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Earth Communications

Satellites May Have Been Underestimating the Planet's Warming For Decades (livescience.com) 137

An anonymous reader quotes a report from LiveScience: The global warming that has already taken place may be even worse than we thought. That's the takeaway from a new study that finds satellite measurements have likely been underestimating the warming of the lower levels of the atmosphere over the last 40 years. Basic physics equations govern the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air, but many measurements of temperature and moisture used in climate models diverge from this relationship, the new study finds. That means either satellite measurements of the troposphere have underestimated its temperature or overestimated its moisture, study leader Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, said in a statement.

"It is currently difficult to determine which interpretation is more credible," Santer said. "But our analysis reveals that several observational datasets -- particularly those with the smallest values of ocean surface warming and tropospheric warming -- appear to be at odds with other, independently measured complementary variables." Complementary variables are those with a physical relationship to each other. In other words, the measurements that show the least warming might also be the least reliable.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Climate.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Satellites May Have Been Underestimating the Planet's Warming For Decades

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  • Here's an interesting climate change game you can play in a few minutes: https://survivethecentury.net/ [survivethecentury.net]

    It's got cartoons! (and witty short fiction from various writers)

    I’ve played it many times, basically I can get one of the following outcomes:

    - very bad, the world suffers from a lot of climate change
    - extremely bad, the world suffers a lot from climate change AND things really get out of hand with a large nuclear war (the nuclear winter is "short" lived so things quickly return to being overheated)

    • by BoogieChile ( 517082 ) on Friday May 28, 2021 @11:01PM (#61433188)

      > a friend of mine says that seeding of the stratosphere with sulfur particles is a pretty good alternative because it largely simulates what happens when a volcano erupts

      Do please tell your friend that doing that would be a monumentally [wikipedia.org] bad idea.

      • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        Do please tell your friend that doing that would be a monumentally [wikipedia.org] bad idea.

        Not, it won't. You need to see the stratosphere. It takes a fairly long time for it to mix with the troposphere, and the required concentrations won't be harmful.

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          Aside from global warming, dimming of the Earth is also an existing potential problem. The solution you are championing would cause a real dimming problem. That will affect things like crop growth, etc. It's not a practical solution.

      • by Qwertie ( 797303 )

        [in 1783 and 1784] An estimated 120,000,000 long tons of sulfur dioxide was emitted, about three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006 (but delivered to higher altitudes, hence more persistent), and equivalent to six times the total 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption.[13][18] This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe

        But reportedly, [technologyreview.com]

        According to Keith's calculations, if operations were begun in 2020, it would take

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      Liberal koolaid: the game.

      You can tell it's hogwash because it links support for marginalized people with prevention of global warming. Also because it presents unproven scientific theories as factual, but that's a different topic. The reality is these things have nothing to do with each-other. Preventing destabilization is necessary. Protecting the marginalized is ethically necessary. But the solution to one problem may well prevent good solutions for the other. In particular the "green new deal" is a gia
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Actually I thought the support for indigenous communities were more about reducing conflict than thinking they directly changed climate parameters.

        This simulation makes the case that unless conflict is reduced (either willingly in the aforementioned scenario or unwillingly with their armed "Global Council") then it will be very difficult to make a coordinated global response to the problem. That is why, in the simulation, the worst scenarios occur when nations (nuclear armed or not) work at cross-purposes

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Smart people who were on the ball already, knew were past the point of no return around 1986.

      Anyone who was born between 1970 and 1985 has seen how quickly climate is changing. From glaciers receding to winters with no snow and then the occasional unseasonal dump of snow.

      There is no way to reverse climate change, there has to be a complete elimination of coal, oil and gas as fuel, and that just isn't going to happen. Likewise steam-power also has to go away (coal and nuclear) as steam is also a greenhouse g

      • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @02:19AM (#61433402)

        There is no way to reverse climate change,

        That's right, because the climate keeps changing. What climate are we supposed to be reaching for? The one in 1990? That seems to be the goal with so many governments having a target to reach 1990 levels of CO2 output. Should we be looking more for a climate like 1890? Or 1790? The climate changes because of powerful natural forces. If we are wrong on the cause of global warming then we will have spent a lot of time an effort on trying to stop the change instead of a more logical action of adjusting to the change.

        there has to be a complete elimination of coal, oil and gas as fuel, and that just isn't going to happen.

        I'm not so sure. If we can believe the science the geological and biological processes that produced coal, petroleum, and natural gas took far longer than the rate we are consuming them. There will be a point where it is simply cheaper to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels, boil water with heat from geothermal and nuclear fission, and produce electricity from moving water and air, than to get this from digging it out of the ground. We didn't end the stone age for a lack of rocks. It ended because we discovered how to use bronze. Then bronze was replaced by iron and coal. We are now in what can be called the space age, the nuclear age. the silicon age, the titanium age, or whatever technology one wishes to focus on to describe this age.

        Likewise steam-power also has to go away (coal and nuclear) as steam is also a greenhouse gas.

        I'd like to know where this nonsense comes from. The amount of water humans boil is nothing compared to the water entering the atmosphere from evaporation from the sea, or released into the air from the plant and animal life on the planet. If we assume this is true then we can use air cooled fourth generation nuclear power, hydro power, onshore wind power, and geothermal power. These are all technologies that are in our reach, don't require we boil water, are abundant, safe, low in pollution, and low in CO2 emissions.

        Climate change also doesn't have a 1-variable fix. There are things like Ocean gyres, jetstreams, el-nina/nino effects, inversions, and such. This is why climate change in the Northern hemisphere is different from the Southern hemisphere.

        I agree. That's why I find this fixation on wind and solar such nonsense. We need an "all the above" energy policy. What we don't need is to exclude hydro and nuclear fission like the Green New Deal wants us to do. Because the climate changes no matter what we do that means building sea walls, dams, canals, and other means to control the flow of water to minimize the damage from droughts, floods, and other natural events.

        Between 1930 and 1986 weather was rather predictable. The earth warmed as much between 1930 and 1986 as it did between 1986 and 1996. This correlates with the price of oil. Go figure. So until we run out of extractable oil, the planet is just going to keep being miserable.

        You mention the hazards of looking for 1 variable fix then put the cause of our shifting climate on 1 variable. That does not compute.

        The climate will change and so we should plan on large civil projects to deal with such changes. Again those would be things like dams, canals, and sea walls to minimize harm to humans and the environment from too much or too little water in places. Along with that is looking to energy sources that are low tech, high in energy return on energy invested, low in need for resources, low in pollution, and low in CO2 emissions. Those being geothermal, hydro, onshore wind, and nuclear fission. If we can find a way to collect solar power without so much mining for coal, silicates, toxic metals, and just mining in such quantities of materials generally, then maybe we can add solar power to that too. Solar power competes with civil engineering projects for materials and labor and competes with food for land and labor. Reducing land requirements by putting solar collectors over buildings, canals, or whatever, only adds to the material and labor requirements.

        • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

          If we are wrong on the cause of global warming then we will have spent a lot of time an effort...

          What if it’s all a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing! [gocomics.com] 8^P

        • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @11:16AM (#61434292) Homepage Journal

          What we should be reaching for is a *slow* rate of change, one that human societies and natural ecosystems can adapt to smoothly. It doesn't matter if the climate ends up where it was five million years ago ... if that change takes a million years. But if it takes a *thousand* years, that's 1000x the rate of change. That thousand-fold difference makes a huge economic and environmental difference.

          When I was a kid we had native brook trout in the streams near my house, but they were threatened by pollution. Then came the Clean Water Act of 1972, and now the rivers are clean enough for brookies, but the change came too late, the population was wiped out. You can't restock them because over the course of the last fifty years climate changed, and summer temperatures routinely reach levels these fish can't survive. If the *same* change from the last fifty years had occurred over fifty *thousand* years -- a rate that falls within the ranges of rates we see in the natural paleoclimate change record -- that's a very different situation. The trout wouldn't be extinct here in *my* lifetime, and in the year 52021 the range of the species would be about the same size, just a little north-shifted. Here at the southern end of that range we might even see heat tolerant subspecies emerge.

          The brook trout is just a charismatic but economically unimportant species, but the same *kinds* of stresses are happening to ecosystems wholesale, and affect jobs that are tied to those ecosystems. Habitats are being overtaken by species that are disruption-tolerant -- poison ivy and oak, bark beetle, and fungi like coffee leaf rust. Now if the disease-free range of coffee were to shrink over a thousand years, nobody would notice; the price of coffee would gradually rise until it became something people drank in historical novels. But if that happens in *a hundred years*, coffee farmers lose their livelihood, economies are destabilized, and consumers experience loss.

          • You can't restock them because over the course of the last fifty years climate changed, and summer temperatures routinely reach levels these fish can't survive.

            This can't be true, whoever told you this line was making it up - ambient air temperature is one of the smallest factors affecting stream temperature. Streams are not standing sources of water waiting around to warm up, they move from a source to an end when they empty into a larger body of water. Unless there was an absolutely massive increase in air temperature, it simply could not have warmed a stream enough to make it unsuitable for brook trout.

            Brook trout do require colder streams in general, but

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              Water temperature lags air temperature, but that doesn't mean it's unaffected.

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          There is no way to reverse climate change,

          (For the record. let me say that I disagree with this.)

          That's right, because the climate keeps changing.

          Well, of course on a long term scale that's true, but it is of course the human induced climate change is what is being discussed here. This is currently occurring much faster than the longer term natural variations in climate.

          What climate are we supposed to be reaching for?

          I'd say, the climate humans have adapted our living to over the last, say, thousand years.

          Yes, we could possibly adapt to a world of, say, the Upper Cretaceous climate, but this would be very disruptive.

          ...Likewise steam-power also has to go away (coal and nuclear) as steam is also a greenhouse gas.

          Yep, this is nonsense. Fi

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @03:05AM (#61433460)

        Likewise steam-power also has to go away (coal and nuclear) as steam is also a greenhouse gas.

        I am an Aspie and I don't always recognize humor. So is this supposed to be a joke? Or do you actually need an explanation of how profoundly stupid this statement is?

      • You seem to be discounting 1976/77. Record snow falls, blizzards, tornadoes etc. many claiming it was the end of times. Not exactly stable. My state had one evening that spawned nearly 100 tornadoes in a single storm.
      • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @08:58AM (#61433940)

        Anyone who was born between 1970 and 1985 has seen how quickly climate is changing. From glaciers receding to winters with no snow and then the occasional unseasonal dump of snow.

        Those born after 1990 have always seen climate as getting warmer, but may not realize as recently as 1986 weather was consistent across north America and Europe.

        Between 1930 and 1986 weather was rather predictable. The earth warmed as much between 1930 and 1986 as it did between 1986 and 1996. This correlates with the price of oil. Go figure. So until we run out of extractable oil, the planet is just going to keep being miserable.

        Anyone born before 1970 who is still alive has by definition seen everything a person born after 1970 and 1990 has seen, plus they have a lot more perspective than their younger counterparts. Ask the older people what they thing of climate change and they will tell you they've seen it all before.

    • Wow, for a post that got modded to -1 off-topic, there are a lot of comments!

      Talking about a (possibly) flawed climate change game in the context of an article about climate change measurements doesn't seem to justify that particular criticism, off-topic? Really?

      While there are many valid criticisms (I'm also troubled by the apparent correlation that indigenous rights lead to a fixed climate) I wish that people would actually post them so that others could learn. Once again, if the underlying engine that s

      • I'm also troubled by the apparent correlation that indigenous rights lead to a fixed climate.

        Had climate change halted before the last ice age ended, indigenous rights on the American continents would not be an issue. Or the indigenous peoples would be descendants of the Phoenicians.

    • Gee, I wonder what suppositions were coded into the game?
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Sure, simulating an *endless* volcano eruption will lower the amount of solar energy retained by the Earth, but the effect of that is not remotely like reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere. It'd reduce the amount of and spectrum of solar energy *received* by the Earth's surface, rather than reducing the amount of reflected energy *radiated* by the surface.

      Don't you think that plants and microorganisms will notice they're getting light? Plants in a habitat that are better adapted to the new artificial condit

      • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

        It would be hard to anticipate what impacts it would have on other aspects of climate as well. Additionally, it is a remediation that we would not only have to continue indefinitely, but would need to increase over time as we continued to release more GHG. It may be a good plan Z.

        Plan A needs to be investing in technologies that will transform our energy economy. The political battle should be over whether this is achieved by a top down measure (government picking winners and losers) or via mechanisms

    • So, a game jimmied so that the only survivable outcome is Maoist control of the world by academics, then? Basically a Greenpeace recruiting tool.

    • Why?

      Scientists can't even get their own models right. Arguing climate outcomes based on some stupid game is just as smart as learning to drive using GTA.

      Unless one of the outcomes is a world dominated by dragons. Then count me in.

    • > Here's an interesting climate change game you can play in a few minutes I've got an even better one, go outside and let me know when something unusually bad happens. I've been playing it for nearly 40 years and I'm still waiting...
  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday May 28, 2021 @11:18PM (#61433198) Homepage

    how much the measurements were off. Was it 1/100 of a degree? Or was it 1 degree? Saying that it was off for 40 years doesn't really tell us anything except that the measurements have basically always been lower than they should have been. Were the measurements off by a greater degree recently, than 40 years ago? Or is the discrepancy about the same over that period?

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @12:47AM (#61433310) Journal

      The paper doesn't say, either [ametsoc.org]. Or maybe it does, but the abstract doesn't, and they want to charge $35 to look at the actual paper.

    • Not sure how any error can produce "warming"

      If we are to believe measurement errors have occurred, then either the satellite record is too high, or it is too low, it would not be the convenient "too high at the start, and too low at the end" because thats obviously bullshit
    • except that the measurements have basically always been lower than they should have been.

      Funny how lower is always the case isn't it? It's like a favoring of a certain direction when random error would be a helluva lot closer to 50:50.

    • by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      More to the point, the existing number fudging hasn't sufficed to panic everyone into giving up their modern lifestyles, so they're adding another fudge factor.

  • Before we go throwing out all the satellite data because there might be a self-contained data error, did anyone bother to compare it to ground sensor based temperature data?
    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @03:03AM (#61433454) Journal

      They're not saying the data is in error, they are saying there are a couple of ways of interpreting the data and are suggesting the way that looks more likely to be correct shows higher warming levels.

      • They're not saying the data is in error, they are saying there are a couple of ways of interpreting the data and are suggesting the way that looks more likely to be correct shows higher warming levels.

        I get that they think the data could be interpreted differently - what I'm asking is if there is any way to validate their competing models. Without an outside data source to verify against, what we have is two competing guesses and nothing more.

        • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          No it's not guesses, it's science and by your measurement all science is bunk because we don't have a second universe in which to test theories.

  • As Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr. from the "Simpsons" would say..."Oops, forgot the carry!"

    Or maybe the satellites were configured for metric and not British units...d'oh!

    JoshK.

  • No matter what the climate scientists say what we need to do about it does not change. We need energy that is abundant, domestically sourced, low in cost, low in pollution, low in demand for resources (land, labor, materials), and while we are at it low in CO2 emissions.

    Those energy sources are onshore wind, hydroelectric dams, geothermal, and nuclear fission. What does not get us there are solar, biomass fuels, and offshore wind. Solar power is dilute, intermittent, and therefore requires more resources

    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      Unfortunately you have that backwards.

      Even onshore wind is still intermittent.

      The only kind of hydro the US will ever build again is micro-hydro. Again, diffuse.

      Geothermal is ultimately location dependent.

      As such, you build the base nuclear and fill it with the more intermittent power.
      Or you're building a massive power storage infrastructure.
      One that, essentially, eats the worldwide production of LIon batteries for years to come.

      • Unfortunately you have that backwards.

        Even onshore wind is still intermittent.

        Onshore wind is diffuse, and intermittent, but it is low tech and therefore inexpensive. With some dispatchable hydro to manage that, or even better pumped hydro to store it, then we have two low tech, low CO2, low pollution energy sources that complement each other well.

        The only kind of hydro the US will ever build again is micro-hydro. Again, diffuse.

        Yes, diffuse but low tech, low CO2, and low pollution. We build dams for not only storing energy but also to store water for drinking and irrigation. We need dams for a lot of things, the energy we get from them is often "free" as we'd b

        • by Chas ( 5144 )

          Simply because it's low-tech and inexpensive doesn't mean it meets the country's needs.
          And the level of diffusion matters if you're going to see a profit out of the equipment before EOL.

          The main reason we're not going to see anything other than micro-hydro is because the environmental wonks hate dams because of the ecological damage they do.
          And you're never going to power a country on micro-hydro. You revisit it several times in your post. So you don't seem to understand my point about utility-grade hydro

    • Things large enough to carry a nuclear reactor, like any ship with a displacement over 40,000 tons, should be powered by a nuclear reactor.

      It should, perhaps, be noted that submarines in the 3-10KT range use nuclear reactors.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You want ships that cannot even steer right (see Suez-Canal just recently) to carry a nuclear reactor? What kind of insane are you?

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )

        You want ships that cannot even steer right (see Suez-Canal just recently) to carry a nuclear reactor? What kind of insane are you?

        The kind that know how reactors on ships are engineered? You think a nuclear powered aircraft carrier or nuclear sub has never collided with something? A 30MW reactor is about 5ft in diameter by 15ft in height. Inside a ship the size of a football stadium, it would be 50 yards away from the sea at worst. So it probably isn't an issue. We could achieve the same thing by using nuclear to make hydrocarbon fuel and power the ships with that but that will be much more expensive (your cheap junk from China w

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          No. You miss that these reactors have to be operated and that an incompetent crew may well have to deal with an emergency on short notice. An aircraft-carrier or nuclear sub has a frigging high-qualified reactor watch! Also, ever thought about who all would get access to fissile material that way? Obviously not. Incredible.

          You nuclear fanatics are not only stupid, you are utterly incompetent as to the characteristics of your fetish.

  • "Toldja the satellites are rigged! Couldn't measure the Earth right, and missed all the global cooling going on. Really freezing here, believe me! It's so cold my fingers snapped off. Oh wait, there they are; they're just short, that's all. Anyhow, loser NASA is not sending their best climate satellites into space. Must be ran by Democrats and Bing Bong Xi, or whatever his name is. Xi probably gave the satellites the Wuhan virus on purpose. Many people tell me they saw him working with CNN to launch that ki

  • by k2r ( 255754 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @03:20AM (#61433482)

    Scientists found indicators that not only the first floor is burning but even the second floor seems to be.
    Meanwhile people in the hallway are telling people with 2nd degree burns in the rooms it’s fine - because the bricks of the building have been molten lava at some point in history and science is obviously still out on how bad the fire is.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @03:58AM (#61433552) Journal

      Scientists found indicators that not only the first floor is burning but even the second floor seems to be.

      Meanwhile people in the hallway are telling people with 2nd degree burns in the rooms itâ(TM)s fine - because the bricks of the building have been molten lava at some point in history and science is obviously still out on how bad the fire is.

      They're also yelling about how maybe the first floor isn't actually on fire because if the scientists weren't sure about the second floor then well, they might be wrong about the first floor and anyway my face isn't turning black and crispy why do you ask?

  • by fygment ( 444210 ) on Saturday May 29, 2021 @07:15AM (#61433764)

    What is being compared is the measurements taken vs what models built on what are believed to be related factors are saying.

    This is the foundation of the problems with climate science. Not everything is known nor understood and so there is a dependence on data. The data in turn is so overwhelmingly high dimensional that to be understood it must be compressed. To do this models are made that use fewer variables but that (it is hoped) approximate the high dimensional truth. That is a serious challenge and it means that models approximate reality with a margin of error that is never mentioned in media dispatches. So someone is likely looking at the models now involved in those estimates and measurements.

    News flash: it doesn't matter if the climate is changing or not. Use resources efficiently, waste less, respect the planet ... why should you only do that because you're scared?

  • "It is currently difficult to determine which interpretation is more credible," sums it up. Trash.
  • Prudence is a corner stone of science, it is important not to overstate any scientifically observations, science is fundamentally small c conservatism.

    Prudence in politics should be a completely different matter, it should be about minimising risk to the people, country etc. It should be still be fundamentally small c conservatism but the problem is that it is not, big C Conservatism is increasing diverging from prudence that as long as somebody else suffers the consequence of bad risks, be it consumers, th

  • Well, as satellites have not been monitoring this information for very long... But if they could how about they would have missed global warming for millenia? Duh.
  • FTFY. Don't assume that the sensors themselves were ever calibrated properly or work properly in general.

  • Lookout! New climate fudge factors heading your way!

  • I think it can't be fixed because, of all of the above posts, I saw no one talking about the cause: too many people. Unless you're addressing that infinite resource-sucker, you may not waste my tax dollars on any of your grand "plans".
  • I am a grandfather. When I was age 5, some 75 years ago, we had cold subfreezing weather and winter snow by the 10th of November. In 1967, we had three feet of snow on a Tuesday in November, and a second three feet of snow the following Saturday. Now, 2020, Winter and sub-freezing weather comes just before January, (no white Christmas). Ski resorts which used to be profitable before are scraping by. On the other end, of winter. 75 years ago, we might have April showers in the first week, and Tulips by Ea
    • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      The midwest will be uninhabitable anyway. They're using up all the water that's underneath of those states and it can't be replenished. This is al known and they keep right on doing it. No plans.

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