Inside Track
NASA Sees Climate Cooling Trend Thanks to Low Sun Activity
NASA is reporting that the sun is entering one of the deepest solar minima of the Space Age, and Earth’s atmosphere is responding in kind.
“We see a cooling trend,” said Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center in the September 2018 issue of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”
The new data is coming from NASA’s Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, which is on board the space agency’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite. SABER monitors infrared radiation from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a vital role in the energy output of our thermosphere, the very top level of our atmosphere.
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