Satellite Temperature Data Supported By Radiosondes

By Paul Homewood

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20160120/

As we know, there has been a concerted attempt in the last few months to discredit satellite temperature measurements. In a way this reflects on the success that sceptic bloggers have had in bringing them to the forefront and pointing out that they do not support NASA/NOAA’s hottest year claims.

Indeed it is only recently that most of the media has begun to pay attention to the fact.

This may be the reason that Schmidt and Karl put up a slide of satellite trends at their joint news conference yesterday.

It confirms what we already knew. that 2015 was only the 3rd warmest, still well below 1998. But what was most significant was the fact that radiosonde data pretty much confirmed everything the satellites were telling us.

Radiosondes, of course, don’t offer the comprehensive geographical coverage that satellites do, but they do provide more direct measurements. As such they are a useful complement to satellites.

The most significant radiosonde numbers are the 5000 and 10000 ft ones, as this is the same area that satellites measure as lower troposphere. The 10000 ft radiosonde data peak in 1998 and 2010, as do the satellites. Oddly though, the 5000 ft ones peaked in 2005.

Certainly this data makes it much more difficult to rubbish satellite as has been attempted. After all, it was Tom Wigley who wrote in this paper back in 2006:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/how-climate-scientists-cheat-and-deceive/

One final point to note. Attacks on satellite data often turn into attacks on the credibility of Roy Spencer and John Christy, who run the UAH series. Yet once again we find that it is actually RSS that shows the least warming.