That all Gore’s bowels crumble up to dust:

He is a scribbled form, drawn with a pen

Upon a parchment, and against this fire

Does he shrink up.

Didn’t you read what he said. The problem with satellite temperature readings is the depth. They are sitting up there out in space, reading temperatures through different layers of the atmosphere, indirectly. What if I was to say to you I can read the temperature of the stratosphere from down here on the ground? Would you believe me.

Theoretically it can be done, and the satellite methods are improving, but this blind faith in their accuracy is puzzling.

and if you click the ruby slippers together three times, saying “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
you can save your frequent flyer miles to use on vacation next summer.

you can click on it to blow it up. Note that the strong cooling from CO2 in the atmosphere occurs above 3 hPa (~20 km) and that there is not a lot, if any up to 100 hPa because cooling from water vapor and CO2 is balanced by a warming from O3. As the SPARC paper says

“The global-mean cooling of the lower stratosphere has not occurred linearly over
the past few decades, but rather is manifested as two downward steps in temperatures that
are coincident with the end of the transient warming associated with the El Chichon and
Pinatubo volcanic eruptions (e.g. Ramaswamy et al. 2006). In the global-mean, the lower
stratosphere has not noticeably cooled since 1995.”

The strong cooling is expected to occur above 100 hPa, which is what is observed at the link you provided. The maximum cooling will be at 1 hPa which is near the stratopause and not discussed in the paper. FWIW

“Estimates of climate trends in the middle and upper stratosphere rely primarily on
a single dataset derived from the operational SSU satellite data, and hence have
substantial uncertainties. . . .

Our assessment shows that the mid-stratosphere is now
believed to be cooling at around 0.4-0.5 K/decade, considerably higher than indicated in
earlier assessments, as a result of the inclusion of a correction for the effect of changes in
atmospheric CO2 on the satellite weighting functions. As a consequence, there is much
less vertical structure in the cooling derived from SSU data than previously indicated.”

So at this point, the modeling may indeed be a better representation of reality than then measurements, which at best are a check against the models (they do agree) until they are improved. It is this competition (remember competition is good) that characterizes science. BTW, the figure Eli referenced above comes from the same sort of line by line calculation that Miskolczi uses, so if you reject it, you are rejecting what he did (Eli differs with M on other grounds, for example his mistaken assumptions, error filled statistical mechanics calculations, use of a non representative atmospheric profiles from early TIGR data sets, and his lack of mechanism beyond feverish handwaving for requiring that the optical density of the atmosphere remain constant. The Bunny has no problem with the line by line calculation. Details at Niche Modeling and CA discussion groups)

btw, thanks for the SPARC paper link

Awesome.

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev120408a.cfm

http://www.met.sjsu.edu/~tesfai/RESULTS/Journals/SPARC_paper.pdf

Randel et al are also more forthcoming about data uncertainties than you appear to be; Lucia also deserves a comment on this issue;

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/embrace-the-volcano-when-volcanos-erupt-temperatures-swing/#comments

You’ll notice she draws on your Robock source. She also links to an interesting paper by Sothers which deals with SO2; I don’t think the Stratosphere ‘fingerprint’ is quite there yet.

“Several volcanic aerosol effects collude to create this pattern of tropospheric temperature changes: warming of the tropical lower stratosphere, ozone depletion at high latitudes, tropical surface cooling, and mid-latitude surface warming (15). The pattern is associated with a strong polar vortex and is called the positive mode of the Arctic Oscillation (16) [which is closely related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (17)]. External stratospheric forcing can push the system into this natural mode of the winter atmospheric circulation relatively easily.

The polar vortex is strengthened by lower stratosphere warming at low latitudes, which is caused by absorption of solar and terrestrial radiation by the volcanic aerosol cloud. Ozone depletion, which in the case of Pinatubo took place mostly at high latitudes in the NH (15), also strengthens the polar vortex by causing polar cooling. Climate models have reproduced the observed winter warming when forced with the observed aerosols (18) and ozone changes (15) after the Pinatubo eruption (15, 19). The results show that the dynamical response of atmospheric circulation to radiative forcing is an important aspect of climate change and highlight the climatic role of the stratosphere (20).

Global warming was retarded for several years after the Pinatubo eruption because of the cooling effects of the volcanic aerosols. Simulations of this cooling helped to validate climate models used for global warming. The strong but relatively short-lived climate forcing was used to test and improve climate models and has sharpened our understanding of the climate system. In the past, it has been difficult to attribute global warming to anthropogenic greenhouse gases because observations of climate change show irregular coolings that do not match the expected warming from greenhouse gases. Simulations that include solar forcing and volcanism (21-23) accurately simulate climate change before the past century but do not reproduce the 0.6ºC warming observed in the past century unless anthropogenic greenhouse gases are considered. These studies have allowed the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report (24) to give the strongest support yet to the attribution of recent warming to human actions.”

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5558/1242

“PINATUBO ERUPTION:
The Climatic Aftermath
Alan Robock*

The eruption of Mount Pinatubo on Luzon Island, Philippines (15.1ºN, 120.4ºE), on 15 June 1991 produced the largest stratospheric volcanic aerosol cloud of the 20th century (1). In just a few days, about 20 megatons of SO2 was injected into the stratosphere (1). The effect of the eruption on global climate could be felt for years. Surface air temperatures over Northern Hemisphere (NH) continents were cooler than normal by up to 2ºC in the summer of 1992 and warmer than normal by up to 3ºC in the winters of 1991-92 (see the figure) and 1992-93.”

Oh yeah it was well know immediately that Pinatubo would be a test of GCMs and they were shown to be right