From NASA News. New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth’s thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere.
Scientists from NASA’s Langley Research Center and Hampton University in Hampton, Va., and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., presented these results at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco from Dec. 14 to 18.
Earth’s thermosphere and mesosphere have been the least explored regions of the atmosphere. The NASA Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission was developed to explore the Earth’s atmosphere above 60 km altitude and was launched in December 2001. One of four instruments on the TIMED mission, the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, was specifically designed to measure the energy budget of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The SABER dataset now covers eight years of data and has already provided some basic insight into the heat budget of the thermosphere on a variety of timescales.
The extent of current solar minimum conditions has created a unique situation for recent SABER datasets, explains Stan Solomon, acting director of the High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The end of solar cycle 23 has offered an opportunity to study the radiative cooling in the thermosphere under exceptionally quiescent conditions.
“The Sun is in a very unusual period,” said Marty Mlynczak, SABER associate principal investigator and senior research scientist at NASA Langley. “The Earth’s thermosphere is responding remarkably — up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules.”
The TIMED measurements show a decrease in the amount of ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun. In addition, the amount of infrared radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere by nitric oxide molecules has decreased by nearly a factor of 10 since early 2002. These observations imply that the upper atmosphere has cooled substantially since then. The research team expects the atmosphere to heat up again as solar activity starts to pick up in the next year.
While this warming has no implications for climate change in the troposphere, a fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that the upper atmosphere will cool in response to increasing carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere cools the density will decrease, which ultimately may impact satellite operations through decreased drag over time.
The SABER dataset is the first global, long-term, and continuous record of the
Nitric oxide (NO) and Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the thermosphere.
“We suggest that the dataset of radiative cooling of the thermosphere by NO and CO2 constitutes a first climate data record for the thermosphere,” says Mlynczak.
The TIMED data provide a climate record for validation of upper atmosphere climate models, which is an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere. SABER provides the first long-term measurements of natural variability in key terms of the upper atmosphere climate.
“A fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that upper atmosphere will cool in response to greenhouse gases in the troposphere,” says Mlynczak. “Scientists need to validate that theory. This climate record of the upper atmosphere is our first chance to have the other side of the equation.”
James Russell III, SABER principal investigator and co-director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., agrees adding, “The atmosphere is a coupled system. If you pick up one end of the stick, you automatically pick up the other – they’re intrinsically linked. To be as accurate as possible, scientists have to understand global change throughout the atmosphere.”
As the TIMED mission continues, these data derived from SABER will become important in assessing long term atmospheric changes due to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
TIMED is the first mission in the Solar Terrestrial Probes Program within the Heliophysics Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
TIMED is the terrestrial anchor of the Heliophysics Great Observatory. Learn more of TIMED’s Heliophysics contributions and its role as a bridge to Earth science missions. Link to lessons learned in terrestrial aeronomy.
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They go from reduced solar output, cooling atmosphere to GHGs being the cause! Can’t these people do any science at all withou blaming GHGs from the word go. I see nothing in this data that proves GHGs are cooling the atmosphere but somehow they have absolute proof, Where?
Is it me? am I being obtuse? or what?
Quite how anybody can deny the Sun’s substantial effect on the Earth’s climate is beyond me. More studies like this, based on sound science, are needed to demolish the ridiculous and over-hyped CO2 link to climactic variations.
So…is the upper atmosphere being cooled from less solar activity or is it a result of greenhouse gases as AGW theory predicts? Reading the article seems to suggest both.
What does this say about the validity of the GCMs that prdicted the “hotspot”?
It is great to get all of these satellites up there, but the data is still too new. It only goes back to 2002. In a few decades, these state of the art technologies are going to be quaint as compared to what future scientists will come up with. I just hope that today’s instruments gather enough data that will still be relevant in the coming decades.
The caption under the first set of graphs says that, “Nitric Oxide (NO) is the IR emitter.” Since Nitric Oxide has a high reactivity, how wide spread is it in the upper atmosphere? Has its concentration changed significantly over the study period?
John M Reynolds
You’re kidding right?
You mean NASA has discovered the Sun might have something to do with the climate?
Who would have ever thought such a thing…
Can a climate techie explain if there is any valid inference here to be made about CO2 driven warming? I understand each aspect of what was quoted but not its implications.
Secondly, any link to the paper that was presented?
So what are the implications? Do there now seem to be two mechanisms producing cooling, the solar one and the hypothesized GHG warming one, whereas we only require one mechanism? Or is the conclusion that both are at work, but the GHG warming must be smaller than thought? Or that the solar mechanism must be smaller than thought?
I wonder how this new story is linked to a similar one almost from almost exactly a year earlier?:
“ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2008) — Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215121601.htm
That in line with the second law of thermodynamics means the Earth’s lower atmosphere transfers more heat out into space during solar minima.
Well blow me down! Who would have thunk it? Maybe that big bright burning ball in the sky does have something to to with it after all?
Is this sentence correct?
“As the atmosphere cools the density will decrease, which ultimately may impact satellite operations through decreased drag over time.”
Shouldn’t the density increase and as a result the drag increase?
Thanks
Would any such cooling be a result of less energy from the sun or less energy coming up from below the upper atmosphere ?
If the variation in solar output is very small as maintained by Leif and others then presumably reduced solar power output would be insufficient to cause the observed cooling on it’s own.
Another study showing the UV variation greater than TSI over the solar cycle. Perhaps TSI is a small player.
If the observed cooling correlates with changes in solar activity then presumably it would not be correlated with CO2 quantities in the atmosphere.
I read elsewhere that the stratosphere has been warming since the mid 90s as the solar activity declined. Is the temperature of the stratosphere moving in the opposite direction to the temperature of the upper atmosphere and are both trends solar activity induced rather than CO2 induced ?
Okay, I haven’t had coffee yet (hang on – that’s better), but even if this wasn’t described as being from NASA news, I’d say it was a NASA press release.
What do they mean by a timely link? The only thing untimely about the Skylab space station was that the Space Shuttle arrived too late to boost it to a higher orbit.
Perhaps they mean they can forecast temperature and density? Well, just a few days ago in Tips & Notes a link to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8408957.stm was posted and that says in part:
Besides the certainty that NASA press releases overstates whatever they’re trying to get attention, perhaps the story is that NASA doesn’t talk with ESA, a story that will never grace the text of a NASA press release.
Hmm, a couple more notes from the press release:
The NASA press release does not mention the effect on the Stratosphere. But there is no strong boundary between the layers of the upper atmosphere as there is between the lower and upper atmosphere at the tropopause. So are NASA being coy here? They don’t want to upset the AGW applecart of co2 caused stratospheric cooling, but need to stay up with the latest results from expensive orbiting hardware.
Caught between a rock and a cold place?
Scratching my head..
ok so If warm theory says the “pollutants” Co2 nitrous and methane get trapped and do Not? radiate to space, but stay low and heat us up..
so theoretically they hardly make it that far..and Co2 is heavier that air, and its supposed to be falling and making oceans go acid..:-)
aw come on!
and the sun which,
a) sends radiant heat and light, is low..
and b)the earth is cooling in the troposphere.(but it still isn’t anything to do with the sun??) (stupid)
well, how come they say here that its still? co2 etc causing this too?
can we see 8 years of mid and low data to also compare?
I seem to remember some of thats on this site and that! also wasn’t showing that huge red blip that IPCC tell us we should see..
correct me if I am wrong by all means 🙂
PS if mayon volcano keeps dumping 7,000+- tonnes of sulphur dioxide + per day. how long will that take to alter weather patterns for the cooler?
so cool above and below, folks, seriously, am I right in thinking this could be ugly.
stop the world ,I wanna get off:-) ?
Great stuff. I’m confident satellite data can give us a much better answer to the fundmental question of to what extent CO2 influences climate, than a set of homogenized wandering thermometers.
“A fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that upper atmosphere will cool in response to greenhouse gases in the troposphere,”
So the cooling is proof of AGW?
Still lot to learn about magnetic fields of the solar system.
There is an apparent ‘correlation’ between the intensity of the Earth’s field and the Solar activity.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-GMF.gif
Perhaps an odd coincidence, should it be ignored?
If the upper atmosphere cools, does it follow that the lower atmosphere can also cool, assuming that the level of GCRs remain constant? Hope someone can explain, thanks.
To the contrary, dynamicists have demonstrated the upper atmosphere is closely linked to the lower atmosphere and troposphere is included.
So…my dear copenhagen fiascoed people, here you are again. Forget it, there is no way out !
So you were expecting CO2 to accumulate heat in a piggy bank up there and now that there is cold you say CO2 is to blame too!, come on!
So let me get this straight, they have data for the 8 last years. In the last 8 years global warming has failed to happen. But the cooling of the stratosphere is an important prediction of the theory behind climate change – the theory that failed to predict that the earth hasn’t warmed in the last 10 years.
The scientists working in this sector are having to resort to ever more weasely sentences to avoid touching the sensitivities of the climate orthodoxy. Sooner or latter this will lead to a schism and we’ll see the orthodoxy split into two competing churches. From there the fun starts.
Popcorn please.