I was driving in the middle of Nevada when all this happened, and was offline the entire time. So I can’t claim any credit here. But, it sure is nice to see that the collection of people who visit and post here have had an impact. I offer my particular thanks to WUWT contributor John Goetz. It seems Gavin agrees. I’m up early this morning on my trip back home, and I was quite surprised to find this on RC. See this comment from Gavin Schmidt on Real Climate:
You and McIntyre are mistaken. The first intimation of a problem was posted on Watt’s blog in the comments by ‘Chris’ at around 4pm EST. By 7pm in those comments John Goetz had confirmed that the NOAA file was the problem. Notifications to the GISTEMP team of a problem started arriving very shortly after that, and I personally emailed them that evening. However, no action was taken until the next morning because people had left work already. They had decided to take the analysis down before 8.14am (email time stamp to me) since the overnight update to the NOAA file (uploaded 4.30am) had not fixed the problem. McIntyre’s intervention sometime that morning is neither here nor there. Possibly he should consider that he is not the only person in the world with email, nor is he the only person that can read. The credit for first spotting this goes to the commentators on WUWT, and the first notification to GISTEMP was that evening. – gavin
John Goetz writes later in RC comments, it appears that Steve McIntyre at least raised the consciousnous level with his first blog posting:
For what it is worth, Chris posted his discovery on WUWT about 45 minutes before I made my update indicating an error existed. However, I made my posting because of two emails Steve Mc sent me about two hours prior. The first was the email John S. sent him, quickly followed by a confirmation from Steve. I simply had not checked email due to being busy with work. Steve had already written most of his post by the time I saw the emails.
Not sure it really matters who was there first. I am ashamed to say I saw the big red blotch in central Asia and was so insensitized that I did not investigate it further. Perhaps I’ve lost my critical eye.
Despite some commenters there at RC referring to WUWT in less than glowing terms, I’m pleased that this blog has been a vehicle for, ahem, “climate change”. 😉 Being first really isn’t all that important, getting the data right is.
Quality control is the issue. It is the reason that I started the surfacestations.org project. If after QC for climate data has been suitably addressed with a standards compliant methodology, such as ISO-8000, I’ll be satisfied with the final data. Right now I’m not convinced that the surface data is truly representative.
Gavin, if you’d like to do a guest post here on this error, the floor is yours. Just leave a comment or drop an email. – Anthony
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Respect to Gavin Schmidt and congratulations tu WUWT.
Maybe Gavin could also discuss the systematic differences between satellite RSS/UAH data and the surface based GISS/HADCRUT data. My son has produced a comparison of the four sets, smoothed by 1y running mean, whereby he fixed on equal height the positions of the 1998 landmark El Nino peak. RSS/UAH are almost indistingiushable through 20 years of data, while HADCRUT lies on average 0.1 centigrade higher, and GISS another 0.1 centigrade. I will mail the plot.
As the 1998 El Nino peak is (predominantly) a sea surface temperature anomaly, it appears, when the satellite data give higher weight to this peak, they give higher weight to ocean temperatures. Turn it around, the surface based GISS/HADCRUT data seem to give more weight to land data.
Your title is incorrect. I have no connection to GISTEMP other than the fact they work out of the same building.
REPLY: Yet you’ve spoken publicly on behalf of the GISTEMP product and the current issue, so forgive me for not immediately realizing there was “no connection”. I’ve changed the title to say GISS rather than GISTEMP in deference to your raising the issue. – Anthony
On surfacestations.org we learn that many stations are badly placed, and data from them shouldn’t be trusted. But there are some of them which are OK. What happens when one compares the historical data of American temperatures from the observatories in the OK-set (say CRN=1,2), the not-OK-set (say CRN=4,5), and the total-set? Is that data available? Can it be done? I know that the good stations are possibly too few to make a good statistics, but I think it’d be amusing to see the differences, and a nice addition to the project.
“Not sure it really matters who was there first. I am ashamed to say I saw the big red blotch in central Asia and was so insensitized that I did not investigate it further. Perhaps I’ve lost my critical eye.”
Credit to Steve McIntyre for learning something about himself and how easy it is to color one’s scientific search for the NULL HYPOTHESIS, which is the proper way to conduct research and analysis. As far as I am concerned, that is the only way to view any such endeavor, and especially AGW theories.
It’s nice to see credit given where it is due.
More important than credit though. it the acknowledgment from Gavin Schmidt that no one at NASA is verifying/going through the records. If a giant mistake like this with the “warmest October on record” slips through, how many smaller mistakes are part of the permanent record. How can anyone rely on GISS to give temperatures accurate to even 1 C?
The surface stations project, the dissection of the nonsensical UHI effects at CA, and now this. Is there any reason not to simply scrap it altogether?
From the Gistemp website:
“2008-11-12: It seems that one of the sources sent September data rather than October data. ”
So, which ‘one source’ sends them the data for Russia, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, Australia…..
Perhaps Gavin can enlighten us.
Since GISS only has 1/4 FTE to manage the factual basis of re-engineering the world’s economy, Gavin should be grateful to Anthony for providing this free public service.
Come to think of it, what ever happened to CRN? That was supposed to be up and running by now.
And here it is! Am checking it out. How long has it been running?
How about an article on this, Rev?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/hourly
You can get shots of the sites here. They look pretty good.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/photos.html
helvio asked:
“What happens when one compares the historical data of American temperatures from the observatories in the OK-set (say CRN=1,2), the not-OK-set (say CRN=4,5), and the total-set?”
As Anthony knows, I did this comparison last year. Basically, these were the results (for the USA lower-48):
– The GISTEMP trend is very close to the trend from the best stations (CRN=1 or 2, rural locations);
– The worst stations (CRN5) show about 0.4 degC/century more warming than the best stations;
Here’s a quick graph of the best, worst, and GISTEMP for the USA48:
http://opentemp.org/_results/20071002_CRN12R_CRN5_TOBS/temp5yr_1951_1980.png
More information and comparisons are available here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2124#comment-144287
I’ve seen this question asked a number of times at WUWT. Anthony is aware of the results of the comparison between GISTEMP and the best stations.
REPLY: And as John VanVliet knows, but never seems to mention, is that the comparison he did last year was in the first couple of months of the project, on a minimal data set, and that there were only 17 stations that made up the best (CRN1/2) group, and with poor spatial distribution.
But, this conclusion from JohnV’s analysis has been trumpeted many times by others as being conclusive, even while the USHCN survey is still ongoing. If I had done this, and done an early analysis, I’d have been vilified for jumping the gun. When the survey is completed, or as near complete as is possible, that will be the time for doing the analysis comparing station quality groups. – Anthony
It is particularly telling that Gavin Schmidt’s attack on Steve McIntyre should be of the ad hominem variety. McIntyre has (1) not claimed special glory in this case and (2) is still conducting an investigation into GISStemp’s appalling October anomaly work. In other words, McIntyre has his eye on the ball and is doing diligent, difficult work to ferret out misinformation.
GISS’s “nothing to see here” should not be honored.
This is a game-changing moment in the climate debates.
It’s not important whether it’s WUWT or Climate Audit. A lot of folks (like Goetz) post both places. IMHO Schmidt is just trying to stir up trouble in the “skeptic” community.
Thanks, JohnV!
Sorry but I don’t think it was as much of a credit to WUWT as a snub to Steve McIntyre.
The line regarding McIntyre; “Possibly he should consider that he is not the only person in the world with email, nor is he the only person that can read.” doesn’t impress me, except with the rudeness that it contains.
Hi,
Please forgive an OT which moderation can delete as they see fit.
I read people talking about an icon up in the corner of the site that takes you to the Artic ice anomaly and graphic. I never have found that icon. Mebbe I’m just clueless . . but any help would be appreciated.
Grant
Reply: The Sea Ice link is the one just above the 5-day forecast, along the right side of the page [it’s two links above the “Sunspots” & “Weather from Phoenix Mars Lander” links]. ~ moderator
I suspect that Gavin Schmidt is attempting to deny any credit to Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre who, on numerous occasions, has publicly shown that Schmidt lacks probity.
Word.
– Dill Weed
Grant, it’s the seventh picture down… a graph.
Whoever spotted the problem… congratulations!! I know one thing, it would have never been spotted at Real Climate.
Sean,
It is my observation that Gavin Schmidt has always been a tad snarky.
What is the difference between GISS and GISTEMP? Only a buffoon would make an issue of it.
Oh gee Gavin, stick to the fact that this was an error in the preliminary data that you guys get from someone else and that your boss refuses to label as preliminary.
By Gavin’s deeds and words shall ye know him. This is a hostage to fortune as far as GISS Gavin and AGW are concerned. A bit like the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond banging on about the arc of prosperity that Scotland could join just before the Iceland banks went bust.
Credit or blame aside, this shows the immense value of having folks with little or no axe to grind looking at the data. Take out the agendas, and you have a better chance of understanding what’s happening.
Transparency. A good model for all of government.
Cynical question: Will the MSM reeport that October wasn’t really the warmest on record?
Did the MSM report that October was the warmest on record?
Obviously there’s no dispute between WU and CA on this matter. The issue was identified more or less concurrently by blog readers John S and Chris, one of whom brought the matter to my attention by email (which I forwarded to John Goetz as noted elsewhere he) and one of whom (Chris) was working his way through the problem here.
On Tuesday morning, none of us had any basis for assuming that NASA was keeping up to date with either blog. While Gavin now admits to reading about the problem at Watts Up on Monday night, he did not leave a post here acknowledging the issue and saying that he would communicate the matter to those responsible in GISTEMP, as perhaps he should have.
Accordingly, I sent Hansen a short and polite email notifying him of the problem. This was done as a courtesy. In response to such an email, in their shoes, based on what Gavin says they knew at the time. I would have sent a short reply, thanking me for the heads-up, saying that they were already aware of the problem via Watts Up and were working on a correction. I would have been quite happy to post up this message.
Instead, Gavin now makes the following gratuitous insult:
McIntyre’s intervention sometime that morning is neither here nor there. Possibly he should consider that he is not the only person in the world with email, nor is he the only person that can read.
What conceivable justification does NASA employee Schmidt have this most recent outburst?
I sent them a polite email. At no point did I claim any personal priority for noticing this particular problem.
In NASA’s original disclosure of the error, they did not acknowledge the role of either blog, though Gavin now admits that he learned of the problem on Monday night from Watts Up. A reader of the NASA webpage could easily conclude that they had corrected the error through their own internal quality control. In response to a CA reader admonishing me for my post, I pointed to the fact that their changes had occurred after my email, which at least set a time after which they could be presumed to be aware of the problem (because to that point no one at NASA had acknowledged either blog). I criticized Hansen because of their failure to acknowledge sources; a reference to Watts Up would have been fine. I did not claim any personal priority. Schmidt’s outburst is entirely uncalled for.
In their most recent notice, NASA has continued to omit any direct reference to the blogs. They now thank “many” who notified them of the problem. However, I’m quite sure that the sources for the “many” ultimately derive entirely from the readership of the two blogs.
JohnV,
That GISSTEMP plot has a gift that keeps on giving. The initial anomalous low temps that bake a larger long term warming trend into any analysis. Unless you are somehow arguing that the CRN12 thermometers, randomly scattered through the set had some statistically improbable unified eroneous warm reading.
More likely the rising trend is a result of the garbage stations which were affected noticable by rising UHI during the postwar boom which forced up the average over the thirty years bewtween ’51 and ’80 higher than it would have been absent an outside trend, which was then was baked into their long term average acting like a thumb on the left side for that green line, and also threw off GISSTEMP in a similar fashion. The assumption that there was no UHI trend in the ’51 to ’80 data when your normalizing average was calculated is the Achiles heel of your argument.
Just saying.