The Satellitegate scandal festers on.

IanC · Oct 24, 2010

US government passes the buck to Michigan State University but they won't give straight answers either.

University Relations officer, Mark Fellows of Michigan State University (MSU) gives an official response to questions I put originally to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) months ago about their "degraded" NOAA-16 satellite.

I had sought answers as to how deep and extensive was the data contamination from a broken sensor that led NOAA to remove a "degraded" global temperature satellite from service. I wished to know whether NOAA was going to actively root out all corrupted data and re-publish their numbers.

However, NOAA tossed that hot potato over to MSU who now advises they cannot make any representations on behalf of NOAA. Thus neither NOAA nor MSU will come clean on the true extent of satellite temperature data corruption and a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request is now becoming ever more necessary to move this issue forward.
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Typical of U.S. satellites, and admitted to by Fellows and other authorities, the offending NOAA-16 data handling is automated and human operators do not routinely check the numbers. Respected climate scientist, Dr Roy Spencer advised me he knew of the fault in the satellites sensor in 2005 and he and other experts abandoned using its corrupted temperatures for climate modeling.

Following Spencers advice and before publishing my first Satellitegate article, I checked the NOAA-16 satellites AVHRR Subsystem Summary. What I found were numerous entries up to 2010 but nowhere any mention of sensor problems likely to cause data degradation. However, after publication of my articles, all entries from the NOAA-16 AVHRR Subsystem Summary from 2005 onwards were removed. Why?
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The following notice was posted on the web site and all internal pages:

NOTICE (8/11/2010): Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive. [emphasis added]

In the 16 years that this service has been available, this is the first known instance of seriously degraded thermal data being delivered on the website. The CoastWatch team is currently evaluating whether other reprogramming changes are necessary to avoid such problems in the future.
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Michigan State University Joins NOAA in Satellitegate Cover Up by John O'Sullivan, guest post at Climate Realists | Climate Realists

I wonder if climate scientists use this data? I bet some do.

CrusaderFrank · Oct 24, 2010

The data and facts may be corrupted but the Theory that Mankind is warming the planet still stands

Old Rocks · Oct 24, 2010

OK. You have one satellite you don't like the data on. Given the number of earth observing satellites in orbit from various countries, one defective satellite is not going to affect the data.

List of Earth observation satellites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IanC · Oct 25, 2010

Old Rocks said: ↑

OK. You have one satellite you don't like the data on. Given the number of earth observing satellites in orbit from various countries, one defective satellite is not going to affect the data.

List of Earth observation satellites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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ahhhh....that makes sense.

but wait!

Now Satellites NOAA-17 and 18 Suffer Calamities

While NOAA's Nero fiddles 'Rome' continues to burn and the satellite network just keeps on falling apart. After NOAA-16 bit the dust last week NOAA-17 became rated 'poor' due to 'scan motor degradation" while NOAA-18's gyro's are regarded by many now as good as dead. However, these satellites that each cross the U.S. twice per day at twelve-hour intervals are still giving "direct readout"(HRPT or APT) or central processing to customers. So please, NOAA, tell us - is this GIGO still being fed into official climate models?

NOAA-17 appears in even worse condition. On February 12 and 19 2010 NOAA-17 concedes it has " AVHRR Scan Motor Degradation" with "Product(s) or Data Impacted."

Beleaguered NOAA customers have been told, "direct readout users are going to have to deal with the missing data gaps as best they can."

On August 9, 2010, NOAA 17 was listed as on 'poor' with scan motor problems and rising motor currents. NOAA admits, "Constant rephase by the MIRP was causing data dropouts on all the HRPT stream and APT and GAC derivatives. Auto re-phase has now been disabled and the resulting AVHRR products are almost all unusable."

NOAA continues with tests on '17' with a view to finding a solution. On page 53 we find that NOAA-17 has an inoperable AMSU Instrument. The status for August 17, 2010 was RED (not operational) and NOAA is undertaking "urgent gyro tests on NOAA 18." For further details see here. More evidence proving NOAA is running a "degrading" satellite network can be read here.
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do you think that the problems with NOAA17 and NOAA18 could have contributed to the poor decision to keep a poorly functioning NOAA16 (they were first informed in 2004) online until public outcry made them do something about it in 2010?

perhaps NOAA should have told its customers to take their business elsewhere until things were sorted out.

Old Rocks- do you think that there is any chance that half a decade's worth of iffy data has had any effect on global temperature measurement or the results of computer climate models?

IanC · Oct 25, 2010

Dimmer view of Earth
By Suzanne Bohan
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 08/08/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT
Updated: 08/09/2010 08:52:48 AM PDT

The satellite, Landsat 7, is broken. And it's emblematic of the nation's battered satellite environmental monitoring program. The bad news: It's only going to get worse, unless the federal agencies criticized for their poor management of the satellite systems over the past decade stage a fast turnaround. Many, however, view that prospect as a long shot.

"I would say our ability to observe the Earth from space is at grave risk of dying from neglect," said Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University.

Inez Fung, a noted climatologist at UC Berkeley, was shocked as she scanned a recent federal report warning of impending gaps in the country's ability to monitor Earth from space.

The federal document, released in May, listed cuts in climate-monitoring sensors from the next generation of Earth-observing satellites. The current satellites beam down many types of indispensable data about the planet, such as ocean currents, ozone levels and snow cover, as well as the pictures we see every day on TV weathercasts.
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Dimmer view of Earth - ContraCostaTimes.com

I sure hope Old Rocks is right about the massive redundancy and wonderful accuracy for the satellite tracking of earth. But there seems to be a few unpublicized problems.

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The Satellitegate scandal festers on.

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