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Thermosphere Contraction Puzzles Scientists
The thermosphere layer of earth's atmosphere begins 80 to 90 kilometers above the surface and extends several hundred kilometers into the sky; it is the home to numerous satellites and the International Space Station. It is known that the thermosphere occasionally cools and contracts, but a recent study of satellite orbital decay (due to light atmospheric drag) found that the contraction during 2008 and 2009 was significantly more severe than expected, leaving researchers at a loss for how to explain it. From Space.com:
"This type of collapse is not rare, but its magnitude shocked scientists. 'This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,' said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 'It's a Space Age record.' The collapse occurred during a period of relative solar inactivity — called a solar minimum from 2008 to 2009. These minimums are known to cool and contract the thermosphere, however, the recent collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain."
Perhaps you should read it again?
It's the largest compression on record, which makes it "significantly more severe" than they were expecting, "its magnitude shocked scientists" enough to call it a "collapse". It cannot be explained by the Solar Minimum (which occurred at the same time), and since solar activity is the only thing that has a direct influence on the compression or inflation, it has left "researchers at a loss".
Christ, you can get that from the fucking summary, you don't even have to read the fucking article.
It's like you saw those phrases and immediately had to post, without even bothering to read enough to put any of them in context. If you were a reporter, you would be the poster-boy for reactionary alarmist journalism.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Humanity will survive, all Global warming is going to do is take crappy places to live and make them even crappier. Big whoop.
Ill stop using it when you stop putting Hitler mustaches on pictures of Obama.
The reasoning goes like this: if there is something about the temperature of the atmosphere that's in some sense unexplained this means scientists know nothing about the climate which means anthropocentric global warming does not exist which means my BP stock will keep its value and I will not have to sell my SUV.