~Method exceeds any other technique in identifying what is happening at the most crucial interaction between Earth surface and atmosphere.
The larger question given by a warming planet is what happens to Earth aside from its climate heating up slowly. The answer is at the interface. In darkness, the surface to air interface is cold, very cold, the land or sea ice becomes a reflection of radiative cooling. Eventually exceeding, overwhelming what heat is left in the lower atmosphere. However, air is a good insulator, in this case the usual layers a top the interface remain warmer, this causes inversions. The rate of cooling or lack thereof can be judged by how strong the inversion is. Extremely thick sea ice over the Arctic Ocean mirrors land during the long night especially after land exhausted or radiated most of its energy to space. Ice some 10 meters thick has very little heat lost to space. Thinner ice has
much more radiation escaping, this flux of energy alters the climate terrain. The lost of thick sea ice has already affected the climate worldwide. In the Arctic past, winter was built by darkness with a sea largely non existent, in effect insulated by sea ice, the lower atmosphere lost its heat upwards to space in Autumn, Winter is created when land and sea ice accelerate this cooling process by heat radiation going at times 2 ways, upwards towards space and downwards towards much frozen Earth.
Most remote sensing instruments do not read physical bodies next to each other extremely precisely. As an example, the air right above open water ocean is often not the same, the remote sensing achievement in determining temperatures at 5, 10, 100 or 200 meters above or below the sea surface is outstanding. But as I wrote before , this precision may be questioned, how we measure the temperature of everything at once is a matter of future progress. What the horizon refraction method does is quite unique, singularly a measure of the physical or thermal process at the interface at once. Its precision is unquestionable. A true measure of the temperature of the entire atmosphere is the dimension of the vertical sun disk, the most precise temperature measurement of the entire atmosphere in existence, but the thermal nature of the surface interface seen at once is invaluable.
Courtesy NOAA..... So we are suppose to believe that the ice surface near Chukchi sea
in 2012 went just as cold or colder from an area which had wide open water as compared with 2014 minima apparently not having such a great melt?
The presence of thick ice does a remarkable transformation of the horizon as opposed to a body of open water or very thin ice. From this literal point of view, the interpretation of interface thermal physics can be judged instantly. Observations
so far this Arctic fall reveal a predominant IAI: Interface Adiabatic Index, meaning
the interface from ice to immediate lower atmosphere being adiabatic, not
fostering inversions describes thinner ice as the area of observation is directed towards the sea. Other methods of measurement usually are oblivious to the interface mixing zone, being blind or oblivious to the IAI gives room for plenty of strange misinterpretations. Now that I know that the IAI is overwhelmingly high.
I understand that any cyclone can easily venture further North, as was the
case in he North Pacific Low in part strengthened by a typhoon, this Cyclone of a week past can also advect warmer air, compounding the IAI to last much longer. The opposite III , a predominant long lasting Interface Inversion Index means winter in progress, the very nature of cold air 'construction' or progression demands
a consistent III, which would repulse and rather chase away any Cyclone.
III at present is very anemic....
wd Nov22,2014
and therefore