Climate change keeps space debris afloat longer

[Admin]

Changes in Earth's atmosphere resulting from climate change are working against efforts to clean dangerous debris out of orbit around Earth.

Climate change keeps space debris afloat longer : Read more

 

[Mergatroid]

No mention of the atmosphere expanding, causing more friction further away from the planet?
Shouldn't a warming atmosphere cause it to expand? Seems the expanses atmosphere should make up for some of the issues caused by carbon. Since there was no mention of it, I have to assume they did not look into it and see how the two effect each other.

 

[billslugg]

The article says that, due to the scarcity of molecules up there, CO2 is adept at reradiating its heat to outer space thus causing an overall cooling and shrinkage of the upper atmosphere.
Solar activity has a dominant affect however, heating and expanding the atmosphere as we enter the peak of the Sunspot cycle in 2025.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I think the most obvious effect on low orbit satellite atmospheric drag is the effect of variable solar emissions on the uppermost layers of our atmosphere. But, this article still seems to skip over a lot of points as it addresses CO2 buildup. First, it seems that they do not mention the fractional amount of CO2 at the orbital distances of concern. Second, their model seems to be based on a correlation of upper atmosphere density and CO2 emissions over a 50 year period. There is a lot that was happening over that 50 years, including emissions of a lot of thing into the lower atmosphere being increased in some chemicals and reduced in others. Meanwhile, the solar emissions have been going through several cycles with different periodicities. So, I am wondering if the inferrences being made from their correlation are physically realistic.

Without some better quantitative explanation of the physics involved, including how much difference this particular phenomenon will make in orbit decay times, this article seems to smell like another attempt to pile onto the emotional badwagon of the "climate change" issue. It is easy to say something will make a known issue worse, but a lot harder to say its effect is significant, rather than insignificant. For instance, preferentially launching rockets into space from Earth towards the east will, by calculation, tend to decrease the rate of rotation of the Earth and increase our day length - but not by enough to ever be noticeable.