A tweet by Dr. Jason Patton at Oklahoma State University inspired this question,

How many of you will check “satellite-derived temperatures” today to determine what you are going to wear or whether you should cover your flower bed tonight?

Actually this statement is a bit tongue-and-cheek because satellite derived estimates have a different objective. A public narrative has emerged that misrepresents how climate scientists record temperature. I spent the first half of my career at NASA and served as Deputy Project Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission now in orbit. I also teach a Satellite Meteorology/Climatology class. Satellite datasets are important complementary datasets, but they are not typically used to validate ground measurements. With GPM, we meticulously established a ground validation program so that we have a robust set of “ground” measurements to tell us if measurements from 350-800 km in space are “accurate.”

from Forbes – Tech http://ift.tt/1M5cj2g
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