Observations made in Channel 2 (53.74 GHz) of the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) radiometer, flown on‐board sequential, sun‐synchronous, polar‐orbiting NOAA operational satellites, indicate that the mean temperature of the atmosphere over the globe increased during the period 1980 to 1999. In this study, we have minimized systematic errors in the time series introduced by satellite orbital drift in an objective manner. This is done with the help of the onboard warm‐blackbody temperature, which is used in the calibration of the MSU radiometer. The corrected MSU Channel 2 observations of the NOAA satellite series reveal that the vertically‐weighted global‐mean temperature of the atmosphere, with a peak weight near the mid troposphere, warmed at the rate of 0.13±0.05 Kdecade⁻¹ during 1980 to 1999. The global warming deduced from conventional meteorological data that have been corrected for urbanization effects agrees reasonably with this satellite‐deduced result.