Climate argument solved?
Technical errors blamed for mismatch in temperature readings.
Jenny Hogan
The end may be in sight for a 15-year argument over a discrepancy in the data on global warming.
Three papers published in Science today say that temperature trends in the lower atmosphere are consistent with a warming world, countering earlier claims to the contrary.
One study deals with satellite measurements, the second with data from weather balloons and the third with predictions of climate models. "Taken together, these three results are a major step forward," says Carl Mears of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, an author of one of the papers.
The problems began in 1990, when an analysis of satellite observations showed the troposphere - the lowest few kilometres of the atmosphere - was warming too slowly compared to the surface for climate models to be correct1. Global-warming sceptics seized upon the result.
"It has been the main crutch of the sceptics when it comes to pooh-poohing global warming, with some success," says Kevin Trenberth, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Some politicians have also cited the data as evidence of the uncertainties in global warming.
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