Figure 2:   Millennial Northern Hemisphere surface air temperature reconstruction (shown in blue) and directly measured data from various instrumental records (shown in red) from AD 1000 to 1999 (adapted from Mann et al. 1999). The black curve shows the underlying trend smoothed by 40-year running averages, the purple dashed line shows the linear trend from AD 1000 to 1850. The shaded gray area gives confidence intervals as two standard error limits. From IPCC (2001, Chapter 2.3.2.2).

Figure 3:   NOAA-17 – The latest in the NOAA/NASA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite TIROS-ATN Program.

Figure 4:   POES Satellite Flight Path with respect to the earth’s surface.

Figure 5:   POES Satellite Flight Path and Scan Geometry in the ecliptic (Sun/Earth) plane. The north pole is normal to the page.

Figure 6:   The TIROS-ATN Spacecraft and its components. The A1, A2, and B Advanced Microwave Sounding Units are the packages used for troposphere and stratosphere temperature studies.

Figure 7:   Static atmospheric weighting function profiles as a function of altitude (in pressure units ³) for MSU and AMSU products. Not shown are the surface contribution factors, which for land (ocean) for TLT are 0.20 (0.10) and for TMT are 0.10 (0.05) of the total weighted profile. The land surface contribution increases for higher surface altitudes. The MSU/AMSULT profile is calculated from views of Nadir and Off-Nadir views of Channel 2. From Christy et. al. (2003).

Figure 8:   Global average tropospheric temperature results from MSU and AMSU records. TLT results are representative of the lower troposphere. Channels 2 and 4 give the middle troposphere and lower stratosphere respectively.

Figure 9:   Ascending-Descending Channel 2 brightness temperature differences for the entire MSU dataset for the central 5 fields of view, the month of June, and for ascending node Local Equatorial Crossing Times (LECT’s) of 15:00 to 16:00 (Top), and the same as simulated by CCM3 diurnal climatology by the RSS Team (from Mears et. al., 2002).

Figure 10:   Service lives of NOAA POES Satellites from 1979 to 2003 and the overlaps in service used for Hot Target Coefficient derivation and merge calculations by, a) UAH and, b) RSS. Taken from Mears et. al. (2003).

Figure 11a:   MSU Channel 2 brightness temperatures for 1979 to 2001 as determined by, a) RSS Ver. 1.0 (Mears et. al., 2003), b) UAH Ver. 5.0 (Christy et. al., 2003), and, c) the difference between the two. Taken from Mears et. al. (2003).

Figure 11b:   Same as Figure 11A but for 1979 to 2002. Taken from Mears et. al. (2003b).

Figure 12:   The Angell 63 Network with the 9 anomalous stations.

Figure 13:   Upper air temperature trends in deg. K/decade from Angell 54 at various troposphere and lower stratosphere altitudes for the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, the Tropics, and the globe, compared with those from MSU, other radiosonde analysis and re-analysis products, and surface-air data, for 1958-2000 (Left) and 1979-2000 (Right). MSU data (M) are from UAH Ver. D (Christy et. al., 2000). Alternate sonde products are from Lanzante et. al. (2003: solid triangles), Parker et. al. (1997: P), and Gaffen et. al. (2000b: G). The re-analysis product is a radiosonde-satellite product from Ramaswamy et. al. (2000: R). Surface temperature trends are from Jones et. al. (2001: J) and Hansen et. al. (1999: H). Trends shown for Lanzante et. al. (2003) are for 1959-1997 (Left) and 1979-1997 (Right), and data for Gaffen et. al. (2000b) are for 1960-1997 (Left) and 1979-1997 (Right). The small circles unconnected by straight lines show trends for the original Angel 63 network (Angell, 1988). The horizontal bars show 2-sigma confidence intervals for each trend indicated. Figure taken from Angell, 2003.