Northern Hemisphere Satellite Temperature Record

The Satellite Oxygen Thermometer. NASA-Huntsville began measuring the temperature of the bottom 5,000 meters of the atmosphere. They have been publishing the monthly mean temperatures of Northern and Southern Hemisphere ever since (see the illustration above). You can judge for yourself the climate changes over the last 17 years. It is interesting that the record of surface thermometers shows a small warming trend but the oxygen thermometer does not. Pinatubo blew in late 1991 and into 1992. Cooling in both hemisphere followed. December 1995 is the last month of the record. December temperatures fell like a rock.

The NASA Goddard GCM model estimated Northern Hemisphere temperature trace is also shown.

Huntsville's space-born thermometer "sees" the terrestrial photons emitted by electrons of our atmospheric oxygen molecules. Diatomic oxygen does not absorb light of terrestrial wavelengths (2 to 20 micron light). It does however have a temperature and puts out photons in a line spectrum of earthly light. NASA has published accuracy of this thermometer is 0.01 C. Government work worthy of funding!

Recently, Bob Balling of Arizona State University published a report in Science detailing a tiny but measurable signal in the oxygen temperatures. Balling found that the temperature of the lower 5,000 meters has a maximum when the moon is full! Some of the sunlight that hits Earth and is reflected back to space hits the moon and some it then gets reflected back to Earth. Early estimates of Earth's planetary albedo was based on this double reflection of sunlight. A little extra kick of sunlight with the waxing and waning of the moon. The temperature change is insignificant. That you can measure such very small temperature changes with the oxygen thermometer is highly significant. NASA has provided us with a nifty, sensitive sensor whose product will grow in value as the years pass. The moon phase thing lends confidence to viewing the large month by month variations in hemispheric temperatures as real measures of the temperature of the bottom part of our atmosphere

The record for Southern Hemisphere temperature up through last December are shown below. Dec. in SH was unremarkable.

Southern Hemisphere Satellite Temperature Record