Articles Tagged "Roy Spencer"

I’ll admit to being a skeptic when it comes to other skeptics’ opinions on the potential effects of sunspot activity on climate. Oh, it’s all very possible I suppose, but I’ve always said I’ll start believing it when someone shows a quantitative connection between variations in global cloud cover (not temperature) and geomagnetic activity.

Maybe my skepticism is because I never took astronomy in college (oops…my wife reminds me I took it 1st year). Or, maybe it’s because I can’t see or feel cosmic rays. They sound kind of New Age to me. After all, I can see sunlight, and I can feel infrared radiation…but cosmic rays? Some might say, “Well, Roy, you work with satellite microwave data, and you can‘t see or feel those either!” True, but I DO have a microwave oven in my kitchen…where’s your cosmic ray oven?

Now…where was I? Oh, yeah. So, since I’ve been working with 9 years of global reflected sunlight data from the CERES instrument flying on NASA’s Terra satellite, last night I decided to take a look at some data for myself.