A SHORT HISTORY OF FRACKING

This piece gives a very interesting account of this controversial process. It seems to be a well-balanced piece which does not shy away from the controversial aspects but does not magnify them either. 

AIR POLLUTION FROM TRAFFIC EXHAUST AND EFFECT ON HEALTH

Hat tip to Dennis for the following excellent piece on the effects of air pollution on health and life-expectancy.

Here is the link. The writer, Euan Mearns, has carried out a lot of research of reports and picked out the relevant passages in his extensive look at this subject. What he has uncovered is that there is still a great deal that is not understood and that, as we all know, there is much exaggeration made to create alarm.

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS

People often wonder how the government come up with the scary statistics needed to get behind their policy of reducing gases from car exhausts. Below is an exchange of letters between the head of the UK Statistics authority, Ed Humpherson and his counterpart at DEFRA (UK department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) Ken Roy.

Ed Humpherson to Ken Roy 
06 February 2017

Dear Ken,
The Office for Statistics Regulation was recently contacted about Defra statistics on the number of deaths associated with air pollution in the UK.    

The latest estimates were published in the September 2015 report ‘Valuing impacts on air quality: Updates in valuing changes in emissions of Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) and concentrations of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)’. 

Given the complexities of estimating mortality due to NO2 and PM2.5, it is important that the report presents full details of the calculation methodology, uncertainty around the estimates, and strengths and limitations of the figures. Currently, it is unclear how you arrived at the upper and lower ranges for the combined estimate of mortality (44,750-52,500). Adding this information would aid understanding and interpretation of the figures.  

Whilst we recognise that this report is not a formal statistical output, given the importance of the figures, we consider that it would be helpful to enhance compliance with Principle 4 of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (Sound Methods and Assured Quality).

Ken Roy's reply to Ed Humpherson

Date:   15 March 2017

Dear Ed,

In response to your letter of 6th February re Defra statistics on the implications, in terms of human health, of air pollution.

We recognise and accept the criticism re the completeness of the commentary provided in the Defra report ‘Valuing impacts on air quality: Updates in valuing changes in emissions of Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) and concentrations of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)’.

As you know this is an area of public policy that Defra, along with other partners across government, continue to focus on – and hence we welcome the feedback.  The Committee on Medical Effects of Air Pollution (COMEAP) continue to consider how estimates of health impacts of NO2 can be refined on the basis of a more detailed analysis of the medical literature, and intend to publish updated estimates with a more complete commentary that reflects the uncertainties inherent in quantifying health impacts. 

 I understand that COMEAP is currently planning to publish its advice this summer.  This will enable Defra to update its analysis – and we intend do so as soon as is possible thereafter hence replacing the original report.  

Kind Regards

Ken
Head of Profession for Statistics (Defra group)  Natural England

So what do we learn from this friendly exchange of letters? Answer - nothing at all about how they came up with these statistics. Simply an apology for not providing sufficient details and a vague promise to do better in future. And this is what the government rely on to make very costly policy decisions. No wonder we are all becoming cynics! 

EX ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY SUPPORTS THE OVERTHROW OF CAPITALISM

Shouldn't someone call the police when people start advocating breaking the law to support their preferred political outcome? This article alerts us to a campaign to do just that. Here is a short exert from the Rebellion Extinction website: 

"From the 31 October citizens of this country will commit repeated acts of disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience. There will be mass arrests.

We demand the UK declares a state of emergency, takes action to create a zero carbon economy by 2025, and creates a national assembly of ordinary people to decide what our zero carbon future will look like.

We are willing to make personal sacrifices. We are prepared to be arrested and to go to prison." 

Even if activists stuck to disruptive civil disobedience, this is illegal and  occupies our already over-stretched police, but there are likely to be quite a few who simply enjoy the thrill of law-breaking joining them.

The fact that Dr Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, endorses this by signing a letter in the Guardian is extremely concerning. How extraordinary that he should join with Marxists and anarchists. I hope the police will be watching this group very closely and getting someone to sign up as a "mole". Make no mistake they are calling for the overthrow of the lawful government. 

What these fools don't seem to realise is that even if they succeeded in getting the UK to a "zero carbon" state, which would results in economic meltdown and continual power cuts, this would have no effect on the rest of the world which emits the other 99% of the carbon. Perhaps they should try their action in China.

USA AND GERMANY CROSS SWORDS OVER NORDSTREAM 2 PIPELINE

This piece explains. If a nation supplies large amounts of fuel to another then it exerts a lot of power over it. As long as Germany is dependent on Russian gas it will be influenced by Russia. Obviously if it could get by on renewables it would not need Russian gas and the Nordstream pipeline, but it does and no doubt will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So much for renewables. They can only be a minor part of the mix. The gas, coal and oil are still the main sources of reliable energy and everyone knows it.

UK MP REPORT GOES FOR BROKE ON ELECTRIC VEHICLES

This piece looks at the new report by the UK parliament Committee on Climate Change which recommends moving the year for ending new petrol cars back to 2032, eight years earlier than originally proposed. Surely the government could not be so daft as to accept this, could they?

WHY DO POLITICIANS IGNORE THE CLIMATE ELEPHANT?

The Climate Change Act is like a baby elephant that is lying at the back of a china shop. It has done a small amount of damage so far, but as it grows in size and strength it will eventually cause havoc

Yesterday I had the good fortune to speak with Owen Paterson MP at a constituency event in the New Forest. Owen is a man with very clear views on Brexit and he is using all his political capital to work towards a clean break followed by a free trade agreement with the EU. Yet, when I asked him what we could do about the Climate Change Act (CCA), he seemed hesitant, almost as if I had mentioned a dark secret that should not be discussed. He implied that he could not campaign for it openly at the present as it would reduce his effectiveness in his work on Brexit.

He mentioned being called a climate change denier, as though he had been rather shocked by the experience which probably followed this article. I understand that Brexit is the immediate challenge, but I was a little shocked at his reluctance to restate his position having had the courage to write his article in the first place. How long will it be before the Climate Elephant gets noticed by the public?

The fact is that politicians who express clear opposition to the CCA are rare in any case, but until they continually make the case, this costly piece of self-destruction will go on pushing up the cost of energy, heating, transport and hence everything we buy and do, until the public force the politicians to look again at it.  

ARIZONA IN THE MIDST OF THE BATTLE OVER RENEWABLE ENERGY

This article gives the details of what is happening in the Grand Canyon State where lawsuits are getting thrown around as the political temperature rises. 40 million dollars are being spent on each side of this battle over whether to mandate the level of renewable energy that must be supplied to the state. The people will give their verdict at the ballot in under two weeks time.

UK CLIMATE SLIGHTLY WARMER AND STABLE

This new report gives a thorough look at the UK climate and compares the real facts with the predictions made by the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2012, published by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), It is quite short and well worth reading. Its conclusions are clear and simple:

In short, although the UK is slightly warmer on average than it used to be, there is no evidence that extreme weather events have become more frequent or extreme. There is also nothing in the data to support official temperature or rainfall projections for the rest of the century. In particular, heatwaves have not become more severe, nor droughts. Rainfall data also does not support the contention that floods have become worse. There is certainly no evidence, based on past trends, that either average summer temperatures will increase by 8◦C, winter rainfall increase by 70%, or summer rainfall fall by 60% in the next few decades. There is also nothing to support the prediction that sea levels will rise by 70cm by 2095. Apart from being slightly warmer, the UK’s climate appears to be little different to the past.

CLIMATE PREDICTIONS COULD BE WRONG IN UK AND EUROPE

The University Network, 18 October 2018

Current climate change predictions in the UK and parts of Europe may be inaccurate, a study conducted by researchers from the University of Lincoln, UK, and the University of Liège, Belgium, suggests.



Existing computer model simulations have failed to properly include air pressure changes that have occured in the Greenland region throughout the past 30 years.

Over the last three decades, the simulations suggested a drop in summertime air pressure in the Greenland region. In reality, the air pressure in the area has gone up.

“These differences between the estimates from the current climate models and observations suggests [sic] that the models cannot accurately represent recent conditions or predict future changes in Greenland climate,” Edward Hanna, a professor of climate science and meteorology at Lincoln and co-lead author of the study, said in a statement.
 
The mistake could have global implications, as the simulations are observed throughout the world to predict future climate change.

IPCC NOW SAY WE CAN EMIT FIVE TIMES AS MUCH CO2 AS THEIR PREVIOUS ESTIMATE

This report from the GWPF gives the details, and, although there is a lot of technical jargon and calculations, the end result is that the IPCC has completely changed its mind about how much CO2 is allowed to be emitted into the atmosphere before the surface temperature exceeds the magical 1.5 degrees C increase that they claim will lead to Armageddon. The maximum amount has been increased to five times as much for what can be emitted from 2017. 

I wonder how much this was due to political pressure to persuade them to come up with a figure that was still achievable? If they had stuck to their previous target it would pretty soon have become obvious that there was no hope of achieving it and then if disaster didn't happen it would make fools of them. They have now given themselves a little more time to persuade governments to make the cuts, but it looks exceedingly unlikely that the cuts will happen. But they are likely to make fool of themselves in the end.

CAN RENEWABLES DENT THE WORLD'S NEED FOR ELECTRICITY?

This post provides the answer (no, of course).  Renewables, such as solar, wind, and biofuels, require taxpayer financial subsidies, need significant fossil fuel resources because of their intermittent nature and require countryside-devouring land mass sprawl due to their low-power density to produce significant power, i.e., precious land that will be required to feed the billions on this earth. On a planet where a child under the age ten dies of hunger every five minutes, to hijack land used to grow crops constitutes a crime against humanity.

DO GREENS REALLY WANT TO SPEND $ TRILLIONS ON BATTERIES?

Batteries packed with toxic chemicals will be needed to power the world if fossil fuels are to be set aside. That is the inevitable conclusion reached by this article. It must be very difficult being a green activist, having to set aside one set of beliefs in order to satisfy another. It seems that either we must use fossil fuels and risk climate change or turn to chemical energy from batteries and pollute the world with waste from them, not to mention the environmental damage digging up all those rare metals needed for the wind turbines and the batteries. 

BJORN LOMBORG, A VOICE OF REASON

Mr Lomborg points out that the average of seven leading peer-reviewed economic models suggest the cost to EU citizens of cutting emissions of CO2 by 80% by 2050 will be in the order of £2.5 trillion a year. [an unbelievable sum that I have queried.]

Lomborg observes that if this policy is conducted with average efficiency it would make EU citizens 24% poorer in 2050.  Yet even on the IPCC's own analysis, the total impact of unmitigated climate change (in the form of extreme weather and rising sea level predictions) would be equivalent to reducing the average person's income, globally, by between 0.2 and 2% in the 2070's. 

Only an idiot could regard giving up 24% to save 2% as a good deal for humanity.

[The above is an extract from Dominic Lawson's column in the Sunday Times on 14 October 2018] 

WHO IS BEHIND THE $38.4 TRILLION CLIMATE RANSOM NOTE

This piece explains who is behind claiming the huge sum which is how much the IPCC insists the world must spend – $2.4 trillion per year over the next 16 years – if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. It’s the equivalent of half the global economy. How can such ridiculous sums be taken seriously?

UK MINISTER TRIES TO PLAY UP CO2 EMISSIONS CUTS

This article looks at the UK, where the subsidies for renewables make every household in the UK directly poorer through their electricity bills - falling especially heavily on the poor, elderly and those in ill-health. Households are also hit indirectly in higher costs of goods and services as industrial and commercial consumers pass on their own share of the subsidy bill to households.

LATEST IPCC SCARE REPORT - THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC HAVE LOST INTEREST

This article looks at Christopher Booker's latest piece on the IPCC's new scary report. I particularly like Paul Homewood's list of reasons why the public are not interested in it:

They have heard the same “Ten years to save the world” scare stories many times before.

• They know that the UK’s emissions are only 1% of the world’s and that whatever we do will have zero effect on anything.
• They also know that countries like China and India are continuing to build new coal power stations.
• Most are sensible enough to realise that a slightly warmer climate in Britain has made little difference to their lives.
• People have no intention of giving up their modern lifestyles, as the IPCC demands.
• They also have no intention of paying towards the $2.4 trillion a year also demanded.
• Above all, they have much more important things to worry about.

All very true, but unfortunately the government don't seem to be in tune with them. While the bulk of the public have lost interest, the noisy minority will try and force the government to keep on driving out cheap energy. Only when the majority of the public make it a big issue to stop will the government listen - or another party will step in with different policies, just as UKIP did with the EU. But in that case the press did run a lot of stories against the EU, blaming them for immigration, waste etc. 

The press still has a lot of influence, as does TV. There is little sign, so far, that they are opposed to the government's climate change policies, in fact quite the opposite.

UK CLIMATE MINISTER IN CAR CRASH INTERVIEW OVER DIET CHANGES TO SAVE THE PLANET

I just could not stop laughing when I read this interview on the BBC website with Claire Perry MP, the UK Climate Change Minister. Poor Claire found herself caught between on the one hand supporting freedom to eat meat and on the other hand supporting what would be very unpopular measures to reduce CO2 emissions. What a dilemma! The arguments she used were priceless - trying to argue that she would not want to be a "nanny", and then said that if we unilaterally gave up meat in the UK it would not make any difference as other nations would not follow our example. 

Someone should have asked her about the Chinese and Indians building all these coal-fired power stations and why we are closing ours down. I wonder if the global warming zealots will dare to ask us all to stop using Christmas lights? I'm sure all those outdoor lights must all add up to quite a few tons of CO2. 

ANOTHER INDIVIDUAL IS ATTACKED FOR QUESTIONNING THE CLIMATE CONSENSUS

This article gives yet another example of someone being threatened because they dared to express a view that the global warming debate is not settled. This man has a career as a film-maker so he risks being ruined by speaking out using a film to make his point. No wonder it is mostly retired people who dare to speak out.

POPULATION INCREASE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE SAYS NEW BOOK

Here is a summary of the contents of the book. While I agree that we are still someway from a catastrophic situation as a result of population increase, that does not mean that we are not having some detrimental effect, such as pollution of the environment. These could be avoided if all nations took care and acted responsibly, but they do not. Also there would eventually be a limit of human population, though I have no idea where it is. 

THE FACTS THAT DISPROVE THAT THE WORLD IS WARMER THAN FOR 100,000 YEARS

This piece is so important that it should be given much more prominence. It shows that the world's surface temperature has gone up and down many times in the recent past, which of course is why this information is kept very quiet by the mainstream media. 

EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS HAVE NOT INCREASED SAYS IPCC REPORT

Here is the good news which is not being given enough publicity. Instead news media prefer to cover the doom and gloom or else ignore the whole climate news altogether as the public tire of the prolonged tide of broken predictions and false alarm.

GOOD LECTURE ON GLOBAL WARMING

This lecture by Prof Richard Lindzen is well worth reading as he is recognised as a brilliant scientist and he treats the complex subject of climate science in a clear and fairly simple way.  

WE NOW HAVE UNTIL 2030 TO SAVE THE PLANET (AND THAT'S THE GOOD NEWS)

This piece gives the details from the latest IPCC report. According to previous reports it would already be too late, but that would mean there was no point in trying. So here we are with apocalypse deferred.

AFTER 200 MILLION YEARS ITS ALL OVER FOR CORALS, SAYS IPCC REPORT

This article explains how the IPCC are going over the top to scare us all. The IPCC have gone full apocalyptic: “Coral reefs would decline by 70 to 90 per cent with warming of 1.5°C…” And this catastrophic prophesy will unfold sometime around 2040. Read the full article and then ask - why is the IPCC so desperate?

CLIMATE RECORD FULL OF ERRORS AND MISSING DATA SAYS NEW REPORT

This report makes interesting reading, as it is based on work by a man who advised the authorities of certain errors in their record which they promptly corrected in March 2016. He found that "Such are the inaccuracies in the data record,  that it is impossible to know how much global temperatures have really risen." This will be no surprise to regular readers of this blog.

HERE'S THE BAD NEWS ABOUT WIND TURBINES

This piece explains the problem, that apparently experts have only recently discovered, which is that wind turbines need between 5 and 20 times as much land as was previously thought to work efficiently. Also they mix the layers of air and so cause extra warming of the surface. But will the powers that be take any notice of these findings? I'm betting a definite "no", because they never want to admit they were wrong.

CLIMATE CATASTROPHE BY 2040 PREDICTED BY IPCC

Hundreds of diplomats from around the world are set to scrutinize the IPCC’s latest Summary for Policy Makers, which contains predictions and benchmarks findings on staving off a climate catastrophe by 2040. 

Read more here

MAJOR ISSUE WITH UPCOMING IPCC REPORT SAY TRUMP OFFICIALS

This article explains the problem. The SPM narrative fails to communicate the scale of the global technological and economic challenge to meet the 1.5C objective,” the U.S. wrote in its comments.

CALIFORNIA SETTING UP FOR MORE EMISSIONS AND HIGHER COSTS

This article explains how the poor Californians are being led by fools who are neither reducing emissions nor keeping costs under control.

ELECTRIC VEHICLE NIGHTMARE BY AN OWNER

If anyone has doubts about the reliability of electric vehicles this article from a  recent edition of the UK Daily Mail is not going to offer them any reassurance. It is hard to imagine that by 2040 we will stop selling new regular cars with all these problems still a reality.

THE ROLL BACK OF GREEN ENERGY IS UNDERWAY

Lawrence Solomon: Canada — And The World — Abandon Green Energy Agenda
Financial Post, 28 September 2018

Wind and solar have become the fossils of the energy industry; oil, gas and coal remain the fuels of the future

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s repeal of the Green Energy Act and balks by premiers of other Canadian provinces at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate agenda aren’t rearguard moves by Donald Trump wannabes. They are part of a worldwide trend rejecting renewables, rejecting climate change alarmism, and embracing coal and other fossil fuels.

Renewables and the high electricity rates they ushered in drove individuals into energy poverty and led industry to flee, putting the lie to the claim that wind and solar are the fuels of the future. Wind and solar, rather, have become the fossils of the energy industry; oil, gas and coal remain the fuels of the future.

China was once the poster boy of the renewable energy industry — just a few months ago Bloomberg stated, “China’s investment in renewables is leaving the rest of the world in its wake” thanks to its subsidy-driven growth. Now China has now begun to throw in the towel by cutting subsidies to renewables, an augur of the demise of investment in its renewables sector. With the cutting of subsidies to renewables in the EU, investment last year dropped to less than half of its peak six years earlier. Japan’s investment halved in just three years.

While China is pulling back from renewables, it’s plunging into coal. According to a BBC report this week, China is boosting its reliance on coal by 25 per cent through construction of hundreds of new coal-fired generating plants. Once completed, its incremental coal capacity will be equivalent to that of the entire U.S. coal fleet. Coal aside, China this year will become the world’s largest importer of natural gas, both via pipeline (up by over 20 per cent) and by ship (up over 50 per cent). It is already the world’s largest importer of coal and oil.

Germany, another renewable-energy poster child, is following the same unwinding, cutting subsidies to wind developers while upping gas imports and local coal. To extract that coal, Germany has decided to expand an existing open-pit coal mine, Europe’s largest, by subsidizing the razing of a 12,000-year-old forest. To round out Germany’s retreat from the demands of the country’s green lobby, it is relaxing regulations that would have required automakers to produce low-CO2-emitting vehicles.

Japan plans to remove its modest renewables subsidies while aggressively expanding fossil fuels — it is adding 40 coal stations to its existing 100. The U.K. is likewise turning from renewables, where investment is expected to decrease by 95 per cent by 2020, in favour of the development of the country’s immense shale-gas resources. And Australia is ending its renewables subsidy program altogether by 2020, giving its abundant coal resources a major lift.

The most consequential change of all, however, occurred in the United States, where the Democratic Party — adherents to the global warming orthodoxy — first lost control of the Congress and then the presidency to the Republicans under President Donald Trump, an outspoken critic of the global-warming lobby. When Trump abandoned the Paris climate accord in favour of coal and other carbon-based fuels, the world’s leaders rose up almost as one in outrage.

Today, with the U.S. having revived its coal industry, having become the world’s largest oil producer and having propelled its once-moribund economic growth rates past the others, those world leaders are following America’s lead while falling silent on Paris. The once-powerful United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, formerly a fixture in the news, is defanged and forgotten, having lost its U.S. funding and its relevance.

The decline of government funding for renewables follows years of public opinion polls that consistently show the public isn’t much fussed about climate change. Governments finally got the message that the green lobby wasn’t all-powerful. The most timid, least principled players in society — the corporate sector — may be next in showing some spine on the climate change file.

According to an internal memo leaked earlier this month, BusinessEurope, the EU’s largest employer association, intends to counter EU plans to tighten carbon-dioxide emissions at their expense, albeit ever so mutedly. If it carries through with its plans and actually dares to publicly represent the interests of its members, it will be one more sign that environmental NGOs and their enablers — the mainstream media — have lost their power.

Full post

THE INS AND OUTS OF CARBON TAXES

This piece gives the rundown on carbon taxes. Taxes on the poor to achieve nothing useful!

SOLAR CYCLE CHANGES CONTROL JET STREAM SAYS NEW HYPOTHESIS

When solar cycles are shorter than 11 years over several cycles the planet warms; when cycles are longer than 11 year for a few cycles, the planet cools. There has been a strong (95%) correlation between the solar cycle and cooling and warming of the northern hemisphere over the past 150 years.

Here is how it works. When sunspot peaks are far apart, the electromagnetic shield is down for a long period of time, cosmic radiation seeds the clouds, and there is more rain and snow (with its albedo reflectivity) and the planet cools (Svensmark, J. et al., 2016). The rainfall makes sense in this context because cooling results in condensation. When the sunspot peaks are frequent the minima have less effect and earth warms (Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, 1997; Svensmark H., et al. 2007).

This pattern is completely consistent with the extremes, the thundery hot summers and cold winters of the Little Ice Age which coincided with the Maunder Minimum when sunspots were few or completely absent for 60 years. Zharkova’s research group is predicting another Little Ice Age beginning right now, today, or at the end of Cycle 24. So think many others who study the sun and think it trumps carbon dioxide (Shaviv, 1998).

How does that happen? Here’s how. NASA says, as we enter the solar minimum, our wispy atmosphere shrinks. NASA has learned to juggle satellites that drop into lower orbits during the solar cycle. Lower down in our atmosphere the sun drives our winds and the most important winds of all, that rule all the others, are the jet streams that power around the planet at well over 160 kilometres an hour.

When the atmosphere contracts, the jets start to meander. The meandering happens because there is a space problem; the same jet stream is jammed into less volume within a shrunken atmosphere; hence the jet streams kink. The cloud levels are slightly but measurably lower as well.

The whole article can be read here.

IS THIS THE SIGN OF A COOLING ATMOSPHERE?

NASA: The chill of solar minimum is being felt in our atmosphere – cooling trend seen

Anthony Watts / 1 day ago September 28, 2018

By Dr. Tony Phillips (Reprinted with permission of Spaceweather.com)

Sept. 27, 2018: The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding.

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

These results come from the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air 100 to 300 kilometers above our planet’s surface. By measuring the infrared glow of these molecules, SABER can assess the thermal state of gas at the very top of the atmosphere–a layer researchers call “the thermosphere.”

“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” explains Mlynczak, who is the associate principal investigator for SABER.

When the thermosphere cools, it shrinks, literally decreasing the radius of Earth’s atmosphere.

natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth.

Above: Layers of the atmosphere. Credit: NASA

To help keep track of what’s happening in the thermosphere, Mlynczak and colleagues recently introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index” (TCI)–a number expressed in Watts that tells how much heat NO molecules are dumping into space. During Solar Maximum, TCI is high (“Hot”); during Solar Minimum, it is low (“Cold”).

“Right now, it is very low indeed,” says Mlynczak. “SABER is currently measuring 33 billion Watts of infrared power from NO. That’s 10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle.”

Although SABER has been in orbit for only 17 years, Mlynczak and colleagues recently calculated TCI going all the way back to the 1940s. “SABER taught us to do this by revealing how TCI depends on other variables such as geomagnetic activity and the sun’s UV output–things that have been measured for decades,” he explains.

Above: An historical record of the Thermosphere Climate Index. Mlynczak and colleagues recently published a paper on the TCI showing that the state of the thermosphere can be discussed using a set of five plain language terms: Cold, Cool, Neutral, Warm, and Hot.

As 2018 comes to an end, the Thermosphere Climate Index is on the verge of setting a Space Age record for Cold. “We’re not there quite yet,” says Mlynczak, “but it could happen in a matter of months.”

“We are especially pleased that SABER is gathering information so important for tracking the effect of the Sun on our atmosphere,” says James Russell, SABER’s Principal Investigator at Hampton University. “A more than 16-year record of long-term changes in the thermal condition of the atmosphere more than 70 miles above the surface is something we did not expect for an instrument designed to last only 3-years in-orbit.”

Soon, the Thermosphere Climate Index will be added to Spaceweather.com as a regular data feed, so our readers can monitor the state of the upper atmosphere just as researchers do. Stay tuned for updates.