Stratospheric Influences on MSU-Derived Tropospheric Temperature Trends: A Direct Error Analysis

Abstract Retrievals of tropospheric temperature trends from data of the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) are subject to biases related to the strong cooling of the stratosphere during the past few decades. The magnitude of this stratospheric contamination in various retrievals is estimated using stratospheric temperature trend profiles based on observations. It is found that from 1979 to 2001 the stratospheric contribution to the trend of MSU channel-2 brightness temperature is about −0.08 K decade−1, which is consistent with the findings of Fu et al. In the retrieval method developed by Fu et al. based on a linear combination of MSU channels 2 and 4, the stratospheric influence is largely removed, leaving a residual influence of less than ±0.01 K decade−1. This method is also found to be more accurate than the angular scanning retrieval technique of Spencer and Christy to remove the stratospheric contamination.