PrintApril 25, 2008
NASA measures global temperatures
NPR has an interesting article on global warming... or cooling? The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat. James Hansen and Al Gore must be so disappointed. NASA is spending around 20 million dollars a year to deploy and monitor 3000 robot buoys around the worlds oceans and the data coming in doesn't support their theory on global warming, in fact it turns out the world has cooled slightly in the last five years.
It's surprising the mainstream media hasn't picked up on this, you would think the fact that the earth is cooling would be front page news.
Wondering what we get for 20 mil per year? Here is a brief description from the Argo home page.
Argo is a global array of 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats that measures the temperature and salinity of the upper 2000 m of the ocean. This allows, for the first time, continuous monitoring of the temperature, salinity, and velocity of the upper ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection.NPR has the money quote from Josh Willis at NASA: (emphasis added)
Argo deployments began in 2000 and by November 2007 the array is 100% complete. Today's tally of floats is shown in the figure above.While the Argo array is currently complete at 3000 floats, to be maintained at that level, national commitments need to provide about 800 floats per year (which has occurred for the past three years).
Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.It might just be worth 20 million if it helps to calm down global warming hysteria. One good feature of the Argo system is that it is virtually tamper proof, unlike the land based system where temperature readings can be artificially inflated due to the urban heat island effect and bad placement of the monitoring stations. (ie: next to AC units) as has been reported.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. "There has been a very slight cooling..."
Also a recent article from the BBC states that global temperatures have not risen since 1998. That's 10 years with no increase and a slight cooling in the last five, all the while CO2 levels are rising every year. Haven't we been told that more CO2 = higher temperatures? It appears that the exact opposite is happening.
