Well, can we reject the null-hypothesis that mean(T(t)) == mean(U(t))? That tells us whether it is "just a". Well, not "just a", but "something added".

I probably haven't formulated what the sticking point is for me with estimating "b".

We start with stating that our model here is a good estimate of T(t), which we show is non-linear, and want to compute "a trend". Then we build another function that is linear, "a trend", and essentially we want to prove that that is also a good estimate of T(t)! But ok, maybe the difference is that T(t) is for the whole century, and "a trend" is for a smaller period of time.