NEWS ON GLOBAL COOLING WHILE SATELLITE SITES HOT SPOTS

Information posted by the scientists at RealClimate should put to rest, once and for all, a canard that frequently raises its ugly head in debates about global climate change. The Global Cooling Mole explains that the so-called global cooling excitement of the 70s was a completely unscientific, pop media-driven myth debunked by climate scientists at its first appearance in 1969. Those climate scientists were even then also discussing and writing about the dangerous accumulations of greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions in the atmosphere and their potential to affect earth’s climate.

Nothing about climate science is absolutely certain but much is now known and everything known underscores the accuracy of assumptions about the relationship between anthropogenic (human made) GhG emissions and global climate change.

Computer models cannot reproduce the immense variables accurately enough to definitively predict the weather but they generally reflect climate patterns with high consistency.

Everything that science knows and everything that scientists can calculate affirms the approach of a level of GhGs in earth’s upper atmosphere, accelerated by human activity, that will engender significant and irreversible environmental changes.

Dr Michael Buchwitz, Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP): "We know that about half of the CO2 emitted by mankind each year is taken up by natural sinks on land and in the oceans. We do not know, however, where exactly these important sinks are and to what extent they take up the CO2 we are emitting, i.e., how strong they are…We also don’t know how these sinks will respond to a changing climate. It is even possible that some of these sinks will saturate or turn into a CO2 source in the future. With our satellite measurements we hope to be able to provide answers to questions like this in order to make reliable predictions…"

New data from a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite imaging scanner being analyzed by Dr. Burwitz will add to the body of information. It has already shown in unequivocal terms that there are indeed increased and therefore identifiably anthropogenic GhG concentrations over more densely populated regions.

Dr Buchwitz, IUP: "That we are able to detect regionally elevated CO2 over Europe shows the high quality of the SCIAMACHY CO2 measurements…We verified that the CO2 spatial pattern that we measure correlates well with current CO2 emission databases and population density but more studies are needed before definitive quantitative conclusions concerning CO2 emissions can be drawn."

There is an answer to climate change doubters who say it's no different than a 1970s "cooling fad": That was a pop-media phenomenon - global climate change is science. (click to enlarge)

Satellite Makes First Ever Observations Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions
March 19, 2008 (European Space Agency via Science Daily)

WHO
Dr Michael Buchwitz, Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP)/University of Bremen

Time Magazine is not the IPCC and did not win a Nobel Prize for its work on "cooling." (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Data from the Scanning Image Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) instrument aboard European Space Agency (ESA)'s Envisat environmental satellite has identified specific sites of anthropogenic (human-generated) greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions.

WHEN
The data evaluated by Buchwitz was from the 2003 thru 2005 period.

This new image shows increased emissions over the most populated section of Europe. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
- IUP/University of Bremen is in Bremen, Germany.
- Natural carbon sinks are thought to be earth’s oceans and forests.
- Increased anthropogenic GhG emissions were identified over Europe’s most densely populated region from Amsterdam in the the Netherlands to Frankfurt in Germany.

WHY
- Accumulated GhG’s are thought to be the causative factor in global climate change.
This imaging is able to distinguish between anthropogenic emissions and natural emissions.
- Natural emissions occur in a yearly pattern, diminishing as plant life grows and consumes CO2 and rising as the plants die and decay, emitting CO2.
- Some anthropogenic emissions are absorbed by natural sinks but others accumulate in the upper atmosphere, adding a “shellack” that traps earth’s heat and making its overall climate warmer.
- New knowledge about unknowns such as CO2 sources (volcanic activity, living organism respirations) and CO2 sinks is expected to emerge from analysis of the satellite imagery.

Imaging also shows NO2 hot spots over populated areas of the U.S. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Burwitz, IUP: "The natural CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface are typically much larger than the CO2 fluxes arising from manmade CO2 emissions…This does not mean, however, that the anthropogenic fluxes are of minor importance. In fact, the opposite is true because the manmade fluxes are only going in one direction whereas the natural fluxes operate in both directions, taking up atmospheric CO2 when plants grow, but releasing most or all of it again later when the plants decay. This results in higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the first half of a year followed by lower CO2 during the second half of a year with a minimum around August…”