Trade.Information

Global warming and human activity: an argument over

In recent years a debate raged about global warming. The upper layers of the troposphere have warmed sufficiently well in agreement with the simulations showing human action on climate? The pendulum has again look in the direction supports this hypothesis.

It is one of the favorite arguments of skeptics about the human cause of global warming. The monitoring of temperatures in the troposphere does not show that they increase significantly in disagreement with ground-based measurements and computer simulations showing the crucial influence of human activity on global warming.

A few years ago, scientists Benjamin Santer had shown by a detailed analysis of procedures for measures such temperatures that they were distorted by bias and that corrections made, there were an agreement with climate models. The vicissitudes of this kind have occurred on several occasions such as the recent warming of the oceans shows easily.

However, in 2007, a new publication in the International Journal of Climatology argued forcefully that disagreement persisted between the simulations and changing temperatures in the tropics in the troposphere, providing grist to the mill skeptics . The answer has been given again by Benjamin Santer and his colleagues in a recent publication, still in International Journal of Climatology.


There would be no significant disagreement according to the researchers. The gap is the result of a statistical test applied incorrectly to comments. In particular, some uncertainties in the measures were not properly taken into account, such as those induced by El Nino and La Nina, which fluctuate significantly temperatures in the tropics.

The researchers found these errors in applying the test described in section 2007 to climate data generated by their simulations. An important way then clearly been demonstrated that leads to false conclusions.

In addition, better precision in the ground and in the troposphere with various instruments have proved instrumental excesses which, again, once taken into account, no longer possible to conclude that a disagreement between observations and climate models.