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Originally published in Science Express on 11 August 2005
Science 2 September 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5740, pp. 1556 - 1559
DOI: 10.1126/science.1115640
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Reports

Radiosonde Daytime Biases and Late-20th Century Warming

Steven C. Sherwood,1* John R. Lanzante,2 Cathryn L. Meyer1

The temperature difference between adjacent 0000 and 1200 UTC weather balloon (radiosonde) reports shows a pervasive tendency toward cooler daytime compared to nighttime observations since the 1970s, especially at tropical stations. Several characteristics of this trend indicate that it is an artifact of systematic reductions over time in the uncorrected error due to daytime solar heating of the instrument and should be absent from accurate climate records. Although other problems may exist, this effect alone is of sufficient magnitude to reconcile radiosonde tropospheric temperature trends and surface trends during the late 20th century.

1 Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ssherwood{at}alum.mit.edu

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