Adjusting Pristine Data

23 09 2008

by John Goetz

On September 15, 2008, Anthony DePalma of the New York Times wrote an article about the Mohonk Lakes USHCN weather station titled Weather History Offers Insight Into Global Warming. This article claimed, in part, that the average annual temperature has risen 2.7 degrees in 112 years at this station. What struck me about the article was the rather quaint description of the manner in which temperatures are recorded, which I have excerpted here (emphasis mine):

Mr. Huth opened the weather station, a louvered box about the size of a suitcase, and leaned in. He checked the high and low temperatures of the day on a pair of official Weather Service thermometers and then manually reset them…

If the procedure seems old-fashioned, that is just as it is intended. The temperatures that Mr. Huth recorded that day were the 41,152nd daily readings at this station, each taken exactly the same way. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve done most of them myself,” said Mr. Huth, who is one of only five people to have served as official weather observer at this station since the first reading was taken on Jan. 1, 1896.

That extremely limited number of observers greatly enhances the reliability, and therefore the value, of the data. Other weather stations have operated longer, but few match Mohonk’s consistency and reliability. “The quality of their observations is second to none on a number of counts,” said Raymond G. O’Keefe, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Albany. “They’re very precise, they keep great records and they’ve done it for a very long time.”

Mohonk’s data stands apart from that of most other cooperative weather observers in other respects as well. The station has never been moved, and the resort, along with the area immediately surrounding the box, has hardly changed over time.

Clearly the data collected at this site is of the highest quality. Five observers committed to their work. No station moves. No equipment changes according to Mr. Huth (in contrast to the NOAA MMS records). Attention to detail unparalleled elsewhere. A truly Norman Rockwell image of dedication.

After reading the article, I wondered what happened to Mr. Huth’s data, and the data collected by the four observers who preceded him. What I learned is that NOAA doesn’t quite trust the data meticulously collected by Mr. Huth and his predecessors. Neither does GISS trust the data NOAA hands it. Following is a description of what is done with the data.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Science, weather_stations

Latest Cycle 24 Sunspot: here today, gone tomorrow

23 09 2008

I decided to make an animated GIF of the latest cycle 24 sunspot, dubbed number 1002, which was literally a “flash in the pan”.


Credit: SOHO/MDI

One thing that has been common so far with all cycle 24 sunspots this year is that they have been small and very short lived. This one lived just slightly more than a whole day, a mere blip in solar time, where some sunspots will survive for a whole solar rotation (27 days) or more.


Comments : 139 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

NASA’s press conference on the state of the sun

23 09 2008

I just finished participating in the press teleconference call in for reporters with NASA and their panel of solar experts today. There was a lot of interesting discussions and questions. Unfortunately even though I put in for a question, I was shut out, and judging from the order of the questions asked and the organizations represented, clearly they played favorites for getting maximum exposure by choosing the larger media outlets first, such as AP’s Seth Borenstein who got the first question. That’s understandable I suppose, still I really wanted to ask what they though about the step function in the Ap Index that occurred in October 2005 and has remained flat since.

I took quite a bit of notes, and I’ll write more later from them, but for now I wanted to give my readers a chance to weigh in.

See the written NASA press release here

The three general things that struck me most from this conference were:

1) We don’t know enough yet to predict solar cycles, we aren’t “in the game”, and “we don’t really know how big next maximum will be”.

2) We don’t see any link between the minimums, cosmic rays (which are increasing now) and earth’s climate. This was downplayed several times. Some quotes were “none of us here are experts on climate, and when asked about Galactic Cosmic Rays and Svensmark’s climate theory is the answer was “speculation”.

3) The minimum we are in now is “unique for the space age”, but “within norms for the last 200 years”, but we are also surprised to learn how much the solar wind has diminished on a truly “entire sun” scale.

Here are a couple of the graphics they provided, note the difference in solar wind pressure between the two measurement periods.
Ulysses solar wind dynamic pressure chart
+ Larger view

And the fact that the electron density and temperature have decreased about 20%
electron properties chart

+ Larger view

Anyone who has listened to this teleconference is welcome to weigh in. For those that did not hear it, The RealAudio file would not play on my PC, did anyone record it? If so advise and I’ll post it here.


Comments : 204 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

ISO-8000 Data Quality – something climate science could benefit from

23 09 2008

I received the following email in my inbox this morning, inviting me to attend the first ISO 8000 data quality conference. Looking at the membership directory for this group, I’m not at all surprised that NASA, NOAA, NCDC, NWS, GISS and others are not members, given the mess that the surface data set is in.

But this is exactly what is needed, better data quality control. We have ISO 9000 all over private industry, to make sure that products meet or exceed quality specifications. Yet even though our government has the Data Quality Act (DQA) which is supposed to cover things like climate data, the simple fact is that it is not enforced. And even when it is questioned, such as I did last year sending a letter to NASA regarding DQA issues, (twice) it was simply ignored.

If climatologists want people to trust the data they gather and present, having an ISO 8000 certification would go a long way towards providing assurance. Given that entire economies will be affected by policy based on climate data that has been presented, wouldn’t it make sense to at least hold it to the same quality standard as private industry now embraces voluntarily? – Anthony

Dear Sir/Madam,

ECCMA is holding the first ISO 8000 data quality conference in Battle Creek, Michigan the home town of the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS). With a packed two day agenda that includes over twenty government and industry speakers the conference is focused on the challenges and the rewards of developing and managing data quality. The conference is preceded on Tuesday October 14th by an ECCMA ISO 8000:110-2008 Master Data Quality Manager Certification course. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Uncategorized