GLOBAL WARMING DEDUCED FROM MSU

Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) radiometer observations in Channel 2 (53 .74 GHz) made from sequential, sun-synchronous, polar-orbiting NOAA op erational satellites have been used to derive global temperature trend for the period 1980 to 1996. Christy et al. (1998) emphasize that the y find a tropospheric cooling trend (-0.046 K decade(-1)) from 1979 to 1997 with these MSU data, although their analysis of near nadir measu rements yields a near zero trend (0.003 K decade(-1)). Using an indepe ndent method to analyze the MSU Ch 2 nadir data separately over global ocean and land, we infer that the temperature trends over both these regions are about 0.11 K decade(-1), during the period 1980 to 1996. T his result is in better agreement with trend analyses based on convent ional surface data.