Britain seeks to join European satellite project

 

by Clive Simpson, Belfast

 

THE UK is seeking to join Portugal and Spain as a member of the Atlantic Constellation, a flagship global project of small satellites for Earth, ocean and climate monitoring.

Through an agreement procured by the UK Space Agency (UKSA), the country will build a new £6 million pathfinder satellite, designed and built by UK-based company Open Cosmos, that could become part of the constellation.

Announced on the opening day of the UK Space Conference in Belfast, the satellite is aimed at strengthening UK capabilities in Earth observation technology.

It will also compliment UK Earth observation (EO) contributions to the EU Copernicus programme, ESA projects and bilateral missions.

Clarifying the Belfast announcement a spokesman for UKSA said it had signed an agreement with Open Cosmos to build and launch a mission that "matches the requirements" of the Atlantic Constellation. "We are in talks with Portugal and Spain regarding a formal joining of the Atlantic Constellation governance mechanism," he added.

Rebecca Evernden, Director of Space with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, told conference delegates in the opening plenary that the UK had also increased its involvement in Copernicus, which had previously been uncertain following Brexit.

The new pathfinder satellite, of the same design and to be launched in the same orbital plane as three others from Portugal​, is being co-funded by Open Cosmos, which is based on the Harwell Space Campus in Oxfordshire.

Rafael Jorda Siquier, Chief Executive of Open Cosmos, said: “The UK joining Portugal and Spain in the Atlantic Constellation is a major step forward in our national EO strategy. Building a shared satellite constellation is a very effective way of having high revisit diverse data over each region of interest.“

New UK space minister Andrew Griffith, appointed as Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology after prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government reshuffle the previous week, was not among the 1500 attendees at the three-day Belfast conference.

Chi Onwurah, the opposition Labour party’s Shadow Minister for Science, Research & Innovation, was scheduled to visit the conference on its final day.

In a statement issued by the UKSA, Griffith said: “Earth observation will play an absolutely vital role in tackling global challenges like climate change and disaster relief, providing the data we need at speed, while supporting key UK industries like agriculture and energy.

“By working with Open Cosmos on a new satellite and supporting our Atlantic partnerswe can harness space tech for our shared goals, while creating new skills opportunities and jobs for the future to grow the UK economy.”

If a deal is reached with Portugal and Spain the UK’s pathfinder satellite will help increase the frequency of revisit time in the constellation’s first orbital plane by a third, meaning more frequent observations can be made of the same point on Earth.

Key applications will include disaster relief action, early detection of climate change indicators, increasing agricultural productivity and improving energy use.

Spain and Portugal announced their agreement to develop a constellation of Earth observation satellites in November 2022. The baseline Atlantic Constellation, costing EUR 60 million, will consist of 16 microsatellites and be able to provide data about any place on Earth every three hours.

The UK is among four other countries (South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Norway) to have expressed an interest in joining the programme as a partner. 

Having more countries involved will allow an increase in the data rate up to the point where satellite information is available every hour, improving the performance of the system without incurring a higher cost for the main participating states.

Chief Executive of the UKSA, Dr Paul Bate, said: “There’s no better way to open the UK Space Conference than by backing a new Earth observation programme.

“Space has been shaping our lives for decades but is set to become increasingly critical as we take the necessary steps to protect our planet, drive prosperity and push the boundaries of human knowledge.

“We are focused on catalysing investment, delivering new missions and capabilities in areas such as Earth observation and the low-Earth orbit economy, and championing the opportunities that our growing space sector brings to people and businesses up and down the country.”

The Atlantic Constellation is a concept for a cooperative constellation of Earth observation (EO) satellites, joining several private and public actors for a common effort to tackle a new EO data policy for territory monitoring and therefore the dynamics of climate changing.

The approach for this initiative was originated by Portugal in 2020 through two parallel studies that ESA carried out upon request of the Portuguese Space Agency (PSA). The initiative aims at developing a business-driven constellation of satellites, carried out in international cooperation, that responds to the needs of many coastal regions.

Since its inception, the goal is for the initiative to be a shared effort between different regions that face similar challenges, where each partner contributes with a reduced number of satellites while benefiting from the data of a broader constellation.

Spain was the first country to join Portugal in the Atlantic Constellation initiative. In 2021, the two countries decided to use EU Recovery and Resilience funds to develop a series of Earth Observation satellites. In Portugal, eight high-resolution satellites are being developed as part of the New Space Portugal Agenda, led by Geosat.

This initiative will provide valuable data for many end users, ranging from aquaculture, land use, or agriculture, but it will also allow the Portuguese industrial ecosystem to acquire know-how on developing and operating end-to-end space systems. On the other hand, Spain will develop eight additional satellites, a development that the European Space Agency will oversee.

Joan Alabart, Industrial Relations and Projects Officer of PSA, said: “The Atlantic Constellation is open to other countries and the UK has manifested its interest to contribute. And the terms of participation are currently being prepared. Other countries have also expressed interest in joining the initiative, which will be announced in due course.”

Portugal is also developing in parallel a series of complementary constellations for VDES, SAR and Very High-Resolution imagery that are expected to be operational by 2026, and these constellations will complement the national effort in the Atlantic Constellation to use all kind of data to foster the development of new satellite based EO data applications.

 

Empire of darkness

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak called for honesty and openness ahead of this week’s AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park for global politicians, tech executives and experts. But warm words and loose promises may not be enough to stem the AI tsunami.

by Clive Simpson

Several days prior to the attack on Israel by Hamas, the renown Israeli author, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari was in Azerbaijan, its own territorial dispute with Armenia having flared up only a week earlier, to give a keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku.

For this annual global gathering of world-leading space scientists, rocket engineers and space graduates, all with their futuristic eyes firmly set on the heavens above, his evocative and challenging words brought them crashing down to Earth.

“Soon the era of human domination of this planet might come to an end,” he warned, laying out the stark reality of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the inherent dangers it presents to humanity. His talk drew rapturous applause from delegates crammed into the 3,000-capacity auditorium.

Despite suggesting that AI has the potential to help humanity, Harari, most famous for his international best-selling book ‘Sapiens’, expressed serious concerns about its precipitant threat to the very life that brought it into being.

Era of human domination

“For tens of thousands of years humans have dominated Earth but if we could go forward in time 700 years, or even just 50 years, we are likely to find a planet dominated by an alien intelligence.

 

We have already met this alien intelligence here on Earth and, within a few decades, it might take over our planet.” 

 

Harari said wasn’t referring to an alien invasion from outer space but “an alien intelligence created by us” in our own Earth-bound laboratories over just the last few decades.

 

“AI is an alien intelligence,” he asserted. “It processes information, makes decisions and creates entirely new ideas in a radically alien way. 

 

“Today, it already surpasses us in many tasks, from playing chess to diagnosing some kinds of cancer, and it may soon surpass us in many more. The AI we are familiar with today is still at a very, very early stage of its evolution.” 

 

He described AI as being still at its “amoeba stage” but unlike human evolution over billions of years it wouldn’t evolve at such a slow pace.

 

“Digital evolution is millions of times faster than organic evolution. The AI amoebas of today may take just a couple of decades to get to T-Rex stage.” If Chat GPT is an amoeba, what do you think an AI T-Rex would look like, he asked?

 

Space exploration

Harari believes that AI has great potential to help humanity, not only by exploring other planets free of stringent life support constraints but also protecting the eco-system of Earth, providing us with much better health care and raising standards of living “beyond our wildest expectations”.

 

But in parallel he issued a stark warning that it would bring with it many new dangers.

 

“AI is likely to de-stabilise the global job market and the global economy. Algorithms might enshrine and worsen existing biases like racism, misogyny and homophobia. Bots that spread outrage and fake news threaten to destroy trust between people, and thereby destroy the foundations of democracy,” he said.

 

“Dictatorships too should be afraid of AI, for they work by silencing and terrorising anyone who might speak or act against them. It isn’t easy, however, to silence and terrorise AI. What would a 21st century Stalin do to a dissenting Bot? Send it to Bot Gulag?” 

 

Existential threats

As well as significant societal challenges, Harari believes AI poses a series of existential threats to the very survival of the human species.

 

“Is it wise to create entities more powerful than us, that might escape our control?

 

“The problem isn’t that AI might be malevolent, the problem is that AI might be so much more competent than us that it will increasingly dominate the economy, culture and politics, while we humans lose the ability to understand what is happening in the world and to make decisions about our future.” 

 

AI might destroy humanity not through hate and fear but because it doesn’t care, just as humans have driven numerous other species to extinction by carelessly changing and destroying their habitats.

 

“Maybe AI will push humanity to extinction and then spread itself through the Milky Way galaxy and beyond? Homo-sapiens will then be remembered in the annals of the universe simply as the short-lived connecting link that shifted the evolution of intelligence from the organic to the inorganic realm.

 

"Some people may view this as a noble achievement, but I personally have a deep fear of this scenario. I believe that what really matters in life is not intelligence, but consciousness.”

 

Intelligence versus consciousness

Harari said intelligence should not be confused with consciousness. “Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, like winning at chess or curing cancer,” Harari explained.

 

“Consciousness is the ability to feel things like pain and pleasure, love and hate. In humans and also in other mammals and birds intelligence goes hand-in-hand with consciousness.

 

“We rely on our feelings to solve problems but computers possess an alien intelligence that so far has no link to consciousness.”

 

Despite an immense advance in computer intelligence over the past half century, he acknowledged there has been exactly “zero advance” in computer consciousness with no indication that computers are anywhere on the road to developing consciousness. 

“Just as spaceships, without ever developing feathers, fly much further than birds, so computers may come to solve problems, much, much better than human beings without ever developing feelings,” he said. 

“If human consciousness goes extinct and our planet falls under the dominion of super intelligent but entirely non-conscious entities that would be an extremely sad and dark end to the story of life. It would be an empire of total darkness.” 

How can we avoid this dark fate and deal with the numerous challenges posed by AI? The good news is that while AI is nowhere near its full potential, the same is true of humans too.

 

Positive potential

In terms of regulation, Harari suggested that humanity first needed to focus its attention on this existential threat of AI.

“We humans need to stop fighting among ourselves and cooperate on our shared interests. Unfortunately, in too many countries, like in my own country of Israel and elsewhere, people are not focused on our shared human interests, but rather on fighting with the neighbours about a few hills. What good would it do to win these hills if humanity loses the whole planet?”

Even if humans across the world cooperate He described the task of regulating AI as a difficult and delicate one.

“Given the pace at which AI is developing it is impossible to anticipate and regulate in advance all the potential hazards, therefore regulations should be based less on creating a body of rigid rules and more on establishing living regulatory executions that can quickly identify and respond to problems as they arise,” he said. 

 “To function well the institutions should also be answerable to the public and should stay in close contact with the human communities all over the world that are affected and impacted by AI.”

Mistakes happen

Harari believes regulatory institutions will need one more crucial asset - strong self-correcting mechanisms - if we are to prevent an AI catastrophe.

“In this era of AI the greatest danger to humanity comes from a false belief in infallibility. But even the wisest people make mistakes and AI is not infallible either,” he said.

“If we put all our trust in some allegedly infallible AI, in some allegedly infallible human being or in some allegedly infallible institution, the result could be the extinction of our species.

“In the past humans have made some terrible mistakes, like building totalitarian regimes, creating exploitative empires and waging world wars. 

“Nevertheless, we survived because previously we didn’t have to deal with the technology that can annihilate us. Hitler and Stalin killed millions but they couldn’t destroy humanity itself, so humanity got a second chance to learn from its catastrophic mistakes and experiments.” 

But Harari warned that AI is very different. “If we make a big mistake with AI we may never get a second chance to learn from it. We should not allow any single person, corporation or country to take a gamble on the fate of our entire species and perhaps on the fate of all earthly life forms,” he said. 

“As far as we know today, terrestrial animals maybe the only conscious entities in the entire galaxy or perhaps in the entire universe. There might be other conscious beings out there somewhere, but at least to the best of my knowledge we haven’t met any of them, so we cannot be sure.

“We have now created a non-conscious but very powerful alien intelligence here on Earth. If we mishandle this, AI might extinguish not just the human dominion over this planet but the light of consciousness itself, turning the universe into a realm of utter darkness. It is the responsibility of all of us to prevent this.”

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The 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), in Baku, Azerbaijan, held between 2 and 6 October 2023, was organised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) in conjunction with Azercosmos (the Space Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan) under the theme ‘Challenges and Opportunities: Give Space a Chance’. In 2024 the IAC will be held in Milan, Italy.

A shorter version of this article was published by Central Bylines on 5 November 2023.

Politicians dither as climate crisis builds

 

GLOBAL heating appears to have entered a new and fast-moving trajectory. Amid record-breaking temperatures, melting ice and a sharp increase in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures during the month of July, veteran climate scientists are now becoming increasingly alarmed about the pace of change.

“A few decades ago some people might have thought climate change was a relatively slow-moving phenomenon but we are now witnessing things happening at a terrifying rate,” said Prof Peter Stott, leader of the UK Met Office’s climate monitoring and attribution team.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has also warned of record temperatures and extreme heat in the near future after confirming the latest climate-heating El Niño event had “arrived”.

The last major El Niño was in 2016 – which to date remains the hottest year on record. But for 2023, it comes on top of increasing global heat driven by human-caused carbon emissions, an effect described by the WMO as a “double whammy”. Its officials say urgent preparations for extreme weather events are now vital to save lives and livelihoods.

“As El Niño builds through the rest of this year, adding an extra oomph to the damaging effects of human-induced global heating, many millions of people across the planet and many diverse ecosystems are going to face extraordinary challenges – and unfortunately suffer great damage,” added Stott.

The WMO estimates there is now a 90 percent probability of the latest El Niño continuing to the end of 2023 at a moderate strength or higher, with the added risk of it supercharging extreme weather.

New records for high temperature have been broken almost daily on every continent in recent months whilst in the UK, the average temperature for June was beaten by nearly a full degree with an unprecedented heatwave also affecting the country’s coastal waters.

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, admits that he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on with this summer’s crazy climate data.

“It feels to me like the climate may have shifted into some sort of new regime of global heating that scientists don’t yet understand. And yet the media and everyone keep acting like things are basically fine and leaders keep expanding fossil fuels,” he says.

Cambridge University’s Prof Emily Shuckburgh, a leading climate scientist and director of Cambridge Zero, says that after the UK’s record-breaking month of high temperatures, it looks likely the rest of the summer will be warmer than normal too as global temperatures continue to rise.

“We’ve been warning of these changes for 30 years and warning that the planet is overheating,” she told listeners on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme (3 July 2023).

“We’ve got record melting in Greenland occurring right at this moment, we’ve got record low levels of sea ice in Antarctica. From pole to pole we are seeing dramatic changes and it is nature as well as humans that is witnessing the impact.

“Those extreme temperatures of 40 degrees that we saw in the UK last summer had a dramatic impact on our wildlife and a dramatic impact on us. Across Europe thousands of people died prematurely in that heatwave.

“Sadly the UK used to be a global leader in terms of climate change and it was only two years ago that we hosted the big international climate conference COP-26. We’ve now relinquished that leadership.”

Prof Shuckburgh says the recent progress report from the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) on how the UK is doing against its own decarbonisation plans was “covered with red” because goals and targets were not being met.

“We should be responding to the cost of living and energy crisis by investing in insulation, in solar, in wind, offshore and onshore,” she suggested.

Prof Shuckburgh urged people to accept the global scale of what is at risk. “We know that if we don’t respond to climate change as a country and as a world then the risks are enormous,” she said.

“They are potentially catastrophic in terms of our food supplies, the global spread of disease, the risk from migration by communities that have been impacted by climate change, the risk of conflicts and, most importantly of all, the risk of passing catastrophic tipping points.

“This is what’s at stake. The really frustrating thing from my perspective is that we know what the solutions are. We have them at our fingertips and what we need are stable policies in support of them.”

Such stark warnings are echoed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who also described addressing climate change as a “human rights” issue.

Evoking a “dystopian future” if urgent action isn’t taken, he said: “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying. We, the generation with the most powerful technological tools in history, have the capacity to change it.”

He accused world leaders of performing “the choreography of promising to act” before getting stuck in a rut dominated by short-term political expediency. Turk called for an immediate end to “senseless subsidies” of the fossil fuel industry and said the Dubai COP28 (2023 UN Climate Change Conference) climate summit in November and December needs to be a “decisive game-changer”.

At the end of June, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was accused by a resigning government minister and environment campaigner, Zac Goldsmith, of being “simply uninterested” in the environment and climate emergency.

Lame political leadership – mirrored by many of those in power and supported by the fossil fuel industry and elements of the right-wing media – along with a cost-of-living crisis and war in Ukraine, have all contributed to a prevailing laissez faire attitude.

At the start of 2023, when Sunak introduced his five key policy pledges, the climate and environment were noticeable by their absence, a clear indication that the country’s third prime minister in as many years does not view them as a priority.

Nothing has changed and, despite mounting climate relasted emergencies around the world this summer, Sunak, who favours flying about the country on short-haul private jets and helicopters, also shunned a recent Paris summit on the climate, debt and poverty hosted by the French President Emmanuel Macron.

If there can be a final thought and persepctive (for now) on this challenging issue then perhaps, somewhat surprisingly, it might go to the actor William Shatner.

As Captain James T Kirk of Star Trek’s Enterprise spaceship he explored the universe, espousing a vision of the future where humanity had not only survived but overcome many of the Earthly problems we face today.

Last year, 90-year-old Shatner had what he described as a “life-changing experience” when he physically travelled into space for the first time, expecting to experience “a deep connection with the immensity around us” and “a deep call” for endless exploration.

“The strongest feeling I had, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief I have ever experienced. I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death,” he said.

“I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.

“This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realised that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside.

“I did my share in popularising the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. It is the final and only frontier, and we have been ravaging it relentlessly, destroying it at an unprecedented rate and making it uninhabitable.” 

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This article by Clive Simpson was first published by Central Bylines under the title, 'Politicians drag their heels as the climate crisis intensifies'.

Space debris problem needs urgent action

 

THE chief of global satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat has issued a stark warning to space leaders calling for immediate action to stem the proliferation of space debris in Earth orbit.

Counselling against complacency, Raveej Suri, Inmarsat’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “So far we have been lucky that we haven’t seen any major collisions in space, but we would be foolish to rely on luck alone.”

His wake up call to governments and industry was delivered during a no-holes-barred keynote speech to more than 100 delegates at the New Space Atlantic Summit, organised by the Portugal Space Agency (PSA) in Lisbon this week.

“It would be irresponsible of me not to call out that I believe we are at a crisis point regarding space sustainability which requires immediate and decisive action,” he stated. “Every year that we fail to act increases the cost of future actions and makes it more technically difficult to deliver an effective cleanup strategy.”

At Inmarsat we do not take the operating environment for granted but I am concerned that the world is now entering a system wide emergency, with low Earth orbits (LEO) particularly vulnerable, and we no longer have the luxury of patient action.

Suri, who transferred from Nokia to head up the London-based satellite services provider in 2021, welcomed moves in the past year which have seen more countries signing up to the ASAT (anti-satellite testing) ban, ESA proposing a zero space debris policy by 2030, a new five-year rule for satellite disposal after reaching the end of their operational life, and space sustainability policy initiatives from the UK.

But he said even these initiatives were “insufficient” compared to the gravity of the problem, citing examples of increasing space debris proliferation and the rising number of orbital near misses - including one by two defunct satellites earlier this year that came within 10 m of each other.

Suri also highlighted the work of Prof Hugh Lewis at the University of Southampton who recently released data that showed in March alone SpaceX Starlink satellites performed more collision avoidance manoeuvres in a single month than in the entire first 2.5 years of Starlink deployment.

Based on statistical models produced by the ESA space debris office, it is estimated that there are 36,500 objects larger than 10 cm, one million objects between one to 10 cm and an extraordinary 130 million objects between 1 mm and 1 cm.

These tiny objects could be anything from paint flecks from rockets to small fragments created from in-orbit impact, but travelling faster than a bullet they can still cause an incredible amount of damage to something else in orbit.

“These numbers and the risk to incumbent services will only increase as tens of thousands of satellites are launched into orbit over the coming years, many as part of so called mega constellations in low Earth orbit,” he said.

“So far we have been lucky but we would be foolish to rely on luck to keep to space commons - areas and resources that fall outside national jurisdiction - open for sustainable use. We urgently need to align to a shared understanding of the problem and agree on principals of action.”

Suri proposed a series of guiding tenets - understanding the constraints of the operating environment, bringing scientific consensus to orbital capacity, and providing equitable and fair solutions to benefit all - to help address the problem.

He also suggested that equity considerations should reach beyond the boundaries of space into Earth’s atmosphere where space environmentalism is already asking questions about the effect of industrialising the de-orbiting of spacecraft and what that does to the precipitous chemical balance of the upper atmosphere.

“We need to make gains in each area, we need to acknowledge that space is finite and move to an urgent scientific consensus on orbital capacity parameters,” he said. “We need to create the means to deal with space debris and we need to keep equity considerations front of mind.”

Whilst acknowledging that UN and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) processes are important, he declared it was time for a “like-minded group of countries” to commit collectively to shared principles, to share regulations and coordinating mechanisms for safe space operations and orbital development.

“This could be achieved by countries such as the UK, US and those in the EU coming together to agree a baseline understanding of the issues and set out basic standards,” he argued. “The collective influence of such a grouping would create a powerful precedent for new entrants to space and those that wish to do business with us.”

He said one of the most effective measures would be to make market access reliant on sustainable and responsible behaviour. “Of course, withholding rights should not be done lightly and it is not a substitute for a global regime which could give full meaning to equity considerations.

“As the CEO of a satellite communications company, space sustainability is an existential issue for my industry. Taking immediate action is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to protect considerable global investment in R&D and infrastructure to ensure that we will continue to operate and provide valuable services well into the future.

“Likewise the stakes for governments are extremely high. The global economy is dependent on satellite-enabled applications, now taken for granted as part of our daily lives whether for safe transit, banking or complex logistics.

“I submit to you that 2023 is a make or break year for our future as a space faring community. Governments and leaders need to take urgent action and demand that operators maintain an open, predictable and sustainable space commons. The stakes have never been higher and the time to act is now.”

Keynotes and panel discussions at the Summit, held at the premises of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the sixth in series of events focused on the theme of ‘A Global Effort for Space Sustainability’.

Speakers included Peter Martinez, Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation, who drew parallels with the development of the environmental movement and said space sustainability needed a similar multi-faceted approach.

International Institute of Space Law (ISSL) President Kae-Uwe Schrogl referred to “out-dated and unenforceable laws” governing outer space. “Sustainability can only be reached on a level playing field and at present we don’t have an architecture for space law. Flags of convenience cannot be allowed,” he stated.

Daniel Smith, CEO of Edinburgh-based AstroAgency, a strategic space marketing and media firm, brought an industry perspective to delegates and urged them to "grasp the opportunity" while there was still time.

“The last thing we really need are more strategies without action,” he said. “The NewSpace economy can be shaped by new space players if we act in unity now.”

Portugal Space Agency president Ricardo Conde described sustainability as “underpinning the country’s expanding efforts in space” and said the agency was targeting “pragmatic solutions” that would help the country tackle today’s most pressing problems, including the impacts of climate change.

“Today, two of the big long-term motivations for space exploration are mining and the extension of territory. Portugal is not interested in mining other worlds and we don't have a vision for the geopolitical extension of territory. We will use our tools and expertise to make space work in a sustainable way."

 

Pumping up the weather

THE year 2022 effectively tied for Earth’s fifth warmest year since 1880 - and the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest nine on record, according to the latest analysis released by NASA.

Scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA’s leading centre for climate modelling in New York have reported global temperatures in 2022 were 0.89 degrees Centigrade (C) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend. Earth is now about 1.11 degrees C warmer than the late 19th century average.

“This is alarming,” admits NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former Space Shuttle astronaut. “Our warming climate is already making a mark. Forest fires are intensifying, hurricanes are getting stronger, droughts are wreaking havoc and sea levels are rising.”

He says NASA is deepening its commitment to addressing climate change and adds: “Our Earth System Observatory will provide state-of-the-art data to support our climate modelling, analysis and predictions to help humanity confront our planet’s changing climate.”

“The reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the long-term planetary impacts will also continue,” explains Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS.

NASA scientists, working with leading international climatologists, have determined carbon dioxide emissions were the highest on record in 2022, despite a short-lived dip in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Levels of these human-driven greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded since.

Using the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation instrument that launched to the International Space Station last year, they have also identified some super-emitters of methane – another powerful greenhouse gas.

Earth’s Arctic region continues to experience the strongest warming trends – close to four times the global average – according to GISS research presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as well as in a separate study.

Communities around the world are already experiencing the impacts that scientists see as connected to the warming atmosphere and ocean – intensified rainfall and tropical storms, severe droughts and increased storm surges.

Among many other climate-driven weather events around the world – including the UK’s hottest ever daytime temperatures which peaked at 40.3 C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire – last year brought torrential monsoon rains that devastated Pakistan and a persistent megadrought in the US Southwest. In September, Hurricane Ian became one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to strike the continental US.

NASA’s global temperature analysis is drawn from data collected by weather stations and Antarctic research stations, as well as instruments mounted on ships and ocean buoys.

Scientists analyse these measurements to account for uncertainties in the data and to maintain consistent methods for calculating global average surface temperature differences for every year. These ground-based measurements of surface temperature are consistent with satellite data collected since 2002 by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on NASA’s Aqua satellite and with other estimates.

NASA uses the period from 1951-1980 as a baseline to understand how global temperatures change over time. That baseline includes climate patterns such as La Niña and El Niño, as well as unusually hot or cold years due to other factors, ensuring it encompasses natural variations in Earth’s temperature.

Many factors can affect the average temperature in any given year. For example, 2022 was one of the warmest on record despite a third consecutive year of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

NASA scientists estimate that La Niña’s cooling influence may have lowered global temperatures slightly (about 0.06 degrees C) from what the average would have been under more typical ocean conditions.

A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that the global surface temperature for 2022 was the sixth highest since 1880.

NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis and have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Although rankings for specific years can differ slightly between the records, they are in broad agreement and both reflect ongoing long-term warming.

NASA’s full dataset of global surface temperatures through 2022, as well as details with code of how NASA scientists conducted the analysis, are publicly available from GISS. 

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This article by Clive Simpson was first published by Central Bylines under the title 'Heating Earth drives more extreme weather'.