Despite continued growth in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, global-mean surface and tropospheric temperatures show minimal increases since 1998. Possible explanations for this “warming hiatus” include internal climate variability, external cooling influences, and observational errors. One contributory factor to the relatively muted surface warming – early 21st century volcanic forcing – has been examined in several modelling studies. Here, we present the first analysis of the impact of recent volcanic forcing on tropospheric temperature, and the first observational assessment of the significance of early 21st century volcanic signals. We find statistically significant signals in the correlations between stratospheric aerosol optical depth and satellite-based estimates of tropospheric temperature/short-wave fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. We show that climate model simulations without early 21st century volcanic activity overestimate the tropospheric warming observed since 1998. In two simulations with more realistic volcanic forcing following the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, differences between modeled and observed tropospheric temperature trends over 1998 to 2012 are decreased by up to 15%, with large uncertainties in the size of the effect. Reducing these uncertainties will require better observational understanding of eruption-specific differences in volcanic aerosol properties, and improved representation of these differences in model simulations.