Detecting and Attributing External Influences on the Climate System: A Review of Recent Advances Page: 27 of 80
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MSU instrument on the NOAA-9 satellite. It also arises from differences in how both groups
account for the effects of satellite orbital drift on the sampling of the diurnal temperature cycle.
If the Mears et al. (2003) analyses of the satellite data is more reliable, then there is no
serious inconsistency between modeled and observed tropospheric temperature trends (Figure 9;
Santer et al., 2003a). There is some evidence to support this interpretation. For example,
significant tropospheric warming occurs also in another recent reanalysis of the MSU channel 2
data (Vinnikov and Grody 2003), which uses a different strategy from that in Mears et al. (2003)
and Christy et al. (2000) to account for drift in sampling the diurnal cycle. Also, a recent study
by Fu et al. (2004) applied a regression-based technique to adjust MSU channel 2 data for the
contribution it receives from the cooling stratosphere. This statistical adjustment reveals
pronounced tropospheric warming, even in the Christy et al. (2000) MSU channel 2 product.
Further study of the robustness of this result is underway. A recent study suggests that
radiosonde products (whose trends are quite similar to UAH trends) may also have
underestimated the tropospheric warming since 1979 (Lanzante et al. 2003). Additionally,
synthetic MSU temperatures computed from the recently-completed ERA-40 reanalysis project
also show tropospheric warming (Santer et al., 2004), and are in close agreement with the Mears
et al. (2003) version of MSU channel 2. There are, however, valid scientific concerns regarding
some of this supporting evidence, and further research is needed to validate the vertical
coherence in model simulations.
Alternatively, if the Christy et al. (2000) analysis is closer to the "true" tropospheric
temperature change over the satellite era, then we do not understand the factors that influence
observed lapse rate variability on multi-decadal timescales, and climate models cannot reproduce
the "observed" differential warming. This highlights the importance of reducing uncertainties in23
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Barnett, T.; Zwiers, F.; Hegerl, G.; Allen, M.; Crowley, T.; Gillett, N. et al. Detecting and Attributing External Influences on the Climate System: A Review of Recent Advances, article, January 26, 2005; Livermore, California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1418795/m1/27/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.