By Steve Goddard
Dr. John Christy recently wrote an excellent piece “Is Jim Hansen’s Global Temperature Skillful?” which highlighted how poorly Dr. Hansen’s past predictions are doing.
This post raises questions about GISS claims of record 2010 temperatures. The most recent GISS graph below shows nearly constant warming from 1965 to the present, with 2010 almost 0.1°C warmer than the actual warmest year of 1998.
HadCrut disagrees. They show temperatures flat over the past decade. and 2010 about 0.1°C cooler than the warmest year 1998.
Looking more closely, the normalised plot below shows trends from Jan 1998 to the present for GISS, HadCrut, UAH and RSS
GISS shows much more warming than anybody else during that period. Hansen claims :
The difference of +0.08°C compared with 2005, the prior warmest year, is large enough that 2010 is likely, but not certain, to be the warmest year in the GISS record.
The discrepancy with the other data sources is larger than Hansen’s claimed 0.08 record. Is it a record temperature, or is it good old fashioned bad data?
Either way, it is still far below Hansen’s projected temperatures for 2010. This is not pretty science.
Hansen made temperature forecasts which have proven too high. Now his “measured” temperature data is pushing higher than everyone else. Would you accept the other team’s coach doing double duty as the referee? In what other profession would people accept this sort of conflict of interest?
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“Hansen made temperature forecasts which have proven too low.”???
“Hansen made temperature forecasts which have proven too low”
I am sure you mean “too high”.
No where Steve. But, remember the money and the prestige of NASA is at stake and their people are in control of the purse strings.
TYPO? Shouldn’t that be “… too high”?
MODERATOR :
Just noticed a typo
“Hansen made temperature forecasts which have proven too low”
Should read :
“Hansen made temperature forecasts which have proven too high”
Thx
Reply: Fixed ~ ctm
I thought that world temps were dropping the last 10 years or so, or is that just the US temp record?
Gistemp methodology is accurately documented and the code is available. It has been reproduced by multiple citizen scientists.
It departs from other indexes for known reasons which can be debated both in the literature and in the blogosphere. Backhanded insinuations of evil intent, such as this, do little to further productive discussion.
It’s that time of the Economy known as weeding out the underachievers.
In Hansens own word “Shut ‘er down”.
The $$$ can be put to better use elsewhere.
Given the similarity with NIWA’s curve, I wonder if Hansen has been helping them. 🙂
If, indeed, Hansen had made forecasts which were too low, he could subsequently claim that the actual temperatures were far worse than even he thought… we’ve never heard that before, have we?
I thought that world temps were dropping the last 10 years or so, or is that just the US temp record?
World. But bear in mind the 10-year stretch is currently running over 2000 La Nina ground. Low starting point.
Let Hansen run his own private company in a sink or swim mode.
He could call it Hansens Institute for Climate upwarming Studies, or HICupS.
Geez jeez,
Look at the graphs. There’s nothing that can justify that!
using the 12 month running average from 1998 (the only time in the past 12 years when the running average of all 4 data sets was almost the same) is also illustrative:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/07/hansen-maintains-title-of-leading.html
jeez
GISTEMP departs from HadCrut because they generate Arctic data where they have none.
Conflicts of interest are highly frowned upon in all fields, and most people are smart enough to avoid them.
jeez,
The inference of “evil intent” is from your own mind. I didn’t say anything along those lines.
Think about that.
“GISS shows much more warming than anybody else during that period”
Then it would be the out and out lier.
The UK met office already has showed that Hadleys sampling is at the lower scale of the warming and that they likely miss out on the warming of the 2000s. What more evidence do you people need before you stop hauling out the 1998 is the warmest argument…
I am a little confused on that HADCRUT graph, that I have seen in at least two posts. I remember a few years ago where Hansen was coerced to concede that the 1930’s were actually warmer than 1988, yet this graph shows the 1930s barely even blipping above the “Normal” line, and way way way lower than 1988.
Watts up with that?
Reply: That was the US index, this is the global index. ~ ctm
(sorry, 1998)
What is the real world experience closer to?
Hansen’s prediction of 0.24 C per decade or the null hypothesis of no warming due to anthropogenic causes?
Yes Steven, known, documented, and not changed recently to my knowledge.
Under other conditions this methodology could lead to a cooling bias (although I have my own opinions on the confirmation bias which seems rampant throughout climatology).
So what is the point of your accusations of conflict of interest if you already know the reasons for the departure, yet fail to mention it in your original post?
How does it contribute to the discussion?
It’s not like CRU and GISS don’t know they do this differently.
It’s not like the reasons for this departure of indexes isn’t known and documented.
Conflicts of interest are completely neutralized of negative intent with full disclosure.
Full disclosure exists here. What are you accomplishing by ululating about this?
jeez,
People avoid conflicts of interest because they are good, not because they are evil.
If Hansen is going to tout a record temperature to the press and politicians, he needs to include disclaimers that more sophisticated satellite and other ground based data disagree. He needs to mention that the slope of his his recent trends are several times higher than modern satellite data. He needs to mention that he extrapolates data 1200 km. He needs to mention that he has very little data at either pole or in Africa.
Does he do any of that?
Steven: Is there any reason you’ve excluded the other surface temperature-based dataset, the product from the NCDC?
All is documented, but you made me look even harder at your cherry-picked example.
If you change the start date of your plot from 1998 to 1999, which is much closer to “the past decade”, GISS tracks almost identically to the satellites and radiosondes.
So the suspected results of your conflict of interest are a direct result of a carefully chosen start date.
I am no fan of Jim Hansen, but this post adds nothing to the discussion and in my opinion, reduces the credibility of this site.