Comparisons are presented between Nimbus 7 LIMS mapped temperatures and both Datasonde and sphere in situ rocketsonde temperature measurements. With this approach up to 666 LIMS/Datasonde pairs were obtained for various pressure levels to look for small biases in LIMS temperatures as a function of altitude, latitude, and season. Between 10--1 hPa LIMS and Datasonde agree everywhere to better than ¿2 K with the exception of a warm bias of about 3 K at 2 hPa at high latitudes. However, LIMS is colder than the Datasonde by about 4 K at 0.4 hPa and by about 8--10 K at 0.1 hPa. When compared with the more accurate sphere temperatures the bias at 0.1 HPa is reduced by nearly one-half. These results indicate that the LIMS zonal mean consistent profiles are nearly free of temperatures bias, except perhaps at 0.1 hPa. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994