Deep Space Satellite Hovering Between Sun and Earth Can Help Earth Concerns

Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, mission

As Donald Trump works to inflict the Republicans' kill-us budget, there is, it is widely believed, a covert professional, bureaucratic and market-stabilizing resistance.

Many rational-minded folk recognize the threats that Trump, evangelicals, nationalists and other nihilists pose to the non-suicidal. So an ad hoc project has been launched.

The aims and objectives include surviving Trump, preserving liberal democracy, nourishing stable international markets, extending the duration of the biosphere and related concerns for the milestone when this lunatic is forced to resign, or January 2021 comes.

Rightwingers and other commentators are correct in identifying a deep state coup, or more accurately the speak-freely-to-press-and-defy-this-lunatic project.

The deep state is generally recognized as the professional intelligence, military, analytic and academic resources serving as a professional class in and around government through administrations.

The coup is a good thing; consider as one writer poses the concern, "Can our trusty life-supporting biosphere hang in there?" (Hunziker, CounterPunch). [The most important journalist of the last 50 years, Glenn Greenwald, objects to the deep state coup, citing democracy concerns. For Greenwald's analysis, see The Intercept and Democracy Now.]

Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR Satellite Mission

America’s first operational deep space satellite hovers some one
million miles from Earth. Positioned between the sun and Earth,
it is able to maintain a constant view of the sun and sun-lit side of
Earth. This location is called Lagrange point 1, (L1).
- (Illustration is not to scale) Credit: NOAA.

To take one illustration of how reality and one depiction of reality can degrade death cultists, consider the Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR satellite mission.

If you are not aware of this spectacular achievement, this may be because the Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR's advocates realize the potential danger the images of a five-year, live, (images taken every two hours), perspective that DSCOVR's EPIC, (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera), camera poses to the death cultists. DSCOVR advocates may fear retaliation.

The EPIC camera, (NOAA runs EPIC), is aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite in stationary, (hovering), orbit between the earth and sun, 932,000 miles sunward from Earth. DSCOVR was launched from Earth February 2015 and has been sending images since June 2015. The DSCOVR mission's duration is five years.

EPIC cameras on DSCOVR offer NOAA personnel a constant view, (in images taken every two hours, and in real-time data), of the fully illuminated Earth, (and Sun), and the DSCOVR website offers us the highlights.

If NOAA decides to offer world populations NOAA's live, real-time viewing of Earth, (has not yet on a live, real-time basis like say the GOES geostationary satellite server), populations may increasingly see Earth as the planet Earth—a life-supporting place, many regions of which are available for human visitation. Images are reported by NOAA to be taken every two hours, maybe that's good enough for reinforcing the human need discouraging planetary catastrophe that death cultists wish to inflict.

The deep state could help by amplifying the DSCOVR's EPIC's perspectives of Earth as a means of subverting death cults in government and corporate interests. The message would be in effect: Don't destroy our home.

DSCOVR's capabilities are presented by NOAA emphasizing military-infrastructure-national security concerns: "The Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, will maintain the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of NOAA's space weather alerts and forecasts. Without timely and accurate warnings, space weather events like the geomagnetic storms caused by changes in solar wind have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system, including power grids, telecommunications, aviation and GPS."

But it is the perspective of Earth that may lend the most-important images:

One year after returning it's first image, NASA's EPIC camera, aboard NOAA's DSCOVR satellite, shows us an entire year from one million miles away.

This video was created using NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope, aboard NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. EPIC takes a new picture every two hours, revealing how the planet would look to human eyes, capturing the ever-changing motion of clouds and weather systems and the fixed features of Earth such as deserts, forests and the distinct blues of different seas. The camera has now recorded a full year of life on Earth from its orbit, seen here.

A million miles away, NOAA's DSCOVR, the Nation's first operational satellite in deep space, orbits a unique location called Lagrange point 1, or L1. This orbit is a gravity neutral point in space, allowing DSCOVR to essentially hover between the sun and Earth at all times, maintaining a constant view of the sun and sun-lit side of Earth. From here, the satellite can provide advanced solar measurements and early warnings of potentially dangerous space weather events, acting as a solar storm buoy in deep space.

Thanks to NASA's EPIC imager, DSCOVR's orbit also gives Earth scientists a unique vantage point for studies of the atmosphere and climate by continuously viewing the sunlit side of the planet. EPIC provides global spectral images of of Earth and insight into Earth's energy balance. EPIC's observations provide a unique angular perspective, and are used in science applications to measure ozone amounts, aerosol amounts, cloud height and phase, vegetation properties, hotspot land properties and UV radiation estimates at Earth's surface.

Learn more about the One Year on Earth - Seen from One-Million Miles video, and see video below:

Climate Change - The Better Graph on the Wall

Global Surface Temperature since 1880, and temperature
anomalies - Figure One above , A Better Graph

Slow-motion catastrophe in a graph

Empirical scientists are not bottom-line people. They compile data, access, and then offer conclusions supported, conclusions provisional in nature and ever-changing as more data come to light.

Drs. James Hansen and Makiko Sato are investigating the composition and dynamics of Earth's atmosphere using data pointing to climate change. This work comes as Republicans in America take refuge in denial, and a collective burying of heads in the sand.

It happens the phenomenon Hansen, Sato and colleagues are looking at bears on the fate of life on Earth. They probe the causes and dynamics of global warming, climatic forcings, and in a separate realm quantify global temperatures.

Hansen and Sato offer humanity a new graph accessible to the most foolish, coming six weeks after Hansen called for nuclear power with its attendant hazards and anomalous release of radiation, to replace the energy-production disaster Homo Sapiens imposed on the planet. (This critical nuclear power piece was widely ignored but suggests how dire conditions are in Earth's atmosphere.)

I wrote Dr. Hansen asking for a definitive public conclusion that catastrophic climate change is irreversible, and we as a planet are beyond the point of no return from major life-altering qualities of Earth.

Scientists have little use for making such statements, it's outside the scope of their enterprise, and Hansen and Sato are as likely as not buried in writing their next paper.

Below is a graph including a best estimate showing the projected change in global surface temperatures that is alarming and devoid of adjectives.

That we are beyond the point of no return appears a conclusion supported by the evidence, and mitigation through coordinated geo-engineering is the needed project universal-in-scale, hence a mere conceit.

Hansen and Sato publish this graph showing annual global surface temperatures relative to 1880-1920, illustrating the anomaly, (change and deviation from 'normal', expected values), in global surface temperature the last several decades.

We live in anomalous times.

As carbon and methane emissions are the primary cause for the increase in temperature change and no change in emissions are expected, we can predict values represented in the graph will move upwards and not down.

Here's the new graph, followed by Hansen and Sato's explanation why this graph is instructive to the matters at hand, (a simple 'we're fucked' would have been revealing too as the rate of temperature change looks to be increasing with higher annual temperatures):

Global Surface Temperature since 1880, and temperature anomalies
Figure One, A Better Graph

Fig. 1. Global surface temperature relative to 1880-1920 based on GISTEMP analysis (mostly NOAA data sources, as described by Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo, 2010: Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys., 48, RG4004. We suggest in an upcoming paper that the temperature in 1940-45 is exaggerated because of data inhomogeneity in WW II. Linear-fit to temperature since 1970 yields present temperature of 1.06°C, which is perhaps our best estimate of warming since the preindustrial period.

A Better Graph

by Web Team | September 26, 2016
Category: Blog

A Better Graph

26 September 2016

James Hansen and Makiko Sato

Sorry to have temporarily stopped writing Communications – was working on a paper that we hope to soon make available. But here is something useful: a better graph.

For decades we have reported/updated the global temperature record, showing the calendar-year annual-mean temperature, usually with the 5-year running-mean included. I submit that the graph below is not only more beautiful, but more informative and it can be usefully updated every month rather than once a year.  The 12-month running-mean takes out the seasonal cycle just as well as the calendar-year mean and includes the calendar-year mean (black squares).  The 11-year running mean does a pretty good job of taking out solar cycle variability and shorter-term variability such as the Southern Oscillation.

Note that the calendar-year means tend to fall a bit below a preceding maximum in the 12-month running mean, so the 2016 mean will probably fall a bit below the current +1.3°C warming relative to 1880-1920. That small drop is usually related to the phasing of the El Nino cycle relative to the calendar year.

BTW, this graph also switches to 1880-1920 as a base period, because of the widespread interest in the magnitude of warming relative to pre-industrial time. Alternatively, one might argue for an earlier base period, say 1700-1800, but the data are much poorer then and the difference in global mean is only about +0.1°C ± 0.1°C (1880-1920 slightly warmer than 1700-1800), so it is of no practical importance.
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NASA Climate Scientist: Earth Warming at Highest Rate in Recorded History

Various social crises of the 1970s were met with the
confident expectation human beings acting could
meet planetary challenges and create a better world.
Jackie Captain of Madison and Fitchburg, Wisc
is pictured in Wisconsin Rapids, circa 1978

Massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and coordinated geo-engineering needed on Earth; high-profile scientist writes off planetary target warming

Update - Emailed Dr. Hansen's web-team. No reply from what a busy office, but a subsequent post answers the question, 'is it fair to infer that the first and second-order effects of climate change are baked-in and irreversible?' The post entitled, A Better Graph, shows data of Global surface temperature-increase anomalies. Bottom line, we have left a planet to the next two generations that we would not recognize today, as coastlines will be covered with Ocean water.
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Really going to have contact our friend, Dr. James Hansen at Columbia, and ask, 'is it fair to infer that the first and second-order effects of climate change are baked-in and irreversible?'

Oliver Milman at the Guardian has a piece out with the head, Nasa: Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years. Writes Milman:

The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it 'very unlikely' that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist.

This year has already seen scorching heat around the world, with the average global temperature peaking at 1.38C above levels experienced in the 19th century, perilously close to the 1.5C limit agreed in the landmark Paris climate accord. July was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880, with each month since October 2015 setting a new high mark for heat.

But Nasa said that records of temperature that go back far further, taken via analysis of ice cores and sediments, suggest that the warming of recent decades is out of step with any period over the past millennium. ...

'In the last 30 years we’ve really moved into exceptional territory,' Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said. 'It’s unprecedented in 1,000 years. There’s no period that has the trend seen in the 20th century in terms of the inclination (of temperatures).'

'Maintaining temperatures below the 1.5C guardrail requires significant and very rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions or co-ordinated geo-engineering. That is very unlikely. We are not even yet making emissions cuts commensurate with keeping warming below 2C.' ...

Lingering carbon dioxide already emitted from power generation, transport and agriculture is already likely to raise sea levels by around three feet by the end of the century, and potentially by 70 feet in the centuries to come. Increasing temperatures will shrink the polar ice caps, make large areas of the Middle East and North Africa unbearable to live in and accelerate what’s known as Earth’s 'sixth mass extinction' of animal species. ...

[Nasa's] Schmidt is the highest-profile scientist to effectively write-off the 1.5C target, which was adopted at December’s UN summit after heavy lobbying from island nations that risk being inundated by rising seas if temperatures exceed this level. Recent research found that just five more years of carbon dioxide emissions at current levels will virtually wipe out any chance of restraining temperatures to a 1.5C increase and avoid runaway climate change.

I'll ask Dr. Hansen a second question, 'is it even inferential at this point that catastrophic climate change is unavoidable?'

Proxy-based temperature reconstruction. Photograph Nasa Earth Observatory