“High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy."
Boy, I'm glad we're not living up there.That could be a real problem. The "good news" is that the layer closest to us, where we also don't live, is warming and expanding, cuz that's what warm air does, and the others will shrink, cuz that's what cold air does......
Global Warming Causes Stratospheric Cooling
Greenhouse gases also cause stratospheric cooling
However, this recovery of the ozone layer is being delayed. A significant portion of the observed stratospheric cooling is also due to human-emitted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Climate models predict that if greenhouse gases are to blame for heating at the surface, compensating cooling must occur in the upper atmosphere. We need only look as far as our sister planet, Venus, to see the truth of this theory. Venus's atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, which has triggered a run-away greenhouse effect of truly hellish proportions. The average surface temperature on Venus is a very toasty 894 °F! However, Venus's upper atmosphere is a much colder than Earth's upper atmosphere. The explanation of this greenhouse gas-caused surface heating and upper air cooling is not simple, but good discussions can be found at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and realclimate.org for those unafraid of radiative transfer theory. One way to think about the problem is that the amount of infrared heat energy radiated out to space by a planet is roughly equal to the amount of solar energy it receives from the sun. If the surface atmosphere warms, there must be compensating cooling elsewhere in the atmosphere in order to keep the amount of heat given off by the planet the same. As emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, their cooling effect on the stratosphere will increase. This will make recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer much slower.
Greenhouse gases cause cooling higher up, too
Greenhouse gases have also led to the cooling of the atmosphere at levels higher than the stratosphere. Over the past 30 years, the Earth's surface temperature has increased 0.2-0.4 °C, while the temperature in the mesosphere, about 50-80 km above ground, has cooled 5-10 °C ( Beig et al., 2006). There is no appreciable cooling due to ozone destruction at these altitudes, so nearly all of this dramatic cooling is due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Even greater cooling of 17 °C per decade has been observed high in the ionosphere, at 350 km altitude. This has affected the orbits of orbiting satellites, due to decreased drag, since the upper atmosphere has shrunk and moved closer to the surface ( Lastovicka et al., 2006). The density of the air has declined 2-3% per decade the past 30 years at 350 km altitude. So, in a sense, the sky IS falling
wunderground.com
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Here are some old stories....
Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically - Space.com
Dec 17, 2009 - The cooling effect also has an effect on the orbits of satellites, because it changes the density of the atmosphere layer. For example, if the layer heats up, it expands like a marshmallow in a microwave, as several scientists described it, and lower, denser parts of the atmosphere rise to higher altitudes.
space.com
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Upper Atmosphere Has Cooled Steadily for Three Decades - Eos
Nov 25, 2014 - Scientists projections that the upper atmosphere would continue to cool and contract with rising greenhouse gas emissions, now confirmed.
eos.org
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Satellite data show a cooling trend in the upper atmosphere. So much for Global Warming, right?
Jul 12, 2017 - Stratospheric temperatures have been cooling over the past few decades and even reached a record low in 2016. Clearly there is no global ...
theclimateconsensus.com |
