Climate change sceptics suffer blow as satellite data correction shows 140% faster global warming

Climate change deniers and sceptics have long pointed to satellite data showing lower temperatures than those recorded on the ground.

However, new research has found an explanation for this apparent discrepancy.

The orbit of satellites around the Earth gradually decays over time due to friction in the Earth’s atmosphere and this gradually changes the time they pass over any one spot and this obviously has a significant effect on the temperature.

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Using information from the satellites, the scientists, Dr Carl Mears and Frank Wentz, of Remote Sensing Systems, a California-based research company, developed a new method of correcting for the changes.

And what they found was startling.

The rate of warming was about a third higher at 0.174 degrees Celsius per decade between 1976 and 2016, compared to 0.134C per decade.

Writing in the Journal of Climate, the scientists said: “The changes result in global-scale warming … about 30 per cent larger than our previous version of the dataset.

“This change is primarily due to the changes in the adjustment for drifting local measurement time. The new dataset shows more warming than most similar datasets constructed from satellites or radiosonde [weather balloon] data.”

In an article on the Carbon Brief website about the new research, data scientist Dr Zeke Hausfather said it showed an even faster rate of warming since 1998 – at nearly 140 per cent – than previous satellite-based studies.

“Climate sceptics have long claimed that satellite data shows global warming to be less pronounced that observational data collected on the Earth’s surface,” he said.

“This new correction to the … data substantially undermines that argument. The new data actually shows more warming than has been observed on the surface, though still slightly less than predicted in most climate models.”

Dr Hausfather explained the problem with interpreting climate data from satellites due to their subtly changing orbit.

“As these satellites circle the Earth, their orbits slowly decay over time due to drag from the upper atmosphere,” he wrote.

“While the satellites are designed to fly over the same spot on the Earth at the same time every day – a precondition to accurately estimating changes in temperatures over time – this orbital decay causes their flyover time to change.

“Some satellites have fairly large orbital drifts, going from measuring temperatures at 2pm to 6pm or 8pm.

“Since the temperature changes since 1979 are on the order of 0.6C or so, it is relatively easy for bias, due to changing observation times, to swamp the underlying climate signal.”

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change

10 show all 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change

1/10 A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris

2/10 Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid

3/10 Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella

4/10 Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali

5/10 Smoke – filled with the carbon that is driving climate change – drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon

6/10 A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain

7/10 Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals,” says the photographer. “Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow.” Rizwan Dharejo

8/10 A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati

9/10 A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”. Leung Ka Wa

10/10 Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

Surface temperature records, Dr Hausfather added, “all tend to agree quite closely with each other, despite different groups using different datasets”.

“Unlike the satellite temperature record, where only a few satellites are measuring temperatures at any given point of time, there is a large amount of redundancy in surface temperature observations, with multiple independent sets of data producing consistent results,” he said.

“Therefore, it is not too surprising that corrections to problems with satellite data would move them closer to surface records.”