What could it be? Something from Los Angeles?
Robert Clemenzi tells us in comments:
Fox5 news in DC just announced that Earth Networks (Gaithersburg, MD) is providing a new service to provide real time CO2 foot print videos for cities. Associated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, they plan to spend $25 million to “complete” the system. It is unbelievable that, using only 100 sensors, they are able to directly monitor the air over the ocean near LA. They even have altitude data.
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Here’s the press release:
Germantown, Md. and La Jolla, Calif. – January 12, 2011 – Earth Networks, formerly AWS Convergence Technologies and the owner and operator of the popular WeatherBug® products and services, announced its expanded focus to include additional environmental observations and measurements, beginning with the deployment of the largest global greenhouse gas (GHG) observation network in close collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Earth Networks CEO Robert Marshall and Dr. Tony Haymet, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, will announce the news at a press event on the Scripps campus in La Jolla, Calif., today at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST, and is available via webcast through the media center at earthnetworks.com and at http://earthnetworks.com/MediaCenter/LiveEarthNetworksPressConference.aspx.
The immediate goal of the Earth Networks Greenhouse Gas Observation Network is to improve the understanding of GHGs in the atmosphere. By deploying and networking many instruments and combining that data with information from its existing weather networks around the world, Earth Networks will become a valuable source for detailed and reliable global environmental information. The data will be available to inform the research community, policy makers and private industry with more precise environmental intelligence.
Further, the network will enable the independent measurement, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas levels and emissions to support international and regional climate policy initiatives. In embarking on this new and expanded mission, Earth Networks is establishing the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This new center forms the pinnacle of scientific research collaboration between Earth Networks and Scripps and will be co-directed by Scripps Professor Ralph Keeling and Distinguished Scripps Research Professor Ray Weiss.
Scripps Oceanography, a part of the University of California, San Diego, is one of the oldest, largest and most important centers for ocean and earth science research, education and public service in the world. Scripps scientists are playing a vital role in advising Earth Networks regarding the network design, methods to ensure data quality, and linking the network data to atmospheric modeling experts at research institutions around the world. Looking ahead, Scripps researchers and their scientific colleagues plan to leverage the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research to conduct new, broad and far-reaching climate science. Today, only a few dozen continuous GHG observing locations exist, which limits analysis. In contrast, Earth Networks will initially deploy 100 GHG observing systems worldwide, beginning with 50 in the continental U.S., followed by deployments in Europe and other areas of the world. The density of the Earth Networks approach will make it possible to quantify and map more localized GHG emissions and uptakes (sinks), and importantly, their changes over time.
Earth Networks will initially utilize environmental instruments from Sunnyvale, California-based Picarro. The Picarro GHG analyzers utilize a technique known as cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) to make precise and reliable measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Earth Networks will use gas calibration standards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that insure compatibility with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) scales for GHGs. CO2 and CH4 are the two most important long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Earth Networks is also working with scientific collaborators to apply sophisticated atmospheric modeling techniques to establish carbon and carbon-equivalent footprint reports for considerably smaller geographic regions than is currently practical.
The atmospheric modeling techniques involve coupling greenhouse gas and weather measurements with computer models of regional atmospheric transport to quantify GHG emission and uptake processes on a regional scale. This combined approach enables a better understanding of the complex global distribution and circulation of GHGs in the atmosphere. Earth Networks – similar to its experience with weather networks – anticipates that the initial network deployment will increase substantially over time and become a “network of networks” with several hundred observing systems worldwide.
Press release link
Video animation
http://ghg.earthnetworks.com/GHG3dAnimate.aspx?stationid=SNDGS
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And the question is: What good is this beyond some hype on your local TV newscast? “Earth Networks” aka WeatherBug is a TV service. So will our local TV meteorologists and weathercasters now terrorize viewers with giant blobs of CO2 attacking the city?
Bet on it.
Complete waste of money and a duplication of effort.
Why wasn’t the funding given to NASA to improve the AQUA satellite information related to CO2 readings — currently displayed as 31 day or monthly? Maybe daily readings aren’t important in relation to atmospheric mixing?
http://climate.nasa.gov/Eyes/eyes.html
Enter the 3D model > choose AQUA > choose ozone or CO2 data set and adjust the view by dragging the globe around.
Get website visualization but it would be even better if one could overlay several of the data sets from different satellites to potentially show cause and effect.
sorry, s/b
Great website visualization but it would be even better if one could overlay several of the data sets from different satellites to potentially show cause and effect.
This is the original report as seen on Fox news
http://www.myfoxdc.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=6994WeatherBug Operator, Earth Networks, Measuring Greenhouse Gases: MyFoxDC.com
Will they include the important greenhouse gaswater vapor in the cartoon? If so, will this cartoon properly depict their relative importance as greenhouse gases?
If so, then there is no need for the animation because we already have water vapor satellite images which will show essentially the same thing.
If places are cold, while having a high Carbon Dioxide level, or hot with low CO2
You see, CO2 “causes” warming because it peaks every year just before the plants wake up in the spring. A definite causal link, since the rise in CO2 comes BEFORE the springtime temperature rise every year. Very reliable. CO2 definitely causes warming in the late winter, early spring. Throughout the summer, the CO2 levels drop as the plants hungrily consume as much as they can find. The DROP in CO2 levels causes the temperatures to drop in the autumn. Every year, the change in CO2 levels precedes the predicted change in temperature by 5-6 months.
This is why monthly CO2 level measures are used to correlate with temperature, rather than annual. At the annual level, the correlation between temperature & CO2 level is insignificant. (I have a link to a J. Hansen paper, somewhere…)
The giant evil gaseous blob is Liberal thought, slouching its way down from San Fransicko.
genezeien says:
January 13, 2011 at 11:04 am
You are 180 degrees out of phase with reality. Radiation is essentially line of sight and fast as light. Note how fast the surface air cools on a no wind, clear cold night. If CO2 was having any affect on OLR, it certainly would not show up as a 6 months delay. Read http://www.kidswincom.net/CO2OLR.pdf.
Ah, Fred-I think you may have misread genezeien’s intented point.
Sorry-“intended”.
Fred H. Haynie says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Dang it, Fred! I was paraphrasing a quote from J. Hansen. Paraphrasing ‘cuz my memory isn’t photographic. Now I’ll have to find the original source 🙁
Please note that I did not say “I believe…” any of it 😉
Sorry Gene. I’m not into sarcasm and your’s was the kind of comment you would expect from “true belivers”.
At this time of year, the prevailing winds in SoCal are westerly. From the picture it looks like CO2 expelled from the ocean is blown toward the coast and builds up in front of the San Gabriel mountains.
David L says at 1:15 am:
“The obsession with CO2 is unstoppable. There is obviously a psychological need for humans to clutch to a fictional belief.”
The Gaian cultists spring from exactly – and I do mean *literally exactly and precisely* – the same psychological impulse as these guys, and none of us should be surprised at the blood thirst that occasionally leaks out from the Gaian cult (e.g., the “10:10” exploding people video).
http://dvdmedia.ign.com/dvd/image/article/773/773344/apocalypto-20070316000537705.jpg
I actually welcome this boondoggle program, which, in its fund-grabbing frenzy, SIO is only too happy to lead. The data will eventually show quite unequivocally that regional variations in CO2 concentration are either incoherent or LAG temperature variations. What will the distinguished professors say when they’re hung by their own petard?
I scanned the comments so maybe I missed it but, I thought the reason given to defend the Hawaiian CO2 record was that CO2 was well-mixed in the atmosphere and therefore the Hawaiian record was representative. The model doesn’t look like the CO2 is well-mixed to me.
I had thought a a novel plan which I truely hope no government will implement.
A new law, making it mandatory for all AGW believers to xxxxxxxx.
That should solve the problem.
I hasten to say that this was intended as a joke.
On reflection, it was in very poor taste and was self snipped.
But I will just comment.
Does anybody else feel that the AGW proponents are getting siller by the day?
Phil and others,
The graphic is not based on measured data of an existing network. It is a simulation of what they expect to see from one. So far they have shown how their plume location methodoligy works on a single site at La Jollia. Grifton, NC would be a better site to use in demonstrating their technique. The raw flask data shows large spikes when a light wind is blowing from the southwest. There is a 15KW coal fired power plant 4km southwest of this small town site. There is another site in Kansas fairly near a larger coal fired power plant. I expect they will find that these plumes they are able to observe, rapidly vanish to natural background which is being controlled by liquid moisture in the air, rivers and lakes, soil, and plants.
beng;
You REALLY need to go to Robert Clemenzi’s site and do some reading. And d/l and read his http://qs.mc-computing.com//Global_Warming/EPA_Comments/TheGreenhouseEffect.doc
Will this be gone in April, I’m hoping to visit and don’t want to carry an oxygen mask around?