Summary: The world has a new and serious mystery, right up there with “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” and “The President’s plane is missing!” What happened to NASA’s satellites that measure global temperatures? They appear to have disappeared from the nation’s major newspapers, their valuable information about global warming lost from view. Today’s post retrieves it to help you understand one of the top public policy issues of our time. {1st of 2 posts today.}
Contents
- Where are NASA’s satellites?
- How warm was May?
- Watch the trend in temperatures!
- Climate models predict too much heat.
- Who measures the world’s temperature?
- For More Information.
- Another view of the satellites.
- Giving the IPCC the last word.
(1) Where are NASA’s satellites?
NASA has launched a fleet of satellites which (among other things) since 1979 have measured Earth’s temperature in the lower troposphere, with better coverage and consistency than the surface temperature networks — with their spotty coverage of the world’s seas and scores of national weather bureaus (many poorly funded) that the collect land temperatures. Being careful and thorough, NASA pays two teams to analyze the data: Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
Here are the satellites whose sensors — at vast cost — have driven the RSS dataset since 1979, among the most valuable results from the space program (see the end of the post for a more detailed chart).
Oddly, the results of the satellites’ temperature measurements have almost disappeared from much of the news. As a crude measure, there are 2,970 Google News stories in the past year mentioning “hottest year”, but only 637 (21%) include the word “satellite” — and few of those are in the mainstream news. For example, per Google News only 1 of the many “hottest year” stories in the New York Times include both terms, 2 of the 49 science articles in the Washington Post (here and here), and 6 of the 17 in the Wall Street Journal.
The eclipse of this data is mysterious since it would provides a contrary perspective to the “hottest year” stories, since neither RSS nor UAH shows 2014 as a record (details here). But whatever the reason, we need not rely on journalists to tell us the expensive findings of this NASA research.
(2) How warm was May?
The UAH team publishes easy to understand monthly reports. They show a world that has warmed since 1979 — but only slightly (few alarmists know this; even fewer admit it).
The May 2015 Global Temperature Report
By the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville
(Blue is cooler than normal; red is warmer}. Click to enlarge.
- Global climate trend since 16 November 1978: +0.11°C (0.19°F) per decade.
- Global composite temp.: +0.27°C (about 0.49°F) above 30-year average for May.
- May 2015 had the third highest global average May temperature in the 38-year global satellite temperature record (followed by 1998 and 2010).
- Anomalies are computed per the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recommended method, comparing the current temperatures vs. a 30 year base period ending with the latest decade.
That warming has not, however, been uniform around the globe. The warmest area was on the southwestern edge of the Kara Sea, north of central Russia near the town of Amderma, with an average of 4.77°C (about 8.59°F) warmer than seasonal norms. The coolest average temperature was in East Antarctica near Davis Station, where the average May 2015 temperature was 3.31°C (about 5.96°F) cooler than normal.
(3) Watch the trend in temperatures!
Our East African plains ape perceptual systems are not good at discerning statistical trends, so UAH shows the temperature history in two forms. First, bar graphs of the annual temperature anomalies in tenths of a degree Centigrade. These show the cool 1970s, the transitional 1990s, the step up during the 1998 El Nino, and the warm 2000s.
A monthly graph by Roy Spencer, principal scientist on the UAH team, shows a more common perspective — in which the pause is more easily seen. Also, you see no record high temperature in recent years.
The Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) data comes from a different mix of satellites with a different algorithm, and results almost identical to UAH (these calculate anomalies from the base period of 1979-1998). A graph of their short-term trend clearly shows the most recent 3 years of the pause…
Monthly global temperature from RSS through May 2015
(4) Since 1980 climate models have predicted too much heat.
Here is a comparison of actual global average temperature from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) vs. forecasts of the major climate models (yellow band) from 1979 – 2008. The gap has continued to widen since then as the RSS line remains flat while the forecast increases; understanding why is a major focus in climate science today.
The thick black line is the observed time series from RSS V3.3 MSU/AMSU Temperatures. The yellow band is the 5% to 95% range of output from CMIP-5 climate simulations. The mean value of each time series average from 1979-1984 is set to zero so the changes over time can be more easily seen. Note that after 1998, the observations are likely to be below the simulated values, indicating that the simulation as a whole are predicting too much warming.
CMIP-5 is model output from Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, as used in the IPCC’s AR5).
(5) Who measures the world’s temperature using satellites?
Who are the 2 teams that NASA contracts with to produce global temperature datasets from satellites? First, the UAH team (from their monthly reports)…
As part of an ongoing joint project between UAHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, an ESSC principal scientist, use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions on the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.
The satellite based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level.
John R. Christy is Professor of Atmospheric Science at U Al-Huntsville, and Director of their Earth System Science Center (ESSC). He is also Alabama’s State Climatologist. See his full profile and publications here. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist at the ESSC and member of the Affiliated Faculty at UAL-Huntsville.
Second, there is Remote Sensing Systems…
Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) is a scientific research company located in Northern California, specializing in satellite microwave remote sensing of the Earth. Established in 1974 by Frank J. Wentz, Remote Sensing Systems, presently, consists of a team of atmospheric, oceanic, and earth scientists and support personnel. Meet our Team. Remote Sensing Systems is a world leader in processing and analyzing microwave data from satellite microwave sensors.
(6) For More Information
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change and My posts about climate change. Also, see these posts about the pause …
- Scientists explore causes of the pause in warming, perhaps the most important research of the decade., with abstracts and links to 37 articles describing 12 theories about causes of the pause.
- One of the most important questions we face: when will the pause in global warming end? with abstracts and links to 15 articles giving predictions from very soon to several decades from now.
- The Pause in global warming has ended. Now see the rest of the story.
- About the imminent spike in global warming!
(7) A look at the satellites who have told us so much about our world
(8) Giving the IPCC the last word
“It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”
— From the IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I report.
