Response to Gleisner et al (2015): Recent global warming hiatus dominated by low latitude temperature trends in surface and troposphere data

• Main Authors: Kevin Cowtan, Peter Jacobs
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Pacific; Global warming
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1069.1874; http://www-users.york.ac.uk/%7Ekdc3/papers/coverage2013/gleisner-response.pdf

A new paper has been published in Geophysical Research Letters which investigates the geographical fingerprint of the recent slowdown in global warming. Gleisner et al. of the Danish Meteorological institute perform an analysis of a number of temperature datasets to investigate the latitudinal distribution of warming over the recent period (20022013). The paper contains results which are consistent with other studies of the oceanic and volcanic contributions to the slowdown in warming. Surprisingly, however, they fail to find a contribution from the rapidly warming Arctic, which is missing from some versions of the temperature record, in contrast to the temperature analysis presented by Cowtan and Way 2014 (henceforth CW14). Gleisner et al. (henceforth G15) investigate the latitudinal distribution of warming in three satellite datasets: two are the familiar microwave sounding data from UAH and RSS. The third is a new Radio Occultation (RO) dataset, which derives information from the delay in radio signals due to the refractive index of the Earth's atmosphere. A fourth dataset is also considered G15's own version of the HadCRUT4 surface temperature data Temperature trends are compared for two periods: Firstly a prehiatus period which G15 define as 1985 to 1997. Secondly a hiatus period which G15 define as the years 20022013, roughly consistent with the period of observed, unprecedented trade wind strength in the Pacific (England et al. 2014