# Presentation: 744959

## The Decade in Climate Change Research

- Global warming
- Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
- Surface & satellite observations
- Sea ice extent
- Glacier retreat
- Aerosols and clouds
- Net primary productivity
- Fires

- Michael D. King
- EOS Senior Project Scientist
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

## What Global Surface Temperature Change has Occurred thus Far?

- Year

- 1860

- 1880

- 1900

- 1920

- 1940

- 1960

- 1980

- 2000

- Departures in Temperature (°C)
- From the 1961-1990 Average

- 0.8

- 0.4

- 0.0

- -0.4

- -0.8

- IPCC 2001

- Global

- Data from thermometers

**Notes:**
The data sets prior to the satellite record are biased toward land regions and toward the northern hemisphere; we're not sure how much of the temperature rise is human-induced.

## Human Influence on Climate

- Michael Prather, UC Irvine

**Notes:**
We're quite sure that the CO2 rise is due to humans but are less certain about the methane rise.

## Radiative Forcing from 1750 to 2000

- Radiative Forcing (Wm-–2)

- 3

- 2

- 0

- -1

- -2

- 1

- Warming

- Cooling

- IPCC 2001

## Global Temperature Predictions

- IPCC 2001

- Year

- Temperature Anomalies  (°C)

- 1.0

- 0.0

- -0.5

- -1.0

- 0.5

- 1850

- 1900

- 1950

- 2000

- Model: Natural Forcing

## Global Temperature Predictions

- IPCC 2001

- Year

- Temperature Anomalies  (°C)

- 1.0

- 0.0

- -0.5

- -1.0

- 0.5

- 1850

- 1900

- 1950

- 2000

- Model: Natural + Anthropogenic Forcing

## Global Temperature Predictions from 1990 to 2100

- IPCC 2001

**Uncertainty in future emissions**

**Uncertainty in climate sensitivity**

## Predicted Sea Level Rise from 1990 to 2100

- IPCC 2001

**Uncertainty in climate sensitivity**

**Uncertainty in future emissions**

## Global Change Spacecraft

- Aura
- 7/10/04

- ICESat
- 1/12/03

- Terra
- 12/18/99

- Aqua
- 5/4/02

## Climate System Energy Balance

- Kiehl and Trenberth (1997)

## CERES Measurements of Earth Radiation Budget

- Study cloud radiative forcing and feedbacks
- Develop an observational baseline of clear-sky radiative fluxes
- Document radiant input to atmospheric and oceanic energetics models
- Validate general circulation models
- Enhance extended-range numerical weather predictions

- Shortwave Flux (W m-2)

- Longwave Flux (W m-2)

- 0

- 105

- 210

- 100

- 210

- 320

- March 2000

## An overlapping Earth Radiation Climate Record:22 years from Nimbus 7 to Terra

- Year

- 79

- 81

- 83

- 85

- 87

- 89

- 91

- 93

- 95

- 97

- 99

- 01

- 10

- 5

- 0

- -5

- Longwave Anomaly (Wm–2)

- Wielicki et al. (2002)

## Global Lower Tropospheric Temperature Anomalies

- Cristy et al. (2003)

- Year

- 79

- 81

- 83

- 85

- 87

- 89

- 91

- 93

- 95

- 97

- 99

- 0.8

- 0.6

- 0.0

- -0.6

- Temperature Anomaly (°C)

- -0.2

- -0.4

- Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU)

- 0.4

- 0.2

- 01

- 03

## Tropospheric Temperature from Satellite

- Surface temperature increase shows ~0.17°C/decade
- Similar to climate model forecasts when natural and anthropogenic forcing are considered
- Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU), as analyzed by Cristy and Spencer, shows 0.07°C/decade tropospheric temperature increase
- Frequent basis for ‘naysayers’ that greenhouse warming is not occurring
- Christy and Spencer analysis has been modified due to multiple processes
- Orbits have decayed with time and the corrections of the weighting functions for scan angle and orbit decay increase the temperature increase in the analysis (Wentz and Schabel, 1998)
- MSU channel 2 (31 GHz) is sensitive to stratospheric temperature (which has decreased due to global warming) - when the sensitivity to stratospheric temperature is taken out of channel 2 analysis, the tropospheric temperature increase changes to 0.17°/decade (Fu et al., 2004)
- For the tropics, the tropospheric warming is about 1.6 times the surface warming, as expected for a moist adiabatic lapse rate

##  Decreases in Arctic Sea Ice Coverage as Observed from Satellite Observations

- Parkinson et al. (1999)

- Year

**Notes:**
The Antarctic ice increased over the same time period (although it decreased significantly in the early and mid-1970s).

## Monthly Arctic Sea Ice Extent Deviations:22 years from Nimbus 7 to DMSP

- Parkinson et al. (1999)

- Year

- 79

- 81

- 83

- 85

- 87

- 89

- 91

- 93

- 95

- 97

- 99

- 1.0

- 0.5

- 0.0

- -1.5

- Sea Ice Extent (106 km2)

- -0.5

- -1.0

- Seasonal Cycle Removed

## Trends in Arctic Sea Ice Coverage

- Parkinson et al. (1999) and Vinnikov et al. (1999)

- Yearly and Seasonal Ice Extent Trends
- 	Yearly	–2.8%/decade
- 	Winter	–2.2%/decade
- 	Spring	–3.1%/decade
- 	Summer	–4.5%/decade
- 	Autumn	–1.9%/decade

- Data Sources
- For November 1978 – August 1987, the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite
- Since mid-August 1987, the Special Sensor Microwave Imagers (SSM/Is) on satellites of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program

- 37,000 km2/year decrease of sea ice area over a 19.4 year period observed from satellite
- 19,000 km2/year decrease in sea ice area over a 46 year period based on in situ and other data from Chapman and Walsh (1993)

## Glaciers as a Harbinger of Global Change

- Glacier National Park
- 110 glaciers have disappeared in the past 150 years
- 37 remaining glaciers expected to disappear within 25 years
- Mt. Kilimanjaro
- All glaciers likely to disappear within 20 years
- 160,000 glaciers worldwide being monitored by satellites (especially Landsat 7/ETM+ and Terra/ASTER)

- Gangotri Glacier, Himalaya

- Bhutan-Himalaya

**Notes:**
The tropical and mid-latitude glaciers have shown a more prominent record of decay in the past few decades than the polar land ice, in contrast to earlier expectations.

## MODIS Monthly Mean Aerosol Optical Thickness(Y. J. Kaufman, D. Tanré, L. A. Remer – NASA GSFC, Univ. of Lille)

- MODIS Monthly Mean Aerosol Optical Thickness(Y. J. Kaufman, D. Tanré, L. A. Remer – NASA GSFC, Univ. of Lille)

- Terra
- September 2000

- Fine Mode
- Industrial pollution
- China, India, US, Europe
- Smoke from biomass burning
- Brazil and Bolivia
- southern Africa (DRC, Angola, Zambia)
- Australia, Borneo
- Coarse Mode
- Desert dust
- Sahara, Arabian Sea
- Sea salt
- Southern ocean

## Global Aerosol Optical Properties

- 1.0

- 0.0

- 0.0

- 0.25

- 0.5

- Aerosol Optical Thickness

- Fine Aerosol Fraction

## Aerosol Climatology from AERONET

- Dubovik et al. (2002)

- Cooling

- Heating

- Hansen et al. 1997

## MODIS Monthly Mean Cloud Optical Thickness(M. D. King, S. Platnick et al. – NASA GSFC)

- April 2003

## Terra/MODIS Level-1B Image

- R	=	0.65 μm
- G	=	0.56 μm
- B	=	0.47 μm

- January 27, 2003
- 1200 UTC

## Terra/MODIS Retrieval of Effective Radius (M. D. King, S. Platnick et al. – NASA GSFC)

- Effective Radius (μm)

- January 27, 2003
- 1200 UTC

- 2

- 16

- 30

- 9

- 23

- 6

- 28

- 50

- 17

- 39

- Water Clouds

- Ice Clouds

## MODIS Net Primary Productivity(S. W. Running, W. E. Esaias – Univ. of Montana, NASA GSFC)

- 0

- 2

- 1

- kgC/m2/year

- 3

- Annual Mean
- 2002

## MODIS Fire Occurrence(C. O. Justice, J. DesCloitres – Univ. of Maryland, NASA GSFC) 

- MODIS Fire Occurrence(C. O. Justice, J. DesCloitres – Univ. of Maryland, NASA GSFC)

- Terra/MODIS
- October 26, 2003** **

## MODIS Fire Occurrence(C. O. Justice, J. DesCloitres – Univ. of Maryland, NASA GSFC) 

- MODIS Fire Occurrence(C. O. Justice, J. DesCloitres – Univ. of Maryland, NASA GSFC)

## MISR Cloud Stereo Height(D. J. Diner, R. Davies et al. – JPL) 

- MISR Cloud Stereo Height(D. J. Diner, R. Davies et al. – JPL)

## Summary and Resources

- Satellites have played a crucial role in understanding and documenting global change
- global surface and atmospheric temperature
- glacial retreat
- sea ice extent and change
- solar radiation into and out of the Earth-atmosphere system
- sources and sinks of carbon in the oceans and land
- Resource on Earth science, including news stories, images of the day, data sets, and natural hazards
- _[earthobservatory.nasa.gov](http://www.koshland-science-nasa.gov/)_
- Marian Koshland Science Museum
- 6th and E Street NW
- _[www.koshland-science-museum.org](http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/)_
- Two in-depth exhibits
- Global warming facts and our future
- Putting DNA to work (human genome etc.)

## Multisensor Fire Observations