Upper-air Temperature

Temperature is one of the fundamental state variables for understanding and predicting the behaviour of the atmosphere. It is basic to the energy budget of the climate system as a whole through the temperature dependence of the long-wave radiation of energy from the atmosphere to space. Upper-air observations are of key importance for detecting and attributing climate change in the troposphere and stratosphere because the warming of the troposphere and the cooling of the stratosphere are unique fingerprints of anthropogenic GHG. They are needed for the development and evaluation of climate models, and for the initialization of medium term and seasonal forecasts.

Figure: Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model as sum of solar forcing, volcanoes, well-mixed greenhouse gases, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone changes, direct sulphate and aerosol forcing. Plot is from 1,000 hPa to 10 hPa (shown on left scale) and from 0 km to 30 km (shown on right).

Source : Adapted from Figure 9.1,IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 996 pp.