What Accounts for the Differences in Temperatures From Measurements at the Earths surface and satellite measurements of the atmosphere?
• Satellites are capable of measuring temperatures in the lower atmosphere (less than 6 miles in altitude), whereas surface temperature measurements are made just a few feet from the Earth’s surface. • Surface temperature records show roughly twice as much warming since 1979 than satellite records (although surface temperature records date back to the mid 19th century, satellite measurements began only in 1979). • A report by the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 stated that both the surface temperature records and the satellite temperature records possessed systematic errors that may bias the data, which account for some of the differences between the two data records. Nevertheless, “the warming of surface temperature that has taken place during the past 20 years is undoubtedly real. . . • However, the National Academy of Sciences also concluded that there are real discrepancies between the surface and satellite records, which have yet to be sufficiently explained. It is often argu
