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Ken L says:
As a layman, who nonetheless reads enough sometimes to get the gist of things, if not the details, I have a problem – how to reconcile this statement by Noaa’s Barnston, taken from the article:
“Satellite measurements help tremendously with this problem. But they are not as reliable as in-situ measurements, because they are indirect (remote sensed) measurements. We’ve come a long way with them, but there are still biases that vary in space and from one day to another, and are partially unpredictable. These can cause errors of over a full degree in some cases. We hope that these errors cancel one another out, but it’s not always the case, because they are sometimes non-random, and large areas have the same direction of error (no cancellation).
with this statement by Dr. Roy Spencer, taken from an article by Paul Homewood ( originally in a post by Spencer, October, 2014), “Roy Spencer On Satellite v Surface Temperature Dataâ€, August 30, 2015:
Satellite microwave radiometers, however, are equipped with laboratory-calibrated platinum resistance thermometers, which have demonstrated stability to thousandths of a degree over many years, and which are used to continuously calibrate the satellite instruments once every 8 seconds. The satellite measurements still have residual calibration effects that must be adjusted for, but these are usually on the order of hundredths of a degree, rather than tenths or whole degrees in the case of ground-based thermometers.
Hopefully someone can help me out. I have ideas, but I’d rather hear from those with a lot more expertise than I have.*********************************************
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Editor of the Fabius Maximus website says:
Ken,
People tend to focus on the instruments used to measure climate, rather than the often far larger and more complex issues affecting data accuracy. There are many of those for satellites, giving us data from varying sets of moving objects in ever-changing orbits high above the Earth.
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Old'un says:
Thanks for highlighting the fact that no plausible mechanism has been identified by which downwelling long wave radiation can increase ocean heat content. This really is the Achilles heal of alarmism, especially as we are talking about seventy percent of the earth’s surface.
The only mechanism that I know off that has been postulated, is that it warms the thin film surface layer, increasing the temperature gradient across it and thus reduces conductive heat loss from the body of water beneath it. In other words, downwelling radiation acts as an insulant that reduces loss of ocean heat, that is primarily gained from insolation. I am not aware of any paper that quantifies the influence on ocean heat content that such a mechanism would have, but it will surely be only a fraction of the figure derived by multiplying the theoretical forcing by the oceans’ area.