Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Over on Twitter, Michael Tobis made the claim that the 1979 Charney report entitled “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment”  was a “triumph of 20th century meteorological science”, in part for predicting “surface warming tending to be concentrated in polar regions”. 

This got me to thinking and when I think, I think about actual observations. So I went and got the UAH MSU satellite data for the temperatures of the lower troposphere (the part of the atmosphere closest to the surface).

Using that data, I calculated the temperature trends by 1° latitude band for the area that the satellite covers (85 North to 85 South). Here is that result:

A “triumph of 20th-century meteorological science”?

Hardly … this result is totally unlike what Charney et al. predicted. Not just a little different. Not even in the same ballpark.

My very best regards to everyone on a sunny summer day … going outside now to get some work done.

w.