NOAA Claims: Global Summer Temperature Was Ninth Warmest – Questionable

NOAA maps shows the lower 48 close to average for the summer.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Last3mTDeptUS.png
Alaska had their third coldest summer on record.
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/518517.html
It was unusually cold in Antarctica, and NOAA probably has little coverage down there.
http://climate.uah.edu/
Antarctica has been officially disowned by the global warming community, because it is not behaving properly.

Whatever distortions may be taking place, and there may be many of them, time will reveal. It is difficult, though, to “give time time,” as a friend of mine used to say.
The farmers with low yields in the U.S. Upper Plains and Canadian Plains, ranchers in the Rockies, and plain folk in Alaska and Australia would probably all have a hard time believing how “warm” the past few months were where they live.
We were to have record lows in Austin overnight, but a blanket of clouds kept us warm. San Angelo, Texas, 220 clicks up the road, had a morning low of 47 degrees today, breaking the old record by 5 degrees. The upper atmosphere has been colder than usual all year and should allow winter cooling to get going in earnest forthwith.

Clouds.
They keep the 12 hours of darkness warm and, thus, skew the averages.
When temperatures drop what happens? Precipitation. Clouds.
It has been raining all over the world recently. It is has been fairly cloudy all over the world recently.
And, of course, there is the legend to support.
(Latin, legenda, “things to be read”) is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. …

Check out this article on the Mohonk Mountain House weather station:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/science/earth/16moho.html
It shows that only 7 years (out of the last 18) were the warmest in 112 years. Granted it’s one station in upper NY, and this year isn’t in yet, but it shows the surprising discrepancies between politically motivated claims by NOAA and the NWS’s cooperative station referenced in the link. One thing I’m taking away from all the thermometers out there is that we just can’t accurately predict global temperature.

NOAA blended Land and SST is highly biased towards minimizing/eliminating cool spots. Comparing http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2008/aug/map-land-sfc-mntp-200808-pg.gif to http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2008/aug/map-blended-mntp-200808-pg.gif there are many blue spots that are smaller or disappear altogether.
Actual August anomalies for Canada see: http://www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/drought/maps/nl_td08_08e.pdf
Notice the negative anomaly in NW Canada that does not show up on the NOAA maps.
The NCDC/NOAA global temperature set is crap.

Jeff Alberts (08:41:05) :
0.85F above the “20th century mean”.
So what??? Summer is 50F above the Winter mean… The world doesn’t end.

it will. in 2015.

Ice sheets could return to the US and the NOAA would still claim one of the warmest years on record. NOAA data calculation results have diverged from reality.

Let’s say NOAA is correct. The key here is “the 20th Century Mean”. We only have records of the 20th century to compare to, so we think these temps are typical. There’s abundant data from drillcores, historical records, etc., etc., showing otherwise. 100 years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, barely measurable at all compared to the geological record. Much ado about nothing.

IT seems to me that a great potion Canadian temperature data is missing from GISS and NOAA data quite regularily while Russian heat waves are reported monthly.
Environment Canada has a very robust database, is there some kind of barrier between these agencies?

Sorry forgot to spell Check.
-Repost
IT seems to me that a great portion of the Canadian temperature record is missing from GISS and NOAA data quite regularily while Russian heat waves are reported monthly.
Environment Canada has a very robust database, is there some kind of barrier between these agencies?

Hi Anthony,
if I look at the GISS temperatures, this is not too far off. I get at an ‘anomaly’ of + 0.39 C for this summer, that ranks 2008 behind 1998(0.67), 2005(0.57), 2007(0.54), 2006(0.51), 2003(0.50), 2002(0.49), 2001(0.47), 1991(0.45) and 1995(0.41) in tenth place.
Of course these GISS numbers are subject to change, or may have already changed.
Looking at UAH data however, I find several further years with warmer summers than 2008 (’88,’89,’90,’94,…).
So striking is i) the difference between UAH and GISS and ii) that NOAA gets even higher anomalies than GISS.
Still even GISS has a year-to-year decrease of 0.15C.

My cynic’s opinion is let NOAA keep talking. Stretched rubber bands snap back. The ultimate consequences will be for NOAA to acknowledge past errors and there’s no way any attempt to correct past biases won’t lower false highs and thus averages.

Sorry for the OT
I have lived in Kansas for 25 years and this is the coolest summer I can remember.
Had the family over for the 4th of July and we ate outside on the porch with a nice cool breeze.
I also noticed that we seemed to have a lot more cloud cover this year, during the day the clouds would block out the sun for long periods of time.
Now I will ask a stupid question, does cloud cover have anything to do with low sunspot activity?
Also is there a way to track the amount of clouds or cloud cover from year to year?
REPLY: Mark, have you ever heard of Svensmark’s Theory? This isn’t intended to embarrass you, just curious if up until this moment you’ve ever heard about it?. – Anthony

Bias affects almost all of us, the more complicated the issue the easier it is for bias to affect outcomes. Having said that I think the GISS data set is so corrupt it is meaningless to discuss change. That is my bias.

I wonder how they’ll spin this winter?

Hi Anthony.
About Svensmarks cloud theory. I was wondering if cloud cover really has any effect on global temperatures, seeing that cloud has a cooling effect during sunlight hours – but a warming effect during the night. Don’t these cancel each other out – or is the 16/8 hour day/night big enough to make a difference.
REPLY: Day scales of effects don’t equate to long term climate. The bottom line is energy balance over time, if albedo is up globally, less energy input means a net cooling.- Anthony

My Mom lives in Montana. All the old timers there are saying it is going to be a cold winter. They had a wet summer. My fiance is from Indiana. Her dad has said that all the farmers are expecting a very cold winter there. They have been cool all summer. I live in Austin and I have a feeling it is going to be cold here too! However, our summer was pretty hot, 3rd most 100 degree days, last time we had as many was 1929 or there about. It is a nice 84 degrees here today with a nice breeze!
I have been a lurker here for 6 months or so. Thanks for all you do Anthony!

Hadcrut has this as the 10th warmest summer

Mike Ramsey,
As one who takes and analyzes measurements for a living, my first questions for any data are when was the measuring device/system last calibrated, what is the error uncertainty, is the environment conducive to the instrument(s) used and are the instruments suitable for the task (at one time it was a 10x factor). What would be the answer to those with respect to the near surface station network?
Satellites can be calibrated and the error quantified even if at a later date. FYI, RSS uses climate models in their calibration procedure.
In industry if NOAA/GISS were to present their data to an auditor or customer, they’d be laughed out of existence. Being a bloated government bureaucracy, they are not answerable to anyone and thus can make statements of conformity that have no resemblance to reality.
Those in charge at NOAA/GISS obviously have no background in Quality Engineering. The bull-in-the-China shop philosophy in climate “science” is breath taking.

REPLY: Mark, have you ever heard of Svensmark’s Theory? This isn’t intended to embarrass you, just curious if up until this moment you’ve ever heard about it?. – Anthony
As an amateur astronomer I am very much aware that the last 2 years have been extraordinarily cloudy where I am. The weather has always been unstable here, but now the periods of clear weather get shorter and fewer. Around 2001 or so I would have at least a couple of clear nights per month, but now it seems even much less.
The low clouds keep hanging there every day. Maybe it is an illusion, but it seems to me the low clouds have increased. To myself I refer to them as ‘Svensmark clouds’…..

I’ve posted similar on other sites, and also somewhat discussed this with Jeff Id…so here goes nothing…
Regardless of what Anthony (or Steve M, or any other individual for that matter) does to address the issues confronting climate change, none of them will have a lasting influence. This isn’t meant as an insult, but merely a factual observation.
For more than five years Steve M has systematically detailed the errors (whether they are innocent or nefarious is of no consequence) of Mann et al, and has shown that paleoclimate reconstruction as it resides today is of no value. Anthony, and all of the volunteers at SurfaceStations.org have done a yeoman’s effort in establishing a documentary record of the temperature stations in the US and all of their faults. And those of us that believe in the scientific method follow these (and others) with great interest.
BUT…in the news, in the classroom, and even in the learned journals, the prevailing “consensus” has nothing to do with science. Millions of children in school will learn that AGW is incontrovertible; that we have in place, a system of accurately measuring temperature; and that “brilliant” climate scientists were able to accurately reconstruct past climate to show that this recent warming is caused by CO2 emissions, and that it will permanently alter the earth’s climate.
No one will be there to show them how Steve M was able to effectively ivalidate the claims of the IPCC AR4. No one will be there to tell them how surface temperatures can be affected by the location of the measurement device, or that there is even such a thing as Urban Heat Island. No one will be there to explain how the scientific method is supposed to work, and that these “brilliant” climate scientists have usurped that method in favor of their own egos (or whatever explanation you would like to provide).
Those of us that believe in science, and believe that being a heretic (as Freeman Dyson prefers) is a worthy cause to defend (based on the evidence of course), will never succeed unless we can find a way to educate the impressionable (aka the youth)! And unfortunately, I do not see the UN, the EU, the US (by virtue of GISS, NOAA, NCAR et al), or any other group allowing an alternative viewpoint to be allowed.
This is the real discussion…how do we get the word out to a larger audience, that there is a true, scientific alternative that has nothing do with big oil, etc.??
I will now return to lurking!! 🙂

@ Anthony
I have heard the name mentioned here, if I remember correctly.
I am not familiar with his theory though, I guess I need to look that up.
This is the first year that this subject caught my eye concerning possible connections with the climate.
I was familiar with the sun spot terminology from when I worked with my dad some 30 years ago in his C.B. business being told that when the C.B. was nice and quiet the sunspot activity was low and when it was noisy the activity was high and that it ran in cycles of 10 – 11 years.

Nahle, N. (2006). Temperature and Solar Radiation. Biology Cabinet. New Braunfels, TX. Obtained on (month) (day), (year) from http://biocab.org/Temperature_and_Solar_Radiation.html.
http://biocab.org/Temperature_and_Solar_Radiation.html
NASA scientists elaborated a prediction about the next solar cycle of 11 years based on the observation of the past tendencies and on the direct influence that the previous cycles have had on the intensity of the following cycle. The intensity of the solar activity has been progressively increasing on every cycle.
The implementation of the Kyoto’s Protocol will not solve the phenomenon of global warming; in the first place, because it does not depend absolutely of the human activities, but from natural factors. In the second place, because the concentration of Heat-Forcing gases in the atmosphere are not thermodynamically capable of store the density of heat registered in the last century. The variability in the tropospheric temperature on Earth depends on cosmic factors, like the increase in the intensity of Solar Radiation and of Intergalactic Cosmic Rays.
The graph gives also a clear explanation about the global warming observed on other planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and some satellites of giant planets.

Anthony, I think you should let everyone know that today NSIDC announced that they are pretty sure that the arctic melt season has ended because arctic ice has seen 5 consecutive days of growth….
Will you do an article on it please and thankyou! 🙂

BTW – earlier in the year they had a record sorhgum crop.

Hi Anthony, the proof you require is from two sources
First the the equation for “absorbance” for gasses
A = -ln ( I’ / I )
A = absorbance
ln = log base 2
I = intensity of light at start of path
I’ = intensity of light at end of path
This is common knowledge and can be clearly seen in wiki under the Beer lambert law.
As you can see absorbance is the log of the change in intensity.
The intensity is the power, the unit of power is watts.
IPCC have misinterpreted absorbance as the change intensity rather than the negative log of changes of intensity.
The measurable effect is demonstrated in this paper
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/barrett_ee05.pdf
The beer lambert law when expressed as concentration vs % absorption
http://robjmitchell.smugmug.com/photos/373715566_bTzfL-M.gif

FYI – looks like the CA server is knocked out again.
REPLY: Its our entire system, major cloud network outage here all the way to San Jose, CA uses my DNS server. -Anthony

RobJM:
Whatever you’ve found, the use of Beer’s fails for other reasons as well. The law was developed to determine a signal’s attenuation passing thru a fluid, i.e., the fluid’s absorptance attenuated the signal. This has nothing to do with the absorptivity of a photon of given wavelength by a molecule–in the case of GHGs, at a given pressure and temperature.
The goal of Beer’s is to relate the percentage of the signal passed to the cross-sectional area of the absorbing fluid. This is seldom attempted, however, and a term ‘optical depth’ is used which for the depth of the atmosphere, e.g., giving an absorptance of about 0.7 for IR at 15um. In fact, at sea level, the signal is ‘absorbed’ within a few 100 meters. A small fraction of the signal is instantly re-emitted and, if the signal is continuous, a wavefront is maintained (think radiosonde). The logrithmic decay of the signal follows with increasing depth.
The real problem comes with the faulty application of Kirchoff’s law: For bodies in thermal equilibrium, the energy absorbed equals that emitted. But the atmosphere is never in thermal equilibrium, we know this because its temperature changes in the presence of OLR!
Most of the IR energy absorbed by GHGs, all but the small fraction instantly re-emitted, is shared with the molecule’s neighbors by collision. The excited GHG molecule immediately returns to its ‘base’ state, the average kinetic energy of the mixed gas in which it resides.
The energy absorbed by the GHG is therefore free to far exceed that emitted.
This, of course, is not the case with Kirchoff’s cavity, a plane-solid construction. There the solid’s lattice transmits the kinetic energy around the wafer-thin perimeter of the cavity at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Any absorbed energy is balanced ‘instantly’ with a corresponding emission.
Only at high pressure and temperature, e.g., the sun’s surface, do we say the emission of a gas equals its absorption.

It is quite definitely the warmest 2008 we’ve ever had.

Could it be that there is some thing wrong with the algorithm?
Everybody knows that it never happened before.

Hopkins, LeeW etal…
Thinking back on my checkered history as a student – back when “duck and cover” was king and the continents didn’t move. The teachers I learned most from were passionate about their subject – and usually questioned set philosophy.
Math teachers were the worst, droning on about binomials and solving for X and such. Then in college I got an (bonehead math) instructor who was excited about math and its uses – Just one example.
The point is this. Keep at it and stay passionate because at some point those “average” kids who go along with everything because they don’t have enough information to swim against the tide will get it. Then they will join the crowd at Anthony’s site – always better late than never.

Real droughts in Australia result in wheat crops of approx 9 to 10 million tons.
20 million Tons, while not a bumper crop is still a reasonable crop.
Our wheat fields are spread across the southern states and have a wide variance of results.
Water moisture in the ground is still an issue – we have had a period of extended drought.
We have also had floods. In a country as big as Australia, you can have floods and droughts at the same time – just in different areas.

Matt:
I was in Southern Ontario in July and Toronto was wet and cool (for TO) at 75 degrees F (24C) for the three days I was there. In Ottawa it was even cooler at about 65 to 70C and in Muskoka it was positively chilly.
This was during the last two weeks of July when Toronto is generally in range of 80 to 95F, with Ottawa about the same.
I live out west now and found the temps comparable to nice PNW summer where temperatures only exceed 80F for maybe 10 to 15 days per summer. How lucky for you.

An interesting link involving current events, Hansen, Gore
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate.

s’cuse me???? With No Child Left Behind teachers are ENTIRELY focused on reading, writing and math. Science and Social Studies get shortened. Music has come to a dead end except for singing dittys. PE is shortened to 2 days a week. Art? What is that? Shop and Home Economics? Haven’t used the kitchen room in YEARS!
Reading and math fluency is King! The school day is divided up after 90 minutes of reading, writing, and math EACH are taken care of. You do the math. Trust me, no one, NO ONE, has time to talk about climate change. Federal dollars only care about reading and math scores. Nothing else. A state diploma depends on passing scores (generally at the 9th grade level or above), in reading, writing, and math. Federal, state, and district dollars don’t give a rat’s ass about science, art, music, or history.
Before you spout off about teachers, spend a month teaching. Otherwise you don’t have a clue.
REPLY: Having been a local school trustee and seeing this first hand, I’ll back up everything Pamela has written. – Anthony

hyonmin (17:46:10) :
This is what will end the AGW parade. Money has a way of cutting through all the bullhockey(stick) and revealing the truth. Go ahead, invest in all the AGW schemes and watch your money disappear.

DR,
If the following is correct,
http://spacescience.spaceref.com/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm
“How do we know the Satellite Data are Correct?
In theory, one could argue that the computer models are accurate, and that the real measurements have some problem. However this is not the case. An incredible amount of work has been done to make sure that the satellite data are the best quality possible. Recent claims to the contrary by Hurrell and Trenberth have been shown to be false for a number of reasons, and are laid to rest in the September 25th edition of Nature (page 342). The temperature measurements from space are verified by two direct and independent methods. The first involves actual in-situ measurements of the lower atmosphere made by balloon-borne observations around the world. The second uses intercalibration and comparison among identical experiments on different orbiting platforms. The result is that the satellite temperature measurements are accurate to within three one-hundredths of a degree Centigrade (0.03 C) when compared to ground-launched balloons taking measurements of the same region of the atmosphere at the same time.”
Why is it that RSS and UAH disagree? What is it exactly that RSS is doing to the data? Surely it is possible to get a series of balloon-borne observations and compare them to RRS data to show the bias.
I know of the problems that GISS has.
http://climatesci.org/2008/08/11/guest-weblog-a-comment-on-the-report-unified-synthesis-product-global-climate-change-in-the-united-states-by-joseph-d-aleo/
What I wonder about is why GISS and NOAA haven’t been called to account via a peer reviewed paper published in, say, Nature. Science is about facts. To win this debate we have to establish the facts. Why is this so hard to do?
–Mike Ramsey

Statistically, what is the probability 2008 wouldn’t be in the top 10 or 20? Not very high. Let’s face it, many scientists and prognosticators have staked their reputations (and possibly careers) on AGW and will not go down easy.

Here’s some evidence of the cool year it has been. This graph shows 29yrs of data for Jan-Aug average temps in the US. Black line represents the last century(1901-2000) average. Notice that we are very similar to 1980, 1983,1989,1996, and 1997.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Sep1622:44:416656799316.gif

Ever think that our K-12 system has devolved into communist indoctrination rather than education?

3.1C this morning in Rhineland Pfalz, with five more days of summer to go. This has anecdotally been a cool summer for central Europe.

Denis Hopkins (15:00:01) “My students know that I […] We do assemblies on the topic. Even so, you always get the consensus argument thrown back at you. The IPCC has attained unimpeachable status… ”
The manipulation of youth, Denis, is an obscenity. To use their “education” time for “indoctrination” is a measure of how low civilisation has sunk. A better world from brighter minds adding to accumulated knowledge is exactly what those of limited brain and large ego do not want and cannot tolerate. Such threatens “them”. “Their” selfish needs threaten the future.
People of goodwill and wisdom must continue, as you do, to resist.
Thank you for your further insight.

For comparison here’s how well gistemp and hadcrut3gl have agreed so far about the the TOP n ranking of summer means (JJA means 1880-2007):
TOP 01 ) had: 1998 giss: 1998 agree: 1998
TOP 02 ) had: 2005 giss: 2005 agree: 2005
TOP 03 ) had: 2003 giss: 2007 agree: NO
TOP 04 ) had: 2001 giss: 2006 agree: NO
TOP 05 ) had: 2002 giss: 2003 agree: NO
TOP 06 ) had: 2006 giss: 2002 agree: NO
TOP 07 ) had: 1997 giss: 2001 agree: NO
TOP 08 ) had: 2007 giss: 1991 agree: NO
TOP 09 ) had: 2004 giss: 1995 agree: NO
TOP 10 ) had: 1995 giss: 1995 agree: 1995
TOP 11 ) had: 2000 giss: 2000 agree: 2000
TOP 12 ) had: 1991 giss: 1990 agree: NO
TOP 13 ) had: 1999 giss: 1981 agree: NO
TOP 14 ) had: 1990 giss: 1996 agree: NO
TOP 15 ) had: 1987 giss: 2004 agree: NO
TOP 16 ) had: 1944 giss: 1988 agree: NO
TOP 17 ) had: 1994 giss: 1997 agree: NO
TOP 18 ) had: 1988 giss: 1994 agree: NO
TOP 19 ) had: 1996 giss: 1987 agree: NO
TOP 20 ) had: 1941 giss: 1983 agree: NO

PS:
The ranking’s agreement about the coldest summers:
TOP 01 ) had: 1903 giss: 1891 agree: NO
TOP 02 ) had: 1911 giss: 1904 agree: NO
TOP 03 ) had: 1904 giss: 1882 agree: NO
TOP 04 ) had: 1908 giss: 1887 agree: NO
TOP 05 ) had: 1910 giss: 1912 agree: NO
TOP 06 ) had: 1909 giss: 1903 agree: NO
TOP 07 ) had: 1907 giss: 1884 agree: 1907
TOP 08 ) had: 1913 giss: 1884 agree: NO
TOP 09 ) had: 1892 giss: 1896 agree: NO
TOP 10 ) had: 1912 giss: 1918 agree: NO
TOP 11 ) had: 1916 giss: 1895 agree: NO
TOP 12 ) had: 1902 giss: 1913 agree: NO
TOP 13 ) had: 1890 giss: 1902 agree: NO
TOP 14 ) had: 1894 giss: 1881 agree: NO
TOP 15 ) had: 1923 giss: 1888 agree: NO
TOP 16 ) had: 1918 giss: 1894 agree: NO
TOP 17 ) had: 1885 giss: 1899 agree: NO
TOP 18 ) had: 1884 giss: 1923 agree: NO
TOP 19 ) had: 1891 giss: 1892 agree: NO
TOP 20 ) had: 1891 giss: 1929 agree: NO

“Have there been any studies to directly calibrate the various temperature standards? Casting doubt on GISS’ land surface temperature collection is not, IMHO, the most effective way to stop this nonsense. A definitive and scientifically accepted (i.e. peer reviewed and published) study that calibrates and reconciles the competing temperature standards (i.e. GISS, UAH, RSS, and HadCRUT3) is the most direct way forward.”
Mike,
That would be an excerise in futility. Comparing GISS with UAH, RSS is like comparing apples and organges. Everyone (including Hansen) knows the limitations of surface based weather observations; with the exceptions of military and civil aviation weather stations, there are no standards in how stations are sited, personnel trained, or quality control applied. The global observation network that Hadley, NOAA and NASA uses has been reduced by 2/3rds since the early 1960s, and the raw data is put through a series of adjustments that render it useless from a scientific perspective. The people at NOAA and NASA are perfectly aware of this.
The amount of divergence between remote satellite soundings and GISS is so great that even Hadely recognizes that GISS represents a statistical outlier. This in and of itself disqualifies GISS statistically. NOAA isn’t much better. But, both goverment institutions have political functions to perform, and what they publish get into the “written word”. For them, that is all that counts. I don’t think these bureaucrats understand the damage they do to thier reputations. When I told my wife that according to NOAA, our part of the country had its 9th warmest summer in Histroy, she said “Tell that to the farmers who had predict low corn yields this year due to cold temperatures.”

Mary,
Thanks for the graph, but I seem to recall a really big la Nina that lasted between 1999-2000 that was much longer and deeper than the brief La Nina that we experienced last winter and spring. Also, now that ENSO conditions have returned to normal, why are we not seeing a big spike in temperatures? It seems to me that global temperatures are currently declining, when if ENSO and Global Warming were the only things driving the climate, I would expect to see a return to a midpoint between now and 2007, which does not currently seem to be happening.
Time will tell, but it looks like we are going to see ENSO neutral conditions for the rest of the year, then a return to La Nina. My prediction is that 2009 will be no warmer than 2008 and could be cooler. I am basing this entirely on the fact that the PDO has shifted to its cool phase, which will make La Nina’s more common and deeper, and El Ninos less frequent, weaker, and shorter. Regardless, of the validity of the Svenmark Theory, shifts in the long term ocean oscillations should bring the global temperature average down.
Regardless, the next 5 years are going to be very telling about all sorts of global climate theories including CO2, solar cycles and various ocean oscillations. Now if we can just get our idiot politicians to take a wait and see approach rather than rushing in like fools, and our propaganda networks to start to provide real information to the non-nerd masses, then we will have something, yeah?

Yea the next 5 years could determine the state of the next 25!!!!
With climate instability and a financial crisis I definitely dont feel confident about anything 🙁
In other news, did you know Chuck Norris “developed” jeans?
http://andthisismyamerica.com/2008/09/17/good-ol-chuck/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/2970482/Britain-faces-serial-power-cuts-in-next-decade-warns-expert.html
AT 7:00 am BST it was on the “Front Page” of the web-site at 9:00 BST it was lost and had to be searched for.

You mean wind and solar can’t take up the slack?? I’m shocked! Shocked I say!

Here’s the deal.
We are around 385 Growing Degree Days short of “avg” at this point in the season. There have been an awful lot of days this summer where we have been 20 degrees below average. Some days the high is just above the “average” low. In short, I’m not buyin it. This is in Central MO. I still want to see a graph of the highs, and the lows, along an average to know where this “avg” temperature comes from, and how the temps that matter to the real world (aka agriculture) are reflected.
Anybody got that??????
I can’t find it.

Guess they leave out places that had a cool summer this year too.

Well, heck! Thought I would post something that would be of enormoous importance, and just put this topic to bed…..but I just don’t have the mental capacity or …..where was I? 🙂
Anecdotally, I can pull up my electricity bill and compare kwh usage for each month/year that I’ve been a consumer. My summertime usage was 75% less than just last year, 50% less then the year before last. Of course, if I mnassage my data in an arcane and unknowable way, maybe I can convince you that in fact, my bill actually increased?
I find it amazing that there is no standard for temperature recording, or one that is followed. That our temperature record is continually adjusted, “in the dark”, so to speak. This should absolutely be completely open, open to review and debate (as needed) so that the real “picture” could more easily be revealed. To do otherwise speaks loudly of the fragility of the process, and opens the door to calls of fraud and deceit.

DR,
I have done a little research. Hansen’s 2001 paper can be found here:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
Commenting on Hansen’s 2001 paper, Steve McIntyre had this to say,
“Indeed, a notable feature of the Hansen urban adjustment statistical method is that its efficacy is not actually demonstrated on a statistical data set of known properties, but is merely asserted and then implemented in an important practical setting – a practice that we’ve seen elsewhere in climate articles.” As you said, this is really bad science.
Positive and Negative Urban Adjustments
by Steve McIntyre on March 1st, 2008
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2815
Steve McIntyre did an audit of the 7364 stations in the GISS network. In this audit of the actual data Steve classified each station by the type of adjustmnet applied. The results are shown below.
… U.S. ROW Total
Negative 740 (39%) 1108 (20%) 1848 (25%)
Positive 1003 (52%) 1233 (23%) 2236 (30%)
“Bipolar” 324 (17%) 335 (6%) 659 (9%)
Subtotal:
Adjusted 1419 (74%) 2006 (37%) 3425 (47%)
Not Adjusted 353 (18%) 2220 (41%) 2573 (35%)
Not Used 149 (8%) 1217 (22%) 1366 (19%)
Total 1921 (100%) 5443 (100%) 7364 (100%)
The NASA negative adjustments *increase* the urbanization effects. What possible justification can there be for this?
“There are many striking aspects to the adjustment inventory.
First, 74% of all U.S. stations are adjusted, while only 37% of ROW stations are adjusted. This is a statistically significant difference by any measure. Is this because the ROW stations are, on average, located in more rural settings than in the US? Or is it because of a difference in methodology (or metadata)? While no one to my knowledge has carried out the engineering-quality investigations necessary to resolve the matter, my impression is that the US has made a fairly concerted effort to maintain weather stations in rural settings (Orland, Miles City etc.) and that many ROW stations are in cities and small towns (especially airports). Using a consistent apples-and-apples population classification, I would be very surprised if this very large difference between U.S. and ROW classifications held up.
Second, negative urban adjustments are not an exotic situation. In the ROW, there are almost the same number of negative adjustments as positive adjustments. In the U.S., there are about 50% more positive adjustments as negative adjustments – again a noticeable difference to the ROW. Some commenters on my Peruvian post seemed to think that negative urban adjustments were an oddball and very anomalous situation. In fact, that’s not the case, negative adjustments are nearly as common as positive adjustments. As such, extreme cases (such as Puerto Maldonado) need to be analyzed and explained. ”
Why is this not out and out fraud and scientific misconduct? Who is standing behind these guys?
Mike Ramsey

DR,
Thank you for the pointer to the paper comparing UAH and RSS Microwave Sounding Unit Derived Tropospheric Temperature data.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD008864.shtml
“Results indicate the greatest discrepancies were over time periods where NOAA-11 through NOAA-15 adjustments were applied to the raw LT data over land. Discrepancies in the LT channel are shown to be dominated by differences in diurnal correction methods due to orbital drift; however, discrepancies from target parameter differences are also present.Comparison of MSU data with the a reduce RATPAC radiosonde dataset indicates that RSS’s method (use of climate model) of determining diurnal effects is likely overestimating the correction in the LT channel. Diurnal correction signatures still exist in the RSS LT time series and are likely affecting the long term trend with a warm bias.”
UAH data
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.03Jan2008
is more accurate. Why hasn’t Remote Sensing Systems (Carl Mears) corrected its data?
Mike Ramsey

evanjones,
Yes, this is not a pretty picture.
BTW, John Christy & David Douglass (citing the Randall & Herman paper) state the case for UAH MSU data being more accurate than the RSS MSU data and shows that the RSS MSU data contains a warming bias. See “Appendix A. Comparison of MSU and RSS” in http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
–Mike Jr

2nd consecutive summer with zero heatwave alerts in Britain. Astonishing.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Heatwave-alerts-stay-silent-for.4514147.jp