Time: Thursday, Dec. 18, 9 a.m. PST
In 2014, NASA launched four new missions to study our home planet, including the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 in July – NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide. This press conference will present early results from the OCO-2 mission. Fossil fuel combustion, deforestation and other human activities are adding almost 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, yet less than half of it stays airborne. The rest is apparently being absorbed by natural processes at the surface, whose identity and location are poorly understood. Ground-based carbon dioxide measurements accurately record the global atmospheric carbon dioxide budget and its trends but do not have the resolution or coverage needed to identify the “sources” emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or the natural “sinks” absorbing this gas. One way to improve the resolution and coverage of these measurements is to collect precise observations of carbon dioxide from an orbiting satellite. OCO-2 is NASA’s first satellite designed to measure atmosphere carbon dioxide with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to identify its sources and sinks. OCO-2 is currently recording more than 100,000 carbon dioxide measurements over Earth’s sunlit hemisphere each day. In addition, a new data product from OCO-2 that senses light emitted from the photosynthesis of plants has been developed. Over the next two years, these measurements are expected to revolutionize our understanding of the processes controlling the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide.
Participants:
Annmarie Eldering, OCO-2 Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Chris O’Dell, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
Paul Wennberg, R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California
Christian Frankenberg, Research Scientist, NASA JPL
Related AGU Sessions:
A41G, A41H, A41I, A51P, A52E, A53R
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites you to watch live and chat about everything from Mars rovers to monitoring asteroids to cool cosmic discoveries. From the lab to the lecture hall, get information directly from scientists and engineers working on NASA’s latest missions.
Live Stream starts at 9AM PST Noon EST
http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL2
@Bill Illis
This map of CO2 emission seem to correlate pretty well to deforestation rate map.
http://www.worldtreetrust.com/education-resources/deforestation/
Deforestation is a tiny player when it comes to the Carbon Cycle/CO2 Cycle in the Amazon rainforest. Several orders of magnitude different.
Correlates pretty well with active volcanic regions, as well
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html
Wish they wouldn’t spend so much of our money on this.
@Joe Kirklin Kbetcha
Yes volcanic regions seem also to correlate but it seem deforestation is stronger CO2 emitter.
… but the climavists want to hack down the forests and chip them for biomass generators ?
Will the results be considered a “baseline” to be compared with future measurements and then hypothesis formed or hyped and spun to confirm previous “We’re all going to die! …unless…” baseline-less hypothesis?
The latter will happen. I hope the former takes precedence.
What a disgraceful waste of money and effort when we already know that the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration does not affect a change in temperature of the Earth’s surface.
This is highlighted in Dr John Christy’s summary of 36 years of satellite lower tropospheric temperature recording which gave the greatest rate of temperature increase over Baffin Bay, 0.82 deg.C per decade, and least over Dome C in the Antarctic, -0.50 deg.C per decade, in spite of both areas having the same rate of increase in CO2 concentration over that period.
Add to that the fact that Scripps Institute data from Mauna Loa shows CO2 increasing at an ever increasing rate, namely 0.69 ppm per annum for Nov. 1958 to Nov. 1963 compared to 2.22 ppm per annum for Oct. 2009 to Oct. 2014, a factor of 3.2 times greater, yet there has been no warming for the past 18 years.
We are doomed! , the Earth’s at the tipping point, the CO2 global warming is about to start another Little Ice Age, tottering ‘back to future’
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-GMF.gif
top – CO2 global distribution 2014
bottom – Earth’s magnetic field around 1650 , the start of Maunder Minimum
(end sarc)
It occurs to me that the Landsat/Earthsat-type multi-spectral scanners have been mapping plant activity in exquisite detail for many years. This new satellite is like scientists ignoring the reality of Google Maps and showing up with one of those “earth at night” maps and saying “Wow, we can finally see where the cities are!” Duh.
Also, since the human component of CO2 emission is supposedly in the 3% range, they will still be looking way down in the noise to find evidence of human activity. If you assume that the big blobs coming from the “deforestation and burning” areas are primarily human, it would represent WAY more than 3%. Same for the blob over China.
If this data shows that the developing countries are in fact the source of the problem, why on earth would the developed countries want to pay compensation for the damage the developed countries are supposedly causing, when it would be the recipients who are actually responsible. Sort of turns the whole IPCC meme right on its head, no?
Couldn’t find any reference to it on Grumpy-ian environment page
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/environment
I wonder what they will make out of it.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
If they don’t screw with that data maybe we will learn something!
“It occurs to me that the Landsat/Earthsat-type multi-spectral scanners have been mapping plant activity in exquisite detail for many years.[…]”
Hehehe. You would think so. But this is totally “the first time ever” just like how everything else is (the classic) “worse than we thought…” and if it isn’t that it is “better than expected…” (the post about polar ice holding up to global warming…). They just keep repeating their excuses.