Remember that video produced a few weeks ago from the usual suspects that says satellite data is no good for climate data? Others in science don’t seem to think so.
Mapping the world for climate sensitivity
By using information gathered by satellites, a group of biologists have developed a new method for measuring ecosystem sensitivity to climate variability.
From THE UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN:
By developing this method, the international team of researchers has been able to map which areas are most sensitive to climate variability across the world.
“Based on the satellite data gathered, we can identify areas that, over the past 14 years, have shown high sensitivity to climate variability,” says researcher Alistair Seddon at the Department of Biology at the University of Bergen (UiB).
Seddon is first author of the paper Sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to climate variability, which has just been published in the journal Nature.
Globe-spanning results
The approach of the researchers has been to identify climate drivers of vegetation productivity on monthly timescales. The researchers have found climate sensitivity in ecosystems around the globe.
“We have found ecologically sensitive regions with amplified responses to climate variability in the Arctic tundra, parts of the boreal forest belt, the tropical rainforest, alpine regions worldwide, steppe and prairie regions of central Asia and North and South America, forests in South America, and eastern areas of Australia,” says Seddon.
Creating a sensitivity index
The metric they have developed, the Vegetation Sensitivity Index (VSI), allows a more quantifiable response to climate change challenges and how sensitive different ecosystems are to short-term climate anomalies; e.g. a warmer June than on average, a cold December, a cloudy September, etc. The index supplements previous methods for monitoring and evaluating the condition of ecosystems.
“Our study provides a quantitative methodology for assessing the relative response rate of ecosystems, either natural ones or those with a strong anthropogenic footprint, to climate variability,” Seddon explains.
Using satellite data to get results
For their study, the researchers have used satellite data from 2000 to 2013, and Seddon describes their method.
“First of all, the method identifies which climate related variables such as temperature, water availability, and cloudiness are important for controlling productivity in a given location,” says Seddon.
“Then we compare the variability in ecosystem productivity, which we also obtain from satellite data, against the variability in the important climate variables.”
VSI provides an additional vegetation metric that can be used to assess the status of ecosystems globally scale.
“This kind of information can be really useful for national-scale ecosystem assessments, like Nordic Nature,” Seddon states.
“Even more interesting is that as satellite measurements continue and so as the datasets get longer, we will be able to recalculate our metric over longer time periods to investigate how and if ecosystem sensitivity to climate variability is changing over time.”
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Are the saying that more Co2 may be helping plants on the endanger species list?
@RichardSCourtney
…Really!? Please state and reference what which “Marx” (Zeppo?) said what about “climate science”….
It was Harpo.
The comment was “Honk, Honk!”
Here he is opening the 1930 IPCC conference:
Dodgy Geezer:
Excellent! Thankyou.
Richard
Honk Honk!++
Well of course the satellites are not good enough. Besides they are expensive and unnecessary.
All you need it one old tree as long as it tells you that CO2 is going to kill us all. That tree can make you rich and famous; just ask Mike “I sees what I wants to sees” Mann.
/snark
…
Disclaimer: It is also true that group think, conformation bias, and dishonesty are widespread in more areas of ‘science’ than just climate “science” so I don’t think “Dr.” Mann has a good case against me for this comment.
To be certain. Anyone who says otherwise is a pommy bastard. All we need is one old tree and this ashtray.
We just need this old tree, this ashtray and this chair. And this table. All we need is one old tree, this ashtray, a table and this chair. That’s it. That’s all we need.
And your Optigrab! The chair, the lamp…and the Opti-Grab, but that’s all we need!
thanks for the chuckle!
That old tree would make an excellent set of chairs, tables and ashtrays.
Yamal pine… the go to furniture timber.
the WMO flag up that Africa needs 9000 temp stations , that is how bad it is for 1/5 th of the world’s land mass and that’s just for starters.
Good lord man! Start the engines! Full speed ahead! We MUST save Africa from itself! Damn the torpedoes!
So satellites found changes over a period satellites found no warming, warming being the claimed source of human driven changes. Did they also show areas becoming more stable as co2 offers benefits to plants? With deserts greening globally the areas that thus far became more stable look rather immense I would think.
Notice how all the great deserts are totally ‘insensitive’ to ‘climate change’ because they are stubbornly hot and totally dry!
Furthermore, all the ‘sensitive’ places are mainly where glaciers a mile thick form every Ice Age! Except for Brazil which supposedly is ‘sensitive’ yet the jungles there lived there during Ice Ages, after Ice Ages and so on. Whereas humans evolved rapidly thanks to Ice Ages being a really nasty hammer changing chimps into humans.
If it rains more than usual my grass grows faster and I have to cut it more often. If Punksatony Phil sees his shadow on February 2nd my grass cutting season will start later in the spring.
100 years from now, when CO2 has supposedly doubled in the atmosphere, it will be 1 degree Celsius warmer, assuming other natural variation and feedback’s do not actually make it cooler.
To what extent will the sensitivity of my grass to “climate” be changed? Will the end of civilization be looming?
sensitivity of my grass to “climate”
==================
no doubt in 100 years you will have a solar powered Roomba to cut the grass, so you can enjoy all the free time made possible by labor saving devices.
just think, as short a time as 50 years ago, it took only 1 parent working to pay for the house and car, while the other parent stayed home to raise the children. and now, with all the conveniences of modern society we have been able to dramatically alter this so that it only takes two parents working to pay for the bus. the car and houses are too expensive for anyone to buy, so no one need worry about having children. truly we have made great advances.
ferd: 100 years??
Nope. Tomorrow if you want one. (Well maybe not self contained solar powered but if you have solar panels to plug in to charge it….)
http://www.lawnbotts.com/
folks 100 years ago had full automated lawn mowers. we are still catching up.
http://articles.extension.org/sites/default/files/w/7/7c/GoatGenemaster2.jpg
You’ll be dead. Your children will be dead. No one will care.
” my grass grows faster ”
Would someone PLEASE cut down the atmospheric CO2.
Its summer down here and I have to mow my grass every bl***y weekend. !!!!!
which of course, releases even more CO2
The interesting thing to me is that the paper refers to climate sensitivity of various ecosystems to the variability of climate. Each is a local effect.
“Vegetation Sensitivity Index (VSI), allows a more quantifiable response to climate change challenges and how sensitive different ecosystems are to short-term climate anomalies; e.g. a warmer June than on average, a cold December, a cloudy September, etc.”
I’m not sure that the information is useful in a larger sense, as we haven’t any way to control those variables, but it is interesting to see how the vegetation reacts to natural (or unnatural) variability.
This paper does not seem to be “yet another volley” in the Climate Wars.
Most of the effects of climate variables on any given plant/plant group/ ecosystem are known from centuries of botanical studies. If the known effects can be monitored via satellite this index could be useful. I really doubt, however, that the vagaries of daily/weekly/monthly weather can be assessed from space. For example, one could have a very warm June, but if one night of frost occurs at any time during the month, the effects will override any normal growth, or even survival (of annuals). Similarly, two years ago we had a brutally cold December with no snow cover. Frost went on average about 8 feet down, and some as low as 11 feet. This has a totally different outcome than a similar month with a meter or more of snow cover and frost down to 3-5 feet. I’m not sure how satellite data can detect subtle (or overt) climatic effects (really weather) in such a broad-based scheme of measurement. Unless they have thousands of folks on the ground monitoring vegetation change as these “short-term climate anomalies” occur there is no way to coordinate weather/vegetation response from space. If their data allows adequate measurement of parameters they might be able to compare against a well-established system such as Koppen’s, the boundaries of which should be measurable over time. Get back to me after 50 years of observation. Until then it is another computer game.
R2, very much appreciated discussion. Thank you.
It’s called very high altitude cherry picking.
Gee, I never knew how weather affects how my grass grows. I thought it was either all random or some grass god that controlled the grass. Thank goodness for scientists.
Sarcasm aside, I am not clear what these guys are trying to prove, discover, or measure.
“We have found ecologically sensitive regions with amplified responses to climate variability…”
Could someone please explain, in plain English, what the heck this means?
It’s your fault.
+100
GOLDEN OLDIE from 2009: The Secret Life of Climate Researchers [Iowahawk] “Our very planet depends on them. Yet they remain nature’s most elusive scientific species, inhabiting some of the world’s most delicate and daunting academic environments. But thanks to new breakthroughs in high speed cameras and email files, metascientists are finally beginning to understand their mysterious behaviors and complex social interactions. Tonight on Iowahawk Geographic: step inside the Secret Life of the Climate Researchers…
This part never fails to crack me up into fits of shrill world’s end hyena-laughter,
In this sequence, we see one group of researchers entering the hive each carrying a datum they have retrieved from a distant climate measuring station. This is the cause of much excitement among their colleagues, who buzz around in a grant-writing frenzy.
[Show: Infrared heat map film of highly agitated researchers]
“But there’s a problem: as the worker researchers attempt to store each raw datum into the neat honeycomb hockey stick structure provided by the hive’s Alpha Grantwriter, they discover that few will fit. The infrared shows them growing cool with fear. This signals the climate researcher’s instinctive behavior to begin viciously beating, rolling and normalizing the data into submission. According to Dr. Nigel V.H. Oldham, professor emeritus at Oxford University’s Centre for Metascience, this violent data dance is what makes climate researchers unique among breeds of scientists.”
Of course any resemblance to actual persons, real or imagined, is completely coincidental.
But the real question is, does it keep them from breeding?
I never liked satellites. You just can’t trust ’em. Or Mears either. Those darned satellites! We spend all that money on them and they lie! Like Mears. We should stop funding both.
They are always accurate when measuring sea level – strange eh!
Actually, Satellites are not at all good with elevation. Certainly NOT to the cm range.
“We have found ecologically sensitive regions with amplified responses to climate variability in the Arctic tundra, parts of the boreal forest belt, the tropical rainforest, alpine regions worldwide, steppe and prairie regions of central Asia and North and South America, forests in South America, and eastern areas of Australia,” says Seddon.
Is there any place else that could have an amplified climate sensitivity?
I am gratified by the heading of this post because last Wednesday the alarmist Melbourne Age (which is aimed at Australia’s second largest City’s inner -city green leftists) published the map and article about using satellite mapping to identify areas of vegetation likely to be sensitive to alleged climate change in our state of Victoria.
I quickly shot off a letter the next day to the new editor asking if the Age thought it appropriate to use satellite based data to report vegetation sensitivity to climate change then why did they not also report satellite data to report atmospheric temperatures –as had John Christy Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Alabama University in his evidence to the US House Committee on Science in February 2
I then asked could that be because the satellite data shows atmospheric warming over the past 37 years much less than the excessive predictions of 102 IPCC models-and as the satellite data was much less alarming -presumably it was probably also much less salable as news?
Not unexpectedly my letter was not published
This dishonest hiding the evidence from the public riles me and I expect many who read this blog