Controversy in the vertical pattern of atmospheric warming

Climate models run under "Global Warming" scenarios indicate that the atmosphere above should warm more than the earth's surface. A controversy erupted about 20 years ago when studies using observed data found that the opposite was occurring: the surface was warming more than the air above. This discrepancy suggested a fundamental shortcoming of climate models that seemed to undermine their credibility for use in studying climate change. This apparent inconsistency, debunked only recently, was shown to be due in large part to errors in the observed upper-air data. Click here for more details.