The relationship between air surface temperature and greenhouse gases in Peninsular Malaysia during 2003–2008 retrieved from AIRS data

The damage resulting from global warming was faster than any experts have predicted or anticipated. Global mean temperature has increased by 0.3-0.6 C during the past 100 years, and warming has been accelerating at a rate of 0.15 since the mid-1970s. The result of an increase of temperature is the greenhouse gases (GHGs). Results from the analysis of the retrieved monthly (AIRX3STM) 1°×1° and (AIRX3C2M) 2.5°×2° spatial resolution, from the Atmosphere infrared sounder (AIRS) data were utilized to analyze the impacts of the GHG´s (CO₂, O₃, CH₄ and H₂O vapor) on the air surface temperature (AST) in Peninsular Malaysia for the period 2003-2008 using multiple regression analysis. AIRS is one of the several instruments onboard the Earth Observing System (EOS), onboard NASA´s Aqua Satellite, launched on May 4, 2002. Among the four pollutants, AST was most affected by water vapor (H₂O vapor) indicated by strong positive Beta coefficient (0.244-1.587). O₃ shows a different positive effect with season´s variations (0.264-1.558), and CH₄ has disparate negative influence. CO₂ yields a reasonable relationship with AST by low to moderate Beta coefficient values ranged from -0.592 to 0.238. The variation of pollutants on the average explains change 60.5% of the AST. This indicates that about 60.5% of the AST are attributed to these pollutant gases. The AIRS data and the Satellite measurements are able to measure the increase of the atmosphere greenhouse gases over different regions.