Comparison of Free Atmosphere Temperature Series from Radiosonde and Satellite Data

A. S. Lavrov and A. M. Sterin

The series of air temperature anomalies in the free atmosphere from radiosonde and satellite data are compared. Along with the well-known datasets of leading foreign centers, the datasets are considered of monthly temperature anomalies for isobaric surfaces and tropospheric and lower tropospheric layers obtained in the All-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information– World Data Center (RIHMI–WDC) from the data of the global network of radiosonde observations. Following numerous literature sources, the study corroborates that it is impossible to detect the so called tropospheric amplification of warming in observational data. The results of the comparison of statistical parameters for different series of air temperature anomalies prove that the RIHMI–WDC dataset is appropriate for solving the problems of climate monitoring on the assessment of air temperature in the free atmosphere. A doubtless advantage of these datasets for the preparation of the data of monitoring and diagnosis of the current climate is that their operational update is possible by processing new monthly portions of radiosonde data for the global network. The other advantage is that they do not depend on the modes of series update in the foreign sources.