Unexplained phenomenon in the skies over Mexico has some wondering if it is somehow related to Arizona. A Valley man is analyzing the so-called UFO sighting.

The sighting occurred two months ago and was videotaped by pilots with the Mexican military as they flew drug patrols over the state of Campeche.

In the tape, you can hear them counting objects. Ultimately, 11 lights or "orbs" are recorded with a combination of infrared and radar technology.

Jim Dilettoso is a world-recognized expert in video analysis. He got the video from his friend Mexican journalist Jaime Mousson.

Mousson interviewed the pilots who flew that night. The Mexican military reportedly recorded this video of so-called unidentified flying objects.

"A lot of people are saying it's an alien spacecraft," he said. "Well, I'm not saying that. It could be an alien spacecraft. It could be a ... holographic projections, so we have to go measure holographic projections, get the data, compare it and see if it's holographic projections. That's a lot of work."

Dilettoso is putting a lot of work into it to learn what the objects are and are not.

"These are not airplanes, these are not helicopters, these are not balloons," Mousson said. "As sophisticated as our analysis equipment is, it can't get the license plate off these objects. What we can do it extract data and compare it to a lot of known objects and compare it to other unknowns."

The case is getting attention because it comes from the Mexican military and is being compared by investigators worldwide to the Phoenix lights.

The Phoenix lights seen across the Valley in 1997 received international attention as a set of unidentified flying objects.

Dilettoso said his analysis of that sighting and of the latest one out of Mexico have striking similarities.

"The Mexican 11 sighting, the Phoenix light sighting, Fatima and Belgium are now grouped together as examples of some really important light ball phenom that has no physical man-made technology explanation," he said.

Dilettoso isn't quite ready to say what he thinks the orbs are yet.

Later this week, he's expecting to receive the entire 37-minute sighting on tape. At that point, he can do a much deeper analysis.
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According to Santiago Yturria (syturria@intercable.net), as part of the investigation, the FLIR representative for Mexico, Mr. Gilberto Rocha, was interviewed by Jaime Maussan regarding the images recorded by the FLIR STAR SAFIRE II aboard the Mexican Air Force Merlin airplane during the March 5 , 2004 incident over the Campeche area.
 
NOTE: The comments and opinions expressed by Mr. Gilberto Rocha are his own personal points of view based on his experience and knowledge of the FLIR STAR SAFIRE II operational functions and do not necessarily represent FLIR Systems, Inc. opinion and points of view.
 
Question: Mr. Rocha, you just have reviewed some images recorded by the Air Force during an anti-narcotics operation over Campeche on March 5, 2004. What is your opinion about them.
 
Answer: These are interesting images because they are not common. I will try to explain myself. The human eye perceives certain light frequency that the sun emits. Beyond this frequency the human eye has not the capacity to perceive those images. The infrared source or the infrared rays can only be detected with the FLIR or with special cameras that can detect the infrared radiation.
 
The equipment that the Air Force is using has the capacity to detect visible images and infrared images. The images that we saw from the Air Force footage correspond to objects that emit temperature, they are emitting heat and they are emitting radiation to the exterior and the camera is reading this.
 
These images may have low resolution because of the distance that we are measuring but represent round shaped objects that can not be compared to any known object that we have been looking for in the air space.
 
Question: Could these have been any kind of aircraft ?
 
Answer. No, because the conventional aircraft have the temperature very well defined in their turbines and in the front where friction is registered therefore they could not be seen as rounded lights.
 
If we could have a closer image of the objects, perhaps we could have a better definition of the shape of these objects but due to the information we have, these objects are round shaped and we cannot consider them as airplanes.
 
Question: Any possibility for an helicopter ?
 
Answer: No, it's the same case: the turbine and blades would be the point of highest temperature defining the shape of the helicopter and it would be always a known shape not of a round-shaped object.
 
Question: If these objects are not any known aircraft what do you think they are.
 
Answer: In the strict sense of the word avoiding any distortion or confusion these are objects that fly and we can not identify.
 
Question: Is it possible that the FLIR could have been giving us false information, that these high temperature readings were non-existent?
 
Answer: Negative, because in the images we are seeing clouds that have a higher temperature that the ambient average temperature, and we can see the cloud silhouettes because the FLIR is detecting their infrared frequency.
 
The objects that we are seeing are the points of highest temperature there. Personally, I have never seen anything like this. My experience with these cameras is completely industrial, we analyze a whole variety of industrial appliances as well as the electrical industry but for me the case of the Mexican Air Force is an unsolved case.

Source: Fox11AZ.com and rense.com
http://www.fox11az.com/news/state/stories/KMSB-20040519-fambp-phoenixlights.1db18284a.html
http://www.rense.com/general53/flir.htm

Powerful evidence for global warming has been discovered by scientists funded by the US Government, demolishing the chief argument of sceptics who deny that the phenomenon is real.

A new analysis of satellite data has revealed that temperatures in a critical part of the atmosphere are rising much faster than previously thought, strengthening the scientific consensus that the world is warming at an unnatural rate.

The discovery resolves one of the most contentious anomalies in climate science, which has often been invoked by the Bush Administration to question whether man-made global warming is happening.

While it is generally accepted that surface temperatures are increasing by an average of 0.17C (0.31F) per decade, satellites have been unable to detect a parallel trend in the troposphere ??” the lowest level of the atmosphere, extending 7.5 miles above the ground, in which most weather occurs.

This lack of tropospheric warming has long puzzled scientists, as it is predicted by all the major models of climate change. It has also been seized on by a small but vocal minority of scientists, who have used it to raise doubts about whether global temperatures are rising at all. The enigma, however, has been explained by a team led by Qiang Fu, of the University of Washington in Seattle.

His research reveals that the troposphere is warming almost precisely as the models predict it should: by about 0.2C (0.4F) per decade. Satellites have not previously detected the trend as they have been confused by colder temperatures in the atmospheric layer above.

The findings, details of which are published today in the journal Nature, provide one of the final pieces of proof that global warming is taking place, and that it is a human-induced phenomenon.

Sceptics have often argued that if temperatures are rising at all, this is down to natural variation in the climate as the world emerges from a ???little Ice Age???. The tropospheric trend, however, is precisely what scientists would expect to see if man-made emissions of greenhouse gases were causing it to heat up.

???I think this could convince not just scientists but the public as well,??? Dr Fu said.

Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, said: ???It will become that much harder for people to claim that the world isn??™t warming and that the warming isn??™t caused by greenhouse-gas emissions.???

In their study, the Washington team examined atmospheric temperature data collected between January 1979 and December 2001 from satellites operated by the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

These satellites used instruments known as microwave-sounding units to measure microwave radiation emitted by oxygen molecules, and thus to calculate the temperature.

The raw data for the troposphere, as measured by the instruments??™ channel 2 setting, showed no pronounced warming trend.

Dr Fu realised, however, that about a fifth of the signal picked up on channel 2 in fact originated in the stratosphere ??” the higher level of the atmosphere between 10km and 50km above the Earth??™s surface. This had skewed the data, as the stratosphere is known to be cooling rapidly.

???Because of ozone depletion and the increase of greenhouse gases, the stratosphere is cooling about five times faster than the troposphere is warming, so the channel 2 measurement by itself provided us with little information on the temperature trend in the lower atmosphere,??? Dr Fu said.

His team then used measurements from weather balloons and from another channel on the microwave units to determine precisely how much of the channel 2 signal was coming from the stratosphere.

Once this stratospheric error was eliminated, the remaining data showed that the troposphere had indeed been warming, by about 0.2C (0.4F) a decade.

???This tells us very clearly what the lower atmosphere temperature trend is, and the trend is very similar to what is happening at the surface,??? Dr Fu said.

The new tropospheric data does not suggest that the pace of global warming is increasing or decreasing. The research was funded by the U.S. Government, through the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global temperatures will rise by an average of between 1.4C and 5.8C by the end of the century.

Dr Hulme said that while the results further confirm the overwhelming scientific consensus that man-made global warming is a proven phenomenon, he would be surprised if it were accepted by critics.

???I??™m under no illusions that it will knock down the critics altogether,??? he said. ???In some quarters, people hold almost fundamentalist beliefs that are immune to carefully reasoned argument. A new paper that seems to take the legs away from one of their critiques may unfortunately not make much difference to their arguments.

???It is the totality of the evidence that has convinced the vast majority of experts that the planet is warming: surface temperature recordings, rises in sea level, retreating glaciers, shifting species domains.

???The compendium of evidence from all these different sources means the overwhelming majority of scientists feel justified in warning society about this.???

Source: The Times
http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/threat/threat6.htm

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