I’d also note, atmospheric data used to be the gold standard in measuring temperature due to no bias and better quality reading, until it started showing significantly less warming than the land readings, and the CAGW crowd started attacking it as less credible.
You are correct about atmospheric data being the gold standard, but probably because it was so useful, Obama’s NOAA turned off the low-atmosphere channel. That doesn’t mean that the high-altitutde channels can be used to show global cooling when “global warming” means the low altitudes keep the warmth that used to be lost to the high altitudes (and eventually space).