Temperature discrepancies are resolved

A government study concludes that previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming at Earth's surface and higher in the atmosphere resulted from errors in satellite and weather balloon data. "New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies," the report says. It was prepared by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. Clearing up the discrepancies is important because skeptics have used them for years to challenge the reliability of global climate models and to cast doubt on the reality of human-induced global warming. The data in the report are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, but some discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved. "The evidence continues to support a substantial human impact on global temperature increases," Thomas R. Karl, director of the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, wrote in a statement accompanying the report.