After 30 years of dimming, the planet’s surface is brightening, an international collaboration concludes this week in Science magazine.

Earth’s surface has been getting brighter for more than a decade, a reversal from a dimming trend that may accelerate warming at the surface and unmask the full effect of greenhouse warming, according to an exhaustive new study of the solar energy that reaches land.

Ever since a report in the late 1980s uncovered a 4 to 6 percent decline of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface over 30 years since 1960, atmospheric scientists have been trying out theories about why this would be and how it would relate to the greenhouse effect, the warming caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, a group led by Martin Wild at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, home of the international Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) archive, had gone to work collecting surface measurements and crunching numbers.

“BSRN didn’t get started until the early ’90s and worked hard to update the earlier archive,” said Charles N. Long, senior scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and co-author of a BSRN report in this week’s issue (Friday, May 6) of the journal Science.

“When we looked at the more recent data, lo and behold, the trend went the other way,” said Long, who conducted the work under the auspices of DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program.

Data analysis capabilities developed by ARM research were crucial in the study, which reveals the planet’s surface has brightened by about 4 percent the past decade. The brightening trend is corroborated by other data, including satellite analyses that are the subject of another paper in this week’s Science.

Sunlight that isn’t absorbed or reflected by clouds as it plunges earthward will heat the surface. Because the atmosphere includes greenhouse gasses, solar warming and greenhouse warming are related.

“The atmosphere is heated from the bottom up, and more solar energy at the surface means we might finally see the increases in temperature that we expected to see with global greenhouse warming,” Long said.

In fact, he said, many believe that we have already been seeing those effects in our most temperature-sensitive climates, with the melting of polar ice and high altitude glaciers.

The report’s authors stopped short of attributing a cause to the cycle of surface dimming and brightening, but listed such suspects as changes in the number and composition of aerosols�liquid and solid particles suspended in air�and how aerosols affect the character of clouds. Over the past decade, the ARM program has built a network of instrumentation sites to sample cloud characteristics and energy transfer in a variety of climates, from tropical to polar.

“The continuous, sophisticated data from these sites will be crucial for determining the causes,” Long said.

Long also pointed out that 70 percent of the planet’s surface is ocean, for which we have no long-term surface brightening or dimming measurements.

PNNL (www.pnl.gov) is a DOE Office of Science laboratory that solves complex problems in energy, national security, the environment and life sciences by advancing the understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and computation. PNNL employs more than 4,000 staff, has a $650 million annual budget, and has been managed by Ohio-based Battelle since the lab’s inception in 1965.

Original press release: Earth Lightens Up (PNNL)

The most detailed portrait ever of the Earth’s land surface is being created with ESA’s Envisat environmental satellite. The GLOBCOVER project aims at producing a global land cover map to a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map.

It will be a unique depiction of the face of our planet in 2005, broken down into more than 20 separate land cover classes. The completed GLOBCOVER map will have numerous uses, including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.

Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument is being systematically used in Full Resolution Mode for the project, acquiring images with a spatial resolution of 300 metres, with an average 150 minutes of acquisitions occurring daily.

The estimate is that up to 20 terabytes of imagery will be needed to mosaic together the final worldwide GLOBCOVER map � an amount of data equivalent to the contents of 20 million books. The image acquisition strategy is based around regional climate patterns to minimise cloud or snow cover. Multiple acquisitions are planned for some regions to account for seasonal variations in land cover.

Other Envisat sensors will work in synergy with MERIS. The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument will be used to differentiate between similar land cover classes, such as wetlands and humid tropical rainforests. And information from the satellite’s Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer will be used to correct for atmospheric distortion and to perform ‘cloud masking’, or the elimination of cloud pixels.

An international network of partners is working with ESA on the two-year GLOBCOVER project, which is taking place as part of the Earth Observation Data User Element (DUE).

Participants include the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Global Observations of Forest Cover and Global Observations of Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Implementation Team Project Office.

“UNEP anticipates being able to put the GLOBCOVER map to good use within its programme of assessment and early warning of emerging environmental issues and threats, particularly those of a trans-boundary nature,” said Ron Witt of UNEP. “Changes in land cover patterns, effects of environmental pollution and loss of biodiversity often do not respect national or other artificial boundaries. “An updated view of such problems - or their effects - from interpreted space imagery should offer a large boost to UNEP’s effort to monitor the health of the planet and our changing environment.”

Located at Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany, the GOFC-GOLD Implementation Team Project Office is responsible for developing international standards and methodology for global observations, and is advising GLOBCOVER on classification issues.

The GLOBCOVER classification system is being designed to be compatible with the Global Land Cover map previously produced for the JRC for the year 2000, a one-kilometre resolution map produced from SPOT-4 Vegetation Instrument data and known as GLC 2000.

GLOBCOVER will also serve to update and improve the European Environment Agency’s CORINE 2000 database, a 300-metre resolution land cover map of the European continent based on a combination of updated land cover maps and satellite imagery.

Once worldwide MERIS Full Resolution coverage is achieved, there will actually be two GLOBCOVER maps produced. The first, GLOBCOVER V1, will be produced automatically by mosaicking images together in a standardised way.

The JRC is then utilising its GLC2000 experience to produce the more advanced GLOBCOVER V2 in the second year, taking a regionally-tuned approach to the data. Some 30 teams worldwide will participate in analysing and validating GLOBCOVER products.

Acquired in a standardised 15 bands, the MERIS images are going to be processed with an upgraded algorithm that includes an ortho-rectification fool, correcting for altitude based on a digital elevation model (DEM) derived from the Radar Altimeter-2 (RA-2), another Envisat instrument.

Original press release: Envisat Making Sharpest Ever Global Earth Map (ESA)

A study of sunlight bounced between the Earth and the Moon shows that during the 80s and 90s the Earth reflected less of our star’s light out into space

But the trend seems to have been reversed during the past three years.

Researchers think this may be because of the natural variability in cloud cover, which can act to push back the Sun’s heat and light away from Earth.

The effect must be taken into account in estimates of future global warming, they report in the journal Science.

Read the complete BBC story: Planet Earth dims then brightens (BBC)

Read the original NASA press release from May 2004 : Scientists Look At Moon to Shed Light On Earth�s Climate

For the first time ever a UN program, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has won the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award.

The prestigious prize, presented today here in Washington DC, has been awarded to the Paris-based OzonAction Branch of UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics.

Announcing the Award, the US EPA praised the “leadership and innovation of the OzonAction Programme” and said it has benefited well over 140 countries through its unique regional networks of National Ozone Units and global information clearinghouse.

“The appreciation of the award panel highlighting UNEP’s leadership and innovation is not only rewarding but also encouraging for our further work,” said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP Executive Director. “The Montreal Protocol is succeeding in its objective of phasing out the global production and consumption of ozone depleting substances, but there is still much work left to be done, particularly in developing countries,” he said.

“A key factor in the success to date has been financial resources provided to help implement the Protocol,” said Toepfer. “In this regard, it is important that one of the key mechanisms underpinning the treaty, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), is adequately replenished this year. This will help ensure that we finish the job, not only for ozone, but also for other global environmental treaties,” he said.

Accepting the award on behalf of UNEP, Rajendra Shende, head of the OzonAction branch said, “The award reminds us of what can be achieved when the commitment of the poorest nations to protect the Earth for future generations is combined with the resolve of the richest countries to do their part for peace, prosperity and environmental health.”

“What you get are amazing global success stories that go beyond conventional thoughts and immensely benefit humanity,” he said.

Global efforts to protect the stratospheric ozone layer were formalised through an international treaty agreed in 1987 called the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone layer.

The ozone layer, which absorbs ultraviolet radiation harmful to living organisms and human health, is in danger from several chemicals currently used in industry and agriculture such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform and methyl bromide.

“The treaty is bearing fruits,” said Shende. “According to the best scientific knowledge the chemicals that have been destroying the ozone layer are now ‘at or near peak,’ and could begin to dissipate slowly — if nations stay the course.”

The participation in the effort is almost universal with 189 countries having ratified the Protocol. And the international agreement is increasingly being recognised as a rare and important multi-lateral success story. In his recent report entitled, ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All,’ UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, described the Montreal Protocol as an “encouraging example showing how global solutions can be found.”

Since 1991, the OzonAction Programme has provided services that assist developing countries and Countries with Economies in Transition to achieve and sustain compliance with the Montreal Protocol.

OzonAction empowers the focal point for this multilateral environmental agreement (known as National Ozone Units) through an information clearinghouse, training and regional networking. The programme simplified the messages from the Protocol�s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel to help countries to make informed decisions about alternative technologies and ozone-friendly policies.

UNEP is one of the four implementing agencies of the Multilateral Fund that was set-up to assist developing country parties to the Protocol. Over 12 years, nearly US$2 billion has been disbursed to 145 developing countries to enable them to comply with it.

Original press release: UNEP Wins 2005 Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award (UNEP)

Russia’s Federal Space Agency has announced that it will support the launch of the European meteorological satellite MetOp-A. The satellite is scheduled to be launched by a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in April 2006.

“The Metop satellite has been procured under a cooperation agreement between ESA and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of European Satellites (EUMETSAT), in which ESA is responsible for satellite development,” said Alain Fournier-Sicre, head of ESA’s Permanent Mission to Russia.

The Soyuz launch vehicle has been procured through a contract between EUMETSAT and the European-Russian joint venture, STARSEM. STARSEM manages the technical interface with the launcher and provides ’state of the art’ satellite preparation facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

During a recent visit to Baikonur, a delegation that included Mr Reinhold Zobl, Head of ESA’s Earth Observation Projects Department, Mr Peter Edwards, ESA MetOp Project Manager and Mr Marc Cohen, EUMETSAT EPS Programme Manager reported that they were “fully satisfied with the available facilities and very impressed by the Russian support provided.”

MetOp-A is the first of a series of three satellites that will be launched at 4.5 year intervals to provide 14 years of operation. They constitute the space segment for the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS), which in conjunction with the US POES satellites provides global meteorological coverage from low Earth orbit.

MetOp will be the first European satellite dedicated to operational meteorology in the Low Earth Polar orbit, a nominal altitude of 820 km. It will complement the data currently being provided by the existing family of Meteosat satellites that operate in the much higher geostationary orbit.

“The MetOp satellite will carry 12 instruments relating to meteorology, climate monitoring and humanitarian missions. The payload constitutes a mixture of recurrent instruments provided by NOAA/NASA and new instruments, developed in Europe, to provide state of the art remote sensing. In combination the payload will ensure enhanced accuracy for measuring temperature, humidity, the speed and direction of the wind above the ocean, and the distribution of ozone in the atmosphere,” Fournier-Sicre said.

Original press release: Russian Space Agency to Launch Europe’s MetOp-A Satellite (ESA)

A group of British engineers is aiming to take the official land speed record for an electrical vehicle.

The team is set to attempt the 394km/h (245mph) record and to become the first to pass the 483km/h (300mph) barrier, in Nevada, US.

The bright orange, 10m-long (32ft) ABB e=motion car, is powered by variable speed drives and two 37kW motors…

Read the complete story: Electric Car Speed Record Attempt (BBC News)