1996, decreased slightly for 2 years, stayed basically stable for 2-3 years, and then has started increasing again.

Thus The 2-year period of negative % increase reflects an actual slight (not significant) albedo drop?

Basically I don’t want this research to get caught in the trap other “researchers” so easily get caught in — conflating a drop in rate of increase with an actual drop in albedo.

If I have misunderstood, I greatly appreciate patient correction. :)