Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 5 December 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/450785a
Earth Monitoring: The crucial measurement
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
Determining sources and sinks of C might be better termed _a_ crucial measurement and not _the_ crucial measurement. To calculate the Earth's energy balance we need to better measure the planet's albedo in addition to CO2 concentrations. We were on our way to doing just that with data from DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) which has been built but not launched. Despite endorsement by the National Academy of Sciences, NASA scrapped that mission and has not explained why. How about it NASA?
But it's all a bit of a misnomer isn't it? CO2 is a factor, but there are more important gases in global warming - methane for example: http://earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm
Nick - if you read the article you refer to you will see: By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane ... Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together ...
Sorry, Nigel not nick. So much for careful reading