Washington sources reported that Satellite measurements by NASA researchers have verified the ground based data which shows the Earth's surface has been warming globally over the past 15 years. Reportedly the team used measurements of the 'skin' temperature of the Earth taken by a satellite-based infrared measurement system called AIRS (Atmospheric Infra-Red Sounder) from 2003 to 2017.
Furthermore the researchers compared these with station-based analyses of surface air temperature anomalies principally the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). Apparently the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found a high level of consistency between the two data sets over the past 15 years. Joel Susskind, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the US said "AIRS data complement GISTEMP because they are at a higher spatial resolution than GISTEMP, and have more complete global coverage”.
Susskind said in a statement "Both data sets demonstrate the Earth's surface has been warming globally over this period and that 2016, 2017, and 2015 have been the warmest years in the instrumental record, in that order". He said "This is important because of the intense interest in the detail of how estimates of global and regional temperature change are constructed from surface temperature data, and how known imperfections in the raw data are handled”.
