The ~0.8 C increase since the 70's is a surface record value. Depending on whose satellite data analysis is consulted, the lower troposphere warming is somewhere between 50% to about the same as that value. Radiosondes on balloons also give different values depending on the distribution of sites where they are deployed; James Angell's NOAA radiosonde dataset has shown warming consistent with the surface record.
And was it Mr. Christy who said the said the upward adjustments to the satellite record were very peculiar since the adjustments were made primarily because they agreed with the models?
I can't confirm that Christy said that, and if he did, I have no idea regarding the context of the statement. Certainly in the robust nature of scientific debate, Christy and Spencer have defended their methods and results as compared to the more recently released analyses from other groups.
James Angell's NOAA radiosonde dataset has shown warming consistent with the surface record.
Only after he was finished dicking with the data was it consistent. Before that it was consistent with the satellite data.
And the "surface record" is actually a record of the increased surface area of asphalt in our cities.
Christy's testimony before the House:
"A new version of the microwave satellite data has been produced, but not yet published, by Remote Sensing Systems or RSS of California. Two weeks ago a paper was published in Science magazine' electronic edition which used a curious means of testing our UAH version against RSS.[1] The paper cited climate model results which agreed more with RSS, because RSS data showed about 0.4°F more warming than UAH's data for this same layer called the mid-troposphere. UAH's total warming for this layer was about 0.05°F. (This layer is higher in the atmosphere than the lower troposphere mentioned earlier with its 0.3°F warming.) The strong implication of the paper was that since RSS was more consistent with the model output, it was likely a more accurate dataset than ours."
Oops, my mistake, the word he used was "curious" not "peculiar".