Scientists Plot Sea Levels Using GPS Satellites (engadget.com) 62
A team from the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC), University of Michigan and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discovered a new way to accurately measure the sea level. The technique is called GNSS-R, and involves bouncing low-powered signals from GPS satellites off of the ocean's surface and measuring the reflected signal with a GNSS-R receiver. The team used a research satellite launched last year as a GNSS-R receiver, but it will be able to tap a new constellation of receivers that NASA is launching this year as part of CYGNSS. That mission will make accurate measurements of surface winds using GPS satellites, but NOC scientists will be able to use them to measure ocean levels, too, yielding a thirty-fold increase in such data.
Constant measuring (Score:2)
It will turn us into a bunch of hypochondriacs with every little fluctuation
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Of course sea level rise is far more important to me. Since well i am going to live for many centuries and own like a million acres of seaside property
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Re:Constant measuring (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, what will happen if the satellite data disagrees with the terrestrial data?
Then scientists will do what they always do in such situations: try to find out what causes the discrepancy.
The vast majority of times, such a discrepancy is caused by a faulty measuring technique or device. If that's ruled out, then you look more closely at the observations you're comparing to, for signs of error there. And if the discrepancy still persists (i.e., you have strong confidence in both sets of observations, even though they disagree) then you start to look for explanations, including possible modifications to theories, that would fit with the observations.
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NASA Data Manipulation (Score:1)
Graph 1 [archive.org]
Graph 2 [nasa.gov]
You will note Graph 1 is from the internet wayback archives, Graph 2 is the current one from NASA's website. They changed the data and made older temperatures colder and newer ones warmer.
No editorial, just the outright facts.
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The two graphs show a difference of 0.6 degrees from 1880 to today
Not quite. The old graph shows an increase of 0.69 degrees from 1880 to 2000. The new graph shows an increase of 1.11 degrees (determined using tabular data, using two linear trend lines through yearly averages). Most of that difference is in the 1880-1960 years. The difference in the 1960-2000 range, where most of the CO2 related warming is happening, is 0.142 degrees.
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Just looked. There are small differences. I see about .1 degree at each end difference between the 5-year means in the two graphs, well within the error bars. If you have the underlying numbers we could look at the statistical signiificance of this
However, what you need to understand is that there is not a single thermometer somewhere that measures the global temperature. There are thousands, and the same ones have not been used consistently in different ways across 100+ years. They are moved, replaced, rea
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How hard did you look ? http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm... [noaa.gov]
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Then scientists will do what they always do in such situations: try to find out what causes the discrepancy.
And if they find it the denialists will do what they always do: see a conspiracy.
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Same thing as now. The Global warming alarmists will pick the largest number, claim it is "Science" and ignore all other estimates. BTW, the article has no numbers other than "thirtyfold" increase -- which I'm guessing means thirtyfold MORE data, not thirtyfold BETTER data. I looked around the internet a bit. The R in GNSS-R apparently stands for Reflectometry. Couldn't find a figure for accuracy, but my initial impression is that it will be limited by two sets of ionospheric delays. It's not clear t
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It's not clear that's all that much use for sea level rise which needs measurements to a fraction of a mm per year.
If you have a lot of measurements, then you can average them to reduce the noise.
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When your measuring millimeters change against 10 meter waves, the data will always disagree.
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So you're worried that measuring might turn you into a hypochondriac? Well I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that measuring doesn't turn people into a hypochondriacs; it just gives the ones who are already hypochondriacs another thing to worry about. The bad news is that it sounds like the question may be moot in your case.
Interesting Twist on GPS, limited data collection. (Score:3)
Oregon State University ( http://www-po.coas.oregonstate... [oregonstate.edu] ? has been recording ocean s"sea level" and other data with sophisicated instruments since the 1970's.
This is an interesting leverage of GPS technology, but the data is for the most part already being collected in much finer detail with many additional parameters.
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Oregon State University ( http://www-po.coas.oregonstate... [oregonstate.edu] ? has been recording ocean s"sea level" and other data with sophisicated instruments since the 1970's.
Interesting link, but nowhere on that page is there any mention of global measurements of sea level.
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There are plenty of measurements of sea level rise. Trouble is, they are all different. There are hundreds of tidal gauges, some of which have centuries of data (most of them more like 50-100 years). Trouble is that since they are located at/near seashores they not well distributed across the planet. And many are in places where various forces are lifting/depressing the ground at rates comparable to sea level rise. There are also satellite altimeters that measure sea level with radar. They have some p
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...and when the satellites show that the sea level IS rising, are you going to fall back to your tired old refuting the data? or challenging the way it's collected? or the most obvious one will be.. "the data doesn't go back far enough"...
You'll say "natural cycle" NO. MATTER. WHAT.
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It's likely to fall locally in some places while rising globally, so they just have to cherry pick the location.
Re:When the satellites show that... (Score:5, Informative)
When the satellites show that the sea level isn't rising
I doubt that will happen, because we already have evidence that it is rising. [nasa.gov]
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"When the satellites show that the sea level isn't rising, will you global warming supporters finally admit to being wrong? "
No, it just means that the ocean is ABSORBING the increase in level!
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Then you can feel justification, as the water laps up over your ankles.
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
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The answer, of course, is yes and no.
If people thought sea level was rising and it isn't they will admit to being wrong about that.
To convince people that the whole picture of AGW is wrong in broad terms, would need a much wider-ranging set of inconsistent data, and preferably an equally consistent model that fitted all the observations better and either fitted, or revised, known physics, in a sensible way.
what's the over/under bet? (Score:2)
Sad thing is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... when these measurements corroborate the existing (and already very convincing) evidence for sea level rise, the wingnuts will come up with yet another obscure rationalization explaining why they should be discarded or ignored.
Alas, with deniers, it's like playing whack-a-mole: when you point to any specific piece of evidence, then out come the excuses for why that one thing is not relevant. When you point out the totality of evidence, out come the irrelevant details.
Re:Sad thing is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the fact that coastal cities are starting to flood at an increasing rate hasn't been enough to convince them, do you really think satellite data's going to do it?
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
Yes, Wingnuts are happy/sad little things... (Score:2)
... when these measurements corroborate the existing (and already very convincing) evidence for sea level rise, the wingnuts will come up with yet another obscure rationalization explaining why they should be discarded or ignored.
You are referring to either the left or right lobe of a wingnut, or the whole thing? Wingnuts are the cutest little darlings. Unlike most nuts with their grasping-sides that rest quietly within a circular area, wingnuts seem to always be begging for attention. "Hey! Look at me!" they cry, their lobes rising like the arms of a child who wants to be picked up. They crave contact with forefingers and thumbs. There is nothing so sad as a wingnut that has never been adjusted. Every time I catch a glimpse of a w
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Re: Rising sea levels (Score:3)
More data is indeed good, but expect it to simply show more detail over the data we already have. It's highly unlikely that it would indicate anything substantially different at this stage to what we're already seeing, as you seemed to think might happen in another comment.
If it actually did indicate something different, and it didn't turn out to be instrument error or a faulty assumption in how it worked, then we'd not only have to look for similar undetected errors in our many other (much more mature) ins
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That made what happened in Nevada even more entertaining. It explains why the GOP might think there's rampant voter fraud...because they have the receipts to prove it.
https://news.vice.com/article/... [vice.com]
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Nevada was the GOP's show.
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That was my point. I must not have made it clear enough.
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That made what happened in Nevada even more entertaining. It explains why the GOP might think there's rampant voter fraud...because they have the receipts to prove it.
Just like how we knew that Saddam used to have WMDs, and that they were old as shit and basically expired.
Re:Rising sea levels (Score:5, Informative)
Of note, the use of GPS for surveying sea surface height has proposed or experimented with for a number of years (Cardellach, Estel; Martin-Neira, Manuel., April 2010). It might be because they've moved beyond 'proof of concept', but I think to say they discovered it is a bit strong. I've even found papers detailing the experimental use of GPS satellites to determine sea surface heights as far back as 2001 (Martin-Neira, M; Caparrini, M; Font-Rossello, J; Lannelongue, S; Vallmitjana, C S, 2001). The bggest change might be a reduction of errors, going from (30cm errors in 2000 to 5 - 15cm in 2009. If they've managed to further reduce the size of the errors then they're onto something really big. If they've just found a more efficient method of measuring sea surface heights in the open ocean, well that's pretty cool, but I'm not sure it's quite a game breaker.
As far as sea surface rise being a hoax, that's a silly statement, after all the empirical evidence is pretty strong, We have long term gauges that have been operating for centuries in a number of areas, and excepting for regions of crustal rebound, raw sea level rise is consistent with expectations if additional heat was being pumped into and inceasing the depth of the thermocline..
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Because elevation in GPS is so accurate (Score:2)
Everybody knows that the elevation term of GPS solutions is the least precise of the three.