Heavy Rain and Climate Change

Rain comes, rain goes, but lately, when it rains it doesn’t just pour — it pours like never before. The reason? Man-made climate change.

Global Temperature in the Air Up There

I’m talking about the temperature in the atmosphere, and specifically the lower troposphere. The troposphere is where most of our weather happens, and for the lower troposphere we have temperature estimates inferred from satellites which measure “microwave brightness,” as well as thermometer measurements from balloons which carry instruments to high altitude and radio their data back to earth (radiosonde data).

By the way: the idea that transforming satellite data into temperature estimates is as simple as sticking a thermometer in your ear (like they do in hospitals these days) is extremely stupid. It’s a lot more complicated than that, which is why different teams that process the satellite data get different results, and those teams keep updating their data with new versions that differ noticeably from previous versions. But it’s the kind of story that sounds convincing to idiots like Ted Cruz.

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