Tag: NASA

Sharpening Antarctica’s image

I like Google Earth. I like looking down on my neighbours to see what’s going on behind their shelter belts, and because I like monitoring what’s going on at the poles, I have the National Snow & Ice Data Centre’s overlay switched on most of the time. It shows current sea ice extent, snow cover and so on. But when I swoop over Antarctica, the underlying images provided by Google are rather disappointing – low resolution and distorted. I was therefore very pleased to discover that a collaboration between NASA, the US Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey has created a new map of the continent based on Landsat imagery. From NASA’s press release:

The map is a realistic, nearly cloudless satellite view of the continent at a resolution 10 times greater than ever before with images captured by the NASA-built Landsat 7 satellite. With the unprecedented ability to see features half the size of a basketball court, the mosaic offers the most geographically accurate, true-color, high-resolution views of Antarctica possible.

You can play with the map at the USGS site, but the interface is rather clunky. However, there are hints that the new map will be available for Google Earth before long. Can’t wait….

Revenge of the zombie facts

Dr Vincent Gray is one of the most active of NZ’s little band of cranks. He’s been publishing his “envirotruth” newsletter since the ’90s, always brimful of climate scepticism, and has been a stalwart reviewer of IPCC reports. His most recent contribution to the IPCC process was to make 1,898 comments on the final draft of the Working Group One report – 16% of the total, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, he accounted for 95% of the comments rejected by the authors. Vincent’s offerings are the backbone of the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition site, and I always enjoy reading them.

His most recent, Problems With Surface Temperature Data [PDF], is typical. He asserts it’s impossible to arrive at a meaningful figure global temperature, prefers satellite data but doesn’t believe it, and then states that “Since the amalgamated surface record is unreliable, an indication of temperature change over the past century can be obtained from well-maintained local records. Attempts to correct for the many errors, though not entirely successful, give records of some credibility.” (Otherwise known as the cherry-pickers charter). He then disinters a 1994 paper that found a 60-65 year cycle in global temperature (but I thought that was meaningless) if the data is “detrended”. One wonders what trend was removed. Perhaps the long term underlying rise in temperature? If we ignore the data, it goes away. Magical thinking at its finest.

[UPDATE 6/11/07: NASA’s excellent Earth Observatory posts a very interesting article about James Hansen and the development of the global temperature record. There’s a superb animation of atmospheric flows from space on page 2.]

But the most interesting part of Vincent’s report is the note at the end: “This paper is part of “The Science is not Settled: Major Issues Remain Unresolved by the IPCC: A Report of the NIPDD” (sic) (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change) to be published by the Science and Environmental Policy Project, Arlington Virginia.” The NIPCC? Seems this is something Fred Singer at SEPP has set up as a counterblast to the IPCC, and its report is due soon. From Fred’s The Week That Was for Sept 1st:

Highlights of the NIPCC Report

  • Demonstration of the insignificance of human contribution to current warming – using the ‘fingerprint’ method – and why future anthropogenic warming is negligible
  • Why climate models do not agree with observations – the role of feedbacks
  • Evidence that solar activity controls most climate change on a decadal time scale
  • Evidence that future warming will not accelerate sea level rise appreciably
  • No evidence for more storms, hurricanes, droughts, and floods as climate warms
  • How we know that a warmer climate is better than a colder one
  • Evidence that the Medieval Period was warmer than today
  • Evidence that pre-1940 warming was not anthropogenic
  • Problems with data quality and special problems with sea surface temperatures
  • Uncertainties about the CO2 budget, past and future – and of future emission scenarios
  • Changes in ocean heat storage, glacier length, and sea ice coverage indicate climate change – but not whether the cause is anthropogenic or natural

That’s a mind-boggling list. If all the papers show the – how shall I put it politely – “rigorous” approach to the science that Dr Gray demonstrates, the NIPCC report will be a real paradigm shift. Or perhaps not.

Float on…

A big float story slipped under the HT radar a month ago. Luckily I noticed the NZ connection in a recent release from the Scripps Institute in California – designers and builders of many of the Argo float network – and so I bring you news of the completion of this ocean monitoring system and the big role played by NIWA and its research ship, the Kaharoa, in deploying the floats. Better late than never…

Continue reading “Float on…”

Friday on my mind

Meridian got the resource consent for its 176 turbine, $1.5bn Project Hayes wind farm on the Lammermoor Range, 70 km north west of Dunedin in Central Otago, but only on a split decision. Next stage: almost certainly the Environment Court. [Herald , The Press , Southland Times] Meanwhile:

  • Brian Fallow follows up on fast following in the Herald, and gets it right.
  • Desmogblog highlights an excellent NASA animation illustrating the sheer extent of this summer’s Arctic ice melt.
  • Technology Review covers MIT’s Smart Cities group design for a folding, stackable, electric city car (and scooter).
  • The Guardian [UK]reports on a list of the top 50 things to do to save the planet, drawn up by the Environment Agency [full list(PDF)]. Toppermost of the poppermost? Dramatically improve the energy efficiency of electrical goods. In the charts at number 2 (with a bullet)? Religious leaders to make the environment a priority for their followers.
  • The Guardian [UK] also has an interesting feature on plans to collect solar energy in space (thus avoiding the losses caused by passage through the atmosphere) and then beam it down to earth via microwave or laser beams.

Time to buy new wellies

WellieRegular readers will know that I’ve been keeping a close eye on this year’s Arctic summer, and the record minimum sea ice extent reached last month (nice NASA picture here). The ice area is increasing now, but is still about 1m km2 below the same time last year. I might have to increase my bet… If all the summer Arctic sea ice disappears quickly, it won’t have any impact on sea level, but if the ice on land – mountain glaciers and the great ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic – melts, sea level will rise. During the last interglacial, about 125,000 years ago, global temperature was a degree or two warmer than today and sea level was about 5m higher. Some of that extra water came from Greenland and Antarctica.

When I was writing Hot Topic, the latest information suggested that Greenland was losing about 200 km3 (cubic kilometres) of ice every year, and Antarctica about 150 km3 (HT, p45). But time goes on, and the world warms. A study to be published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that the glaciers of southeast Greenland are now losing 300 km3 of ice per year, a 400% increase in melt rate since 2004. AFP reports:

“Until 2004, the glacier mass in the southeastern part of the island lost about 50 to 100 cubic kilometres (12 to 24 cubic miles) per year. After this date, the melting rate accelerated to 300 cubic kilometres per year. It’s a jump of 400 percent, which is very worrying,” National Space Center head researcher and project chief Abbas Khan told AFP. […] The measurements indicated that the mountains hugging glaciers in the southeastern part of Greenland rose four to five centimetres (1.5 to two inches) per year, and that the banks of the glaciers thinned 100 metres per year.

Continue reading “Time to buy new wellies”