It seems in study after study, report after report, it all
comes down to the same conclusion: global warming is real and it needs to be
dealt with.
Most recently, a 17-member team has published new results
finding no mismatch between the tropical warming trends predicted by climate
models and actual observations.This of course challenges those the latest
assertions of those who still don’t buy into global warming.
The study, published online in the International Journal of Climatology
last week, concludes that it has resolved a decade-old problem largely by using
more recent data and accounting for the effect of natural climate variations on
satellite and weather balloon measurements. The team's result was that no
fundamental disagreement exists.
Climate models have long forecast that the Earth's lower
atmosphere should warm more quickly than the surface. This prediction, in the
past, has not matched observational records. But more recent studies led the
U.S. Climate Change Science Program to conclude that there was no major
discrepancy on a global scale.
One problem area remained: the tropics. Last year, a team of
known climate change skeptics, including professional contrarian S. Fred
Singer, a scientist who now heads the Science & Environmental Policy
Project, published a peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of
Climatology. It found a "significant" disagreement between climate
model predictions and tropical observations. The study concluded that climate
change projections for the future are seriously flawed.
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Santer was
dubious. "We had a look at the paper and decided pretty quickly that the
statistical test these folks had applied was completely inappropriate,"
said Santer.
Any series of temperature measurements, he explained, are
imprinted with human-influenced slow warming, but there's also natural noise --
especially in the tropics, where there are many yearly complications due to El
Niño, for example. Said Schmidt: "They basically ignored the uncertainty
in the data."
In addition to correcting the statistical test, the new
study addresses a gap in scientific understanding. This paper is certainly
important if it determines whether there is a discrepancy or not, said Isaac
Held, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
Geophysical Dynamics Fluid Laboratory who was not involved with either study.
What’s needed, as evidenced in the discrepancy between these
two studies is that better climate measurements are needed. Most climate data,
from satellite measurements to weather balloon drops, are gathered to keep
track of the weather. While meteorologists want to use the best equipment and
procedures available to them at the moment, a climatologist needs consistent
data over the long term.
In order to monitor the overall success or failure of future
efforts to mitigate climate change or reduce greenhouse gases, it’s absolutely imperative.
It’s great that groups like these can
provide a check and balance for each other so progress can move forward. | 
