Earthcare Cloud Mission Launches To Resolve Climate Unknowns (bbc.com) 25
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A sophisticated joint European-Japanese satellite has launched to measure how clouds influence the climate. Some low-level clouds are known to cool the planet, others at high altitude will act as a blanket. The Earthcare mission will use a laser and a radar to probe the atmosphere to see precisely where the balance lies. It's one of the great uncertainties in the computer models used to forecast how the climate will respond to increasing levels of greenhouse gases. "Many of our models suggest cloud cover will go down in the future and that means that clouds will reflect less sunlight back to space, more will be absorbed at the surface and that will act as an amplifier to the warming we would get from carbon dioxide," Dr Robin Hogan, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, told BBC News.
The 2.3-tonne satellite was sent up from California on a SpaceX rocket. The project is led by the European Space Agency (ESA), which has described it as the organization's most complex Earth observation venture to date. Certainly, the technical challenge in getting the instruments to work as intended has been immense. It's taken fully 20 years to go from mission approval to launch. Earthcare will circle the Earth at a height of about 400km (250 miles). It's actually got four instruments in total that will work in unison to get at the information sought by climate scientists.
The simplest is an imager -- a camera that will take pictures of the scene passing below the spacecraft to give context to the measurements made by the other three instruments. Earthcare's European ultraviolet laser will see the thin, high clouds and the tops of clouds lower down. It will also detect the small particles and droplets (aerosols) in the atmosphere that influence the formation and behavior of clouds. The Japanese radar will look into the clouds, to determine how much water they are carrying and how that's precipitating as rain, hail and snow. And a radiometer will sense how much of the energy falling on to Earth from the Sun is being reflected or radiated back into space.
The 2.3-tonne satellite was sent up from California on a SpaceX rocket. The project is led by the European Space Agency (ESA), which has described it as the organization's most complex Earth observation venture to date. Certainly, the technical challenge in getting the instruments to work as intended has been immense. It's taken fully 20 years to go from mission approval to launch. Earthcare will circle the Earth at a height of about 400km (250 miles). It's actually got four instruments in total that will work in unison to get at the information sought by climate scientists.
The simplest is an imager -- a camera that will take pictures of the scene passing below the spacecraft to give context to the measurements made by the other three instruments. Earthcare's European ultraviolet laser will see the thin, high clouds and the tops of clouds lower down. It will also detect the small particles and droplets (aerosols) in the atmosphere that influence the formation and behavior of clouds. The Japanese radar will look into the clouds, to determine how much water they are carrying and how that's precipitating as rain, hail and snow. And a radiometer will sense how much of the energy falling on to Earth from the Sun is being reflected or radiated back into space.
Picture download (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Picture download (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Picture download (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There probably isn't any data available yet. There is normally an initial commissioning phase, first for the the basic satellite platform, then the instruments.
Re: Picture download (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I can understand the interest in getting the data directly from the satellite, but to get usable data (even from pictures) you are likely going to need to apply a whole host of geometric and radiometric corrections. Things are _far_ more complex than for old weather satellite.
Most ESA missions make their data directly available for free via the internet, once it's been processed into a usable form.
Re: (Score:2)
Most weather satellites simply use FAX etc.
Easisly decodable and recievable with a suitable antenna. These ones might use something more complex but again, if you know the freqency and have a suitable satallite antenna you should easily be able to receive it and hopfully will decode it using standard tools.
Re: (Score:3)
Thing is, the FAX images from waether satellites just show cloud coverage and types.
These satellites *might* send such images, but their actual data, the lidar information etc will be sent to the groundstations and processed there.
If you want pics of the earth and clouds, look into recieving FAX signals from satellites, there are plenty to choose from an an SDR is the common way but you could also use the audio ouitput from a scanner.
You'll also need prediction software to predict passes of the satellites o
Re: Picture download (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
No, the main reason you "don't hold any truck with said models" is that you'll latch onto any uncertainty in the model as an excuse to dismiss the entire model.
Basic denialism 101.
Uncertainty and models and predictions [Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the main reason you "don't hold any truck with said models" is that you'll latch onto any uncertainty in the model as an excuse to dismiss the entire model.
Basic denialism 101.
The people that have latched on to CO2 being the primary cause of global warming appear to latch on to any uncertainty that upsets their model.
"The people that have latched on to CO2 being the primary cause of global warming" have done so because the absorption of infrared radiation by trace gasses such as CO2 in the atmosphere is something that been known for well over a century, we now have detailed measurements of this absorption, and we use this information to understand the temperature of all the planets with atmospheres, not just the Earth. They have "latched on to" this as an explanation of global warming because all the other hypotheses to explain the warming have been disproven by data. If, when you say, "latched on to any uncertainty that upsets their model," you mean, the models all have quoted error bars, and they keep improving measurements in order to increase the fidelity of the models and thus reduce the error bars: yes, that's right.
This is in spite of predictions of doom by some date if we don't reduce CO2 emissions, then when the date comes and there's no doomsday they still cling to their models of CO2 emissions dooming us all.
Depends on what you consider "doom". But: no. If you think that ACTUAL SCIENCE has made predictions of doom due to global warming on dates that have come and gone, let me point you to some of the actual science. Here's the 1978 NRC report, 46 years ago, one of the first to make predictions: https://nap.nationalacademies.... [nationalacademies.org]
And here are the IPCC reports, the ones that the deniers all claim are "doomsayers": https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ [www.ipcc.ch]
You can start with the First Assessment report, 1990: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar1... [www.ipcc.ch] , and look at what was predicted 34 years ago. Which predictions here have been "predictions of doom" with a specified date, which has passed and not happened?
(Spoiler: none.)
The rest of your post goes on to talk about nuclear power, but that's a question of what we choose to DO about warming (if we choose to do anything), and is completely unrelated to the accuracy of the science.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
but why tho? most life on earth will be fine - in fact better off - without humans around. on every single metric, the planets better off without us... why arent you pushing for the end of humanity if youre all about "following the science"
You seem to be unable to distinguish between understanding the science, and advocating a course of action.
What the science says is that greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming and thus to climate change, and we see this effect in measured data. Whether the Earth is "in fact better off" is a value judgement, not a question of science.
Which is what I had just stated:
a question of what we choose to DO about warming (if we choose to do anything), is completely unrelated to the accuracy of the science.
Re: (Score:1)
The IPCC has stated that nuclear power is crucial to lowering CO2 emissions so they are not one of the groups that shout how we are doomed if we don't lower CO2 emissions and still doomed if we use the most powerful technology we have to lower CO2 emissions. They are fine with using nuclear power so I have no problem with the IPCC, they understand the relative risks posed between global warming and nuclear power. The people I have a problem with are those that scream how something needs to be done then sc
Re: (Score:2)
Nevertheless, the question whether the science is right is entirely independent from the question of what, if anything, we choose to do about it. And we should not make our decision on whether to believe somebody saying that the science is right by asking them first "which solution do you propose."
Re: (Score:2)
Thus the main reason I dont hold any truck with said models.
This is the way science works, starting with the overall picture, and then progressively filling in finer details.
That's why models have error bars.
We know the overall behavior of clouds, of course: We've been mapping cloud cover from orbit for over 60 years, and, yes, made measurements with multispectral lidar and radar and all that. This mission is filling in details at a finer level. The finer the details, the more you can reduce the error bars.
Re: (Score:1)
Hard observational data [Re:Finally] (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with our climate models is we don't have enough hard, observational data to tell us which of them we can safely ignore. I couldn't be happier with this experiment. Filling in the gaps on the effect of cloud cover is absolutely vital work.
We have terabytes of hard observational data. It's hard to emphasize just how much data you will have to fit if you're going to try to come up with some alternate hypothesis for warming.
https://climate.nasa.gov/nasa_... [nasa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://wmo.int/activities/glo... [wmo.int]
https://wmo.int/topics/earth-o... [wmo.int].
I couldn't be happier with this experiment. Filling in the gaps on the effect of cloud cover is absolutely vital work.
Exactly. Always good to fill in gaps. More data is always apprciated.
Just don't say "we lack hard observational data". We have a lot of hard observational data.
Great (Score:3)