Besides, I believe Dr. Christy in that one is not directly adjusted to the other. I wonder if there might be something amiss with the proxy conversion, however.

But why would the trend be the same for both?

The surface violations continued and increased after 1980. This should exaggerate the trend.

So why would satellite trends match?

Are sat. trends for Lower trop supposed to exceed surface trends? That would explain it. Or are sat. trend proxies somehow mistranslated in a way that they match surface trends? That would also explain it.

The Tammano Hall take is that the trends are roughly equal, therefore site violation means absolutely nothing. I don’t buy that:

–We have seen the records jump as the stations are moved from lesser to greater violation.

–NOAA SHAP adjustments are UP, so it is impossible that the NOAA/CRN station violations are being taken into account.

So, as I see it, we are left with two reasonable conclusions:

A.) Surface trends and Sat trends are NOT SUPPOSED to be the same. therefore their apparent match is actually an indication of an exaggeration of surface trends.

B.) Surface and Sat trends ARE supposed to match, and, since the surface trends are being incorrectly measured, therefore somehow the satellite trends are being incorrectly measured.

c.) Site violations don’t mean squat.

So, which is it? Or what am I missing?

Just as a note, satellites don’t take raw temperature data – their measurements must be calibrated to known “ground-truth”. If your ground truth is wrong, your calibration is off, and your measurements are off.

I don’t believe the “corrected” RSS and UAH measurements were in agreement with the absolute surface measurement. The surface measurements as I recall were between .24C/decade and .27C/decade. UAH was adjusted upwards from .07 to .12 but that is still far short of the surface based. The agreement was in the rate of change in the trend, not in the absolute value.

Also, even though the satellites were corrected for drift and decay, their values should have been 30% greater than the surface if it was to indicate a greenhouse signal.

I may be mistaken, but this is my recollection.

As a matter of fact, I already have a rather large file, tiered in Word Outline, which corresponds with my “postcard” comments. Its several sections covers the basic science (points, data of all sides), paleoclimate, measurement and equipment issues, and the history of the debate.

Most of the points I post here I pull off of that.

My objective has been to form it into an interactive, continually updated white paper. A comprehensive-yet-simple, constantly evolving body of work on the subject.

Naturally, in order to maintain an open process, old versions would be archived. But new, complete releases would be fairly frequest as appropriate.

Word Outline and its “9 lvevels” (which require zip training to use and can be manipulated and “collapsed” to limit the numbers of “postcards” in any presentation) is an ideal took for the document. So the document would exist online and ideally be downloadable in Word Outline format. (I have also created a set of styles to “normalize” the Heading 1-0 formats, so it doesn’t look like an attack from the planet of Barnum and Bailey).

The idea is to set up a tree of “postcards” which can be “drilled down” as far as one wishes, but the presentation can be limited as appropriate to specific audience and discussion.

I’ve already touched on the “postcard” (“filecard”, whatever) subject with a couple of others, but it’s all very pre-preliminary.

The basic idea is for not merely a white paper, but a “living” white paper. A single document on a location that would allow for the full array of comments and, to a degree, input from the outside.

Here’s a proposal: how about a collective effort to layout all the information in a form that is comprehensible to the layman yet addresses all of the issues and is all in one place (sort of a FAQ but with more coherence and organization)? I have the interest myself, but not the time. It’s a big job, yet the effort might be a real contribution to SurfaceStations. A collaborative effort would (hopefully) distill the information to the best presentation (a la the Wiki concept). It will take a good editor in the end, of course. Any thoughts?

REPLY: Since the number of WSFO’s was drastically reduced in the early 1990’s, the COOP manager staff has also been reduced, remaining staff has seen service areas double or triple.

As a result, site visits have dropped in frequency. I am not aware that GISS did anything to do a QC check of sites they use.

Mercury max-min thermometers would often be replaced, especially when column separation occurred. MMTS units may be replaced, but there is no field calibration for the sensor, only for the display. That is done using a plug with a precision resistor put on the end of the cable in place of the sensor.

I also find it hard to believe that the atmospheric tail can, in the long run, truly wag the oceanic dog. I was always a bit more of a sea-witch than a sun-worshipper. Though I do give merry old sol his due as base, primary driver. And in the end, orbital eccentricity (and continental drift) rule within their limited parameters.

paminator: Very interesting. Yes, it would be nice to do a limited US comparison, if the satellite data can be snagged.

If it can’t, though, the world will serve for now. And a comparison should probably be done anyway. A cursory look-see has made it apparent that the foreign stations are in even worse shape than the US net, including in Western Europe. The guy who “certified” the godawful China system was in legal hot water for malfeasance last time i checked. Australia may be better (but it seems their adjustment procedures may have rendered their historical metadata somewhere between SNAFU and FUBAR).

So I expect that the world will reflect pretty much what the US reflects, only more so.

Meanwhile, i think I’ll go back and check out those comparisons on this site a while back.

The corrections to the MSU UAH data were for orbital drift, and led to a correction (if I remember correctly) from +0.12 C/dec to +0.16 C/dec. However, Christy and Spencer then published a more careful comparison of UAH and RSS constructions with radiosonde data and concluded that the corrected UAH version is more consistent with radiosonde data. In another paper Christy and friends looked at LT trends versus surface in the tropics and concluded that the LT trends were much lower than what was expected from GHG theory and the surface temp record. I interpret that as an indication that the surface temp trend in the tropics is overestimating the real trend. I would not be surprised if the same result obtains over the US. Perhaps a quick email to Dr. Christy or Dr. Spencer for a suggestion on where to get this data is in order?

Right. Got it. Yes, that would make more sense.

That would put the adjustment right in line with the observed surface increase.

Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?

Earlier on (different thread), I speculated that the increase from ‘80 to date was real but probably exaggerated by c. a factor of two.

Now, as I understand it, the orbital drift was causing what amounted to something analogous to a TOBS error. That’s a real issue, and I can understand the need for correction.

But there was something else. something about a correction made at the same time. Something that Dr. Christy did not exactly approve of, but said it did not violate MoE, so he more or less dismissed it.

What was that other correction? Was it warming or cooling? How big was it? What was the specific reason for it?

We must wonder about the amount of the orbital adjustment as well. But what was this other “mystery adjustment”? And how big is that MoE, anyway?

Measurement errors aren’t as bad for temperatures as they are for lightspeed, but they’re still a major factor

Especially as we are looking at tenths of a degree C over a period of decades.

Also, getting back to an earlier point fropm braddles: If the delta-T for troposherie from 1979 – 1998 is 1.2 to 1.4 times that for the surface one would expect the tropospheric rate of increase to outpace surface measurements by around a third. (Plus that “mystery” adjustment, whatever it is.)

After that, the temperature is roughly flat, so there would be not much change.

Same deal goes for the surface stations. So if the delta-T of the surface stations were exaggerated (because of site violation) by roughly that amount the surface temps would match pretty well the increase of tropospheric heat.

So there would be an apparent match.

But what if those figures are not SUPPOSED to match? What if the tropospheric rate of temperature change is supposed to carry their temps higher than surface? A seeming match, therefore, might point out a discrepancy, in and of itself.

Therefore, saying that surface temp anomoly “matched” tropospheric temps after two decades of increase is a false match. A mismatch.

A clear indication that surface temps had been exaggerated by means of site violations?

You’d better nail down that decimal point, son ;). An adjustment of 0.12 K per decade would amount to 0.36 K for thirty years. That would put the adjustment right in line with the observed surface increase.