Here’s a story of scientific investigation and discovery I’m proud to have
had a small part in.Regular readers may remember that I posted about a
climate station in Detroit Lakes MN last week, surveyed by volunteer Don
Kostuch, and cross posted it to the website
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1828#comments that had two air
conditioner units right next to it. It looked like an obvious cause and
effect because in 1999 on May 5th, it was determined that the a/c units were
moved off the roof of the radio station where this station resides and moved
them to the ground where the temperature sensor is close by.
Detroit Lakes, MN surveyed by Don Kostuch – Don has
single handedly done almost the entire state of Minnesota!However, some folks on the blogosphere just went, well, a little
ballistic over that assertion. It was a good thing too, because their very
loud and somewhat uncivil complaints led to an examination of this idea: if
its not the a/c units, what then did cause the temperature jump at that
time?
Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates
www.climateaudit.org and began to
investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were
graphed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
What he discovered was truly amazing. Since NASA does not fully publish
the computer source code and formulae used to calculate the trends in the
graph, nor the correction used to arrive at the “corrected” data. He had to
reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed
data..
Here is one of his
where he begins to understand what is happening. “This imparts an upward
discontinuity of a deg C in wintertime and 0.8 deg C annually. I checked the
monthly data and determined that the discontinuity occurred on January 2000
– and, to that extent, appears to be a Y2K problem. I presume that this is a
programming error.”
He further refines his argument showing the
and the problems with the
USHCN temperature data. He also sends an email to NASA GISS advising of the problem.
here, stating that NASA made a correction not only on their own web
page, attributing the discovery to McIntyre, but NASA also issued a
corrected set of temperature anomaly data which you can see here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
Steve McIntyre posted this data from NASA’s newly published data set from
Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) These numbers represent deviation
from the mean temperature calculated from temperature measurement stations
throughout the USA.
According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the
hottest year ever. 1934 is.
Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now
from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are
from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003,
2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of
temperature are calculated separately.)
Top 10 GISS U.S. Temperature deviation (deg C) in New Order
8/7/2007
| Year | Old | New |
| 1934 | 1.23 | 1.25 |
| 1998 | 1.24 | 1.23 |
| 1921 | 1.12 | 1.15 |
| 2006 | 1.23 | 1.13 |
| 1931 | 1.08 | 1.08 |
| 1999 | 0.94 | 0.93 |
| 1953 | 0.91 | 0.90 |
| 1990 | 0.88 | 0.87 |
| 1938 | 0.85 | 0.86 |
| 1939 | 0.84 | 0.85 |
Here’s the old order of top 10 yearly temperatures.
| Year | Old | New |
| 1998 | 1.24 | 1.23 |
| 1934 | 1.23 | 1.25 |
| 2006 | 1.23 | 1.13 |
| 1921 | 1.12 | 1.15 |
| 1931 | 1.08 | 1.08 |
| 1999 | 0.94 | 0.93 |
| 1953 | 0.91 | 0.90 |
| 2001 | 0.90 | 0.76 |
| 1990 | 0.88 | 0.87 |
| 1938 | 0.85 | 0.86 |
I salute the work of Steven McIntyre, he has now made two major contributions to climate science.
1) Proving how the Mann “hockey stick” used in all Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was based on unsupportable data and methods.
2) Proving how yearly temperature anomalies for the USA are based on data that had been processed incorrectly.
Dr. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado also deserves credit becuase he was the one who encouraged me to pursue the www.surfacestations.org project due to his broad work on land use change and it’s affect on regional and local climate.
Congratulations to both you and Steve, Anthony. Of course the propagandists will poo-poo this as illegitimate research because they didn’t do it. And of course no clear trend in 20th century surface temperature emerges as a result.
Where’s the global warming??
Correct me if I am wrong. From this information it appears that the last twenty years of global warming — which has been argued as not congruent with sunspot cycles — is, indeed, completely anthropogenic. That is, the warming trend formerly reported was either false or overstated and was produced entirely by humans fidgeting and fudging numbers while playing statistical games with computer programs.
I do not wish to be unfair but it seems to me that global warming science as it is currently known is largely practiced by the seat of the pants in air conditioned rooms at computer terminals.
There are two basic branches of all science — theoretical and empirical. Theoretical science is valuable and exciting but worthless without reliable, real world empirical data.
Since it appears that no one has ever tried to do any reasonable quality control or quality evaluation of surface stations, and considering the hostile tone of the detractors of your station survey, and considering the unpublished massaging methods used on USHCN temperature data, it appears that there are some real and significant problems in the global warming science community.
Not the least of which is credibility.
Anthony…congrats! Keep pushing the (thermal) envelope!
By the way, Don Kostuch is a surveying animal. Kudos to him as well for finding a site that pushed the debate over the edge.
Just wondering – how come NASA gets away with not posting their software & correction data? If their work is not reproducible or checkable, how is it called science?
Frank,
That my freind, is the 64,000 dollar question.
Yet, it is the reality of the situation.
Anthony
Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts vs. 95% of the scientific community.
I wish I would have put a $20 spot on that fight.
Are you planning on redrawing this nasty bit of propaganda?
Anthony, congratulations! Successes like these are super motivators for doing more surveys later this month. We will be reporting from the road in Nevada, Idaho and Utah. I am recruiting some folks to do surveys in Montana and Wyoming. I will keep you posted on my success.
Anthony,
You guys should be commended for a job well done so far…I completely agree that good science should be reproducible and subject to strong peer review…
However, I think that some of the comments being made (by others) are making way too much of this news …Remember that this data is USA only, not global temps…A significant upward temperature trend is still present over the past twenty years, which was clearly stated on CA…
Let’s take a look at all data (especially global) and ensure its reliability…But be careful of making too much of this..
Thank you
Matt
Let me be the 8th to congratualte you (and St, Mac and the Drs. P.)!
Now for all those nasty foreign sites! (Are you maybe going to ‘rassle up some international volunteers?)
“Yet, it is the reality of the situation.”
The reality of the situation is that anyone who refuses to divulge methods or data has lost the argument forthwith–by automatic forfeit.
That’s even true in my own field (history). Cough up or get out. Period.
It goes without saying. So how in heck does one find oneself having to say it?
Not only that, but isn’t that stuff paid for by taxpayer? Don’t they have a legal obligation to cough up, quite apart from all the other (more pressing) scientific reasons?
Re: “Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts vs. 95% of the scientific community.”
Now isn’t this statement interesting, where does this dubious 95% figure come from and why does the anonymous author couch it in adversarial terms?
Didn’t NASA just change their data and credit Mr. McIntyre?
It comes from a recent quote by California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown. (I believe he was referencing the recent Newsweek cover story but who can say?)
NASA admitting to a mistake to a private individual isn’t exactly exculpicating them from their part in the greater crime of inventing a false crisis, which is currently being used to pummel the business community in my home state.
I’ll be looking forward to the press release issued to the world at large by NASA regarding these new developments, then I will judge whether or not they are honorable seekers of truth.
By the way, isn’t NASA GISS a government funded agency and therefore subject to FOIA? Wouldn’t the formulae, corrections and source codes be recoverable under a proper FOIA request? If not, forgive my ignorance on this matter, me being foreign and so on. 🙂
Congratulations! I have been reporting some of your surveys on my EM News Blog and so I am delighted that errors and misrepresentation of climate data are being brought under closer scrutiny.
Global warming is a misnomer, instead our planet and all the other planets in our solar system are undergoing evolutionary change driven by solar, cosmic and galactic energy.
What we are seeing can be explained in terms of electromagnetic effects driving change NOT temperatures.
“Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts vs. 95% of the scientific community.”
There’s an old anecdote about Einstein. A hundred (or a thousand or ten thousand) Nazi scientists got together and signed a paper denouncing Relativity.
Einstein is said to have remarked, “if they had been right, they would have needed only one scientist!”
“Now isn’t this statement interesting, where does this dubious 95% figure come from”
The “consensus”?
“and why does the anonymous author couch it in adversarial terms?”
Well . . . it IS a controversy!
“Didn’t NASA just change their data and credit Mr. McIntyre?”
Yes they did and so they should have.
They should do more (such as cough up data and methods). They credit St.Mac.; now they should enlighten him.
The NOAA stats are still show a 0.06C increase per decade, for the US same as before, with 1998 and 2005 leaving i934 in the dust(bowl).
Anthony
What’s up with the CA site? It’s been down for a while now. Not a hit as with your site, I hope.
Good stuff. Let me make my prediction that there are more surprises to come.
Anthony thanks for your efforts and great research into the GW myth. It is amazing when the facts start coming together, the global warming myth is evaporating. The leftie greenies will still be blowing smoke and hot air, but the truth will prevail. Even though the UN is pushing the GW myth, just like the food for oil scandal, the politicos want to extract money out of the U.S. and other nations for something that really does not exist (or can be proved is cause by man or Co2). The scientist pushing GW are using dooms day scare tactics to get grant money.
I do not deny climate changes. We think we know it all and can out guess the good Lord, but the world and climate belongs to the God of this Universe.
God bless and keep up the great research. Check out my new blog: Green Chemicals are not always Green.
Steve
This proves the point that global warming since 1990 is totally man made! Man made because of errors.
Perhaps this explains the delay with the USHCN Version 2 dataset that was suppose to come out in July?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/
Great research. I am from England,has this data been released to the papers in America. I guess they won’t be interested anyway eventually all this info will filter through.
Rush Limbaugh quoted you right off the bat in todays show.
But that is easy, Rush has been calling BS on AGW since forever.
I wonder where the global warming media juggernaught will crack first?
Those offsets are still pretty small.
Considering the number of detected microsite violations so far (plus the possible minimzation of UHIE), I’d be surprised if much greater offsets will not soon be due.
Let me also join in with a hearty congratulations! I’ve been following the proceedings at Climate Audit and I must say that it’s been an eye-opener.
As Matt said above, though, the adjustments are for the US only. Of course, that didn’t stop the media and others earlier this year from trumpeting the fact that 2006 (!)was the warmest year in the US:
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2007/jan07/noaa07-001.html
Then, of course, 2006 fell when revised data were rolled out in May:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/ann/ann06.html
Are the media outlets now going to correct themselves again? I’m not holding my breath…
As for the rest of the world, I have always wondered about the state of the temperature data from remote areas of the earth – e.g. India, China, Africa, open oceans. I can only imagine how poor many of these sites are compared with the USHCN. How are the global temperatures corrected, especially for the previous century? There certainly must be severe UHI effects in places with large populations like China and India. Questions, questions…
Frank K.