Stratcepts Glitter Belt

GLITTER BELT

Starting Revival of Stratcepts.com

Poster Slam: Presentation to the American Meteorological Society Meeting 2024.  

Welcome. 

Planet Earth is warming. That means that less heat is going out into Space from the Earth's atmosphere, than what is coming into the atmosphere, land and oceans. Net Heat Retention, averaged over the planet's total surface area, amounts to 0.82 Watts per square meter.  24hrs a day, every day. This rate has been fairly stable, but is in fact going up. The rate at which it is going up, is also going up - and that is what is truly alarming. 

Some effects: The foremost is that there is simply more energy in the atmosphere and oceans. Which means that storms of extreme intensity, are becoming more frequent. The Mean Sea Level is rising, at a rate of about 4 millimeters per year. This is partly due to thermal expansion of water as it gets hotter (mainly in tropical summers) and because the Northern Ice Cap now melts enough every year that the legendary NorthWest Passage between the ice-cap and north America and north Russia, in whose search many died, is now clear and open almost year-round. Permafrost is melting more each year, releasing methane from decaying vegetation of past aeons, that was tied up under the permafrost. And methane (CH4 )absorbs 20 to 76 times as much Infrared radiation, as Carbon Di Oxide (CO2) does. 

What is being done about it? The United Nations Framework Council on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been studying this. Back in 1992 The Kyoto Protocol laid out a process to drive the anthropogenic part of Climate Change, back down to the level of 1990. By 2012. Ok, 2015, Ok...   After 2021, the US Govt. endorsed "NET ZERO", an ambitious drive to cut anthropogenic CO2 generation to a net of zero (generation balanced by absorption/segregation). By 2050. NetZero is estimated to cost around USD 300 Trillion. But it will not bring the atmosphere and oceans to the levels of 1990. It will not even cut Net Heat Retention from 0.82W to 0. In fact it will not reduce it from 0.82 at all, or in fact from wherever it reaches (0.84? 0.86?) by 2050. It may cut the rate of increase of the rate of increase to zero. 

Are you happy with this? We are not. Please join us in doing something about it. Since 2016, we have been exploring a way to cut Net Heat Retention. And we know what it will take to roll Earth's temperature and sea level back all the way to 1990 - within 35 years from serious start. We believe that this has no risk of negative effects... but we believing is not enough. We must prove it. See below how we are setting out along a path to first prove the absence of negative effects, become able to predict the Climate and Weather worldwide with the accuracy needed to be sure.. and then when all reasonable authorities are happy, to go ahead and REVERSE Net Heat Retention.. until we reach 1990 levels. As Figure 2 shows, when we do this, the sea level will go back down commensurate with reduction in temperature. The northern ice pack can be formed up again. Why 1990? Yes we can go further back, but there is no global mandate to do so. 

Welcome.

Weather Mapping: The First Step

Weather Prediction: The Past is Always Easier And Safer to Predict

Prediction, Data, Certainty and Scale-Up

Weather Mapping: The First Step

Fighting Climate Change, if done seriously, runs into a fundamental obstacle. Whatever we do, may have effects that we cannot predict today. And they could be catastrophic. Suppose you managed to mess with the formation of the Monsoons! It would cause mass starvation and death over much of Asia.  Or the North Atlantic Circulation, that brings warm currents that keep the North American east coast and Europe's west coast open all winter. Or the cool current that is the basis for the climate of the Canadian and American Northwest.  Any number of horrors may be imagined. Point is, we do not have the capability to predict. A corollary is that if you go ahead WITHOUT such proof of safety, you will find yourself blamed, fairly or not, for ANYTHING that happens. A large flood. A severe hurricane. A Polar Vortex. Tidal waves. Crop failures, Locust swarms. 

Weather Prediction: The Past is Always Easier And Safer to Predict

But how long can we wait for such a prediction capability? The default process is to seek orders of magnitude improvement in computational resources. Computers 100X as fast and 0.01X as expensive as today's. Will that do it? Very doubtful. Present weather prediction is accurate - for tomorrow. At 7 days out, prediction accuracy is 50%. IOW, Coin Toss. 

Our solution is built into our development and scaleup architecture. We will START with weather measurement. Just daytime at the start, but with a growing fleet of FLTs: Flying Leaflets. Island-hopping. Flying in the mid troposphere under sunlight. But just that will increase weather data by 100X, in frequency, spatial resolution, temporal resolution, statistical accuracy, measurement least count.  As these data build up, developers of prediction technology can simply use data to predict, and use their science-based prediction codes as well, Improve confidence in prediction. 

Prediction, Data, Certainty and Scale-Up

In 5 years, you will be able to see what you would have predicted based on data 5 years ago - and if you can show with confidence that you predict accurately, then we can believe your prediction for the next 5 years. You can use your codes to check the effects of imposed perturbations - first to see threshold of instability, next to check micro-scale effects. All this time our measurement systems will be growing. When the GO! signal comes we will be ready to scale up very very fast, to reverse Net Heat Retention.