ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-10727-2011 Uncertainty of the stratospheric/tropospheric temperature trends in 1979–2008: multiple satellite MSU, radiosonde, and reanalysis datasets Xu J. 1 A. M. Powell Jr. 2 Environmental Science and Technology Center, College of Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA Center for Satellite Application and Research (STAR), USA 28 10 2011 11 20 10727 10732 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/10727/2011/acp-11-10727-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/10727/2011/acp-11-10727-2011.pdf

The trends and spreads of tropospheric and stratospheric temperature are discussed in terms of three groups of datasets in 1979–2008. These datasets include (a) three satellite observations of Microwave Sounding Units (MSU) measurements, (b) five radiosonde observations and (c) five reanalysis products. The equivalent tropospheric and stratospheric temperature from radiosonde and reanalyses are calculated based on the vertical weighting function of the MSU channel 2 (CH2) and channel 4 (CH4) measurements, respectively. The results show that both cooling in the stratosphere and warming in troposphere significantly depends on the datasets and latitudes.

 References Christy, J. R., Spencer, R. W., and Braswell, W. D.: MSU tropospheric temperatures: Dataset construction and radiosonde comparisons, J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 17, 1153–1170, 2000. Fu, Q., Johanson, C. M., Warren, S. G., and Seidel, D. J.: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric trends, Nature, 429, 55–58, 2004. Kumar, A. and Hu, Z.-Z.: Uncertainty in the ocean-atmosphere feedbacks associated with ENSO in the reanalysis products, Clim. Dynam., http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1104-3doi:10.1007/s00382-011-1104-3, online first, 2011. Mears, C. A., Schabel, M. C., and Wentz, F. J.: A reanalysis of the MSU channel 2 tropospheric temperature record, J. Climate, 16, 3650–3664, 2003. Santer, B. D., Hnilo, J. J., Wigley, T. M. L., Boyle, J. S., Doutriaux, C., Fiorino, M., Parker, D.E., and Taylor K. E.: Uncertainties in observationally based estimates of temperature change in the free atmosphere, J. Geophys. Res., 104, 6305–6333, 1999. Seidel, D. J., Angell, J. K., Christy, J., Free, M., Klein, S. A., Lanzante, J. R., Mears, S. C., Parker,D., Schabel, M., Spencer, R., Sterin, A., Thorne, P., and Wentz, F.: Uncertainty in signals of large-scale climate variations in radiosonde and satellite upper-air temperature datasets, J. Climate, 17, 2225–2240, 2004. Trenberth, K. E., Stepaniak, D. P., Hurrell, J. W., and Fiorino, M.: Quality of reanalyses in the tropics, J. Climate, 14, 1499–1510, 2001. Xu, J. and Powell, A. M.: Ensemble spread and its implication for the evaluation of temperature trends from multiple radiosondes and reanalyses products, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L17704, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GL044300doi:10.1029/2010GL044300, 2010. Xue, Y., Huang, B., Hu, Z.-Z., Kumar, A., Wen, C., Behringer, D., and Nadiga, S.: An assessment of oceanic variability in the NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis, Clim. Dynam., http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0954-4doi:10.1007/s00382-010-0954-4, online first, 2011. Zou, C., Gao, M., and Goldberg, M.: Error structure and atmospheric temperature trends in observations from the microwave sounding unit, J. Climate, 22, 1661–1680, 2009.