Does the temperature outside the atmosphere rise, so does the ISS also rise a little every year?

Answer

The temperatures we measure are those OF the atmosphere. The first question then is whether a ‘temperature outside the atmosphere’ has meaning.

The temperature of a gas is a measure of the average kinetic energy that the atoms or molecules in that gas have. Its definition only makes sense if that average says something about the whole, which is when the individual particles interact a lot with each other and thus exchange energy. Because then there is a kind of universal law of statistics (thanks to Mr. Gauss) that determines how many – for a given average value – there are relative particles that have so much more or less energy than that average. When we are in a state where there are few interactions between the particles (which is the case in most of the space) then of course there is still an average energy, but the link to a temperature is less evident; cold and hot run through each other. The temperature we measure in our atmosphere therefore reflects the average kinetic energy of the molecules in the atmosphere. That extrapolation outside the atmosphere is therefore a bit of a ‘contradiction in terms’.

Whether global warming comes from within or from outside, of course, has everything to do with whether something happens inside or rather outside. Outside would mean that more energy is coming at us, and that could be measured in the ISS. There is no evidence for that. The incident energy they feel there is the light of the sun, and also all kinds of fast particles that pass there, usually also from the sun, but also from elsewhere in the universe. The sum of these is not the same every hour, but there is no indication that this energy supply is responsible for the rather rapid increase in temperature that we have experienced on Earth over the past 50 years. On the other hand, the warming is real, and the increase of greenhouse gases such as CO2 is also real, and it is an inescapable consequence of basic physics (which we apparently have confidence in when we turn on the light or start the dishwasher) that more greenhouse gas means warming. Moreover, the picture is not only qualitatively correct, but also quantitatively.