March 2024 | 0.95°C (1.71°F)
Satellite UAH Version 6 (data updated by 3rd of the month)
Click for description of the data/larger graph
Description:
This global temperature record from 1979 shows a modest and unalarming 0.14° Celsius rise per decade (0.25⁰ Fahrenheit rise per decade) that is not accelerating.
The UAH satellite temperature dataset, developed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, measures the temperature of various atmospheric layers from satellite measurements of the oxygen radiance in the microwave band, using the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) temperature measurements on the AQUA satellite. This graph displays the Lower Troposphere aka TLT data. The reason for using the lower troposphere instead of the surface as viewed from space is that the temperature data seen by satellites at the surface is inherently too noisy to provide stable data. The altitude of TLT data used is at approximately 14,000 feet (4267.2 meters) which is representative of surface temperature, without the noise associated with weather and human activity, such as Urban Heat Islands (UHI), which skew the near-surface temperature record. A pro and con discussion can be found at the Everything Climate page on UHI.
It was the first global temperature dataset developed from satellite information and has been used as a tool for research into surface and atmospheric temperature changes. The dataset is published by Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer. A more detailed monthly report can be found here at the UAH Global Temperature Report page.
The entire UAH Global Temperature record relies on combining and calibrating the data from several different NASA satellites over the entire temperature record since 1979. This is because satellites have a limited operational life. In 2022, a group of scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headed by Cheng-Zhi Zou, published a study with with a new approach to NOAA’s satellite microwave sounder data so that it virtually matched the UAH Global Temperature record, corroborating the UAH analysis. Now Zou’s analysis agrees with the UAH series very closely—in fact it has a slightly smaller warming trend. In addition, this temperature record has been corroborated by the massive temperature data record developed with atmospheric balloon temperature records from around the globe.
The raw data is available here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
You must be logged in to post a comment.