The Mystery Of Titan's Missing Clouds

Imaging of Saturn's Moon Titan's northern latitudes from the Cassini spacecraft. Interestingly one camera (VIMS) shows clouds (bottom, yellowish area) which the other instrument (ISS camera) misses.

Space scientist Elizabeth Turtle, based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, Maryland, is currently puzzling over the matter of Titan's clouds - which appear to be "absent without official leave".   All serious models of Saturn's moon indicate storm clouds ought to have appeared by now but evidently have not.

First, a bit of review: Titan intrigues space and planetary scientists on Earth because it is the only other body (apart from Earth) in the solar system featuring an Earth-like liquid cycle i.e. between rain and stable liquid surface features. On Earth it's called a "water cycle" but on Titan it's a methane cycle.   This is given Titan's average high temperature hovers around 94 Kelvin (for comparison, the freezing point of water is 273 K)

Methane condenses high in Titan's sky as clouds then rains onto its icy surface as a liquid. It then erodes the surface ice as it runs into lakes and rivers then evaporates once more into the atmosphere,.   Like Earth, Titan features an axial tilt as it revolves around its parent world and hence displays "seasons" which affect its atmosphere in a similar way to how Earth's axial tilt affects its own seasons.

In like manner, during Titan's summer one pole is always sunlit  and one pole is always dark. Warm temperatures on the more sunlit hemisphere give rise to convective storm cells , just as summer storms form on Earth.    Just as Earth in the above diagram was in the midst of its northern winter Titan was in the middle of its January in 2004 when Cassini arrived at Saturn.   Not surprisingly, the Cassini team observed lots of southern hemisphere summer storms.

Given Titan's year last almost 30 Earth years Titan's seasons have shifted over the last few Earth years and so we are seeing the moon entering its "June", according to Turtle. Since this shift began APL scientists have been waiting for the same summer storms to now form in the northern hemisphere.

Were they looking too early? Who knows? But as of mid-February on Earth no storms or clouds had yet been observed in Titan images. But wait! Turtle's colleague Jason Barnes - who works with Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) reported observing the clouds.

Turtle questioned her colleague, 'What clouds?' -  Whereupon she checked all her images and found no evidence at all of clouds.  She then viewed imaged via the VIMS data and saw a swath of smudgy clouds obscuring the exact features visible in the ISS (Imaging Science Subsystem)  instrument.  The latter detects electromagnetic wavelengths in the near infrared, e.g. between 980 nm and 2 micrometers.

On the other hand, the VIMS sees further into the infrared, e.g. to wavelengths that extend to 5 micrometers.  So, it appears the spectral band accessed - by the particular instrument - determines whether one observes Titan's clouds or not.  Turtle l evinced surprise, asking "they're only showing up in some wavelengths and not others?"  But why not? In solar physics this observational divergence is common and one sees different features depending on what wavelength is used. So it shouldn't be totally surprising.

Turtle presented her "puzzle" at the fall meeting of  the American Geophysical Union and those interested can read more here:

http://bit.ly/FM2016Titan

AGU Needs To Sever Ties With ExxonMobil's "Blood money"

When I joined the American Geophysical Union more than 30 years ago, I did so to be part of a professional organization of scientists at the forefront of research from space physics to climate change.  Indeed, from the time the AGU position on climate change first came out, followed by a mild revision, e.g.


http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf


It has been encouraging to see at least one major scientific organization out in the open stating clearly the extent to which climate change-global warming is real and a threat to all of us on this planet.

Therefore, it was somewhat shocking to read in a recent issue of Eos: Earth & Space Science News (December, page 8, 'AGU Should Sever Ties With ExxonMobil') that the research organization to which I belong has actually been taking money from the most arrogant and deceptive climate change deniers for the past 15 years.  This according to the three authors of the article: Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, and Kerry A. Emmanuel.

As the authors note:

"For decades, ExxonMobil has engaged in a campaign of disinformation: funding individuals and organizations committed to portraying climate change as highly uncertain, if not a hoax; questioning the motives of climate scientists; and targeting researchers for personal attacks aimed at discrediting their findings.

ExxonMobil executives have repeatedly suggested in speeches, in interviews, and in “advertorials” that climate science was too unreliable to be trusted as a basis for policy making. Flying in the face of peer-reviewed economic studies, they have also insisted that the costs of mitigating climate change would be greater than the benefits.

Accepting ExxonMobil money violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation. Given these facts, it baffles us that the American Geophysical Union (AGU) continues to accept money from ExxonMobil. The more than half a million dollars of ExxonMobil money that AGU has accepted over the past 15 years violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation.

Last month, AGU reaffirmed its perplexing stance. On 23 September, its Board of Directors chose not to sever ties to ExxonMobil funding, despite receiving a detailed report from AGU members that demonstrates that ExxonMobil is still in the business of disinformation."


These opening sentences left me with mouth agape and in near disbelief. How on earth could an organization to which I'd committed more than 3 decades of time, energy (and money!)  have made such an awful, near sighted decision? I mean, why accept "blood oil money" from a bunch dedicated to denying what your own position statement displays?  Have even the most venerable professional scientific organizations been perverted by "Trumpdom"? Well, of course, that can't be a factor given it's been going on for 15 years. This elicits the question of whether the money given was that important to AGU carrying out its mission.

I doubt it, given that a half million bucks over 15 years is, let's be clear, essentially "chump change" compared to the tens of millions collected in regular professional fees, membership fees. I mean, we're talking about  $33,300 a year. Is that really all it takes for a scientific organization to sell its principles, its very "soul"?   

These questions are even more to the point given, as the authors point out (ibid.):

"ExxonMobil’s systematic attacks on climate science are well documented. They have been detailed by our fellow scientists, as well as us—indeed, we ourselves have been targets of ExxonMobil’s repeated attacks. ExxonMobil’s assault on climate science has been documented in the scholarly research of historians and sociologists who have taken up the issue of attacks on science as a question of academic scholarship. The attacks have also been heavily explored by journalists, science advocacy organizations, and filmmakers.

What’s more, ExxonMobil’s attacks on climate science are not a thing of the past. A report by AGU members sent to AGU’s Board on 25 March 2016, ahead of their 6–7 April Board meeting, documented an exhaustive body of evidence supporting the fact that ExxonMobil “continues to generate its own misinformative comments, fund groups that promote climate science misinformation, and financially support more than 100 climate-denying members of Congress.”

Moreover, “despite stating publicly in 2008 that it would no longer support climate science misinformation, ExxonMobil has continued to make public statements disparaging the validity of climate science and to financially support others who do the same.”"

The most trenchant point of all is perhaps:


"The fact that AGU accepts this money is a clear violation of AGU’s Organizational Support Policy. The policy states, “AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

Adding:

"It is precisely because ExxonMobil so clearly fails to meet the standard of this policy that more than 100 leading AGU members, including the three of us, were signatories to an open letter last February urging AGU to sever its ties with the company. The letter noted that “AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action. But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU’s institutional social license to help legitimize the company’s climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members.”

AGU must understand that this is not merely a matter of cosmetics or optics. The fact that money - in any amount - is being accepted from ExxonMobil, actually undermines credibility in AGU's position statement and its commitment to serious climate science.

At the same time this schizoid behavior may need a broader explanation. As Naomi Klein has noted ('This Changes Everything') while insurance and re-insurance companies are at the forefront of concern over climate change, i.e. Ms. Klein quotes  (p. 49)one Swiss re-insurer (Swiss Re Americas):

"What keeps me up at night is climate change."

Many still contribute "substantial sums of money" to climate denier think tanks like the Heartland Institute. Ms. Klein offers no convincing reason for such contradictory behavior, but it could well be explained by a divergence between individuals in a company and the opinion of the whole Board of Directors.  In any case, as climate change disasters ramp up this split will have to end, given insurers will be bleeding more and more money.

In any case, one hopes AGU will soon see the gross error of its ways and send these ExxonMobil spinners and their money packing.

See also:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

"Re-Engineering the Planet to Limit Effects of Global Warming" - Not A Good Idea!

The report that on Tuesday government -backed scientists called for research and testing of "last ditch climate interventions" - by blocking sunlight or capturing and burying CO2-   ought to get every sane and sober person's attention.  To wit, four members of the National Academy of Sciences team just unveiled lengthy reports on such methods to "deliberately re-engineer the climate in response to global warming."

According to lead member of the team, Waleed Abdalati:

"We need to do this so that in the future, if we're in a situation that requires drastic action, we can make good decisions with appropriate information."

Alas, Waleed doesn't grasp the time for drastic action has passed- which would have been proactive, not reactive, i.e. cutting carbon consumption by 50 percent or more. That should have been done when the position statement - confirming humans' outsized influence- was first issued by the American Geophysical Union in 2008, i.e.:

"The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."

So what Abdalati and his extended team of 16 scientists (including  CIA -affiliated) now propose, is tantamount to closing the barn door after all the cows have left.   One of the schemes, believe it or not, is trying to inject particles into clouds to increase the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere - so significant solar radiation is reflected back into space instead of being absorbed.

But one wonders whether these would-be planet saving stalwarts have factored in that a specific type of cloud has to be generated, not just any old cloud! For example, wispy high flying cirrus are semi-transparent to incoming sunlight but block infrared radiation emitted by the Earth, thus CONTRIBUTING to the Greenhouse Effect. Meanwhile, stratus clouds are gray, dense and low flying and have a net COOLING effect since their albedo is relatively high. So how will they ensure they generate the second type and not the first?  Also, given an average of 3.5 billion cubic meters of cloud will be needed to  even minimally offset the inputs of CO2 - just from the oceans-  where will they get the numbers of planes or whatever (boats?)  to do the seeding?

Let's also remind ourselves that this Rube Goldberg solution isn't new and indeed was first proposed (with a number of other "solutions") by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in their book entitled "Super-Freakanomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes'.   Their daft solutions in terms of planet re-engineering undoubtedly derived from their comparison of human-caused global warming to the  late 19th-early,  20th century eco-problem of an over-abundance of horse shit (piling up on city roads everywhere) because, of course, the horse was the common mode of human transport - and well, the critters dumped at will.

Of course, the comparison is idiotic since the magnitude of global warming is orders of magnitude greater than excess horsie manure problem of our great gradnfathers. But it was this type of simplistic thinking which led directly to the authors' simplistic solutions which are little different from the ones being proposed by this illustrious NAS bunch now.  Also totally absent from the  two economists' suspect radar (as it is now from the NAS team's radar) is the role of methane, now being outgassed from permafrost - as well as from wetlands, rice paddies and lakes. (See: Eos, Vol. 90, No. 5, 3 February, 2009, 'Global Methane Emissions from Wetlands, Rice Paddies and Lakes'). The article noted the current concentration then of atmospheric methane was ~ 1774 ± 1.8 ppb (parts per billion) and  accounted for 18% of all greenhouse gases. This is extremely unsettling, given that methane has a forcing component of 0.5 to 0.7 W/m^2 compared to CO2's value of 1.3 to 1.5 W/m^2 .

One of the duo's proposals was to use fiberglass boats equipped with cloud-making machines over the oceans, and seed the clouds, No thought - as I noted above - how they'd ensure they seeded the right clouds, or where they'd muster the 1.5 million odd boats to even have a remote chance. Oh- and how they'd ensure all those boats seeded the right clouds simultaneously.

Another hare-brained plan entailed sucking cold water from the depth of the sea to the surface. This fails because they have no remote idea how to locate such cold water, which emergence depends upon a downwelling wave (so-called because it lowers the thermocline, or temperature gradient). By example, typical downwellings during an El Nino prevent deeper cold water from mixing with warmer water near the surface. 

Perhaps their ultimate solution is based on the Mount Pinatubo volcano that erupted in the Philippines in 1992. The volcano sent so much SO2 (sulphur dioxide) into the atmosphere that it resulted in cooler global air temperatures (by about 1.0 F) for about three years. So why not shoot enormous quantities (about four quadrillion tonnes a month) of sulphur dixoide into the atmosphere using an eighteen mile long hose?

First, the hose would have to be - in order for effect comparable to Pinatubo- about a half mile wide. Such a hose even if made of thinnest mylar with maximum ram pressure of the flowing gas -would not remain stable against gravity. Indeed, one can do calculations showing that by the time the mass of SO2 pumped attained a height of 2 miles the "hose" will collapse.

Even if the mechanical problems could be met, it would still be a god-awful idea. For one thing, SO2 in the presence of the catalyst NO2 forms sulphuric acid, H2 SO4, and this can then generate acid rain. Do we really want ten septillion tonnes of acid rain descending on what remaining agriculture growth areas, farms remain in a greenhouse world? Not to mention raining on humans, with concentrations of pH in the range of 2-3? Ever had H2SO4 spill onto your skin in a lab?

Beyond that, the amount of SO2 needed at the given altitude for the desired effect can further erode the ozone layer. Beyond a certain threshold, this erosion of protective ozone leads to much higher influx of ultraviolet radiation - more skin cancers, more blindness, etc.

Then there is this: their idiotic SO2 pumping solution would only work IF fossil fuel production at the onset of pumping made no further increases, leading to further CO2 concentration. But this would require really draconian solutions, such as stopping all births (since human population is the base producer of greenhouse gas) and all industrial activity. 

Beyond all this, most silly solutions - whether from the econ duo or the NAS - involve reflecting sunlight, which only masks the real cause of climate change: the continuous input of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere. Again, while the NAS team offers a "solution" or two to deal with CO2 ("stripping CO2 from the air and pumping it deep into water and gas wells") they don't say HOW nor can they assure us there won't be massive collateral damage effects, say like earthquakes - which we now know are associated with pumping fracked fluids deep underground. Ask Oklahoma!   Apart from that they offer no solutions at all of controlling methane input.

So pardon me if I side more with the critics based at one brain trust - Erosion Technology Concentration- which argues that these interventions provide an "escape hatch" to the fossil fuel industry - which would be quite happy to send this planet into oblivion by excavating every last erg of oil - in whatever form.  Their only concern is profits, not people. 

Marcia McNutt, former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said (quoted in the Denver Post piece referencing the the plans):

"These (proposed) technological interventions should be a wake up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions."

She added that - if not - we may "have to deploy some kind of carbon dioxide removal".  Good luck on that! Because even if you succeed with CO2 there's still that methane to ponder, and if we hit the runaway greenhouse marker - which may be within 25 years or less- all bets will be off. 

A Scary Fact: Earth On Track For The Hottest Year On Record

Receding glacier seen in Switzerland on our trip there in September.

Perhaps the scariest story reported so far this year, is that Earth is on track for 2014 to break the record for the hottest year ever recorded. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration reported on Monday, Oct. 20, that the previous month averaged 60.3 F - the hottest September in 135 years of record keeping. More sobering yet, May, June and August also set records.

Meanwhile, the first nine months of 2014 have registered a global average temperature of 58.72 F- tying it with 1998 for the warmest first nine months on record, according to NOAA's Climate Data Center.  According to NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden, quoted in the Denver Post (Oct. 21, p. 14A, 'Earth Headed for Hottest Year Yet'):

"It's pretty likely 2014 will break the record for the hottest year."

This may well come as a major surprise to those backward folks still spreading the misbegotten trope that warming has "halted since 1998". I refer to those like a character named Theo Vermaelen, who recently wrote in a letter to The Financial Times (Sept. 12, p. 10), commenting on a graph in an earlier (Sept. 10) article by Pilita Clark :

"It would have been enlightening to also plot a graph of average temperatures since 1984 so that all can see that since 1998 there has been no meaningful global warming.".

Actually, Theo, you're just not reading the graphs correctly, as I also advised columnist George Will in a previous post, e.g.:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html

As noted therein, the error made by Will (and likely Mr. Vermaelen as well) is a serious misreading of the graphs published in a Nature paper back in 2008 by Noel Keenlyside et al. The plausible misreading was rendered more probable by the authors'  tentative claim for "monotonic global cooling" since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and become embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation.

The problem? Overlooking that for the key graph  each data point really represented a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represented the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003, or in Will's case, "16 years of no warming"  from 1998.

In addition, the mystery could have resolved itself had Will - and his equally unread mate, Vermaelen- spotted the red line in the graphic of the Nature publication and beheld that it was the actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. They then could have asked themselves: "Why does the red line stop in 1998 and not 2007?"  Again, it’s a running 10-year mean, and the authors use data from a Hadley paper that ends around 2003, In effect, they can't do a ten-year centered mean after 1998.

Lazy deniers like Will and Vermaelen, however, have parlayed their own perceptual deficiency and this simple statistical peculiarity of the data into believing that global warming factually STOPPED in 1998! But the stunning fact is the evidence all around belies this canard!   Hell, one only needs to remove the blinkers and behold the scores of receding, melting glaciers, images and videos not long ago made available as in this  PBS program, see:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899

Not to mention the scenes we saw in Switzerland, including of the once proud Eiger gletscher. Can these knuckleheads actually deny what they're seeing? How do they thing the recession of those glaciers occurred since 1998? Fairy dust?? Sprinkled from invisible sprites?

Climate scientist Blunden, in response to these dimwits who insist the world has not warmed in 18 years has this rejoinder:

"Well no one has told the planet that!"

She added (ibid.) that NOAA records show no pause in warming, period. But of course, this information issues from scientific sources not those from 'Fox n' Friends'!  Yes, 1998 broke a record for hottest year, but so also has 2005 and 2010, and likely 2014 as well.

If any excuse might be made for the likes of Will and Vermaelen it's that they don't regular read Nature so might have missed seeing the clarification letter Dr. Noel Keenlyside, subsequently provided to the publication: As he explained, they  were predicting no increase in average temperature of the "next decade" (2005 to 2015- relative to their data timeline) over the "previous decade", which, for them, is 2000 to 2010! And that is, in fact, precisely what their figures show -- that the 10-year mean global temperature centered around 2010 is the roughly the same as the mean global temperature centered around 2005. And both years are relatively HOT.

I guess the moral of the story is that people who pen newspaper columns like Will, or write letters to editors like Vermaelen, ought to first ensure they aren't adding to the already large cache of agnotology - for example as present here:












As we know, and I've stated before,agnotology, (derived from the Greek 'agnosis') is  the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).

For those who want the real lowdown, without the bull crap, you can read the American Geophysical Union policy position statement on global warming here:

http://news.agu.org/press-release/american-geophysical-union-releases-revised-position-statement-on-climate-change/

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/59320/green-world-rising-a-call-to-save-the-earth-from-climate-change