Tropospheric Warming Over The Past Two Decades

Satellite temperature measurements do not support the recent claim of a "leveling off of warming" over the past two decades. Tropospheric warming trends over recent 20-year periods are always significantly larger (at the 10% level or better) than model estimates of 20-year trends arising f...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Santer, Benjamin D., Solomon, Susan, Wentz, Frank J., Fu, Qiang, Po-Chedley, Stephen, Mears, Carl, Painter, Jeffrey F., Bonfils, Céline
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Format: Article
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113635
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2020-7581
Description
Summary:Satellite temperature measurements do not support the recent claim of a "leveling off of warming" over the past two decades. Tropospheric warming trends over recent 20-year periods are always significantly larger (at the 10% level or better) than model estimates of 20-year trends arising from natural internal variability. Over the full 38-year period of the satellite record, the separation between observed warming and internal variability estimates is even clearer. In two out of three recent satellite datasets, the tropospheric warming from 1979 to 2016 is unprecedented relative to internally generated temperature trends on the 38-year timescale.