CLIMATE CHANGE

DEVELOPMENT OF THIS ANALYSIS

By Charles Rhodes, Xylene Power Ltd.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

DEVELOPMENT OF THIS ANALYSIS:

In late 2006 I made a plot of annual average temperature, as measured by Environment Canada at the Toronto International Airport, versus time for the forty year period 1965 to 2005. This plot is shown below.

This plot shows a definite warming trend with an increase in the annual average temperature over the forty year period of 2.44 degrees C. If this trend of increasing temperature continues, there will be profound effects on the people of Toronto, Ontario, North America and the world.

As a physicist and engineer concerned with energy management I faced the following questions:
a. Will this temperature continue to increase in the future?
b. If so, how fast will it increase?
c. What must be done to prevent further temperature increases?

I sought to find the answers to these questions without reference to any climate model. There have been many publications relating to the greenhouse effect and global warming. The published claims run the gamut from no thermal effect at all to uncontrolled thermal runaway, depending on the climate and atmospheric model used.

In my view, the best way of resolving questions relating to global warming is to rely on direct energy flow measurements, not climate models. Then the law of conservation of energy can be applied. The surface temperature of the Earth is a result of an energy balance between absorbed solar electromagnetic radiation and emitted thermal electromagnetic radiation. If these energy flows are equal the local temperature of the earth is constant. If these energy flows are unequal then the Earth either cools down or warms up, depending on which energy flow is larger. Issues of global warming can be resolved by analysis of precision radiation measurements using the known relationship between temperature and emitted thermal electromagnetic radiation flux.

Astronomers and astrophysicists have devoted their lives to precision measurement of electromagnetic radiation in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and issues relating to radiation absorption by gases. The place to find reliable data relating to future global warming is not in climate journals, it is in astrophysical publications.

This web site presents data gathered by ground based astronomers and astrophysicists, orbital satelites and a deep space probe. This data is used to make firm conclusions about global warming. All of the data sources, data values and related calculations are presented, so that others may independently verify the results and conclusions.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

BACK NEXT

This web page last updated January 21, 2007