How did NASA become this unreliable?

[mamooth]

Oh and you sate that satellites (even though they're good at measure temp on other planets, sun, light frequencies from stars 100s of light years away)...are not good at reading surface temps on earth.

Yes, exactly.

Accuracy matters. Getting the temperature on Jupiter to within 10C is good enough. But that kind of error would be useless for any climate studies on earth. For that, you've got to get the errors under 0.1C.

Your standard weather satellite on earth gets you to within a couple degrees. That's good enough for the weather forecast, but no good for climate studies.

I guess infrared thermometers are s**t tech

For climate studies, they are pretty useless, being they can't see through clouds.

Some earth orbiting satellites try to determine temperature by measuring the microwave radiation emitted by atmospheric oxygen. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to that, but not completely transparent. Hence, corrections have to be made for time of day, clouds, humidity, observation angle, satellite orbit degradation, sensor drift, and other factors. A lot of guesswork is involved. Surface temperature measurements are much more reliable, being how they measure temperature directly.

Some satellites do measure IR out of the stratosphere, since there's little water vapor to interfere there. That's how we know the stratosphere is cooling, which is one of the smoking guns for greenhouse-gas caused global warming. An increase in solar output would cause the stratosphere to warm, hence we know an increasing solar output is not the cause of the warming on earth.

 

[flacaltenn]

Oh and you sate that satellites (even though they're good at measure temp on other planets, sun, light frequencies from stars 100s of light years away)...are not good at reading surface temps on earth.

Yes, exactly.

Accuracy matters. Getting the temperature on Jupiter to within 10C is good enough. But that kind of error would be useless for any climate studies on earth. For that, you've got to get the errors under 0.1C.

Your standard weather satellite on earth gets you to within a couple degrees. That's good enough for the weather forecast, but no good for climate studies.

I guess infrared thermometers are s**t tech

For climate studies, they are pretty useless, being they can't see through clouds.

Some earth orbiting satellites try to determine temperature by measuring the microwave radiation emitted by atmospheric oxygen. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to that, but not completely transparent. Hence, corrections have to be made for time of day, clouds, humidity, observation angle, satellite orbit degradation, sensor drift, and other factors. A lot of guesswork is involved. Surface temperature measurements are much more reliable, being how they measure temperature directly.

Some satellites do measure IR out of the stratosphere, since there's little water vapor to interfere there. That's how we know the stratosphere is cooling, which is one of the smoking guns for greenhouse-gas caused global warming. An increase in solar output would cause the stratosphere to warm, hence we know an increasing solar output is not the cause of the warming on earth.

The only thing that "can't see thru clouds" is you and the Infra Red band IMAGING pkgs on those birds.. The satellite temp record is NOT thru IR.. It uses microwave sounding of Oxygen measurement. NOT IR imaging. There ARE some effects in the near tropics to the equator -- but they are miniscule and CAN EASILY be compensated by other sensors aboard the spacecraft..

Spencer/Christy have shown that the difference in CLEAR/Clouded on a GLOBAL scale amounts to less than 0.006 deg/decade in the warming trend. And clouds with precip are just as likely to introduce cooling into those far right decimal points..

 

[flacaltenn]

For that matter --- does GISS/Hadley toss out surface measurements because of clouds or fog or precipitation???

All these sat.. records are checked with balloon sounders on a regular basis..
And RSS and UAH are Independently processing data with wildly varying algorithms and getting approximately the same answers for the globe.

Pretty soon --- GISS and Hadley will have to struggle over their divergence FROM the satellite record..

 

[mamooth]

That's right. The accurate data contradicts the claims of the loony right fringe political cult, so scientists will soon start throwing out that accurate data.

If this was the Soviet-type state that deniers dream about implementing (the one where any scientist who disagrees with them gets sent to the gulag), sure, such Lysenkoist tactics could take hold. However, as we're part of a free society, don't count on it.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

TOM HARRIS: Global warming: Deceptive temperature record claims - Washington Times

Obammy cut their funding and they decided to lie for him to get funding.

 

[sakinago]

That's right. The accurate data contradicts the claims of the loony right fringe political cult, so scientists will soon start throwing out that accurate data.

If this was the Soviet-type state that deniers dream about implementing (the one where any scientist who disagrees with them gets sent to the gulag), sure, such Lysenkoist tactics could take hold. However, as we're part of a free society, don't count on it.

What is better to get an accurate baseline ? A satellite in orbit, or scattered thermometers in differing currents?

 

[mamooth]

Surface measurements, obviously. The single satellite instrument is constantly drifting, so it makes for a poor baseline. But when you've got thousands of individual instruments, drift is not an issue, as statistically the drift sort of cancels out.

That's why satellites are calibrated using the surface data. Doing it the other way around would be crazy.

 

[IanC]

NASA is a large entity with many departments. That is why you can find NASA papers that totally disagree with each other being published in the same time frame.

As someone else here commented, political correctness has become important to NASA so publicity for individual findings is often based on their usefulness to supporting accepted memes. Eg. Zwally's finding that Antarctica was gaining ice mass was buried as inconvenient. But sometimes papers leak out, especially if they have pretty graphics, like Chen's (?) Paper on UHI that showed many degrees of warming from city to suburb to rural. Most of you have probably seen the graphic. UHI is an interesting problem. Hansen's paper leads off with Tokyo's massive warming but misdirects by failing to point out that the majority of UHI adjustments are in the opposite direction for a net result of zero. BEST actually calculates a net cooling for Urban Heat Island Effect. Hard to believe but it is true, in their minds anyways.

 

[flacaltenn]

Surface measurements, obviously. The single satellite instrument is constantly drifting, so it makes for a poor baseline. But when you've got thousands of individual instruments, drift is not an issue, as statistically the drift sort of cancels out.

That's why satellites are calibrated using the surface data. Doing it the other way around would be crazy.

Satellites are NOT calibrated with surface thermometers. Wouldn't be sufficient. Since they measure a volume of troposphere going up several 1000 ft.. They are tested with balloon sounders.

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, here we are. The 'Conservatives' now state the the scientists at NOAA, NASA, and the USGS are all engaged in fraud. Not only those, but all the scientists in similiar agencies in all the other nations. And we are expected to just accept their accusations as gospel. As this El Nino continues to warm up, the deniers are going to become more extreme and shrill. 2016!

 

[ScienceRocks]

All I'll say Old rocks is I pray that the democrats can hold onto the white house. The damage they will do to this countries science making ability will look a lot like the ISIS.

I never thought I'd say this but I'll be voting democrat in 2016. Social disagreements doesn't out weigh how screwed up these people have become.

 

[Old Rocks]

Mathew, there was a time, when we had Democrats like Magnusen and Jackson in Washington, and Republicans like Tom McCall in Oregon, that I was an independent. Then the GOP in Oregon and Washington was taken over by the far right. To the extent where in Oregon, the head of the Republican Party was also the head of OISM. So I have voted a straight Dem ticket since that takeover. I really would like to go back to being an Independent, but the present meme of the GOP makes that impossible.

The stances of the GOP on education, science, infrastructure, and taxes simply makes that impossible.

 

[sakinago]

Oh god there's nothing far right about the GOP, most of them would be awesome democrat candidates 20 to 15 years ago. Look how far left the whole country has shifted, 8 years ago Obama was campaigning on securing the boarder, against gay marriage, and how debt is unethical. And far right in American politics just means the further right, the less govt control. So don't try the comparison of American far right to European far right fascism.

And the "blue dog all the way." I'm supposed to be surprised your voting democrat?

 

[Old Rocks]

Mr. Sakinago, the GOP has gone absolutely far right. President Obama has done far more securing of the border than any other President. And the American far right does indeed resemble the European far right nativism. The American has a disdain of education and science, a love of oligarchy, witness their infatuation with Ayn Rand. The American Far Right does not believe in one of the pillars of our Constitution, Separation of Church and State. They apparently believe now, as does one of their candidates for running for the nomination, that the President can change a Constitutional Amendment on Executive Order.

As is, the far right of the GOP has alienated women, blacks, latinos, academics, and scientists. And seem to believe that is a winning combination in the 2016 election. Oh well.

 

[sakinago]

Mr. Sakinago, the GOP has gone absolutely far right. President Obama has done far more securing of the border than any other President. And the American far right does indeed resemble the European far right nativism. The American has a disdain of education and science, a love of oligarchy, witness their infatuation with Ayn Rand. The American Far Right does not believe in one of the pillars of our Constitution, Separation of Church and State. They apparently believe now, as does one of their candidates for running for the nomination, that the President can change a Constitutional Amendment on Executive Order.

As is, the far right of the GOP has alienated women, blacks, latinos, academics, and scientists. And seem to believe that is a winning combination in the 2016 election. Oh well.

Someone got their full dose of identity politics propaganda this morning. There is no disdain for education and science, that's just ridiculous to say half of Americans have disdain for that. Maybe for the type of centralized science and education, a lot like far right (European) nazi Germany had. After all they are the reason we can go to space, have jets, and have pressurized planes. But they also had science and education, coming from a central source, that said they were the master race. Very dangerous stuff to have those things only coming from a centralized source, even if it is good in the beginning, it always goes south.

Sure some may have a love for oligarchy, but socialism is another form of oligarchy. Instead of the rich leaders ruling, socialism is just the powerful politicians ruling.

I don't know what candidate or policy you are talking about, please list, but I guarantee I will not vote for them if that's the case. But I will add separation of church and state was made bc they did not want an official government religion like in the countries they fled from. I think executive orders have been abused for probably about 100 years and they need to stop wether I like the policy or not.

And ayn rand was an individualist, complete opposite of the far left and right of Europe, so I don't know why you'd bring that up.

 

[flacaltenn]

The CREDIBILITY of any data, statistics, or statements coming out of DC has declined sharply under 8 years of Obama. You can no longer ANY Numbers or statistics or facts that are offered..

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

"How did NASA become this unreliable?"

How did most conservatives become this prone to loaded question fallacies.

 

[Wyatt earp]

I'll listen to nasa far before I listen to any kook on this board. That is reality.

The same guys who fucked up a 125 million dollar Mars mission because they couldn't determine what measurement to use, metric or English?


Those guys?

CNN - NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss - September 30, 1999

 

[Wyatt earp]

TOM HARRIS: Global warming: Deceptive temperature record claims - Washington Times

Obammy cut their funding and they decided to lie for him to get funding.

Exactly..... What does the difference make of a little hundredth of degree lie?









Just millions and millions of new dollars

 

[ScienceRocks]

I'll listen to nasa far before I listen to any kook on this board. That is reality.

The same guys who fucked up a 125 million dollar Mars mission because they couldn't determine what measurement to use, metric or English?


Those guys?

CNN - NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss - September 30, 1999

One mission...


Everything else sent since has been successful. Who else outside of India, esa can say the same??? Oh'crap, their government ran programs!!!! They work well and they're not perfect! Space travel has risk but nasa kicks ass like no other. I think I'll keep riding the nasa horse as we find out more about our universe.

Most of those guys are probably 50 iq points more intelligent then you.