whats' the latest proof that the Earth is warming?

[booley]

I used ot have a really good graph that showed that the climate over all was warming, even compensated for the satelite discrepencies.

But I lost it and need the best and most recent info to show that the earth is warming and it's human activity.

Got a freeper who keeps claiming the waether satelites show the earth is cooling.

Any help appreciated.

[vpigrad]

1. Ask him how he thinks..

the Earth is cooling when the mantle expanding due to heat just caused one of the worst earthquakes in human history?

[booley]

3. well two things

first, he's an idiot.

And two, I am not sure I buy yoru explanation. The air is heating yup BUT that wouldn't make more earthqaukes that I see. For one, the environment isn't gettign that hotter. E specially at the bottom of the ocean. And two, the Earth is already hotter then the air above it. Even if we had 200 degree days it would still be cooler then your avergage volcanic vent or the inner crust and mantle.

And third, i think I heard somewhere that the Earth has been expanding since it was formed.

If you have something to back up what you claim, I would love to see it.

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. ???Whwere did you hear that one?

I don't beleive a single reputable scientist in the field would support that "Global Warming" caused the Mantle to Expand and trigger the recent earthquake in the Indian ocean. That is pure B.S.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Links4U

http://magazine.audubon.org/features0312/hottest_spot.html
>>As the Arctic warms faster than any other place on earth, habitats are either melting or growing like crazy. And that's just the beginning. Researchers fear the impact may open a Pandora's box for climate change, affecting weather and ecosystems the world over.<<

>>When snow geophysicist Matthew Sturm first glimpsed one of the photos in 1998, he promptly had all 5,000 of them Fedexed to his office. By comparing those images with aerial photographs taken today, researchers are trying to document long-term changes to Alaska's North Slope, as well as to gain insight into the effect of rapid climate change on Arctic vegetation.<<

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Laboratory/PlanetEarthScience/GlobalWarming/GW_InfoCenter_Europe.html





http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Laboratory/PlanetEarthScience/GlobalWarming/GW.html
Global Warming
The Earth’s average temperature rose by more than half a degree Celsius over the last century. What caused this change? Join NASA’s Earth Observatory Team in an investigation into the causes and effects of global warming. Begin your investigation by viewing the Introduction.

[roguevalley]

4. Tell him I'm standing on my porch in shirt sleeves here in Alaska.

Tell him also to kiss my behind. I hate people who don't see what's happening. What will it take? Water around his ankles?

[seasat]

5. The Freeper is refering to Jeff Christy's work.

Booley wrote: "Got a freeper who keeps claiming the waether satelites show the earth is cooling."

Jeff Christy is a former Baptist preacher who got a PhD (don't remember his specialty) and is in charge of NASA's MSU sattelites. These satellites look at microwave emmissions at a band given off by oxygen molecules in the atmosphere that correlate with the temperature of the atmosphere. He's basically looking at two different angles with the satellite through 120 km of atmosphere to determine the temperature of the lower 4 km. When Christy first presented the data in the late 90s, he concluded that the lower troposphere was slightly cooling and the stratosphere was definitely cooling. He's one of an extremely small minority of scientists that doubt the green house gas theory of global warming.

However, after other scientists examined his work they found out that he did not take into account the variations in orbital height of the satellites. The calibration of these satellites has also been called into question. They've seen as much as a 0.6 °C difference between two different satellites when they've had two in orbit. He did accomplish some good because the modelers who were trying to predict climatology did not properly take into account reflective particles in the atmosphere such as those that result from sulfur dioxide emmissions. The result was that with corrections for orbital height, better calibrations, and reflective particles in the models, they've now achieved closure between the MSU data and the models.

Stratospheric cooling is expected in the scenario where green house gases contribute to the global warming. You put a glass pane between you and a fire, the air on your side feels cooler. The Freeper is looking at old reports because the current MSU calibrations indicate that the troposphere is warming. Christy is still arguing against the greenhouse affect but (IMHO) it's sour grapes on his part since he was found to be in error.

Check out this link. They addressed the MSU data back in 2000. This is a National Academy of Sciences publication on reconciling the descrepancies between different data sets.

[Squatch]

6. January 6...76 degrees in Virginia

[phantom power]

7. This week we had tornados, in phoenix. In winter.

We've had two very warm, very energetic, weather systems move through AZ in the last couple weeks, and a third is on it's way this weekend.

It's normal to have rain this time of year, but these systems have been strange. Tornados aren't unheard of, but they happen during summer monsoon, not winter.

[Viking12]

9. New interpretation of satellite measurements confirms global warming

(Note to moderators: this is a press release, no copyright problems)


For years the debate about climate change has had a contentious sticking point - satellite measurements of temperatures in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere where most weather occurs, were inconsistent with fast-warming surface temperatures.

But a team led by a University of Washington atmospheric scientist has used satellite data in a new and more accurate way to show that, for more than two decades, the troposphere has actually been warming faster than the surface. The new approach relies on information that better separates readings of the troposphere from those of another atmospheric layer above, which have disguised the true troposphere temperature trend.

"This tells us very clearly what the lower atmosphere temperature trend is, and the trend is very similar to what is happening at the surface," said Qiang Fu, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

He is lead author of a paper documenting the work published in the May 6 edition of the journal Nature. Co-authors are Celeste Johanson, a UW research assistant and graduate student in atmospheric sciences; Stephen Warren, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences and Earth and space sciences; and Dian Seidel, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Air Resources Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md.

The team examined measurements from devices called microwave-sounding units on NOAA satellites from January 1979 through December 2001. The satellites all used similar equipment and techniques to measure microwave radiation emitted by oxygen in the atmosphere and determine its temperature.

Different channels of the microwave-sounding units measured radiation emitted at different frequencies, thus providing data for different layers of the atmosphere. In the case of the troposphere - which extends from the surface to an altitude of about 7.5 miles - it was believed there was less warming than what had been recorded at the surface.

The troposphere temperature was measured by channel 2 on the microwave sounding units, but those readings were imprecise because about one-fifth of the signal actually came from a higher atmospheric layer called the stratosphere.

"Because of ozone depletion and the increase of greenhouse gases, the stratosphere is cooling about five times faster than the troposphere is warming, so the channel 2 measurement by itself provided us with little information on the temperature trend in the lower atmosphere," Fu said.

Stratosphere temperatures are measured by channel 4 on the microwave units. Fu's team used data from weather balloons at various altitudes to develop a method in which the two satellite channels could be employed to deduce the average temperature in the troposphere. The scientists correlated the troposphere temperature data from balloons with the simulated radiation in the two satellite channels to determine which part of the channel 2 measurement had come from the cooling stratosphere and should be removed.

What remained indicated that the troposphere has been warming at about two-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade, or nearly one-third of a degree Fahrenheit per decade. That closely resembles measurements of warming at the surface, something climate models have suggested would result if the warmer surface temperatures are the result of greenhouse gases. The previous lack of demonstrable warming in the troposphere has prompted some to argue that climate models are missing unrecognized but important physical processes, or even that human-caused climate change is not happening.

One reason previous data have not shown enough warming in the troposphere, Fu said, is because the stratosphere influence on the channel 2 temperature trend has never been properly quantified, even though there have been attempts to account for its influence. Those attempts had large uncertainties, so many researchers had simply used the unadjusted channel 2 temperature trends to represent the temperature trends in the middle of the troposphere.

Fu's work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The findings, he said, could offer a new context for climate change discussion.

"I think everyone can understand our approach," he said. "I think this could convince not just scientists but the public as well."

Fu, Q., et al., 2004. Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58.


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14166

[Viking12]

10. See also....

Science, Vol 302, Issue 5643, 269-272, 10 October 2003

Global Warming Trend of Mean Tropospheric Temperature Observed by Satellites
Konstantin Y. Vinnikov1* and Norman C. Grody2
We have analyzed the global tropospheric temperature for 1978 to 2002 with the use of passive microwave sounding data from the NOAA series of polar orbiters and the Earth Observing System Aqua satellite. To accurately retrieve the climatic trend, we combined the satellite data with an analytic model of temperature that contains three different time scales: a linear trend and functions that define the seasonal and diurnal cycles. Our analysis shows a trend of +0.22° to 0.26°C per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5643/269?view=abstract

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_record