. "Review of the Executive Summary." Review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program's Synthesis and Assessment Product on Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005.
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Review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s Synthesis and Assessment Product on Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere
23. Section 6 “Improving our understanding” starts with rather general philosophical statements, whose connection to the recommendations that follow is unclear. The recommendations are broad and unspecific, despite the fact that the report raises some very specific problems. Some of the recommendations are not argued clearly elsewhere in the report, in particular Chapter 6. For example, it is not clear that Chapter 6 calls for “efforts to better understand and reconcile differences between climate data records that purport to measure the same variable,” the second of the specific recommendations listed on page 32 of the Temperature Trends report. More specific recommendations that could immediately be acted upon could be to initiate an action to determine whether the RSS-UAH MSU discrepancy can be resolved or to better characterize the instrumental contribution to the radiosonde trends. In addition, more recognition that planning activities have gone on internationally to design an effective global climate monitoring system should be given.
24. It would be useful to have a summary table showing all datasets and models used in this report to avoid long figure captions.
