Perpetual Innovation

Category: NASA

  • NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record | NASA

    NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record | NASA

    This is a good recap of the tie in to record warming with human activity.

    It also give links the the raw data and the detailed methodology.

    Anybody want to play with the raw, unadulterated data, you will find a LOT of it; and no matter which way you look at it trend line appears. And the trend line is very depressing.

    BUT…

    This blog is devoted to easy, affordable solutions that can be implemented right now, in a business friendly way. In fact, the first things that can be done, energy efficiency and telecommuting, offer huge savings to everyone concerned (and a nice boost in the direction of sustainability).

    Why not start by picking the low-lying fruit now, and then address the heavy lifting as the next step.

    Orrrr, we all can wait and wait until governments to get into the mix to help us all with the problems.:-(

    We like the business now solution.

  • It’s Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record (watch the data unfold)

    It’s Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record:

    This is a very cool — oops, hot, I mean — visual of the earth temperatures over recent decades.

    As you will see, the monthly averages and the annual averages spike up year after year. Only a few monthly numbers are higher now then in 1995 and almost no monthly numbers are higher than the 20th century average.

    2014 was unusual as a hot year because is was not an el nino year. This was a “normal” year in which 5 of the hottest months on record occurred. 2014 outpaced the prior hottest months of 2010 and 2005.

    You have to go back a decade to find a coldest record month. That’s some ugly statistics, no matter how you look at it.

    Here’s a different graphic of combined land and surface temperatures in this US Today article. Notice that you could start over with a trend line at about 1995 and produce a new trend line that is simply higher than the historical average of a century.

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  • WMO Warns Lima Delegates 2014 May Be Hottest Year | Climate Central

    WMO Warns Lima Delegates, 2014 … Hottest Year in History!:-( | Climate Central:

    Ouch, this is really really ugly, the data related to 2014 as the hottest year in modern history.

    Double to the angst is the melt-off of the Antarctic.

    Here’s a discussion about both.

    The period between April and September, according to NASA GISS was the hottest in 120 years. Most (?all?) of the months since April will set all time heat highs, as well.

    Fortunately an El Nino weather pattern did not develop this year or the year-end temperatures would be even higher.

    The consistent march of the oceans to higher temperature is doubly scary. It should take years, if not decades for rising temperatures to make a dent in the ocean temperatures. If the oceans are, on average 2 miles deep, it should take a long time for warming at the surface to permeate down to the depths.

    Thermal expansion is scary. A 1 degree increase in surface temperatures, on average, should eventually result in about 2 feet of rise at the ocean surface due to thermal expansion as water gets warmer. This may take many years, but the increase is “baked in” if surface temperatures stay the same (or continue rising).

    But doubly worrisome are the ice sheets in Antarctica (and Greenland and Iceland) which are ice sheets on top of land. The Arctic in the north is generally ice on top of water, so when the ice melts up there, as it is rapidly doing, it does not affect ocean levels (directly).

    A study accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica is melting quickly and at an increasing rate. They found that the ice loss was equivalent to the volume of Mt Everest every 2 years.


    The accepted draft of the article is here: paper…

    Too bad. After seeing some encouraging studies that suggested that there might be a bit of a hiatus to the march of global warming, some of the more recent measures are not so good.

    Ouch!:-(

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  • NASA GISS: Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global Warming. (It’s perception, Toto)

    NASA GISS: Research News: Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global Warming:

    Op Ed: We must stop rolling the dice on Global Warming.  (1 page)
    Full Paper/Presentation: Perception of climate change. (5.8 mb, PDF)

    James Hansen (& Soto & Ruedy, 2012) from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Exploration just completed a big study on world temperature change. This research uses simple, straight forward stats, and our friendly bell-shaped curve from elementary statistics. (It doesn’t use the complicated weather modeling with the spaghetti lines that almost no one really understands.)

    This is the same Hansen who first really started warning us that the climate has changed in the 1980s…
    “Toto, I’ve a feeling we‘re not in Kansas any more.”

    The graphics are powerful. Watch the the bell-shaped curve of temperatures move distinctly and precipitously to the right, compared to a “normal” 10-year period 30 years ago. And because of more extreme weather, the bell curve has flattened out.

    If you are a denier of global warming, you will be very sad about this report.
    If you haven’t made up your mind about global warming, you shocked by this revelation. And very sad about this report.
    If you’ve been a siren about global warming, this will make you want to cry. But it will also provide some of the most powerful materials ever, to go sound the alarm.

    Now your next conversation with God, or a mere mortal, for that matter, might go like this.
    “I’m sorry Sir, the patient is getting sick, and running a fever… and the fever is rising…  Yes, there’s about 7.1 billion people who are inadvertently, but consistently, poisoning the patient.. No, I’m sorry they don’t seem to want to stop doing what they’re doing… Why not? … Well, its a mater of perception!”

    Before reading this report consider this. Hansen et al. include the scorcher of a year in 2011 (think Texas and Oklahoma drought), but do not include the record-setting 2012 mega-scorcher.

    Related Links:

    + NASA What on Earth blog: The New Climate Dice


    Reference
    Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, and R. Ruedy, 2012a: Perception of climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., doi:10.1073/pnas.1205276109. Early draft posted as “Public perception of climate change and the new climate dice”, arXiv.org:1204.1286.

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