Climate Lab BookOpen Climate ScienceSeptember 12, 2019 By Ed Hawkins e.hawkins@reading.ac.uk
Atmospheric temperature trends
The
lower atmosphere is warming 🚩 while the upper atmosphere is
cooling – a clear fingerprint of the
enhanced greenhouse effect from
human emissions of carbon dioxide.
The simple explanation is that some of the infrared radiation emitted by the surface, which would have normally reached the upper atmosphere, is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere. The upper atmosphere therefore receives less energy than before, and so cools. The very warm years (intense reds) in the upper atmosphere are the 1982-83 El Chichón and 1991-92 Pinatubo eruptions respectively.
Changes in global atmospheric temperature at different levels in the atmosphere from 1979 to 2018: surface, TLT, TTT, TMT, TLS. Data from Cowtan & Way, and RSSv4. The colour scale goes from -0.75K to +0.75K, relative to the average of 1981-2010 for each layer separately.
http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/climate-lab-book/2019/atmospheric-temperature-trends/