Video: Jason2 satellite luanched to track Oceans, climate change

A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite launched June 20 on a globe-circling voyage to continue charting sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission will return a vast amount of new data that will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts.

Measurements of sea-surface height, or ocean surface topography, reveal the speed and direction of ocean currents and tell scientists how much of the sun’s energy is stored by the ocean. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations.

OSTM/Jason 2’s expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001.

The mission culminates more than three decades of research by NASA and CNES in this field. This expertise will be passed on to the world’s weather and environmental forecasting agencies, which will be responsible for collecting the data. The involvement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as mission partners on OSTM/Jason 2 helps establish this proven research capability as a valuable tool for use in everyday applications.

From Science Daily: Read article
From National Geogrphaic: Watch video

Stern report on Global Warming was wrong…

Sir Nicholas Stern has warned that the gloomy predictions of his high-profile review of the future effects of global warming underestimated the risks, and that climate change poses a bigger threat than he realised.

Stern said this week that new scientific findings showed greenhouse gas emissions were causing more damage than was understood in 2006, when he prepared his study for the government. He pointed to last year’s reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and new research which shows that the planet’s oceans and forests are soaking up less carbon dioxide than expected.

He said: “Emissions are growing much faster than we’d thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we’d thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates and the speed of climate change seems to be faster.”

Stern said the new findings vindicated his report, which has been criticised by climate sceptics and some economists as exaggerating the possible damage. “People who said I was scaremongering were profoundly wrong,” he told a conference in London.

From the Guardian: Read more