Coupled chemistry climate model simulations of stratospheric temperatures and their trends for the recent past

The climatology of the models for recent years is in good agreement with observations for the troposphere but the model results diverge from each other and from observations in the stratosphere.

Overall, the models agree better with observations than in previous assessments, primarily because of corrections in the observed temperatures. The annually averaged global and polar temperature trends simulated by the models are generally in agreement with revised satellite observations and radiosonde data over much of their altitude range. In the global average, the model trends underpredict the radiosonde data slightly at the top of the observed range.