Why is the upper atmosphere cooling if global warming is happening?

Answer 1

The upper atmosphere is cooler because the lower atmosphere is trapping more of the heat. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains that an enhanced greenhouse effect, which the earth now has, is expected to cause cooling in the upper parts of the atmosphere because the "blanket" effect in the lower atmosphere holds in more heat, so less reaches the upper atmosphere.

The atmosphere's lower stratosphere (15 - 24 kilometres or 49,000 - 79,500 feet) has had slight cooling since 1979. This is seen from satellite Microwave Sounding Unit and radiosonde data.

The lower and mid-troposphere (700 metres to 8 km or 2,500 - 26,000 feet) has shown warming at much the same rate as the earth's surface temperatures.

Answer:The cooling of the upper Stratosphere seems to have stopped around 1998 according to the most current data available from NOAA.

What is even more interesting though is that this cooling trend is happening at all levels of the atmosphere except the upper stratosphere! The lower troposphere is (as of Jan 202) 0.09 degrees C cooler than the average since 1981. The total satellite record started in late 1979.

It is agreed that you would expect the lower troposphere to warm and the upper stratosphere to cool on a consistent basis if global warming were a man induced even, (NOAA explains why above) The graphs below clearly shows that this is not what is occurring. There has been no cooling of the upper atmosphere since 1998 and no additional warming of the troposphere since 2010 (virtual tie for 1998). Does that mean that all global warming is natural? Not necessarily, but it does show that once again the IPCC has had problems with their models and the actual is not tracking as they would like. I does mean that the science is far from proven that global warming is man made.

(see related link)