The Instrumental Data Record: Its Accuracy and Use in Attempts to Identify the “CO₂ Signal”

Abstract

Although meteorological recording began earlier, the period since the middle of the nineteenth century is that traditionally associated with instrumental records. This review examines in detail the reliability of temperature, precipitation and sea-level pressure data, concentrating on the construction of hemispheric and global average temperature series. The key piece of observational evidence in the “global warming debate” is the “global” temperature series (Jones and Wigley, 1990). How much has the temperature risen? In the last section, pattern correlation statistics are used to search for the greenhouse warming signals predicted by five different General Circulation Models(GCMs) in the observed record of land and ocean surface temperature changes. No trends in the time series of the statistic, R(t), were found using just greenhouse warming signals. Anthropogenic influences were detected, however, using the GCM response patterns from combined greenhouse and sulphate aerosol forcing perturbation experiments.