Recently we’ve been discussing products from the AIRS satellite instrument (Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder) onboard the Aqua satellite. There has been quite a bit of interest in this because unlike the satellite temperature record that goes back to 1979, until now we have not had a complementary satellite derived CO2 record. We are about to have one, and much more.
Click image to see a slide show with this graphic in it (PDF)
I wrote to the AIRS team to inquire about when the satellite data on CO2, and other relevant products might be made public. All that has been released so far are occasional snippets of data and imagery, such as the short slide show above.
Here is the response I got from them:
Thank you for your interest in the AIRS CO2 data product.
We are still in the validation phase in developing this new product.
It will be part of the Version 6 data release, but for now those of us
working on it are intensively validating our results using in situ
measurements by aircraft and upward looking fourier transform IR
spectrometers (TCCON network and others).
The AIRS CO2 product is for the mid-troposphere. For quite some time
it was accepted theory that CO2 in the free troposphere is
“well-mixed”, i.e., the difference that might be seen at that altitude
would be a fraction of a part per million (ppmv). Models, which
ingest surface fluxes from known sources, have long predicted a smooth
(small)variation with latitude, with steadily diminishing CO2 as you
move farther South. We have a “two-planet” planet – land in the
Northern Hemisphere and ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. Synoptic
weather in the NH can be seen to control the distribution of CO2 in
the free troposphere. The SH large-scale action is mostly zonal.
Since our results are at variance with what is commonly accepted by he
scientific community, we must work especially hard to validate them.
We have just had a paper accepted by Geophysical Research Letters that
will be published in 6-8 weeks, and are preparing a validation paper.
We have global CO2 retrievals (day and night, over ocean and land, for
clear and cloudy scenes) spanning the time period from Sept 2002 to
the present. Those data will be released as we satisfactorily
validate them.
I suggest you Google “Carbon Tracker” for some interesting maps
generated using model atmospheres and data for CO2 sources. It shows
the CO2 weather in the lowest part of the atmosphere.
The big picture is that CO2 sources and sinks are in the planetary
boundary layer. Global circulation of CO2 occurs in the free
troposphere. Thus, PBL is local whereas free troposphere is
international.
———-
AIRS Team
With the suggestion of using the Google “Carbon tracker”, some readers might look at this response as a “dodge”. I don’t see it that way at all. Why? Because they are actively engaged in proving the instrument by doing a series of aircraft based measurements to validate the data the instrument on the spacecraft is seeing.
For example, read this paper from them:
First Satellite Remote Sounding of the Global Mid-Tropospheric CO2
These graphics show how hard they are working to validate the data from in situ measurements using airborne flask samples sent to a lab spectrometer:
…and the results of the flask sample measurements:
Read more about this here in this paper (PDF)
Also if you read between the lines in their response to me, particularly this paragraph:
Since our results are at variance with what is commonly accepted by he
scientific community, we must work especially hard to validate them.
We have just had a paper accepted by Geophysical Research Letters that
will be published in 6-8 weeks, and are preparing a validation paper.
I’d say that waiting that 6-8 weeks for the paper and supporting data will be well worth it. The working title of the upcoming paper is: “Satellite Remote Sounding of Mid-Tropospheric CO2” and the lead author is Moustafa T. Chahine.
Good things come to those who wait.
Yes, that paragraph about being at variance with accepted values jumped out at me immediately. I don’t see a conspiracy here. It sounds like science being done with great attention to detail. Wouldn’t want to confuse the science work being done with what administrators or politicians say or do. I don’t doubt that as their studies and data become published it may cause quite a stir.
Yet more reading to do…
Since our results are at variance with what is commonly accepted by he
scientific community, we must work especially hard to validate them.
Wow…Just wow.
I find it extremely disturbing that the abstract (first paragraph) of the AIRS paper you linked above states:
“Human activity has increased the concentration of the earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide, which plays a direct role in contributing to global warming.”
How can they be fair and unbiased with this presupposition guiding their efforts? The rest of the paragraph looks more like a hypothesis that their research will attempt to prove.
REPLY: look at the date on the paper. I think they’ve learned a few things since then, as indicated in the response to me. – Anthony
I note with interest that the highest water vapor concentrations are around the tropics. Water vapor in addition to being a greenhouse gas is a temperature limiting mechanism for the atmosphere. As the heat energy goes up, more energy is absorbed by water vapor than is reflected in any thermometer increase. A psychometric chart shows why, it’s called latent heat. http://www.truetex.com/psychrometric_chart.htm However, for those who can’t read the chart, there is a handy calculator: http://www.issi1.com/corwin/calculator/vapor.html
I made this argument before but sooner or later someone is going to get it, simple air temp measurements are not a valid indicator of heat content of the air, only Enthalpy is. Enthalpy counts all heat including that stored in water vapor. 80F in NY is NOT equivalent to 80F in Miami. Just because it may be 100F in Tuscon, Az doesn’t mean it is hotter than 80F in Tampa, FL, it’s not when the RH in Tuscon is 20% (33 Btu/#) and 70% in Tampa (36.5 Btu/#) . Meteorologists and Engineers know this, clearly Hansen does not or choses not. Any claim that the planet is getting hotter based on temperature measurements alone is specious.
REPLY: Well said, or in simpler terms, “its the heat AND the humidity” – Anthony
Encouraging.
With regards to your comment dscott, I have been thinking for some time now that temperature is inappropriate and that things would be much simpler to understand if they were rephrased in terms of energy density (thermal kinetic energy) . Temperature by itself is confusing because so much depends on the context (the temperature of what?) Energy density avoids that confusion. The Maths and understanding in general are much simpler (in my opinion) when phrased in terms of energy and energy densities.
I am going to go enjoy a can of mixed nuts in honor of this major development in global climate theory.
If it doesn’t agree with the climate models, how long will it be before it’s suddenly discovered to be wrong and in need of adjustment?
Just like the 3,000 Argo buoys, the expendable BathyThermograph data, the satellite temperature data, and the land based temperature record?
Max
I am sure the climate modellers will find some way to claim that this new data means AGW is even worse than they previously thought….
Since our results are at variance with what is commonly accepted by he scientific community, we must work especially hard to validate them.
An interesting statement from which the more paranoid amongst us could infer that any results/papers that comply with AGW do not have to undergo rigorous validation.
Max (11:55:57) :
“If it doesn’t agree with the climate models, how long will it be before it’s suddenly discovered to be wrong and in need of adjustment?
Just like the 3,000 Argo buoys, the expendable BathyThermograph data, the satellite temperature data, and the land based temperature record?”
I suppose that is exactly why they are trying to validate the data before going public.
Not to have the same fate. Seems fair enough to me, and the deadline they give is reasonable.
From the link, “These processes are not adequately represented in the
current three-dimensional chemistry transport models used for projection of future
concentrations of atmospheric CO2.”
There’s a mouthful right there.
Dan McCune (11:06:39) :
OTOH, in the slides they mention that H2O is the main greenhouse gas twice.
The only dates I see in the papers are on the images and references, and some of the latter are quite recent.
Interesting times ahead. Oh boy, just what we need. 🙂 (Smilies disabled? Yay!)
It takes considerable courage to stand up like Galileo and speak against the established religion. There have been calls to revoke professional credentials, people have been fired, and war crimes trials have been demanded for the heretics.
Rigorous validation? You Bet!
Your career and the future of your family depends on you being 100% correct before you say that the King has no clothes.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
It would be nice if science could once again operate free of political interference.
Fortunately the ARGO buoys people broke through the interference(if there was any) and got their story out. This research looks really promising.
I agree, waiting is good in this instance, let them complete, without interference.
We’ll have to see.
Jon,
A better analogy might be Luther and his ’41 sentences’.
This lead me to here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/tseries.php?type=mr#imagetable
Looks to me like it is in rough agreement with what we see in the traditional Mauna Loa sawtooth graph.
Let’s be nice, folks, these are the same guys that published that Arctic sea ice reductions are due to winds, not temperature. It takes a lot of guts to challenge Gore et al’s public relations campaign.
The satellite data has been scrutinized ad nauseum for decades by the AGW proponents because they don’t agree with their preconceived notions. Now the
AIRS data are being scrutinized because they don’t agree with the AGW proponents preconceived notions… do I smell a rat?
dscott: Not too long ago, I ran across a recently published paper that dealt with atmospheric enthalpy. Unfortunately, I didn’t save a copy. So there is one out there, probably more. I had my head into the Smith and Reynolds SST data at the time and I can’t recall the conclusions of that paper. With my HVAC background, I remember thinking, Of course, but that’s as far as that goes.
This reminds me of the paper the guy wrote on the chemical analysis of CO2 concentration. It struck me that he showed varying concentrations with time and location. What this means (to me anyway) is that the well mixed theory may be in the toilet. I suspect that the 50 year residence time that we hear of from the AGW college of cardinals of any individual molecule is bogus. I would be willing to wager that the residence time would vary from minutes to maybe a couple of years and not much beyond that. Interesting indeed.
We’ve waited for this that long.
So, let’s be pacefully. The walls of Jericho didn’t fell by one trumpete, instead
by the effect of the sum of all trumpetes.
Or how about ‘Pink Floyd’ – ‘Another brick in the wall’…
… we will need quite some more …
…What’s really well mixed ? At least, not CO², NOR temperatures,
hummmh, four years ago, my – very personal – projection for CO² was:
The peak will be around 2020,- with an expected timelag to global surface temperatures, then it will go downwards. Skipped that allready, will be – possibly – within the next 3/5 years.
Regards
Klausb
Klausb
If you look at cryosphere today last two days 28-29 july looks like its starting to
freeze up extent and thickness (white thick ice) could be = end of AGW LOL
I hope their aircraft measures differences in altitude too. Other aircraft measurements eg,
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFM.A62B0151W
have shown that there is a significant difference with altitude (high at low altitude and low at high altitude) as well as spatially but nevertheless the mantra of well-mixed CO2 still dominates the literature despite the complete dearth of evidence for it. I’m continually amazed that so many scientists just accept such raw assumptions without checking. Anyway, while measurements at 38000 feet (ie large jet cruising height) and the surface might very well have similar values, there is likely a bathtub shape in between because mother nature wants her carbon dioxide near the ground where it is needed: Not only is it produced at the surface, it dissolves in rainwater. So any significant CO2 further up may have been dumped there by aircraft. If so, then having just two measurements – surface and mid-trop won’t tell the full story. The CO2 hotspots in the AIRS plot (taken at jet cruising height) certainly seem to concentrate over tourist areas, not industrial zones. However time and the proper scientific method will tell, eventually.
Just maybe, they will show the water vapour feedback isn’t what is claimed. Maybe, even negative.
Now that would be a torpedo below the waterline (pun intended) for AGW.
Isn’t Roy Spencer on the AIRS satelite team?
JamesG, et al:
“I hope their aircraft measures differences in altitude too. Other aircraft measurements…”
We’ll have to wait and see, but it’s hard to imagine that the measurements aren’t tagged or linked to either latitude/longitude/height or ECEF coordinates. That’s one of the beauties of GPS, the linking of positional data and time stamps to the underlying data. And where better to have good GPS positioning than in an airplane at altitude 🙂
Apropos of almost nothing but just an observation. Chinese, with nearly three thousand years of carefully recorded weather data, have always differentiated in their language between the sensation of heat from actual temperature, and the oppressive feeling of heat from humidty. In Chinese Mandarin you state the temperature is hot by saying “Re” but you can also say it feels hot by saying “Shi.” (I am too lazy tonight to round up a dictionary and pull up just which of the 86 characters pronounced “shi” is that one. If anyone really wants to know ask and I will bestir myself.)
In the same way the Chinese language distinguishes between hot in temperature and “hot” in sensation from spices by two different words. (“Re” again, or “La” for spicy).
As a good psycho-linguist I have to point out that the development of a people’s language is a combination of the interaction of their environment with their culture. Hence the difference between the specific Inuit words for snow in its different incarnations (new, old, light, heavy, powdery, dense, etc.) and the many distinct Arabic words for camel (male, female, young, old, able to breed, barren, good, bad, etc.)
After many years of studying Chinese I continue to be amused by the fine gradations of certain words for things that are smelt, heard, felt, or experienced whereas actual physical things have very gross word usage. For instance,shades of color are very poorly defined and the only color of blue you can use with one word is the sky on a clear day and the only real word for green is the green of a Mongolian grassland after a recent rain. Black, red, and white have individual names everything else has to be a description.
Ta,
John in a philosophical mood.
So if the result is validated, we find that Co2 varies from place to place by up to 3%, as opposed to the less than 1% that scientists had previously supposed?
REPLY: It may be more than that, there’s vertical inhomgeneity as well. We’ll just have to wait and see. – Anthony
Correct me if I’m wrong but the satellite data is being matched with an airplane ride at the same altitude that the satellite data is taken from. CO2 measures from the airplane are cross matched with the satellite data to see if CO2 flask measures on the airplane are the same as the beam signature pointed from the satellite into the troposphere. The stairstep graphs are measures taken closer to the ground (IE where the outgassing and sink areas are). You won’t necessarily see the stairstep graph from the troposphere results if the potential new theory is right: CO2 is not well mixed in the troposphere where it has the greatest potential to affect temperature. And then, while there may be zonal or regional trends since 2002, the next step will be to determine just how the CO2 got there in this globby, uneven kind of mixed pattern, and why trends are showing up (a hunch: some will be up, some will be down, just like ozone). Don’t forget that cosmic rays produce 14CO2. With solar cycles, one might expect to see an increase in 14CO2 reflected in the overall CO2 measure for a troposphere area during minimums and then only when cosmic rays are hitting Earth during minimums in these areas.
This could explain a whole, whole bunch about that “83 year time lag” between the ice cores and Mauna Loa. Yep, it’s a bunch of bull pucky. NEXT!!!!!!!
[…] Watts Up With That? – 31 July, 2008 _____________________________ […]
Basil (12:51:13) :
“”This lead me to here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/tseries.php?type=mr#imagetable
Looks to me like it is in rough agreement with what we see in the traditional Mauna Loa sawtooth graph.””
This is good for the Mauna Loa graphs. The saw tooth is obviously the earth breathing in and out . Human CO2 output would look like that plotted in seconds.
From the link you provided, I saw that the Indonesia results are rather out of the mold, more constant than saw tooth and large discrepancies with models, and I wonder whether this is true of all tropics or what.
from the pdf link above:
“Our results demonstrate that satellite derived CO2 data which track weather
patterns can also be used to study the vertical and horizontal transports in the Earth’s atmosphere. Since no model information were used to derive the distribution of CO2 the results discussed in this paper are independent of models and thus provide an objective means to assess and improve the accuracy and performance of current three-dimensional chemistry transport models.”
It is important that the results of AIRS do not depend on models. They then can be used to validate surface data, in the engineering sense of the word, rather than the other way around that the scientific community has been forced fed.
It is the data that trumps models and not the other way around, which is the common misconception in the dominant groups of climatology.
They’re taking an awful long time to validate the accuracy of the onboard instrumentation…considering it’s lifetime is projected only through 2009. It was launched in ’02, and if the device still has’nt passed IOT, to my way of thinking, this means it never will.
A lot of world government policy has been based on the “variance” to the new data.
I am not surprised they are being careful.
Another crucial to AGW parameter that is not well studied and I have not seen any satellite maps is the albedo. In a toy weather model in Junkscience.com a tiny change in albedo makes large changes in temperatures.
From a link provided by L.Svalgaard in solarcycle24.com I see that the lack of measurement and the relience on modelint is taken for granted.
”
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_EOS_2006.pdf
Does somebody know of albedo maps from satellites?
“To derive ideal estimates of the Earth’s
reflectance, it would be necessary to observe
reflected radiances at all angles from
all points on the Earth, which is technically
impossible.Therefore, all measurements from
which albedo can be inferred require assumptions
and/or modeling. During recent
decades, there have been some efforts to
measure the Earth’s albedo from space; but
a long-term data series of the Earth’s albedo
is difficult to obtain due to the complicated
intercalibration of the different satellite data
and the long gaps in the series. However, the
availability of different albedo (and cloud)
databases, and their intercomparisons, can
help to constrain the assumptions necessary
to derive estimates”
It is encouraging that the AIR has been cleared at the moment at least , for CO2. Maybe a similar sleuthing should start for albedo?
What I “hate” ( as in “I hate windows vista”) in this climate bibliography I have immersed myself in the last months, is the assumption that data is malleable and disposable when it does not agree with our standards, particularly multimillion expensive satellite data. The very concept of “anomaly” raises my hackles, because it presupposes what “omaly” is. ( being greek the word has more connotations that you would care to learn).
Sorry, that was a link given in the thread Svalgaard #8 in Climate Audit.
They should mount standardized CO2, temp and water vapour sensors on all (or many) commercial planes flying around the world recording levels during all phases of the flights. This would really get us lots of data. They have, after all been doing similar things (temp, salinity etc) with ships at sea for over 100 years now. Imagine all the cross checking we could do then against satellite data, we’d also have partial 3D maps over continental masses which would be quite useful i’d imagine.
anna v
I believe it is possible to gain some idea of albedo from “earthshine”.
Of course today would be problematical with the eclipse. 🙂
(anna v) “a tiny change in albedo makes large changes in temperatures.”
That is a subject which I have been researching for the last year, and for something so basic, there is almost no reliable data available.
When Anthony mentioned measuring Earthshine as a method of measuring albedo last year, I got involved. Instead of using neutral density filters like NASA was doing, I approached the problem from another direction.
http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/espaper/earthshine_proposal.html
In recent years, software has been developed to combine multiple images obtained using different exposure lenghts. High dynamic range imaging allowed me to measure Earthshine and this is how I attacked the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
Why such a basic and important measurement as albedo is not being tracked every day, is an absolute mystery to me.
albedo maps from satellites;
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/atmosphere/data2.html
This latest AQUA result is promising; AGW relies on the myth of average temperature and a uniform mixing of CO2; with uniform mixing the concept of atmospheric opaqueness can be argued along with the heat-trapping lag created vertical expansion of the non-outward radiative portion of the atmosphere; with uneven mixing, if one accepts that some atmospheric heating is done by CO2, then radiative windows exist and thermal gradient caused weather allows the quick dispersal of any extra heat and balance to be maintained. This has potential.
H. Smith (01:22:00) :
“They should mount standardized CO2, temp and water vapour sensors on all (or many) commercial planes flying around the world recording levels during all phases of the flights.”
The drawback is that jet aircraft tend to fly at the most efficient altitude. Something about minimizing fuel expense. Variances include stuff like avoiding turbulence and other aircraft.
Once upon a time in a debate about public vs. private weather measurments I suggested that FedEx could outfit cargo planes with GPS-guided gliders and release a few on transcontinental flights, sorta like how radiosondes are released into hurricanes. The gliders could then fly themselves to a nearby FedEx distribution center collecting a weather profile on the way down. Then a quick trip to the airport and they’d be ready for another flight.
Distribution easy, data transport easy, good PR, the only issues I see are FAA approval and that it would be nice to get data from the tropopause instead of just flight level. Perhaps model II could be designed to seek out thunderstorm updrafts, and then fly well away from the storm column.
“They have, after all been doing similar things (temp, salinity etc) with ships at sea for over 100 years now. ‘
Yes, and those measurements have been called into questions. Unless the measurements are a primary mission, and not an add on to the flight crews duties, I don’t see how you can do the research down to a few PPM’s or a fraction of a degree.
I believe he’s the team leader, but I could be mistaken.
REPLY: He’s on UAH as team leader but not on AIRS, AFAIK – Anthony
Ahhh Basil, if it is soooooooo well mixed, why can’t we have some of the measuring stations convenient to us. You know, like at airports next to the temperature measurement stations??
Don’t they have the CO2 stations far away from major anthropogenic sources?? Don’t they have little RULES for acceptance of measurements, like, the reading must be within their parameters for 6 hours before it is accepted??
Don’t they toss out a significant number of days readings and interpolate for their graphs??
I would LOVE to see their raw data, by day, annotated with know Mona Loa eruptions, to see how well even Mona Loa matches WELL MIXED!!!!!
Can anyone imagine throwing out otherwise valid temp data because it doesn’t fall within narrow preconceptions?
Oh yeah, we can just check the changes in the GISS data!!
anna v, thank you for the new term: modelint. Cause that is just about what we have at the moment from model data. Lint.
From Roger Pielke’s site:
The Draft report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States has been released. There is an announcement of the Public Review Draft of the Unified Synthesis Product Global Climate Change in the United States. Public comments are due by August 14 2008 [Climate Science readers are urged to submit comments].
This US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report is Co-Chaired by Thomas R. Karl, Jerry Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson with the Senior Editor and Synthesis Team Coordinator Susan J. Hassol. These are the same individuals who have led past CCSP reports (e.g. see and see), with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson deliberately excluding scientific perspectives that differ from their viewpoints (i.e. see). Susan Hassol was writer of the HBO Special “To Hot Not to Handle”. This HBO show clearly had a specific perspective on the climate change issue, and lacked a balanced perspective. The HBO Executive Producer was Ms. Laurie David.
REPLY: I’ve been reading that report, NCDC has gone off the deep end. – Anthony
It also takes a lot of guts to go against the Bush manipulation machine:
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/environmental-scientists-not-allowed-to-speak-their-truth/
REPLY: …or the Gore manipulation machine.
cohenite (05:29:27) :
“albedo maps from satellites;
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/atmosphere/data2.html
This latest AQUA result is promising; ”
Thanks for the link. It is interesting, but “latest”? it is not. It says it is from 2000.
Really, even if one is not coming from a conspiracy prone culture ( mine is greek, and three greeks make a conspiracy 😉 ) something is very fishy when multimillion government projects give eight year old indicative plots instead of a continuous stream of maps from measurements. Forces one to thinka All these are NASA, and Hansen is BIG in NASA. Maybe there is a strangle hold on promotions? funding? What is going on?
Pamela Gray (09:08:20) :
“anna v, thank you for the new term: modelint. Cause that is just about what we have at the moment from model data. Lint.”
You know the saying ” a slipping tongue says the truth”
we should have ” as skidding finger prints the truth” 🙂 .
Gee, computer models approach reality when using well-mixed gases. But if reality isn’t well mixed, what are the models approaching?
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-1/final-report/default.htm
The ozone hole was misplaced in anomalous data for a while, you might recall. Ozone values couldn’t possibly be that low, so it was bad data.
Steve H (05:20:32) :
Seems a reasonable measure of albedo, though we would need to know it to fractions of a percent.
Was the proposal accepted?I checked your links. Any published results?
lamarguerite — “It also takes a lot of guts to go against the Bush manipulation machine:”
The “Union of Concerned Scientists” is the same collection of activist idiots who bought into the entire Carl Sagan ‘nuclear winter’ scare nonsense. They have a 25 year track record of being corrupt, wrong, and utterly irrelevant. They tried to stop the Star Wars program. Claimed it wouldn’t work. Laughed at it. They failed to stop the program. And worse (for them), the basics of it works. So much for their track record of being anywhere within shouting distance of being right. They were wrong then and they’re wrong now. In 20 years some other PC scare will pop up and these clowns will be… wait for it… WRONG.
Second, almost any such claim about Bush is specious nonsense: e.g. when people like you start in on that rubbish, what I hear is “I have a pebble in my shoe; it must be Bush’s fault.” What the administration has done (it’s on record of having done it) is tone down activist twaddle in official reports. In these, scientists are asked to report on the science, not their unrequested policy opinions. They do not speak for the government, and their positions as scientists don’t give them the authority to do so. Boo hoo.
One of these days I’m going to run across an AGW alarmist and/or AGW argument that is sound and not somehow informed by some dimwitted misunderstanding of Marxist wishful thinking. Hasn’t happened yet.
(anna V) “Was the proposal accepted?I checked your links. Any published results?
To my knowledge. this project was canceled in 2004.
That is why amature astronomers like myself are stepping in and doing the science that NASA should be doing.
anna; that link to albedo is not from 2000, but has been active since 2000; the thing that interests me, as a matter of logic, is that regions of high albedo must perforce have less of a greenhouse effect since there is less localised receipt of incoming SW radiation; with less SW reaching the ground there must be less reradiated LW to be intercepted by whatever CO2 is ‘well-mixed’ in the above atmosphere.
Pam,
Since you like nuts, I feel I should warn you about rancid pecans. Licking dirt would be preferable, IMO.
cohenite (16:49:05) :
“anna; that link to albedo is not from 2000, but has been active since 2000;”
The link may be active still, but the map shown has a caption that says it is from a month in 2000. I could not find any link to more recent maps.I will try again once the link works for me again, since it does not now.
here is the caption to the march 2000 albedo map
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/atmosphere/data2.html
“Global Reflected Shortwave Solar Radiation – Shortwave radiation is visible light—in this case, sunlight. This satellite image shows sunlight reflected from the earth back into space. Green and blue areas show light penetrating the atmosphere; white and beige indicate areas where light reflects back into space. This picture was constructed from images gathered over a one-month period during March 2000. Source:CERES instrument team”
randomengineer,
While I think a few anti-missile weapons are necessary against accidental launches and the possibility of a nutty leader, any more than 20 or so might spark an arms race. Besides, the most important thing to a politician is his LIFE. Nuclear weapons can certainly threaten that. Why do you think we have had no major wars since WWII where 50 million died.
death’s shadow
Takes a dreadful fear,
death’s shadow here,
to still the dogs of war.
Our rulers dear
would send us there
and shed not many tears.
But let their lives be threatened
by say, a nuclear weapon,
and suddenly it is clear:
Peace ain’t so bad after all.
anna v (23:09:16)
This satellite image shows sunlight reflected from the earth back into space. Green and blue areas show light penetrating the atmosphere; white and beige indicate areas where light reflects back into space.
The white or beige areas show sunlight reflecting from Africa’s Sahara Desert, as well as from high clouds over the tropical oceans, Amazonia, and tropical Africa. On the other hand, darker areas show sunlight penetrating the atmosphere in the cloud-free areas of the oceans.
Very interesting. I noticed that the southwest desert is in the dark area.
I wonder why?
I also noticed that the artic area was dark blue. Since ‘This picture was constructed from images gathered over a one-month period during March 2000’ how was sunlight penetrating the atmosphere in the artic during the winter months?
Very interesting.
Mauna Loa CO2 Stumbles. July level lower than January. Preliminary of course.
What part of within 3% is not well mixed?
What’s the seasonal variation as measured at Mauna Loa?
What part of water vapor being the strongest greenhouse gas do you think the AGW crowd does’t understand?
You have no case!
As I read this again, does it lend support to Beck’s paper on CO2 measurements?
[…] An encouraging response on satellite CO2 measurement from the AIRS Team […]
DR:
I’ve been thinking the same thing. Dr. Beck’s paper was attacked almost as viciously here as Viscount Monckton’s. Based on that fact alone, I suspect that Beck’s conclusions were pretty accurate.
randomengineer, I’ve found a generic rebuttal to the predictions of the Union of Concerned Scientists [and to climate alarmists in general]: click
What you see there is the influence of the seasonal vegetation decay/uptake, especially in the NH for the month of July 2003 (and 2008).
This is measured at the high altitude ground stations too: Mauna Loa and the South Pole (both at about 3,000 m) show the same seasonal variation as the satellites. Here a graph of monthly averages 2002-2004 for Mauna Loa and the South Pole, there is little variation in seasonal amplitude over the years.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/month_2002_2004.jpg
For July 2003, the difference between Mauna Loa (20 N) and the South Pole (90 S) data is 3-4 ppmv. According to the satellite measurements, it is 3 ppmv
For May 2003, the difference between MLO and SPO data is 6-7 ppmv. According to the satellite: 4 ppmv
One need to take into account that the satellite measurements have a lower measurement accuracy , compared to the land based ones (+/- 0.1 ppmv)
The seasonal variations near level out if one takes the yearly averages. Only a (small) variation around the trend, mainly caused by (ocean) temperature variations remains.
See further the seasonal variation with altitude already known by Bert Bolin in 1970, which is only for the NH, as the SH shows far less variation (less land/vegetation):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_height.jpg
Caption: Figure 3:2 Amplitude and phase shift of seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 at different altitudes, calculated from direct observations by harmonic analysis (Bolin and Bischof, 1970).
Does this support Beck’s paper on historic CO2 measurements? No, most of the old measurements had an accuracy of +/- 3% = +/- 10 ppmv. Near all seasonal differences over the globe are within that range.
Further, as the AIRS people say:
The big picture is that CO2 sources and sinks are in the planetary
boundary layer. Global circulation of CO2 occurs in the free
troposphere. Thus, PBL is local whereas free troposphere is
international.
Becks data are almost solely in the PBL, where a lot of sources and sinks are present (5% of the atmosphere) while the base stations (and now the satellites) measure either at ground level with a good mixing with the free troposphere, or in the mid-troposphere (representing 95% of the atmosphere).
[…] representativity than the land based measurements such as that from the Mauna Loa Observatory. My writeup on AIRS here on July 31st 2008 indicated that they would have a published paper in 6-8 weeks for us to review. […]