One of the issues that have recently come up in conversation is that the Satellite data has been wrong for essentially 19-years is showing a pause in global warming… even though mankind has produced almost two-thirds of the CO2 since the Industrial revolution in that same time. U.S. News and World Report puts it thus:
This “orbital drift” is based on a paper by Carl A. Mears and Frank J. Wentz, which was first submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research, and had the paper rejected. They then “revamped” the paper, and turned it into the Journal of Climate. Keep in mind that there are only two groups working on this stuff… it is a highly specialized field, and Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy were and are key to understanding this data set and any changes to it (see appendix). Anthony Watts asked about the paper and their review of it:
As it turns out ~ there is something afoot. Three excellent posts…
- The ‘Karlization’ of global temperature continues – this time RSS makes a massive upwards adjustment
- Comments on New RSS v4 Pause-Busting Global Temperature Dataset
- Comment on New Satellite-Observed Temperature Dataset
JUDITH CURRY notes that the revised paper was not peer reviewed by these two juggernauts in the satellite “maintenance” — also noting that really we (myself included) are prematurely discussing this issue:
But still worth noting, EVEN IF you include the new data… we see modeling waaay overblown:
Without the new — I would say, messaged data from one satellite — we see a great comparison lining up of many tracks of reliable temps:
The models are 100% wrong. 100%
APPENDIX
…For their achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991 and a Special Award by the American Meteorological Society in 1996 “for developing a global, precise record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.” In January 2002 Christy was inducted as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
The data is published monthly, available for all to review. The satellite measurements have been a lightning rod for those who advocate that human emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), are causing significant global warming. There have been three relatively minor errors in the calculations that, when determined, were promptly corrected. Which is how science should work. The corrections involved orbital decay, orbital drift, and the cooling of the stratosphere. The measurement of temperatures, from the surface to roughly 50,000 feet (15 km) altitude, includes the layer for the “Hot Spot” and avoids the cooling stratosphere.
Calculations are now made by three separate groups, UAH, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and a group with the University of Washington. In addition, Christy uses four separate sets of radiosonde data from weather balloons to verify his work. The correspondence among these datasets is very close.
Also, Christy served as a contributor or lead author (2001) to the first four reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As state climatologist, Christy stated that, according to global climate models, the Paris Agreement to cut CO2 emissions will have an impact on temperatures so small that it cannot be measured. Further, he stated that based on research, if surface temperatures are used to estimate the greenhouse effect, daytime highs better serve the purpose than nighttime temperatures or averages. Daytimes highs are less influenced by changes in land use such as urbanization
[….]
John Christy exemplifies the perseverance, dedication to empirical science, and humanity befitting the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award.