Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/28/2009 12:22:53 PM PST by Titus-Maximus
From NASA News. New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth’s thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere.
Scientists from NASA’s Langley Research Center and Hampton University in Hampton, Va., and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., presented these results at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco from Dec. 14 to 18.
Earth’s thermosphere and mesosphere have been the least explored regions of the atmosphere. The NASA Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission was developed to explore the Earth’s atmosphere above 60 km altitude and was launched in December 2001. One of four instruments on the TIMED mission, the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, was specifically designed to measure the energy budget of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The SABER dataset now covers eight years of data and has already provided some basic insight into the heat budget of the thermosphere on a variety of timescales.
The extent of current solar minimum conditions has created a unique situation for recent SABER datasets, explains Stan Solomon, acting director of the High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The end of solar cycle 23 has offered an opportunity to study the radiative cooling in the thermosphere under exceptionally quiescent conditions.
“The Sun is in a very unusual period,” said Marty Mlynczak, SABER associate principal investigator and senior research scientist at NASA Langley. “The Earth’s thermosphere is responding remarkably — up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules.”
The TIMED measurements show a decrease in the amount of ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun. In addition, the amount of infrared radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere by nitric oxide molecules has decreased by nearly a factor of 10 since early 2002. These observations imply that the upper atmosphere has cooled substantially since then. The research team expects the atmosphere to heat up again as solar activity starts to pick up in the next year.
While this warming has no implications for climate change in the troposphere, a fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that the upper atmosphere will cool in response to increasing carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere cools the density will decrease, which ultimately may impact satellite operations through decreased drag over time.
The SABER dataset is the first global, long-term, and continuous record of the
Nitric oxide (NO) and Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the thermosphere. “We suggest that the dataset of radiative cooling of the thermosphere by NO and CO2 constitutes a first climate data record for the thermosphere,” says Mlynczak.
The TIMED data provide a climate record for validation of upper atmosphere climate models, which is an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere. SABER provides the first long-term measurements of natural variability in key terms of the upper atmosphere climate. “A fundamental prediction of climate change theory is that upper atmosphere will cool in response to greenhouse gases in the troposphere,” says Mlynczak. “Scientists need to validate that theory. This climate record of the upper atmosphere is our first chance to have the other side of the equation.”
James Russell III, SABER principal investigator and co-director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., agrees adding, “The atmosphere is a coupled system. If you pick up one end of the stick, you automatically pick up the other – they’re intrinsically linked. To be as accurate as possible, scientists have to understand global change throughout the atmosphere.”
As the TIMED mission continues, these data derived from SABER will become important in assessing long term atmospheric changes due to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
TIMED is the first mission in the Solar Terrestrial Probes Program within the Heliophysics Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
TIMED is the terrestrial anchor of the Heliophysics Great Observatory. Learn more of TIMED’s Heliophysics contributions and its role as a bridge to Earth science missions. Link to lessons learned in terrestrial aeronomy.
Article poses more questions than it answers - read the comments as well.
Dan Quale will get on the GLOBAL COOLING bandwagon and make ALGORE look like the squid he is. . . . . . .
Ping to self for later read.
You know, I think, next Monday I'm going to discover Gravity and get famous.
We must increase our carbon footprint to off-set global cooling.
I’m buying a new multi-fuel SUV that runs on spotted owls or polar bear fat.
I'm shocked!!!
Ruh, roh, another ‘inconvenient truth’, I guess.
Sun ping!
Heh, NASA has been predicting Solar Cycle 24 to start picking up since just at the end of Cycle 23, late in 2008. 2009 was an extremely quiet sunspot year, and though Cycle 24 has begun, NASA has had to change its prediction about the expected numbers of sunspots several times in the last year, precisely because the Sunspot cycle didn't follow what they assumed it would do.
If the Cycle continues to be a slow in making sunspots, we could very well be in a Solar Minimum, but hopefully not like the likes of the Maunder or Dalton minima. But if we DO end up being in a Solar Minimum, Sir Kit and I have suggested it be called the Gore-Hansen Minimum, to cement for posterity the stupidity and duplicity of those two men, who foisted the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax on the world.
Sigh, yet another decline to hide. The work of a warming cultist is just never done.
You know, just this past weekend I saw a car here in Indy with a personal plate: "RUH ROH"
It would have been rich if it had a Obama sticker on it. Alas, it didn't. Nor any green/globull warming ones either.
LOL! Yeah, that would have been rich, indeed.
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