Climate Monitoring Station Proposed on the Moon

CryogenicKeen writes with the news that a University of Michigan study indicates the perfect place to monitor Earth's climate system would be the surface of the moon. The side facing us is a perfect location to monitor temperatures and weather patterns here on our planet, and a UM paper proposes an international effort to deploy monitoring stations on Earth's natural satellite. "On the near side of the airless moon, where Apollo 15 landed, surface temperature is controlled by solar radiation during daytime and energy radiated from Earth at night. Huang showed that due to an amplifying effect, even weak radiation from Earth produces measurable temperature changes in the regolith. Further, his revisit of the data revealed distinctly different characteristics in daytime and nighttime lunar surface temperature variations. This allowed him to uncover a lunar night-time warming trend from mid-1972 to late 1975, which was consistent with a global dimming of Earth that occurred over the same period and was due to a general decrease of sunlight over land surfaces."

Comments

expensive?

[crunzh]

Sounds really expensive, isn't there some way to use the money better or do we really need all that new data? We could, like sped the money on CO2 reductions or developing green technology.

Re:expensive?

[Bodrius]

If you cannot measure success, how do you know it works?

I'm not sure if this is the cheapest way to get the best measurements, but if we're going to invest seriously on technology to control global warming, having objective measurements to track the results is vital.

Otherwise, knee-jerk reactions, politics and PR will control which green-technologies become mainstream, if any.

Re:expensive?

[Guppy06]

"We could, like sped the money on CO2 reductions or developing green technology."

Do your part to reduce CO2 by turning off your computer.

Re:expensive?

[crunzh]

Err, yuo know what /. is? The answer would be something like, Do your part to reduce CO2 by building a more energy efficient computer!

Re:expensive?

[dattaway]

We could use the same Hollywood movie set that created the Apollo Moon Landings to put a weather station there too. Shouldn't cost more than the typical movie these days. They could even charge tickets for the weather.

Re:expensive?

[__aaclcg7560]

Wrong answer. This is Slashdot. The Anonymous Cowards should do their part to reduce CO2 by not breathing. A substantial side benefit is the reduction of unwanted basement dwelling DNA from the gene pool. This would help both the climate and the human race. :P

Re:expensive?

[Chris Mattern]

On the other hand, a clean electric car that is not polluting is something I can measure by just walking on the street. ;)

No, you can't, because walking down the street where the car is tells you nothing about the pollution being created by the power plant that makes the electricity, nor does it tell you anything about the possibly highly toxic metals and/or chemicals used in the battery which will pollute where and when the car is disposed of.

The electric car may be a step towards less pollution. It may not be. To be honest, I suspect it will be. But you're not going to be able to tell just by watching the car. You're going to need to be a little more systematic than that.

Chris Mattern

Re:expensive?

[0xdeadbeef]

Let's send Al Gore to the Moon so that he can monitor the Earth's climate.

It is pre-ordained, he is to be First Emperor of the Moon.

"For I have ridden the MIGHTY MOON WORM!"

Why the moon?

[Smight]

Is the moon the closest to earth you can get before your science is distorted by politics?

hindsight

[perlchild]

He's proving a correlation, which means that knowing what happened, he found clues that it would...
How can he be so sure that if we gather the clues, we'll come to the right conclusion? We have lots of data about climate, so much we usually can't tell what will happen, how is this different? Is it really that tied to radiation? Couldn't we measure radiation straight in the atmosphere? Do we already do so? Can we take multiple measurements to isolate local conditions?

Putting stuff on the moon is a romantic notion that appeals to a lot of people, but we should keep it as a last resort.

We already know the climate

[Anonymous Coward]

of the moon....

We've got something sitting here ready to go up

[LordVader717]

We've had this baby ready to launch for years, but for some mysterious reason NASA is having trouble doing anything with climate research. All they need to do is strap it on a DELTA IV rocket.

Re:We've got something sitting here ready to go up

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I think the problem is the frick'in 2 year design lifespan. Why should we spend all that money to get it up there if it's only going to last 2 years? Climate changes are long term. What the hell?

Granted it will probably last longer than that but maybe not.

Well...

[gaijin99]

I'm in favor of lunar development, but this seems kind of pointless. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the insturments in a polar orbit so they'd be closer and get more accurate readings? Heck, even a geosynch orbit is vastly closer than on the moon.

Re:Well...

[Bemopolis]

No, it wouldn't make more sense, since he proposes measuring the temperature variation in the lunar surface dust (regolith). What he measures with this is a global average Earth temperature, avoiding problems such as having weather stations in city heat islands. Additionally, the method also measures heating changes due to variations in solar input. Both of these criticisms have arisen among the anti-global warming crowd, so the addition of this methodology is useful. Plus, it's not like it replaces the use of orbiting satellites, getting the required additional funding from Big Oil-controlled politicians notwithstanding. *cough cough*

Re:Well...

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

Perhaps, but there is one advantage to putting a weather station on the moon: it'll stay put.
Satellites fall out of the sky, become space junk, or get hit by anti-satellite missiles. Equipment on the moon should stay on the moon, and it won't be as awkward to work around if it stops working. Hopefully it'll take longer to make anti-moonbase missiles than to set this weather station up.

Re:Well...

[MichaelSmith]

No, it wouldn't make more sense, since he proposes measuring the temperature variation in the lunar surface dust (regolith)

The funny bit is that the Apollo ALSEP stations would have done the job perfectly except they were switched off after the Apollo program finished.

Re:Cool

[Guppy06]

TFA didn't mention sending people. Is "ZOMG manned spaceflight is teh expensive!" the "frost pist!" of space-related articles around here?

Alternatively...

[Spazntwich]

We could just use satellites, which we've gotten pretty good at.

Fair warning

[Jhan]

If anyone uses the phrase "Dark Side of the Moon", or "Light Side of the moon" I will punch them in the face. If they defend that by saying it's a "figure of speech", I'll rip their head of. Just so you know.

Re:Fair warning

[mobby_6kl]

I thought "Dark Side Of The Moon" was a pretty good album, and I'm not that big of a fan.

Lunar cooling?

[jgoemat]

Would they be looking especially for lunar cooling at "night" on the moon? Because it has no atmosphere and no sunlight when dark, they say that the temperature of the side nearest the Earth is controlled by radiation from Earth. Would that mean global warming would cause it to be cooler, since the greenhouse effect causes that radiation to be reflected back to Earth?

What will the phone number be?

[zamboni1138]

Like any other good remote automated weather station (think AWOS), there should be a phone number to dial into, so that pilots could check the local weather, as well as a VHF station for in-flight use. I can imagine the data now:

000:00:00:00 Winds: Calm, Altimeter: 00.00, Humidity: 0, Visibility: > 20 miles, Celling: > two five thousand feet
000:01:00:00 Winds: Calm, Altimeter: 00.00, Humidity: 0, Visibility: > 20 miles, Celling: > two five thousand feet
000:02:00:00 Winds: Calm, Altimeter: 00.00, Humidity: 0, Visibility: > 20 miles, Celling: > two five thousand feet
000:03:00:00 Winds: Calm, Altimeter: 00.00, Humidity: 0, Visibility: > 20 miles, Celling: > two five thousand feet
000:04:00:00 Winds: Calm, Altimeter: 00.00, Humidity: 0, Visibility: > 20 miles, Celling: > two five thousand feet, caution extreme radiation warning

It WAS the dark side of the moon

[davidwr]

From dictionary.com, dark can mean "hidden; secret."

Until the space age, that's exactly what the non-Earth-facing side of the moon was: hidden from view.

I admit it is a bit confusing when any given part of what was once the "dark side of the moon" spends half of each orbit in bright sunlight.

Not expensive if you piggyback on India moon probe

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct that it would be very expensive, if you had a mission to the moon with this as the sole goal of the entire mission. So they should talk to India about including this as part of India's moon shots. I assume India wants to land on the Earth facing side, too, so this could ride down along with the robot from a few articles ago.

The Moon is a perfect place...

[xZoomerZx]

from which to measure and study so called global warming. Or more accurately, solar radiation fluctuations and its effects on its satellites (the moon and earth).
The overwhelming arrogance of some people to believe that mere humans and our assorted activities have a major impact on the (average) mass of the atmosphere of about 5,000 trillion metric tons, is astounding in the extreme. A single volcanic eruption spews more "greenhouse gases" and particulates into the atmosphere than all human activity for a decade. And yet the worst that happens (globally)are beautiful sunsets for a couple of years then its gone.
The most logical and common sense reason for climate temperature variations is that great, bright, flaming ball of fusing hydrogen in the sky. Which, by the way, is known to be variable in its output. So putting a sensor array on the moon, away from the influence of human activities , will finally settle this matter once and for all, so we can get on with more important matters. Like fair taxes http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer, or ending genocide http://www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=yes, or who will be the next "American Idol". Oh, and if you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, plant a few trees or flowers, they love the stuff.

Re:The Moon is a perfect place...

[gnuman99]

Stop trolling, troll. You know, people had setellites in space using misterious things called "SOLAR PANEL"s for their power production for a few decades now. And guess what? The EM flux from the sun didn't change, yet, global warming!

According to
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Earth's atmosphere contains about 3 trillion tons of CO2.

Now, let's get some real data about emission,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm
In 2003, 7.303 billion tons of additional CO2 emitted from fossil fuels

See the nice graph they have,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/cumulat ivedata.JPG
Now if they just add India and China accelerating consumption, we would see a huge spike at the end.

So, we are have an ADDITIONAL 7.3/3000 => 0.24% of CO2 by weight per year to the ecosystem.

Now, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the _Earth's_atmosphere, ALL volcanoes release about,
    130-230 MILLION tons of CO2.

So humanity is releasing, oh, 30-50 TIMES the amount of CO2 by volcanoes during the SAME AMOUNT OF TIME., well, back in 2003.

This also means that current natural system is balanced at volcanic emissions of CO2, not 50 times that, hence CO2 is rising and not being tanked.

Also, if 3000 billion tons of CO2 is 380ppm, then 7.3 (from fossil fuels in 2003) is only 1ppm.. So, that doesn't even account for the total increase of CO2 now hence the number is too low (additional release of CO2 from burning forests probably accounts for the rest, but who weights forests??). CO2 is going up at a current rate of 2 ppm per year and accelerating.

Anyway, what you say is bullshit as seen above. Volcanoes do not account for even a fraction of what is happening in CO2.

Just wait a little bit and "mother nature" will help us increase the CO2 rate much, much faster than even currently. When the Siberian and Canadian bogs defrost and warm up, the Atlantic (aka. Bermuda Triangle) and Black Sea releases their methane (it just needs to warm a little bit more), well, then we'll see global warming. CO2 will be over 1000ppm by end of the century and then, well, you or your kids may just see what happens then.

Re:The Moon is a perfect place...

[SEMW]

The overwhelming arrogance of some people to believe that mere humans and our assorted activities have a major impact... You're right! For too long humanity has been making decisions on the basis of nothing more than "facts", "data", and "experimental evidence". No longer! We shall move over to a system of making decisions on how arrogant it is to believe things.

For example, atoms are the fundamental building blocks of matter; it is extraordinarily arrogant of humanity to think that we can split them. Simple logical thus shows that atom bombs are obviously myths, and it clearly follows that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed by them. As a "nuclear bomb sceptic", I have previously been assaulted by someone who claimed to be a family member of someone who was killed by a nuclear bomb! I was merely attempting to calmly and patiently explain how bombs were a liberal consipiracy propogated by the all-controlling American liberal media, but alas -- they did not want to listen to the Truth.

They even offered to take me over to Japan to show me the 'destruction' -- when I refused on the grounds that the voyage would take several months by steamship, they preposterously claimed that mankind could fly through the air? How arrogant is that, to think that mankind should have the ability to conquer the sky, which clearly belongs to God; and if He had meant us to fly, He would have given us wings!

Ah, the arrogance of Humanity to believe such things.

Instead of watching us, why not watch the moon?

[Angelwrath]

I would suggest, in addition to watching the Earth for climate change, that we also watch other planets. I've read recently that some research points to part of the climate change problem being the sun itself. Why don't we send weather monitoring stations to Mars as well, and see if the temperature is rising on other planets?

If we're going to monitor our own planet, we should have some objective evidence from other planets as well.

Re:Instead of watching us, why not watch the moon?

[shma]

I would suggest, in addition to watching the Earth for climate change, that we also watch other planets. I've read recently that some research points to part of the climate change problem being the sun itself.

I don't know who told you that, but it isn't true. Solar irradiance is a very small part of global warming. This is the conclusion in the IPCC's latest report: see this presentation from the vice chair of working group one (top link, the relevant slide is 27). The main reason we can separate the two is that heating from the sun varies with respect to altitude in a different way than anthropogenic heating (unfortunately I don't have those slides for you).

Re:Instead of watching us, why not watch the moon?

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

We've already sent the Mars probes and the Mars Climate Orbiter. If we're lucky, we'll send a Mars Climate Orbiter that actually stays in the correct orbit soon. So, we're covering that end.
I believe someone also just sent a probe into Jupiter. It took a while to get there, but we should have climate data on Jupiter and some of its moons by now.
I think we've even tried a solar orbiter.
So, we're already doing other planets. (Climate on Venus: hot enough to melt probes--but then, Venus has a huge problem with greenhouse gasses.) We just need to play with our own some more.

Moon is a lousy observation platform

[amightywind]

If you really need to be at the lunar distance to monitor climate you should station the instruments at L4 and L5. It takes a lot less energy deploy instruments there than landing on the moon. Solar eclipses are less frequent, etc. You would think that the scientist would have had this figured out before he went public.