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If you have not worked extensively with this data (either source), you might not know what its limitations are. The temperature data you mention is a composite
by mturmon 11y ago
If you have not worked extensively with this data (either source), you might not know what its limitations are.
The temperature data you mention is a composite from several space-based instruments, that have to be stitched together. Calibration of any space-based measurement is not easy, so your statement "simply measuring the total energy released by a slice of 75% of the atmosphere" is not really that simple at all!
In particular, radiometers (like AMSU, where the UAH numbers come from) are really good when used for band ratios (taking the ratio, in essence, can allow instrument sensitivity to cancel out). And they are at their best for short-term studies where instrument temperature and component drift cannot accumulate. But radiometers are not nearly so good at absolute measurements over long time bases. There is a literature on this, for instance: how AMSU temperature drift affects its measurements.
In general, I'd suggest that your expertise may not be great enough to dismiss one measurement and favor other, very specific, measurements. Remember that the IPCC contributors have literally devoted half their life to studying these problems. It's hard for an educated enthusiast to keep up. (Source: I work with several IPCC contributors, and their expertise is humbling.)
- merpnderp 11y agoThanks for the kind reasonable response, and yes at some point you have to trust the peer review process on the AMSU bias corrections. But with the UAH 6.0 update, the global data is consistently within .2C of the RSS data, which uses completely different sensors, different teams, and to some degree, different methodologies. Independent verification?
- merpnderp 11y agoGiven your experience with the IPCC, what do you think of the new NOAA ERSST.v4 contradiction of the NOAA and UK satellite sea surface records? I know the satellite sea surface records are prone to levels of high inaccuracy, but ERSST.v4 seems to contradict every other record. Besides, the idea of getting usable data from sea lanes, of mixed water, from engine intakes seems.....unlikely.
- mturmon 11y agoI feel like there's a lot of armchair scientists playing this like baseball fans, rabbiting after every press release and paper only in the light of what it might say about their already-preferred answer to a rather narrow question. The professionals are trying to advance our measurement and modeling capability, perform calibration and validation, tighten error bars. It's about more than a graph of temperature vs. time.