Written by Lester Haines
Svalbard archipelago poses for Sentinel-1B
Europe’s Sentinel-1B Earth-watching satellite has delivered its first image, a tad over two days aftersoaring aloft from Kourou, French Guiana, and a mere two hours after its Synthetic Aperture Radarwas fired up.
Norway’s Svalbard archipelago – including the Austfonna glacier – was the satellite’s inaugural snap (full version here):
Written by P Gosselin
Paul Donan of the excellent weather science site Vencore Weather here brings us up to date on the latest on one of the most powerful natural cycles driving our North Atlantic climate: North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) cycles.
Here I’ll sum up the main points. Of course do read the entire post at Vencore for all the details.
In a nutshell the sites writes that the North Atlantic “is now showing signs of a possible long-term shift back to colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures (SST) and this could have serious implications on US climate and sea ice areal extent in the Northern Hemisphere”.
Written by Anthony Bright-Paul
Now here’s a problem all you Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warmers can help me with, especially as I notice that at least one of you seems to know some Physics. How does the atmosphere get warm?
We are all agreed that 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere is composed of Nitrogen and Oxygen, which leaves just 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} for the ‘Greenhouse Gases’, which includes Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide at just 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} (or 400 parts per million, the human portion being just at most 0.000012{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}). 
Now the infrared radiation from the Sun encounters the mass of the Earth and heat is produced on the sands, rocks, oceans and lakes. So that is the picture. But the question is how does the air get hot?
The thing is – pardon my unlettered language – the thing is that Nitrogen and Oxygen are transparent to infrared radiation, near infrared and far infrared, that is oncoming and outgoing radiation. Of course, you guys have taught me that the ‘Greenhouse gases’ and in particular Carbon Dioxide is opaque to radiation, absorbs and emits it; -that is it emits radiation and thereby cools.
Written by steven goddard
NOAA 850-300 mb radiosonde data shows about 0.2C net troposphere warming from 1958 to 2010, but after NOAA gets done tampering the net warming is about 0.8C.
They accomplish this by a spectacular hockey stick of data tampering.
Read more at stevengoddard.wordpress.com
Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser
Drones are in, just ask an armed forces general or other delivery specialist.
Need a 50-ton tank delivered in the middle of the tundra? No problem. Or need a few containers of Christmas ribbons at the North Pole for Santa and his Elves? No problem either.
If you aware of the up and coming things, the latest development should not surprise you: Super-Drones (SDs, my terminology), also known as large blimps or, decades ago, as “Zeppelins.”
Written by Lester Haines
Earlier this week, France’s snappily-named “Micro-Satellite à traînée Compensée pour l’Observation du Principe d’Equivalence”, aka Microscope, rode a Soyuz lifter to orbit on a mission to ” test the equivalence principle, which postulates the equality between gravitational mass and inertial mass”.
Legend has it that in around 1600, Galileo dropped a couple of spheres with different masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to challenge Aristotle’s insistence that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones.
Whether or not that experiment ever actually took place, Galileo’s suspicion was that all objects (in the same gravitational field) should fall at the same speed, irrespective of their mass, and he was eventually able to conclude that in a vacuum this would indeed be indeed be the case.
Written by JAMES DELINGPOLE
You’ve read about how NOAA overestimated US warming by 50 percent.
Now it’s NSIDC’s turn to be caught red-handed fiddling the data and cooking the books.
NSIDC – National Snow and Ice Data Center – is the US government agency which provides the official statistics on such matters as sea ice coverage in the Arctic.
Naturally its research is of paramount importance to the climate alarmists’ narrative that man-made global warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt. At least it was until those ice caps refused to play ball…
Written by SEAN MARTIN
Eruptions at Snake River Plain in Idaho were “significantly larger” than geologists had previously thought.
Scientists from the University of Leicester discovered there were a staggering 12 massive eruptions over the course of four million years, beginning 12 million years ago.
The massive eruptions helped to form the 100 kilometre-wide Snake River Basin, with one of the most powerful eruptions occurring 8.1 million years ago. The eruption’s volume exceeded 1,900 km3 and created a 1.3km thick caldera.
Written by Darren Pauli
The Hubble telescope has spotted an ice moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake.
Makemake (pronounced mar-kee mar-kee) is 1400 kilometres in diameter and is the second brightest dwarf planet behind Pluto. It resides in the Kuiper Belt and is one of five dwarf planets to be recognised by the International Astronomical Union. It’s newly-found moon, dubbed MK 2, is some 1300 times fainter than its parent and is a mere 160 kilometres in diameter.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 found MK 2 in April last year thanks in part to its ability to detect faint objects near bright objects. MK2 is the first moon found at Makemake.
Written by Kenneth Richard
Guest author Kenneth Richard examines the impacts of past volcanoes on climate. The findings will surely be controversial.
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By Kenneth Richard
Long-term (decadal and even centennial-scale) volcanic influence on climate has recently gained more and more attention in the scientific literature. Previously thought to influence surface temperatures for only a few years at a time, there is now a growing body of evidence suggesting volcanic aerosols may significantly affect both short and long-term climate changes by blocking solar radiation from heating the oceans’ surface waters.
When specifying the factors contributing to decadal and centennial-scale temperature changes, solar activity and greenhouse gases are usually thought to top the list. And since 93{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the heat from global warming ends up in the oceans (IPCC, 2013), the focus necessarily should be on what mechanisms contribute most to variations in ocean heat content (OHC) and sea surface temperatures (SST).
Back in 2013, Rosenthal et al. published a paper in Science on millennial-scale ocean heat content variations (Pacific). As the graph (Fig. 4B from the paper) below illustrates, the authors document a dramatic cooling of the 0-700 m layer between the Medieval Warm Period (~1000 CE) and Little Ice Age (1600-1800 CE). While OHC has risen since the depths of the Little Ice Age, modern ocean temperatures are still significantly cooler (-0.65°C) than what they were just 1,000 years ago, or during the Medieval Warm Period.
Written by Anthony Bright-Paul
Here are some questions for the man-made or Anthropogenic Global Warmers. Since I have taken up the cudgels on various Facebook pages I am screamed at by numerous sycophants who declare that I am a simpleton and totally ignorant. I confess! But here are some questions for the man-made Global Warmers?
Do you deny that the Sun’s radiation causes the surfaces of the Earth to warm?
Do you deny that we are travelling round the Sun at over 66,000 miles per hour in an ellipse?
Do you deny that the Sun is one million three hundred thousand times as big as Planet Earth by volume?
Do you deny that the Sun on it corona is approximately 6,500C?
Do you deny that the Sun is between 91 to 95 million miles away?
Do you deny that the whole Solar system is within an arm of the Milky Way?
Written by P Gosselin
Geologist Dr. Sebastian Luning and chemist Prof. Fritz Vahrenohlt have recently looked at the so-called climate “Tipping Points” hypothesis, one that is heavily promoted by the alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The idea of the climate irreversibly tipping into something completely different and potentially hostile once certain thresholds are reached is one often put forth by PIK head Prof. Hans-Joschim Schellnhuber, architect of the proposed “Great Transformation of Society“.
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Good bye “Tipping Points”?
By Sebastian Luning and Fritz vahrenholt
(Translated/edited by P Gosselin)
Do you recall the horror reports of imminent climate tipping points? They are often used to paint doomsday scenarios:
Written by CHERYL CHUMLEY
Scientists have captured the moment a human sperm meets an egg on film, and found the union is a “fireworks” show that produces a blast of white light.
The phenomenon was discovered about five years ago in a mouse, but it’s never before been seen in humans.
Specifically, scientists noted that at the exact moment of conception, an explosion of fiery sparks is emitted. And what’s more, researchers found different sizes of light and said the size can actually reveal the quality of the egg that’s being fertilized, the Telegraph reported.
In short, researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago said the brighter the fireworks, the healthier the egg. And the practical benefit of that finding is that it enables medical officials to identify the best fertilized eggs for in-vitro fertilization procedures.
Scientists attribute the flash to a trigger release of calcium that occurs when the sperm enters the egg, and that deposit causes an expulsion of zinc. As the zinc pours forth, it carries with it small molecules that give off a fluorescent light.
Written by epictimes.com
Thirty years ago the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disaster is still being tallied, but experts believe that thousands of people died and as many as 70,000 suffered severe poisoning. In addition, an area of land the size of Rhode Island may not be fit for human habitation for as much as 150 years, which just might make it a perfect place for a thriving wildlife refuge.
New photographic data show the 1,600 square-mile Chernobyl Evacuation Zone is now “basically an incredibly large sanctuary” for animals large and small, according to University of Georgia biologist Jim Beasley.
Written by Trudy E. Bell & Dr. Tony Phillips
May 6, 2008: At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England’s foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.
Above: Sunspots sketched by Richard Carrington on Sept. 1, 1859.
On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and “being somewhat flurried by the surprise,” Carrington later wrote, “I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled.” He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
Written by Yu Tao and Jan-Peter Muller, UCL
The surface of Mars — including the location of Beagle-2 — has been shown in unprecedented detail by UCL scientists using a revolutionary image stacking and matching technique.
Exciting pictures of the Beagle-2 lander, the ancient lakebeds discovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, NASA’s MER-A rover tracks and Home Plate’s rocks have been released by the UCL researchers who stacked and matched images taken from orbit, to reveal objects at a resolution up to five times greater than previously achieved.
A paper describing the technique, called Super-Resolution Restoration (SRR), was published in Planetary and Space Science in February but has only recently been used to focus on specific objects on Mars. The technique could be used to search for other artefacts from past failed landings as well as identify safe landing locations for future rover missions. It will also allow scientists to explore vastly more terrain than is possible with a single rover.
Co-author Professor Jan-Peter Muller from the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said: “We now have the equivalent of drone-eye vision anywhere on the surface of Mars where there are enough clear repeat pictures. It allows us to see objects in much sharper focus from orbit than ever before and the picture quality is comparable to that obtained from landers.
“As more pictures are collected, we will see increasing evidence of the kind we have only seen from the three successful rover missions to date. This will be a game-changer and the start of a new era in planetary exploration.”
Even with the largest telescopes that can be launched into orbit, the level of detail that can be seen on the surface of planets is limited. This is due to constraints on mass, mainly telescope optics, the communication bandwidth needed to deliver higher resolution images to Earth and the interference from planetary atmospheres. For cameras orbiting Earth and Mars, the resolution limit today is around 25cm (or about 10 inches).
By stacking and matching pictures of the same area taken from different angles, Super-Resolution Restoration (SRR) allows objects as small as 5cm (about 2 inches) to be seen from the same 25cm telescope. For Mars, where the surface usually takes decades to millions of years to change, these images can be captured over a period of ten years and still achieve a high resolution. For Earth, the atmosphere is much more turbulent so images for each stack have to be obtained in a matter of seconds.
The UCL team applied SRR to stacks of between four and eight 25cm images of the Martian surface taken using the NASA HiRISE camera to achieve the 5cm target resolution. These included some of the latest HiRISE images of the Beagle-2 landing area that were kindly provided by Professor John Bridges from the University of Leicester.
“Using novel machine vision methods, information from lower resolution images can be extracted to estimate the best possible true scene. This technique has huge potential to improve our knowledge of a planet’s surface from multiple remotely sensed images. In the future, we will be able to recreate rover-scale images anywhere on the surface of Mars and other planets from repeat image stacks” said Mr Yu Tao, Research Associate at UCL and lead author of the paper.
The team’s ‘super-resolution’ zoomed-in image of the Beagle-2 location proposed by Professor Mark Sims and colleagues at the University of Leicester provides strong supporting evidence that this is the site of the lander. The scientists plan on exploring other areas of Mars using the technique to see what else they find.
Sources
Read more at sciencedaily.com
