New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming

starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise."

Comments

Global warming or global cooling

[jgardn]

I've changed my view on global warming. I used to think the whole earth couldn't warm or cool, but it would stay the same over time. Now I believe that the earth does warm and cool over significant variations. So we are in a global warming phase, if the toposphere is absolute proof (which we can't be sure about.)

The question is: What can we do about it?
The answer is: Unfortunately, not much. If we cut all the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses drastically in half, that wouldn't account for the other variations responsible for global warming like a more active sun or just the phase of the weather patterns on earth or the temperature of the sea. I have to think about it this way: If humanity did all it could to cool or warm the earth, what would we accomplish? The answer is that the earth is so huge and so complicated that we can't predict whether our actions would cause havoc or remedy. I mean, we could spend trillions of dollars on a system to cool the troposphere only to find out that by doing so we are causing more hurricanes and such.

The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.

Say what you will.....

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

I blame the sun!

:-P

Rush Limbaugh's take on this

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Rush said that global warming was a communist plot of the liberal hegemony, backed by anti-NRA and pro-ACLU supporters, in an attempt to get a feminist abortion doctor elected to the presidency thereby preventing the birth of the Anti-christ, thwarting Jimmy Swaggart's and Jerry Falwell's predictions of the second coming of Christ and the fall of Israel.

I think he's exagerrating.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[CryBaby]

Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.

What, in your view, constitutes irrefutable proof? Worldwide famine, skyrocketing cancer rates (oh wait, we already have that problem)? Waiting for "irrefutable proof", in this case, basically means waiting until it's too late. Also, I don't understand why the prospect of cleaner air, water and soil is so terrible that we need to put it off until the last possible moment - but that's just me and maybe I haven't listened to enough Rush Limbaugh.

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

Not surprisingly, NASA disagrees with you and claims that, over the next 50 years, all naturally occurring greenhouse gasses combined (that includes volcanic eruptions) will account for a 0.5C temperature increase compared to a 1.0-2.0C increase if man-made emissions continue unchecked. This article provides more detail on the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (often cited by anti-environmentalists as proof that natural phenomena dwarf human activity in relation to global warming) and, like the NASA research, concludes that volcanic eruptions acually serve to *decrease* global warming.

If any actual research backs up your claim in any way, please share it with the rest of us.

Since there is no explanation for the past trend nor the fact that looking even further back the entire planet had a higher median temperature. as is evident by the many hypothosis that the thunder lizards may have died due to an ice age... I don't really have to point out there weren't humans then to contribute to that natural disaster that caused a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.

What "dramatic shift" are you talking about? The dinosaur article mentions a temperature change of 10C over a period of 7 million years. That's a shift of a little over one millionth of a degree per year - not very dramatic if you ask me. Current climate research predicts the same amount of change over a period of several hundred to a few thousand years. Taking the more mild predictions, that means our climate is changing about 2000 times faster than the "dramatic shift" you refer to.

Here is an article about a National Academy of Sciences' report provided at the request of the Bush administration. It states plainly that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

Here is a paper from the American Geophysical Union stating that "human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate... scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."

Anyway, I could go on with pages of links from universities and scientific organizations who are increasingly making unqualified statements that, yes, the tons of pollution we pump into the air, water, and soil on a daily basis are having negative effects - including global warming. Most of the opposition to these views can be found on the websites of right-wing political think tanks, individual right wing politicians, and in "opinion" pieces with no links to actual scientific research.