Re: SC30

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061125/asp/frontpage/story_7049213.asp

Sky falling and fast, warn scientists
- Pollution warms surface of Earth, but cools and shrinks upper atmosphere

New Delhi, Nov. 24: Forget the fable of Chicken Little — the sky is indeed falling. The upper zone of Earth’s atmosphere is cooling and shrinking, an international team of scientists said today.

The researchers, including an atmospheric physicist from India, said that while carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming the surface of Earth, they are simultaneously cooling its upper atmosphere.

“The evidence is very clear. It’s based on direct observations of temperatures in the atmosphere,” said Gufran Beig, a team member and deputy director at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune. “The upper atmosphere is cooling fast, much faster than the surface of the Earth is warming,” he said.

In a report in the US journal Science today, Beig and his colleagues said temperatures have dropped by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius per decade in the region of the atmosphere 50 km to 100 km above Earth’s surface.............

.............Earlier studies have shown that temperatures in the upper atmosphere over India have dropped by about 10 degrees over the past 30 years.

The temperatures in the region higher than 100 km are falling even faster.

Carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases such as methane and an oxide of nitrogen are responsible for global warming. These gases are released during the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity.

While carbon dioxide near Earth’s surface absorbs solar radiation and traps heat from the sun, higher up it behaves differently. It interacts with solar radiation and emits heat, leading to cooling.

“Our findings show human activities on Earth’s surface can have significant changes on even the uppermost regions of the atmosphere,” Jan Lastovicka, a scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Prague, Czech Republic, told The Telegraph.

Over the past three decades, the temperature on Earth’s surface has increased by about 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius, but the decrease in the upper atmosphere has ranged from 5 to 10 degrees Celsius, the scientists said................

..........He said the exact impact on satellites is unclear, but there are concerns that a lower density of the ionosphere will lead to an increase in the PENETRATION OF HIGH ENERGY PARTICLES FROM SPACE.............

Here yet another example of how humanities prolific production of greenhouse gases is changing various qualities of our atmosphere. I am particularly interested in the discussion that the changing upper atmosphere may be allowing differant high energy particles from space to now reach ground level. Could these changing upper atmospheric conditions be a casual factor in what me and my brother have noticed recently, a seeming extra burning intensity from sunlight, beyond what would be expected with just warmer average temps on average? Also, if our government is involved in covert programs to try and alter atmospheric conditions, for climate change concerns, or for other reason's, the affect on our atmosphere regarding any substances introduced to bring about the sought after changes, could be currently altering our atmosphere also.