skierinvermont Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/mar/25/one-satellite-data-set-is-underestimating-global-warming Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nflwxman Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Interesting and something tells me there is more to come regarding UAH and RSS. I think many of us here who have been following global temperatures have noticed fishy behavior on the sat datasets well before this paper brings this new issue to light. One portion that they touch on in this paper is the amplification of tropical warming. El Ninos intensify the convective transport to the mid latitudes, but the heavy correlation to ENSO has shown overly muted warming the last decade or two. It was almost to the point where it seemed "off." I would have liked them to talk more about the orbital drift component of RSS that has been arising recently, however. It's hard to argue with the use of surface stations as our main gauge of atmospheric temperatures. While the measurement coverage is not extensive, at least one can be confident WHAT you are measuring has a small quantifiable margin of error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AvantHiatus Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Posted a link to the study in the global temperature topic. One less piece of fodder for deniers and skeptics. The study found a greater than 250% warming increase in the calibrated version of UAH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StudentOfClimatology Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Looks like a tropically-focused TMT correction rather than a TLT correction? I'm still reading through the paper, but that's the impression I'm getting from the abstract and the initial equations. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00767.1 If this is the case, it's more relevant to the question regarding the existence of the tropical mid/upper-tropospheric "hotspot", a key signature of H^2O feedback, rather than lower tropospheric temps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Global_Warmer Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 In case any one was wondering. Watts, Tisdale, nor Goodard have said one word about this. If it was the opposite you guys think they would have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORH_wxman Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 I know they are about to come out with UAH version 6.0. So when they do, I'm sure they will respond to the paper. I haven't read it yet though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StudentOfClimatology Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 I know they are about to come out with UAH version 6.0. So when they do, I'm sure they will respond to the paper. I haven't read it yet though. I don't even think it's even relevant to the global TLT trend..I read it last night and it's basically a fix for the observed tropical TMT divergence in the MSU/AMSU units with a few added homogenizations. Looks like Weatherguy701 misinterpreted the paper pretty badly. It's important for those researching the tropical upper tropospheric hotspot and the tropical response to AGW as a whole, but doesn't really even talk about the TLT domain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chubbs Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 I know they are about to come out with UAH version 6.0. So when they do, I'm sure they will respond to the paper. I haven't read it yet though. I'm not holding my breath - they have been working on v6.0 since 2011. Quote below is from a 2012 WUWT blog after a previous Po-Chedley paper indicated some problems with the UAH dataset. Makes you wonder what is going on behind the curtain to cause such a long delay in the release. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/09/christy-and-spencer-our-response-to-recent-criticism-of-the-uah-satellite-temperatures/ "All of this will soon be moot, anyway. Since last year we have been working on v6.0 of the UAH datasets which should be ready with the tropospheric temperature datasets before summer is out. These will include (1) a new, more defensible objective empirical calculation to correct for the drift of the satellites through the diurnal cycle, and (2) a new hot calibration target effective emissivity adjustment which results in better agreement between simultaneously operating satellites at the calibration step, making the post-calibration hot-target adjustment PCF criticizes unnecessary. So, since our new v6.0 dataset is close to completion and submission for publication, we have chosen this venue to document PCF’s misinformation in a rather informal, but reproducible, way rather than bother to submit a journal rebuttal addressing the older dataset." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORH_wxman Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 I don't even think it's even relevant to the global TLT trend..I read it last night and it's basically a fix for the observed tropical TMT divergence in the MSU/AMSU units with a few added homogenizations. Looks like Weatherguy701 misinterpreted the paper pretty badly. It's important for those researching the tropical upper tropospheric hotspot and the tropical response to AGW as a whole, but doesn't really even talk about the TLT domain. Yeah it looks like they are focusing on TMT and not TLT because the paper says how RSS is more accurate than UAH. If that's the case and this was about more than TMT, then they would imply that the flatter RSS TLT trend is more accurate. I haven't read the full paper tho. Just picked through it a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skierinvermont Posted March 28, 2015 Author Share Posted March 28, 2015 Yeah it looks like they are focusing on TMT and not TLT because the paper says how RSS is more accurate than UAH. If that's the case and this was about more than TMT, then they would imply that the flatter RSS TLT trend is more accurate. I haven't read the full paper tho. Just picked through it a bit. They may be saying RSS is more accurate for tropical TMT only, simply for the reason that it has the higher trend. In that case, neither RSS nor UAH may be that accurate. Or RSS may be more accurate for TLT global temps as well. It's not clear to me (I haven't read the paper). I would suggest that RSS is a bit more accurate overall even though the trend since 1979 is slightly lower than UAH now for two reasons: 1) The temporal pattern of warming is more consistent with other datasets and with theory (a post 1998 slowdown is more evident in RSS and this slowdown, being partially ENSO-related, should be especially evident on satellite datasets where the ENSO signal is magnified 2X vs surface datasets) 2) Tropical TMT is more consistent with other datasets and theory It's still entirely possible RSS is underestimating warming as well. The discrepancies are not very reassuring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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