Balloons vs Satellites

From time to time CED has reported on what satellites have to say about the temperature history of our atmosphere. These satellites don't measure the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface. Rather they measure the average (integrated) temperature a column of air from the surface up to some specified altitude. Elsewhere in this issue of CED we report Bob Ballings finding that these satellites permit the detection of even the tiny global temperature change resulting from sunlight from the moon and to the Earth during the new moon - full moon cycle. Here we compare satellite and weather balloon (rawindsonde) temperature measurements. The illustration above charts the annual average of the two measures for the atmosphere from 5,000 feet to 30,000 feet from 1979 (start of the satellite record) and 1994. The balloon record goes back to 1964.

The two records are correlated at the 0.97 level (that is an eyeball level correlation). The satellite "theremometer" does a good job in comparison to thermometers on a balloon rides upward from our first order weather stations. We also find that for this layer of the atmosphere we see no change in either the balloon record or in the satellite record. Climate varied but had no trend over the 15 years of common record. CO2 enrichment should have resulted in a warming trend in this record. This comparison was provided to CED by the Office of the State Climatologist of Virginia.