Well, not quite that bad, but if I was still on TV, that would probably be the tease during prime time. It appears that solar influences are mostly at work here.
By Dr. Dr. Tony Phillips NASA
NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet’s atmosphere. High above Earth’s surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called “the thermosphere” recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.
“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,” says John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). “It’s a Space Age record.”
The collapse happened during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009—a fact which comes as little surprise to researchers. The thermosphere always cools and contracts when solar activity is low. In this case, however, the magnitude of the collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.
“Something is going on that we do not understand,” says Emmert.
The thermosphere ranges in altitude from 90 km to 600+ km. It is a realm of meteors, auroras and satellites, which skim through the thermosphere as they circle Earth. It is also where solar radiation makes first contact with our planet. The thermosphere intercepts extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photons from the sun before they can reach the ground. When solar activity is high, solar EUV warms the thermosphere, causing it to puff up like a marshmallow held over a camp fire. (This heating can raise temperatures as high as 1400 K—hence the name thermosphere.) When solar activity is low, the opposite happens.
Lately, solar activity has been very low. In 2008 and 2009, the sun plunged into a century-class solar minimum. Sunspots were scarce, solar flares almost non-existent, and solar EUV radiation was at a low ebb. Researchers immediately turned their attention to the thermosphere to see what would happen.
How do you know what’s happening all the way up in the thermosphere?
Emmert uses a clever technique: Because satellites feel aerodynamic drag when they move through the thermosphere, it is possible to monitor conditions there by watching satellites decay. He analyzed the decay rates of more than 5000 satellites ranging in altitude between 200 and 600 km and ranging in time between 1967 and 2010. This provided a unique space-time sampling of thermospheric density, temperature, and pressure covering almost the entire Space Age. In this way he discovered that the thermospheric collapse of 2008-2009 was not only bigger than any previous collapse, but also bigger than the sun alone could explain.
One possible explanation is carbon dioxide (CO2).
When carbon dioxide gets into the thermosphere, it acts as a coolant, shedding heat via infrared radiation. It is widely-known that CO2 levels have been increasing in Earth’s atmosphere. Extra CO2 in the thermosphere could have magnified the cooling action of solar minimum.
“But the numbers don’t quite add up,” says Emmert. “Even when we take CO2 into account using our best understanding of how it operates as a coolant, we cannot fully explain the thermosphere’s collapse.”
According to Emmert and colleagues, low solar EUV accounts for about 30% of the collapse. Extra CO2 accounts for at least another 10%. That leaves as much as 60% unaccounted for.
In their GRL paper, the authors acknowledge that the situation is complicated. There’s more to it than just solar EUV and terrestrial CO2. For instance, trends in global climate could alter the composition of the thermosphere, changing its thermal properties and the way it responds to external stimuli. The overall sensitivity of the thermosphere to solar radiation could actually be increasing.
“The density anomalies,” they wrote, “may signify that an as-yet-unidentified climatological tipping point involving energy balance and chemistry feedbacks has been reached.”
Or not.
Important clues may be found in the way the thermosphere rebounds. Solar minimum is now coming to an end, EUV radiation is on the rise, and the thermosphere is puffing up again. Exactly how the recovery proceeds could unravel the contributions of solar vs. terrestrial sources.
“We will continue to monitor the situation,” says Emmert.
For more information see Emmert, J. T., J. L. Lean, and J. M. Picone (2010), Record-low thermospheric density during the 2008 solar minimum, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12102.
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Sadly, we only have record of this obviously cyclical phenomenon in the satellite age, so of course CO2 is to blame.
Their own graphs show the cyclic nature, and yet the CO2 card is played.
Sad that many supposed scientists today seem to have secondary degrees in marketing and advertising. Makes me want to kick a polar bear.
Why did I get the feeling that CO2 would somehow get the blame? “When in doubt, blame CO2,” seems to be the mantra in today’s “consensus science” circles.
By the way, I thought we had exited the recent solar cycle minimum and were “ramping up quickly” towards the next solar maximum (solar cycle 24). But no. It appears the “solar minimum is now coming to an end.”
On the other hand, perhaps the sun is ramping up, but this time towards an historically low Dalton-like minimum.
An NCAR video shows how carbon dioxide warms the lower atmosphere, but cools the upper atmosphere. [click for more]
My girlfriend remarks: Oh! I am soooooo NOT believing that!!
The thought:
[A] WHERE is the ‘science’ which describes how a gas molecule will behave differently –even contrarily– at varying altitudes?
[B] WHY is that not happening from ground-level all the way up through the atmosphere? Does the ‘science’ change at mid-altitudes to become entirely ‘neutral?’
[C] Has that supposition been tested in the lab?
[D] The whole thought is fraught with inconsistency: If CO2 molecules are supposedly doing what is spoken of –at altitude– then WHY does the Earth get warm at all? After all, if the UV radiation is being deflected by high altitude CO2 …
You can’t have it both ways: Either it warms or it doesn’t, or it cools or it doesn’t.
So, on Venus, when temperatures and the EM radiation profiles reflect 735K, CO2 causes warming.
But in the Earth’s Thermosphere, when temperatures and the EM radiation profiles reflect 735K, CO2 causes cooling.
There is just a lot of settled global warming science that the pro-AGW set cannot bring themselves to think about questioning. The thought just does not cross their mind at all and contradictions just continue on with no sober second thought.
Lee Kington says:
July 15, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I guess the sky was falling.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Witty and perfect. This is quote of the week.
Lucy Skywalker says:
July 15, 2010 at 4:43 pm
if….Leif Svalgaard were not so……territorial.
I hadn’t thought of it that way. But that seems right. Wish I was as witty as you. I’ll go back to my cell of frustrated mediocrity now. 😉
What is CO2 doing up there? I thought that one evil humans released CO2 it stayed down around here forever and ever, just heating things up until the earth died of fever.
I think I have figured out what really causes global warming if you look at the first picture you will note that the Sun has come to about 700 km from the earth; that should have warmed things up a bit.
Before I get excited about the 60% unexplained increase in the density of the thermosphere, I want to see the correction to the data used for the calculations of the density change established by atmospheric drag. In order estimate the drag involves making assumptions about the nature of the factors that enter into aerodynamic drag including the effects of the satellite profiles and orbits. My experence with studying space effects on satelite material is that the surfaces are degraded by the effects of atomic oxygen erosion. In addition most of the satellites tumble in orbit. I plan to obtain a copy of the paper when I get back from vacation.
Hypothesis: The rise of the climate blogs punctured the hot air gas bags of CAGW Notice how the atmosphere began to recover just after Climategate?
kirkmyers says:
July 15, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Why did I get the feeling that CO2 would somehow get the blame? “When in doubt, blame CO2,” seems to be the mantra in today’s “consensus science” circles.
By the way, I thought we had exited the recent solar cycle minimum and were “ramping up quickly” towards the next solar maximum (solar cycle 24). But no. It appears the “solar minimum is now coming to an end.”
On the other hand, perhaps the sun is ramping up, but this time towards an historically low Dalton-like minimum.
___________________________________________________
It seems to have gotten named the Eddy Minimum.
I forgot to mention the reference to The New Junk Blame, June 27 WUWT which reviews a paper from Saunders, Swinerd, and Lewis and refutes its association with CO2.
“Something is going on that we do not understand.”
Would that we might hear a climate modeler say that.
More proof that the science is not settled. But the scientists will be lining up for the grants to prove Man Made CO2 did it, even if it didn’t.
Maybe the 60% got ate up in the calculations. Warmers can be very good at comparing reality with expectations and finding that reality wrong.
You can’t have it both ways: Either it warms or it doesn’t, or it cools or it doesn’t.
They aren’t having it both ways at all. CO2 doesn’t “heat” anything. At best it traps heat in (the greenhouse analogy) by absorbing and re-radiating. However that same action in the upper atmosphere could equally well prevent heat from getting to lower atmosphere.
An analogy you might understand is this. An electric heater inside warms your house. Yet placed outside your house, with the appropriate tubing, it can become an air conditioner and cool your house.
As contradictory as it sounds, a heating operation can give localised cooling.
I am not convinced that the CO2 effect is strong enough to give runaway global warming, but you need somewhat more than naked scepticism to rebut it. I would suggest that unless you have a great deal of the required physics and chemistry that you should leave rebuttal of these issues to people who have.
Ulric Lyons says:
July 15, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Solar wind velocity was very low through 2008/9 till this spring, total numbers of coronal holes per year were also down
Actually not quite. During the first half of 2008, solar wind speed was very high [500 km/sec]. It was only really low [356 km/sec] during the last half of 2009.
Speaking of ramps, here’s a new look at solar cycle in their ‘takeoff’ mode:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin10.htm
Do keep in mind that the very early data (especially SC11/12 1877-1880) suffer from lack of coverage.
You can see why I am want to call SC23/24 diffuse.
This is really interesting development. It’s not often that something this big occurs totally unexpected. Some possible implications of the thermosphere’s collapse.
1. The science is obviously so far from settled that to suggest we understand all the forcings on climate is ludicrous.
2. This is likely some variety of climate feedback, as such certainly could have something to do with increased levels of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
3. The feedback is likely to be negative on global temperatures since a cooling of thermosphere must ultimately cool the meso, strato then troposphere below.
The Earth’s biosphere has been remarkable good at maintaining the temperature with in a relatively narrow range for hundreds of millions of years through all sorts of extremely rapid atmospheric changes. Perhaps we are witnessing just another one of Gaia’s homeostasis techniques for the first time. At higher CO2 levels perhaps this thermosphere cooling effect negates further troposphere warming…
At the earths surface the incoming light energy is absorbed by the crust/oceans and some of that energy is re-radiated in IR wavelengths, the CO2 in the atmosphere does not absorb light energy – only IR.
that is why CO2 can be cooling in upper atmosphere and warming in lower atmosphere.
Any scientist getting paid by the federal gov’t (grants or otherwise) should simply not be trusted when it comes to climate. Now CO2 causes massive cooling? I guess that makes sense if you want to hedge your bets for the next round of funding. There was an article that was contemporaneous with the event that I’d read that was far less speculative (and 1000 times more honest). A couple of years later and now they’re pointing the finger at CO2. I’ll make an effort to find that article. This and other NASA garbage like the “consensus” sunspot stuff and Jim Hansen, Gavin Schmidt’s proselytizing really make me embarassed for that Agency. Why do we have to pay taxes for this garbagola? I wish they’d stick to the science and leave the boogeyman schtick for the campfire with their kids. It’s *really* getting old fellas. Time to write my CongressCritters.
Mandolinjon says: “…In addition most of the satellites tumble in orbit.”
I’ve calculated the orbital decay of such a satellite (actually a complete booster, less engines). I calculated 3 weeks life in orbit, which turned out to be off by two days. (NASA estimated 5 days, missing by two weeks.)
wes george says: “…The Earth’s biosphere has been remarkabl(y) good at maintaining the temperature with in a relatively narrow range for hundreds of millions of years through all sorts of extremely rapid atmospheric changes. Perhaps we are witnessing just another one of Gaia’s homeostasis techniques for the first time.…”
I’m still wondering whether the ionosphere is acting like a grid in a vacuum tube, moderating the loss of heat to space. When it’s thick, dense, and hot, it holds heat in; when it’s thin and diffuse, it passes more heat.
It is always nice to hear these people admit when they simply do not know something.
Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167
@RAYQ MCMULLEN The ionosphere is the uppermost part of the atmosphere, between the thermosphere and the exosphere, distinguished because it is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere. It has practical importance because, among other functions, it influences radio propagation to distant places on the Earth. from wiki
Hm.. is it just me or does everybody else know the CO2 level in the ionosphere? Has it increased then? If so, how much?