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Elsewhere on AB there is an interesting discussion on the impact of satellites. https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/astrophotography/other/is-starlink-ruining-your-astrophotography-experience/ My own take on this is that two other scourges of the anthropocene; namely light pollution and climate change are likely to have a much bigger effect. LP is clearly a major issue, with recent research demonstrating and average 8% per annum increase in LP across the world. This was a beautiful piece of work, using observations of star visibility from people around the world over a decade or more. However, to my knowledge, I am not sure if the same thing has been done for the impact of climate change, measured e.g. through the amount of time observing is not possible due to cloud/humidity. One could also invoke smoke from wild fires, another symptom of climate change. It would need a very good sample of rigorously kept observing logs from a number of people over a large number years, but AB might be the best place to start in seeing whether such a data base exists or can be created. [Professional observatories will also keep such records, but accessing may be hard as much will be analog. My money is on the amateur community - or at least a small fraction of it - to have kept better records of this sort of information. ] Would love to hear peoples thoughts/experiences. I have only been in my location doing AP for 3 years, by this year we had our first ever inversion layer in the valley [at least in living memory] wiping out much of the long nights in June and July. |
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Hi Brian, Interesting question, which I had similarly raised about two years ago: https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/off-topic/anything-goes/poll-astronomy-possible-in-2021/ My analysis at that time concerned cloud coverage (post), which appears to have risen. I should go and repeat my analysis with the recent data available (hopefully, I haven trashed my analysis script 😨). For the season of fall 2022 until now, I‘d say we‘ve got a horrible year for AP. Fall and winter 22/23 didn’t allow any significant AP as well as this fall (permanent cloud coverage and rain). Only summer allowed for a streak of clear nights but due to latitude, nights are pretty short then. I‘d call 2023 „the year without AP“. IMHO, it’s climate change. Björn |
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Hello, from a purely practical point of view, the reliability of weather forecasts has suffered a lot during the last few years. So it is getting much more difficult to rely on precise weather forecasts for planning astrophotography. I don't think the weather conditions have changed considerably during the last years. Here in Central Europe, November and December have always been a difficult time for our hobby. Seasons have somewhat shifted, so that the change to cold winter weather now takes place at a later date than previously. We seem to have better AP conditions during late autumn, but winter lasts longer nowadays, with cold and snowy weather until March or even April. However, if this is due to essential changes in our climate, caused by whatever factors, is a very controversial topic. I generally believe we humans overestimate our understanding of earth's atmosphere. CS Chris |
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I have no statistical proof of this, of course, but in general it seems like there are fewer clear nights than seven years ago when I started doing this. Of course, it could just be that I am doing much longer integrations now than before (dozens of hours versus a couple hours per image) than when I started so my demand on clear sky time is much greater. And to the extent that the recent forest fire season in Canada was exacerbated by climate change - well you can say that climate change nearly completely ruined the 2023 summer imaging season for me. |
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I have kept a very simple nighttime cloud cover record since 2000 which probably isn’t fine enough in detail to show any effects. What I can say is the past 3-4 months has been very poor often a whole month goes by without a decent break. I’m starting to think of shorter projects such as the half hour I did recently on comet Lemmon mainly just for fun rather than a several night project on a DSO. I do think that climate change is responsible for the degradation many of us have seen across continents for clear skies, I’ve been looking into the effect of La Niña but haven’t come to any conclusion. |
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| As others have said, it "seems" that there are fewer good nights here in the Pac NW but I really have no solid evidence to pin that to global warming. It certainly is not out of the question, however. It is well established that more heat and more atmospheric energy means more atmospheric disruption and that can't be good for astronomy. |
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| The Pacific NW now has a fifth season of Fire and smoke that is ruining August and September in the Dark sky areas of Eastern Oregon. |
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 For people in Alberta and BC, I think this says all that needs to be said. Granted, there are some long-term forest related trends that are not favourable for us right now, but they are only exasperated by climate change. |
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| Before, I use to worry about LP and clouds. Now in addition to those factors, I have to worry about the smoke which this year started earlier. Here in the central US, we got smoke from end of April to September. |
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| Y’all know that the US has admitted to recent weather manipulation projects right? Projects that involve cloud seeding. |
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Is climate change impacting your (my) astrophotography. No. |
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| News headline: Cow farts are wiping astrophotography off the face of the earth. |
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There could be a coherence between the change in jetstreams and high pressure areeas, at least for this time of the year. Anytime we have a high pressure area, jetstreams seem to push them away, so clouds follow. Another thing could be the rising temperatures of the oceans, leading to more humidity and clouds. But we all know, buying telescopes is the main cause for clouds. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00792-8 |
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News headline: *Salvatore eats steak furiously* |
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Brian Boyle: Climate change has not caused me heart damage or impacted my astro hobby. |
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Cloud cover certainly has a huge influence on astrophotography and it is generally predicted to be effected by climate change. In my area which is quite dry it has been remarkable how few clear nights there have been. In general long term residents often say it is more cloudy now than 20 years or more in past. It would be really interesting to look at historical data to get a more scientific answer. The one recent study I found suggests that globally cloud coverage has increased quite a bit in tropical and subtropical areas, but has actually decreased in continental temperate areas where most of us do our imaging. But it’s really hard to measure in a consistent way. So it’s one of those things that does not yet appear to have a clear answer. https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/6559/2023/#:~:text=The%20trend%20mode%20shows%20growth,over%20most%20non%2Ddesert%20continents. |
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Christian Koll: Do you have any data or studies showing this to be the case? I ask, because this goes against many reports I've read in recent years stating that forecasts are more accurate than ever. |
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16.18
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Cloud cover certainly has a huge influence on astrophotography and it is generally predicted to be effected by climate change. In my area which is quite dry it has been remarkable how few clear nights there have been. In general long term residents often say it is more cloudy now than 20 years or more in past. It would be really interesting to look at historical data to get a more scientific answer. The one recent study I found suggests that globally cloud coverage has increased quite a bit in tropical and subtropical areas, but has actually decreased in continental temperate areas where most of us do our imaging. But it’s really hard to measure in a consistent way. So it’s one of those things that does not yet appear to have a clear answer. That’s a great link… Really helpful thanks |
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| No. |
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Let me think….  Nope. |
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The weather is very unpredictable and unstable. It is documented by weather statistics that we are getting more rain and varying temperatures across all seasons. The statistics go back quite a while, but this has been a trend for approximately forty years here. So I don't doubt that it has an impact on things. Forecasts are ever changing, daily if not hourly sometimes. So I don't find them all that reliable when it comes to planning sessions tbf. |
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| nope |
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Yes, I believe climate change is probably complicating the accuracy of weather prediction as well as weather itself. Last summer I had an astro field trip planned to a dark site in Northern California that I had been to several times. It's about 142 miles from where I live in San Francisco. On the morning I was planning on leaving, I looked at several weather forecasts for the area, they all agreed it was going to be clear and hot, about 100F. This is a high fire danger area, and given how climate change has increased the frequency and ferocity of wildfires in California I knew there might be a chance a fire could break out but I decided to go anyway. When I got there the temperature was a bit over 100F. But the sky was completely cloudy, it was raining and there were lightning bolts. The woman who owns the house I rented said she's never seen rain in August before and she's lived there some 20 years. I stayed for about 15 minutes trying to make up my mind, should I stay or go? I decided that with lightning, 100F temperature and very dry brush and trees everywhere that the fire danger was too high, not to mention the sky was filled with dark clouds. I drove all the way back home (3 hours). I made a 6 hour trip for nothing. |
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It's a very interesting topic in the field of astronomy and astrophotography. The topic of climate change was one of my favorite projects I was working on at university. There are tons of different researches and papers on this topic, not only because it's interesting and worth thinking about, but mostly because in the last five years so many changes took place. I think I will not be able to do everything by myself, luckily I found these guys from https://mysupergeek.com/, and they helped me not to lost in a large amount of information. Rising temperatures contribute to increased atmospheric turbulence, degrading image clarity. Changes in humidity can impact telescope optics. Altered weather patterns affect sky visibility and the frequency of clear nights, limiting observational opportunities. Extreme weather events pose risks to observatories and equipment. Additionally, light pollution may intensify due to climate-induced shifts. Mitigating climate change is vital for preserving optimal conditions, ensuring astronomers and astrophotographers can continue their work effectively, studying and capturing celestial phenomena with minimal interference from environmental factors. |
