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ClimatEnerGeopolitics
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A brief explanation of how temperature is inferred from satellite dataamstocks82 wants you to think satellites record raw temperature data. He wants you to think satellite data comes from thermometers. It doesn't. There is a lot of adjusting done to the raw data obtained from satellites. Here is a brief explanation: "For a few decades, satellites have measured radiant emission from oxygen in the atmosphere and have related these measurements to temperatures. As satellites orbit the Earth, the microwave instrument on-board scans the atmosphere below them every 8 seconds or so and scientists apply what are called weighting functions to extract information from different altitudes. Each of the microwave “channels” uses a different weighting function so as to obtain information at different heights. The four channels most associated with atmospheric temperatures are Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit channels 3, 5, 7, and 9 in the current fleet of satellites. "The radiant emission received by the satellite can be influenced by other components in the atmosphere, in particular cloud liquid water. Many years ago, the impact of cloud liquid water was considered and various attempts were made to eliminate its influence through a filtering process. It is well known that cloud liquid water can influence the measurements, the real question is by how much?" http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/nov/07/new-study-disputes-satellite-temperature-estimates But amstocks82 wants you to think that satellite data are more accurate than ground station data, because he wants you to believe the ground station data are wrong. They're not wrong. |
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