How’s this for a summer activity: dragging a GPS hundreds of kilometers across Antarctic ice to grab a GPS measurement? That’s been the programme for researchers from the University of Tasmania, along with collaborators from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, in a project designed to validate measurements from the European …

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Thursday 22nd December 2011 09:05 GMT Dodgy Geezer

Why are they doing this?

We already know that the world is doomed from computer models.

Actually getting real data tells us nothing more, and might <del>reveal</del> confuse the real situation.

Which is providing us with a lot of research money at the moment....

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1. Thursday 22nd December 2011 09:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Err...
  
  As Prof Brian Cox said last time I saw him speak:
  
  Observe (ie: take data points)
  
  Try to understand the system you see
  
  Try to build a model, reflecting your understanding
  
  Repeat
  
  It is critically important to build models, it's also critically important to use real world data.
  
  Also, satellites need calibration, if you've got an accurate ground station you've got a datum to compare the satellite readings from.
  
  And... There is no research money at the moment, NERC is being disbanded, which is a crying shame. The MetOffice have had their budgets slashed and this is coming out of research. Scientists are losing their jobs left right and centre.
  
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2. Thursday 22nd December 2011 12:43 GMT Francis Boyle
  
  The world will be fine
  
  I just wouldn't fancy being around in another fifty plus years. Just maybe this work will make life in the 2060s a little more endurable.
  
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Friday 23rd December 2011 11:32 GMT fredds

worry

"I just wouldn't fancy being around in another fifty plus years. Just maybe this work will make life in the 2060s a little more endurable."

Why wouldn't you want to be around in 50 years? The earth is not warming any more, that is why global warming was dropped in favour of climate change. Australian scientists in antarctica drill the ice every year to measure thickness, it is getting thicker. Their data is more accurate than that from a satellite. Sea levels are going up by about1.3 per year, as they have done since the last ice age. We had the medieval warm period a thousand years ago and the little ice age 400 years ago, so the climate is always changing.

Don't worry, be happy

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1. Friday 23rd December 2011 11:55 GMT Francis Boyle
  
  "The earth is not warming any more"
  
  Famous last words.
  
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