Why does the stratosphere not show any cooling for 14 years?

Question

The graph TLS or lower stratosphere has shown no cooling for 14 years, if AGW is true the additional heat captured in the troposphere should cause the lower stratosphere to cool.

Does this indicate that AGW is not true, or possibly stopped 14 years ago?

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/the-scoop-on-satellite-temperature-data/

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Answer 1

Said the layman:  I so enjoy watching you guys hammer away.  Thanks much.

Answer 2

Uncertainty in Signals of Large-Scale Climate Variations in Radiosonde and Satellite Upper-Air Temperature Datasets

Seidel, D. J. et al.

Journal of Climate June 2004

"The large spread among trend estimates suggests that using multiple datasets to characterize large-scale upper-air temperature trends gives a more complete characterization of their uncertainty than reliance on a single dataset. ... the purely statistical uncertainty of the signal in individual datasets is large enough to effectively encompass the spread among datasets."

The RSS TLS is weighted heavily for an altitude of 18 km. The carbon dioxide cooling effect is much stronger at 40 km and above. So given the error-bar in stratospheric temperature measurements and that most of the effect is expected at higher elevations, there's really nothing odd about 14 years. I'm sure you know that if you extended the time to 16, 20, or 29 years (given 30 years is the oft stated period of time for determining climate trends) you'd see a cooling of 0.313 k/decade.

Edit:

"is no problem in the satellite data channels"  Perhaps you should contact Dr. Seidel about that, since he clearly has the view that the data in question here has "large" statistical uncertainty.  I just don't get you doubters that seem to think as long as a measurement comes from a satellite it's automatically accurate and trustworthy. Obviously, you've never analyzed any significant instrumentation measurements before.

Answer 3

Come on TC, I know you know this.  The stratospheric temperature is also dependent on ozone, which has been increasing over that same period.

However, the layers above the stratosphere are cooling exactly as AGW predicts.

Answer 4

All that you have is a .com reference? So since you do not have a peer reviewed reference it means little. But I see that the pseudo peers at the bottom of page agree with me that all of the numbers on this page have been manipulated to smooth out any trends at all.

The underlying data clearly shows the increase in temperature that occurred over this period.

Try working the data  yourself. You will see. There is really no information available unless you pay for it. You cannot do research on the internet.

Answer 5

It's right there.  -0.313 degrees/decade in channel TLS of the RSS data.  There have been short term fluctuations, but they're well within the error bars for the trend line.  Watts is confusing signal and noise, a typical amateur mistake.  The actual data, from the official RSS site:

http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_descri...

"Channel TLS (Lower Stratosphere) is dominated by stratospheric cooling, punctuated by dramatic warming events caused by the eruptions of El Chichon (1982) and Mt Pinatubo (1991)."

Forgive me if I accept the Ph.D. climatologists analysis of their data rather than that of a weatherman with an axe to grind.

BOATMAN1 - Climatologists are not WELL trained in statistics, it's a requirement for the work.

Answer 6

Stratospheric temperatures are confounded by the recovery of ozone.  The cooling by increasing CO2 is being offset by the recovery in stratospheric ozone, which leads to warming.

It only indicates that the data are complicated, and reliance on reductionist analysis focusing on a single factor is a guarantee to talk nonsense.

Answer 7

OK-- got to scold you boys-- physicists, and climatologist are NOT statisticians------  and YES I would trust Sat data LONG before I trusted ground data. But I have said this before-- I think.

What's the hurry------ none of the world governments or politicians will do what needs to be done anyway--  in about 10-15 years the Sat data will be long enough to settle the issue.

Answer 8

Because a single satellite data channel, such as T4, covers a lot more than one altitude. T4, the so-called "lower stratosphere" channel, actually covers everything between 10 and 30 km, which means it includes the upper troposphere and tropopause -- which are warming. Here's the graph from RSS itself:

http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_browse.html

Obviously this is too blunt an instrument. When you want to look at the stratosphere alone, without contamination by the troposphere, you need radiosonde records. Such data are available from, for example, the Hadley Centre. Here they are:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2...

And when we do that, guess what? The stratosphere at 50 hPa (20 km) and 100 hPa (15 km) has indeed cooled over the last 14 years.