What’s the advantage of looking at these temperatures versus those at the surface?
Rain and snow are largely dependent upon the temperature difference between the surface and the mid-troposphere. When there’s little difference, air in the lower atmosphere does not rise, meaning that the vertical motion required to form a cloud is absent. When the difference is large, moisture-laden surface air is very buoyant and can result in intense rain events.
Getting the difference systematically wrong in a climate model means getting the rainfall wrong, which pretty much invalidates regional temperature forecasts. A dry surface (think: desert) warms (and cools) much more rapidly than a wet one. If the computer models are somehow getting surface temperatures right that could only be a fortuitous result if the midtropospheric temperatures are as far off as Christy’s data shows.
Indeed, the models have this temperature differential dead wrong. Over the period of study, they say it should be remaining the same. But, in fact, it is growing in the real world, at a rate nine times what is predicted by the models over this study period.
