ARL News
ARL climate trend work recognized by Discover Magazine
January 3, 2005
In its January 2005 issue, Discover Magazine lists its
picks for the top 100 science stories of 2004. Their choice for the
#1 story is the "Turning Point" on global warming, citing work by Fu
et al. (reference below) who found a tropospheric warming trend in
satellite data after removing the effects of stratospheric cooling.
Dian Seidel of ARL was a co-author of the paper.
The magazine article states: "...Computer models can't explain that
trend without factoring in a man-made greenhouse effect, but skeptics
have long argued that the models also can't explain why the lower atmosphere
has apparently warmed less than Earth's surface. That argument took
a knock in 2004. Reanalyzing the satellite temperature measurements,
Qiang Fu of the University of Washington and his colleagues concluded
that a cooling in the upper atmosphere had been masking what is in
fact a large warming of the lower atmosphere".
The full citation for the Fu et al. article is:
Fu, Q., C.M Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution
of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature
trend, Nature, 249, 55-58.
Correspondence arising from the original publication is addressed in
the following reponse:
Fu, Q., D.J. Seidel, C.M. Johanson, and S.G. Warren, 2004: Atmospheric
science: Stratospheric cooling and the troposphere (reply), Nature,
doi: 10.1038/nature03210.
Contact information: Bruce B. Hicks
Phone: (301) 713-0684
e-mail: bruce.hicks@noaa.gov
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