Fact Sheet for “ Consistency of Modelled and Observed Temperature

Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from a large archive of computer model simulations, a consortium of scientists from 12 different institutions has resolved a long-standing conundrum in climate science – the apparent discrepancy between simulated and observed temperature trends in the tropics. Research published by this group indicates that there is no fundamental discrepancy between modeled and observed tropical temperature trends when one accounts for: 1) the (currently large) uncertainties in observations; 2) the statistical uncertainties in estimating trends from observations. These results refute a recent claim that model and observed tropical temperature trends “disagree to a statistically significant extent”. This claim was based on the application of a flawed statistical test and the use of older observational datasets. Ben Santer, Peter Thorne, Leo Haimberger, Karl Taylor, Tom Wigley, John Lanzante, Susan Solomon, Melissa Free, Peter Gleckler, Phil Jones, Tom Karl, Steve Klein, Carl Mears, Doug Nychka, Gavin Schmidt, Steve Sherwood, and Frank Wentz