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Satellite Observations
25 year history of detailed weather measurements
- 10 km surface resolution
- 3 hour time resolution
- 100% surface coverage
- Measurements include
- Surface temperature
- Cloud temperature
- Cloud coverage
- Reflectivities
Notes:
Weather satellites have been collecting data for over 25 years. ISCCP is a NASA project that's been aggregating and processing this data. All of this data is freely available on the NASA web site. Solar irradiation data is available from NASA and the SORCE project at the University of Colorado.
This data is far better for use in identifying global average surface temperature trends than any surface based observations. However, there are some discontinuities in the way the data has been processed, which must be accounted for.
The AGW line of reasoning is that these discontinuities makes the absolute numbers meaningless and instead use anomaly analysis to present the data.