This is an old argument, adjusted data versus non adjusted data, and why does the adjusted data show a trend and the unadjusted data does not? We’ve battled this here on WUWT many times with GISS and NCDC, now the battle is spreading down under to New Zealand. And surprise, they cite NCDC’s own adjustment techniques. And it’s the same thing NCDC and GISS does, cool the past and essentially ignore UHI and land use change factors.
The Seven Station Set (7SS) Above from NIWA: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2009 inclusive, based on long-term station records from between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908 onwards) locations. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2009 (0.91°C/100 years).
Oddly, there seems to be some serious distancing afoot by NIWA, they say essentially “it’s not ours”. I suppose I would too, when you find that you can simply download the raw “unadjusted” data, plot it yourself, and find there there is essentially no trend.
Above graph was noted in this report where they write:
Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Jo Nova sums this up pretty well. So well in fact I think I’ll let her (bold mine):
There’s a litany of excuses. The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) claims NZ has been warming at 0.92°C per 100 years. But when some independent minded chaps in New Zealand graphed the raw NZ data they found the thermometers show NZ has only warmed by a statistically non-significant 0.06°C. They asked for answer and got nowhere until they managed to get the light of legal pressure onto NIWA to force it to reply honestly. Reading between the lines, it’s obvious NIWA can’t explain nor defend the adjustments.
Richard Treadgold was one of that team and files this report on the Climate Conversation Group Website as shown below. Apparently there’s a legal case ongoing. I’ll have another post on this later. – Anthony
===================================
What’s left of the NIWA case?
Richard Treadgold
We hope justice will be done in the case against NIWA. Separate question: what of justice for the NZ temperature record?
The status of the NZ temperature record
For the last ten years, visitors to NIWA’s official website have been greeted by a graph of the “seven-station series” (7SS), under the bold heading “New Zealand Temperature Record”. The graph covers the period from 1853 to the present, and is adorned by a prominent trend-line sloping sharply upwards. Accompanying text informs the world that “New Zealand has experienced a warming trend of approximately 0.9°C over the past 100 years.”
The 7SS has been updated and used in every monthly issue of NIWA’s “Climate Digest” since January 1993. Its 0.9°C (sometimes 1.0°C) of warming has appeared in the Australia/NZ Chapter of the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 Assessment Reports. It has been offered as sworn evidence in countless tribunals and judicial enquiries, and provides the historical base for all of NIWA’s reports to both Central and Local Governments on climate science issues and future projections.
NIWA has a printed promotional brochure describing its climate activities, which commences with the iconic 7SS graph. No piece of climate lore is more familiar to the public, and it is better known than NIWA’s logo.
But now, para 7(a) of NIWA’s Statement of Defence states that “there is no ‘official’ or formal New Zealand Temperature Record”.
In para 8(b) it says the NZTR is not a public record for the purposes of the Public Records Act, using the exemption of “special collections” defined (in para 4(b)) as non-public records used for “research purposes”.
In para 4, NIWA denies it has any obligation to use the best available data or best scientific techniques, while conceding that it has statutory duties to pursue excellence and to perform its functions efficiently and effectively.
The juxtaposition of these conflicting stances leaves NIWA looking decidedly awkward. Should it go all out to defend its most famous product, or throw the NZTR under a bus?
The 7SS adjustments
The 7SS posed as a genuine historical archive, until the NZCSC disclosed, in its 2009 paper Are We Feeling Warmer Yet, that the warming trend was merely an artefact of NIWA’s in-house ‘corrections’. After a lengthy saga (described in Brill, B.E., 2010a. ‘Crisis in New Zealand climatology’, Quadrant Magazine (May) and Brill, B.E., 2010b. ‘New Zealand climate crisis gets worse’, Quadrant Magazine (June)), it emerged that NIWA had adopted some 34 non-replicable adjustments proposed in 1980 by Salinger, whose calculations had been lost.
The NZCSC filed judicial review proceedings against NIWA, requesting the Court to:
• Declare the 7SS invalid
• Direct NIWA to prepare a valid replacement NZTR
In its Statement of Defence, NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the Bureaux of Meteorologists (BOM) for peer review.
From ministerial answers to Parliamentary Questions, we know that this “review” has involved five or six scientists working for about six months, and has received a special grant of about $70,000. It comprises a replacement Schedule of Adjustments for the 7SS with de novo documentation and detailed justification for each adjustment.
The Hokitika example at http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data (scroll down to Documentation of the adjustment process) has been repeated for all seven weather stations.
The replacement 7SS doesn’t repeat the Salinger adjustments but it is to include any adjustments agreed between NIWA and BOM, both of whom will supposedly apply state-of-the-art homogenisation technology.
So the old 7SS has already been repudiated. A replacement NZTR is being prepared by NIWA – presumably the best effort they are capable of producing. NZCSC is about to receive what it asked for. On the face of it, there’s nothing much left for the Court to adjudicate.
What will happen in the court case?
The proceedings are not yet affected by these developments. If the replacement NZTR is as deeply flawed as its predecessor (which seems inherently unlikely) NZCSC will doubtless press on to trial – although some amendments to the pleadings would probably be required. If the new document seems respectable, the parties may well be able to resolve their remaining differences. Watch this space!
Hide the statistically no change temperature. Well of course we have never seen that graph showing .9 degrees warming. Must be some web vandals and some printing errors. Gosh it is surprising that any one mentioned it, no pressure at all.
The agw-smitten politicians all over the world will be putting their fingers in their ears and going “La la la la la”. Will it make any difference? Some irony on the topic from a Spectator gadfly blogger
http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/6351793/the-heresy-of-denial.thtml
Wow! That was fast, Anthony — you seemed to echo our posting almost immediately. Thank you.
The court case is not scheduled at this point; it awaits a conference, which itself has not been scheduled. Still, it’s great to give support to like-minded people around the world at a time when there’s probably more opportunity for climate sceptics to be heard AND LISTENED TO than for a long time.
Cheers.
Am I mis-reading the graphic? By eye I can see a downward trend from around 1880 to around 1930 and an upward trend from around 1945 to the present day. Or is this a trend of the difference, rather than the absolute values? If so, my mistake!
Robinson –
Which graph?
C’mon, call a spade a Spade, ( I’m in the UK so I’m looking forward to mine, Sigh ), this is either unjustified manipulation of the data or out and out fraud.
I look forward to the usual suspects trying to defend something the originating body has thrown under the bus.
From the post. “it emerged that NIWA had adopted some 34 non-replicable adjustments proposed in 1980 by Salinger, whose calculations had been lost.”
What’s with these climate government departments? Niwa lost Saingers’s calculations however NASA managed to lose our capital city until Steve McIntyre kindly found it again for them.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/09/25/houston-weve-found-wellington-nz/
For the first 55 years, the average national temperature of the country of New Zealand was based on 2 (!) stations and for the next hundred, 7 stations. That alone tells me they have absolutely no idea what the average national temperature was. But it’s a point I’ve made before and nobody else seems bothered by it, so I must be missing something.
Robinson is right. If you split the graph in half, it seems like there was a 50 year cooling trend followed by a 50 year warming trend (but not at the level of the homogenised data). So if we want to base climate on two, 50-year trends, then we’re due for either 50 years of cooling or 50 years of slight warming. Or there could not be a trend or pattern. But think about following the chart patterns of a common stock in the short run–someone is out there predicting a pattern or trend, even if there is none.
If the NZ raw data shows no statistical significant warming as from the 1850s, how does this impact upon the AGW theory? Doesn’t that theory suggest that warming must be global? After all, CO2 levels are meant to be reasonably homogenised over the entire globe and accordingly CO2 levels over NZ must have risen from the pre-industrial levels of say 280ppm (although I do not necessarily accept that that level is correct) to about 385 ppm of today’s level. Shouldn’t such an increase in CO2 have had a warming effect on NZ, and if not why not? What mechanism allows for such a significant increase in CO2 concentrations but yet results in no statistically significant warming? [apart from the obvious that in practice given the real climatic sensitivity to CO2, CO2 has little, if any effect, on global temperatures]
It must be recalled that the warmists deny the existence of the MWP because there is no proxy evidence confirming that it was a global event (conveniently ignoring that the proxy evidence does not establish that it was not a global event). They go on to argue that if not a global event, the MWP cannot have existed.
Applying the same logic, if NZ temeperatures have not increased (statistically significantly) it follows there can be no such thing as global warming. At most, we are looking at a collection of local events (where in some part of the globe there may have been some warming and in other parts no warming and which case CO2 cannot be the driver and this must be due to natural variation or some as of yet unidentified driver).
I am sure that when you look at the raw data for other areas, eg., Northern Ireland (can’t remember the name of the station data but there have been posts on this during the last few months), again there is no statistical warming since the 1850s thus demonstrating that global warming simply is not happening (at least not globally).
If there are areas in both the Northern and Southern hemisheres that are not sustaining statistically significant warming, the entire theory of global warming is in dis-array.
Niwa, Niwa, wouldn’t want to be ya….
Being a kiwi I’m familiar with Niwa’s antics.
Leading up to that pseudo-scientific train wreck we like to call Copenhagen, Niwa and TV3 battered the New Zealand population night after night with B.S
That’s the top shelf B.S, 24 carat gold, double dip recession inducing, government guaranteed B.S.
( TV3 is to journalism, as Al Gore is to Climate science – takes a crack at it, but no actual integrity.)
We had glaciers melting – seems ice can do that, we had predicted changes in weather patterns, which like most clairvoyant prognostications – fail to manifest, and we had TV3 rolling out a Niwa scientists, all in name of Global weather-cool-warm-something-ing.
Niwa – has been grossly influenced by our previous communist regime, which saw its grand tyrant, Helen Clarke, elevated to the number three spot at the U.N. I know what number Ones and Number Twos are –number Threes I fear to ponder.
Its shrill utterances all hark back to pleasing the real-politick, of the Clarke junta. Unfortunately now we have a Tory government, desperate to sell NZ to the corporation of China, and having implemented an ETS scam to boot – as promised by, you guessed it, the former Clarke gub-bor-ment, they feel inclined to continue to ruin the country.
Niwa is hopelessly mired in the murky world of international social engineering, and its administration is just covering their backsides, got to keep the game alive Lads!
If the WUWT readership know of an outreach programme for Meteorological types, hopelessly addicted to CARBON-CYCLE-ADDICTION, please let the New Zealand guvment know on 0800-sinking-ship.
This is on old issue in general with NZ. They (don’t know which organizations exactly) have been caught doing this several times. NZ really doesn’t have a reliable temperature dataset. Skewing was way worse than this in the past which is how the error was caught. It was well beyond what GW would indicate. So the skewing actually did the opposite of what they wanted. It showed that it had to be a local phenomenon since GW could not account for it. Well, that phenomenon has been found (A: people skewing the data).
Strange that it’s STILL going on. I’ve seen so many stories about this from NZ I can’t keep track of it all.
How on earth can an entire nation’s temperatures be based on just 2 stations and given any credibility, then on just 7 stations and given any credibility? How do either of those populations lend themselves to stasticially significant averages or standard deviations? I’m flabbergasted (or gobsmacked).
For the first 55 years, the average national temperature of the country of New Zealand was based on 2 (!) stations and for the next hundred, 7 stations. That alone tells me they have absolutely no idea what the average national temperature was. But it’s a point I’ve made before and nobody else seems bothered by it, so I must be missing something.
Yes, you are missing something. There was no attempt in the “7 station series” at a “national average”. Such a thing is always meaningless (do you go by land area, sea area, city average ?).
The 7SS does show a trend over the length of NZ, and that trend is a clue as to whether it has been warming significantly or not. That was why Salinger was keen to distort it by “adjustment”.
For anyone living in NZ the fact that we haven’t warmed by a degree can be found without resorting to measure temperatures. We have a lot of plants who are very temperature dependent, and their spread over 100 years of warming would be very obvious.
Yet we see no great spread of Pohutukawa or Mangrove swamps. Nor are the cherry orchards down south out of business without the requisite cold winters. NIWA charts can be fiddled, but plants only grow in their actual range, regardless of what NIWA wants us to believe.
“”The court case is not scheduled at this point””
The case will be made moot and dumped. NIWA will repudiate the old stats and, as the post indicates, is working on new ones.
The new stats with new “adjustments” will, again, an upward trend in temps. I suspect will be just as fraudulent, but the tweaks will be better hidden and rationalized. Or, like the American NAS did with the Mann hockey stick, it will debunk the Salinger methods, yet say they were accurate anyway, provven by other stats.
There is a lot of money riding on this. The science is corrupted.
I await the outcome of this with keen anticipation.
The thing that I dont think that you have really fully explored here is the possible implications now that the NZTR has been declared not to exist. Surely this meants that all policy outcomes and legislation based on it (eg their ETS) are liable to be challenged in the courts (and in Parliament). Further, presumably any person or company who has spent money on CO2 reduction schemes based on the NZTR would be able to sue NIWA or the NZ government for their money back. I mean if there is no stastistical tempurature rise to justify the expenditure, then they have been conned. If this doesn’t lead to the biggest class action of all time, NZ lawyers dont deserve their money.
Also it will be fascinating to see what BOM (Australia) does. It will be desparate to perpetuate the NZ fraud to prop up its own dodgy (Australian) temperature manipulations, but may also want to caste them adrift and wash their hands of their over zealous fudging. Either way they are going to be drawn into justifying all the new adjustments to the NZ temp record – which will throw a lot of light back on what they have been doing to the Australian temperature records
The second one. But then, you know, kind-of the first one as well.
Having studied this rediculous Climate Change fantasy for close on 18 years , I feel most strongly , that the perpetrators and supporters of this criminal lie should be held to account . Those who supported and passed the evil E.T.S. legislation are equally culpable . Those on the lower incomes will suffer and those on higher incomes will continue to laugh , all the way to the bank. Politicians , Scientists , News Media , and bureaucrats ,have all been responsible for allowing legislation to be passed which will produce billions of dollars revenue for Government . Who are running the carbon credit exchange in New Zealand ?
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a backdown by NIWA.
Jim Salinger, who produced the graph and made the adjustments worked with Phil Jones at East Anglia for many years. His successor and chief climate scientist for NIWA, David Wratt is on the IPCC’s 30-strong Bureau (the steering committee), was vice-chair of Working Group 1 (which dealt with the science of past, present, and future climate change), and was review editor for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
With that background he is going to defend their graph. So far they have been very aggressive in attacking their critics, citing things like adding a 0.8°C increase to Wellington data when the station was shifted to a site 125 m above the previous site. However as we all know, a one off correction does not produce a slope to a graph. But even in this correction it seems to me that 0.8°C is rather a large, considering the normal lapse rate of 1.5°C/1000 ft would only give a 0.625 degrees in 125m.
David Wratt profile
Whats is the pont of making temps look warmer?.Why go to all the trouble of doing this?. The only answer must be to use it for another purpose.
However, now I draw in what I see, I’m not sure it’s significant, i.e.:
Image with trends drawn in red.
I mean the height of the trend on the right is probably not statistically significant when compared to that on the left.
I can’t help but suspect that NIWA is using their abandonment of the “official” NZ temperature history as a way of avoiding losing in a courtroom. The result of which would be to put the NZ version of Cap’n Trade in jeopardy.
The way I see it, there are two factors that (if possible to quantify) would justify temperature adjustment in this case.
First is TOBS. If observation time mirrors that in the US (which I don’t know), that would require a warming adjustment.
Second is SHAP. It is almost certain that station history would require an overall cooling adjustment. Some stations might have been moved to cooler locations, but urbanization and encroachment would need to be accounted for as well (not to mention microsite issues).
As for homogenization, why do it at all? If the extra stations are good, then why not just add them to the set? If they are not good, then why use them at all?
“In its Statement of Defence, NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the Bureaux of Meteorologists (BOM) for peer review.”
Don’t be too sure of the outcome of the “peer review” by the Australian BOM.
From CRU e-mail; Tuesday, 19 June 2007 07:21:57 : Filename: 1182255717.txt
“Had an email from David Jones of BMRC, Melbourne. He said
they are ignoring anybody who has dealings with CA, as there are
threads on it about Australian sites.”
The guy above is a senior manager in the BOM and is a warmista of the first order as I have seen and experienced.
And there are a whole coterie of warmista’s right through the whole of the BOM and the CSIRO’s climate research units, unfortunately usually in senior positions.
And as Ken Stewart of the Kenskingdom blog who has done an analysis on a number of Australian GHCN stations and has shown that there appears to be serious questionable adjustments and homogenisations to the Australian station data all carried out by the BOM and / or GISS.
So don’t expect the Australian BOM to admit to anything even as a supposed independent peer reviewer of NIWA’s “review papers” as it is pointed out above that the BOM and NIWA used similar adjustment techniques and have a similar cultural attitude to making the climate data conform to a particular ideological and dangerously warming stance.
The real puzzle to me in all this entire climategate saga is what made all these so called “climate scientists” believe that they could continuously manipulate and corrupt the data which was, as they knew and admitted in some of the climategate e-mails, drifting further and further away from reality.
Yet they continued presenting this corrupted, homogenised data and conclusions to the public and the politicos as the current reality while seemingly believing that nobody would ever check be able to their data or challenge their conclusions.
And if anybody did so, as we saw, they believed they had the power and influence to stop those enquiries in their tracks.
Sooner or later the differences between the real climate data and their manipulated and homogenised data and model projections that they hailed as infallible proof of a current and future dangerously warming global climate were going to be exposed.
That is just the nature of the way things work, proven time and time again throughout all of history.
Once their corrupted data manipulations were exposed the reputations and standings of those climategate scientists and all those who co-operated or were co-opted into their circle of data manipulation, designed to achieve an ideologically biased result, would eventually suffer a severe and permanent drop in standing and prestige in the science world and so it has happened and is still happening.
I can only guess that in their sheer hubris they never seemed to contemplate or understand the possible ultimate outcome and personal penalties and severe loss of standing and prestige in the world of science and a consequent and ongoing and severe loss of faith in climate science by the public if and when their corrupted manipulations of the data and science were eventually uncovered.
A Crooks of Adelaide,
That was my thinking too. I posted a similar thought on Richard Treadgold’s blog and he replied that it’s a matter of talking to the lawyers and the politicians.
The replacement 7SS doesn’t repeat the Salinger adjustments but it is to include any adjustments agreed between NIWA and BOM, both of whom will supposedly apply state-of-the-art homogenisation technology.
AND they get to include a $70,000 homogenised lie, right?
“In its Statement of Defence, NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the Bureaux of Meteorologists (BOM) for peer review.”
There is not such agency as the Bureaux of Meterologists. It is the Australian Bureau of Meterology. The Bureau of Meterology is an Australian Government Agency. http://www.bom.gov.au
Bureaux is the plural of bureau.
Tim Maguire –
From around 1905 onward NZ has had way more climate stations taking daily max-min temperatures than you would guess from the NIWA 7-station set. For much of the period between 1860 and 1900 it had 6 or more stations collecting such data. There are some gaps in some of the records pre 1900 which is why only 2 were used by NIWA. It should be noted that the other pre-1900 datasets show the same general (non-trending) pattern as the non-adjusted graph by the NZ climate coalition.
After about 1905 the number of NZ climate stations increased dramatically. By around 1930 there were 60+ stations reporting and by the 1960’s in the order of 150 or so. In 2010 there are more than 100 stations in NZ supplying daily max-min temperatures and data for other climatic variables as well. The truth is that the NZ National Climate database is repleat with abundant data. The mystery is why NIWA (database administrator) has failed so abysmally in presenting a realistic picture of the last 160 years of NZ climate.
Due to the documented failures in the science as presented by NIWA there are now a significant number of Kiwis who have gone to the National database and collected much of the temperature data from it. When the next NIWA graph appears it will be scrutinised in great detail if it appears there is an inflated temperature trend.
By the way, NIWA also produced an 11-station set commencing about 1930, the data for which was downloadable when I last looked at the NIWA website a few months back. This graph also shows an upward trend, primarily because the 1930’s and 1940’s were genuinely colder throughout NZ than the subsequent (or prior) period. The trend is caused in large part by the cherry-picked start date.
and to make it worse NZ govt are going to vote on methane gas [cows farting] tax. In australia the labour govt have set up a task force to bring in a carbon tax .TO be on this task force you MUST believe in global warming . can you believe it we cannot GOD SAVE AUSTRALIA BECAUSE WE NEED YOUR HELP. I think its too late for new new zealand i am sorry to say
…Salinger, whose calculations had been lost.
A continuing trend. When they run out of time and excuses to ignore FOI requests –
“woops, sorry we’ve lost the data.”
And we are trusting these scientists to advise on global political decisions worth trillions of dollars and the liberties of the world’s populations.
“Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and short term forecasting (in contrast with climatology).”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meterology
“NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the [Bureau of Meterology] (BOM) for peer review.”
So ‘climate’ science is deferring to ‘weather’ forecasters to determine whether or not the historically recorded weather has been translated correctly in to climate.
It would be ironic if the weather forecasters replied: ‘This climate is not the weather!’.
Peter Foster writes:
“So far they have been very aggressive in attacking their critics, citing things like adding a 0.8°C increase to Wellington data when the station was shifted to a site 125 m above the previous site.”
Peter, I recall this one. Apparently there is some old article that rationalizes adjustments for altitude change, assuming increased altitude, decreased temp. That may be a good rule of thumb on the flat North American prairies, but what about next to a body of cold water? I recall the Wellington station was closer to the shore, then moved up a hill? Farther away from water colder than air temps, would not the adjustment be needed the opposite direction, warmer with increased nearby elevation?
I have not seen that point argued.
NIWA have a new 11 station series PROVING the warming – but it’s 77 years long starting in 1930 – which was the bottom of a cooling trend. They have carefully selected a series to maximize the upward trend. I am ashamed (as a New Zealander) that NIWA could stoop so low with such a shallow “trick”
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/temperature-trends-from-raw-data
ROM says: @ October 9, 2010 at 6:12 pm
” Don’t be too sure of the outcome of the “peer review” by the Australian BOM. …..”
I agree completely. Ordinarily it would be a no-brainer to expect BOM to support NIWA. However, I assume the basis for any adjustments will have to be made public in NZ. These adjustments will be put under the microscope, and if they dont stand up to public scrutiny, then it will all blow back into BOM’s lap, and give further cause to question their dealings with the Australian data. The question is: Is BOM confident enough in its own homogenisation process to help NIWA out by confirming its fudged temperature slope (and everything that hangs off it) – but risk public scrutiny of that homogenisation process? Or will they cut NIWA adrift in order to prevent insights into their own data manipulations and try and save their own skins?
There is another independent way to check the temperature record. New Zealand consists of two main islands, surrounded by ocean. The meteorological surface air temperature (MSAT) record should track the local ocean surface temperature record. Specifically, the long term (5 yr) average MINIMUM MSAT should track the long term (5yr) ocean surface temperatures. This has been shown to be the case for California using the PDO and the UK using the local AMO. Urban heat island effects and other station biases should show up as changes in the station trends relative to the ocean temperatures. A simple linear trend should be sufficient understand the principal effects.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/pacific_decadal.html
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/BLANDET/What%20Surface%20Temperature%20V2_R%20Clark_9%2020%2010.pdf
richard verney;
If the NZ raw data shows no statistical significant warming as from the 1850s, how does this impact upon the AGW theory? Doesn’t that theory suggest that warming must be global?>>
It depends on which version of the theory. There are multiple variations, just as there are multiple skeptic positions. That said, the “classic” version does expect warming to be global, but not uniform. The coldest areas of the planet warm the most, and in any given area, the coldest seasons warm more than the warmest seasons, and you can even take it down to daily where one would expect cooler night time temperatures to warm more then day time highs. The same “well known” physics that warming theory is based on requires cold things to warm most, and warm things to warm the least.
So… in fact if you dig into the details, one would expect very little warming in a moderate climate such as New Zealand’s. If the original NIWA data showed that New Zealand was warming at the same rate as the global average, that would mean that something other than CO2 was driving the numbers even higher. In other words, if the “adjustments” were a fraudulent attempt to produce proof of AGW, then who ever did that apparently didn’t understand the part of the theory that says that the coldest places (like the poles) should warm more than the global average, and moderate and warm places (like most of New Zealand, most of the time) should warm less than the global average.
Come to think of it, if CRU continues to refuse to release its raw data, instead of one big story like this there are likely to be a hundred little stories like this.
This could hurt the cause of AGW even worse than if CRU sucked it in and got it over with.
I am looking forward to NIWA’s updated version of NZ’s temperature record, as I will make a fresh comparison with Salinger’s predictions from 1987 about how much NZ should have warmed by now. Even taking the official figures my 2007 “Mother Earth: Global Warming Denier” video shows temperatures way undershooting Salinger’s 1987 predictions:
I recommend making an appropriate post here.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Default.aspx?TabId=1342&articleID=180240&ce14249=1#comment
Since a lack of temperature stations is a problem for the Kiwis, I suggest a proxy of lamb numbers in spring. The Kiwis have been counting sheep for years. And the mortality rate of lambs should statistacally tell if there is a cooling or warming trend in the climate. Go for it Kiwis and the Wallabies to beat the All Blacks in Hong Kong. By the way do you want Russell Crowe back?
Thanks, I thought I corrected that before posting. I’ll do it again.
A Crooks of Adelaide:
Huub Bakker:
I think, too, that it’s most important for people to understand that NZ’s ETS was not predicated on any perception of local warming. It was driven by the global picture and prognostications (for all their shortcomings!) and by the sense that we in li’l ol’ Noo Zilland should play our part for the greater good. Even if it did us no good. Which it won’t. None of our international competitors face an ETS – we’re our own worst enemy. Nuts!
So, even having to revise the NZ temperature history downwards, if that is necessary, would not by itself justify dismantling the ETS.
Having worked with NIWA, I am not surprised. And I fully agree with “Seen it before” and Peter Foster.
Unfortunately for the sheeple of New Zealand and Australia, no-one will see this reported locally and no-one will stand up to the NZ Govn’t.
Australia and New Zealand are very much into “me too” polotics. We’ll see a “price on carbon” in Australia soon. What irritates me is the use of the word carbon to “label” C02 emissions. Carbon is an element, which in particulate form, soot, is a pollution problem. Anyone familiar with 1950’s London will know what I am talking about. C02 on the other hand is made up of two elements and has totally different chemical and physical properties. How these are somehow considered the same is just a shame.
The fact that man is making the climate change and will destroy the planet is clearly axiomatic.
The warming must be evident in the temperature record.
Therefore if the temperature record is ‘faulty’ it must be adjusted.
Leave the poor guys alone they’re just trying to do science. Of course here science means arranging reality so it follows the expectations of Scientists.
John of Cloverdale WA says:
October 9, 2010 at 8:17 pm
The number of lambs killed during the recent Southland snow storm could be at least a hint. And no thanks you can keep Crowe but give us back Robbie Deans.
Evan:
It’s worse than that, Evan. Barry Brill describes the blemishes of the 11SS in detail at Quadrant Magazine, including using Class 4 stations (potential errors of up to 2°C), documented relocations in no fewer than six of the stations, despite NIWA’s web site claim that the selection was made because “these sites have never been shifted” and including stations for which there’s no data for much of the period.
Cheers.
And speaking of recent snow storms in NZ that killed hundreds of thousands of lambs in Southland. From weather is not climate dept. here we go again and we are supposed to be in late spring weather.
SEVERE WEATHER WATCH FOR FIORDLAND, SOUTHLAND, CLUTHA AND DUNEDIN ISSUED BY METSERVICE AT 0856hrs 10-Oct-2010
SNOWFALLS TODAY IN THE SOUTH OF THE SOUTH ISLAND WITH STRONG BITTERLY COLD SOUTHWESTERLIES.
An active cold front is forecast to sweep across southern New Zealand this morning, followed by strong bitterly cold southwest winds and snow lowering to to around 200 metres this afternoon. The heaviest snowfalls should be above 300 metres about Southern Fiordland, Southland, Clutha and Dunedin, where 5 to 10cm may accumulate in some locations. Southwest gales are also expected in coastal areas, and especially about the coastal hills, including the Catlins. These strong winds combined with the snow are likely to produce blizzard conditions putting extreme stress on vulnerable livestock. Roads in these areas could also be affected, especially those above 300 metres. This cold outbreak will not be very long lasting, with snow showers easing Sunday night and clearing Monday morning.
From:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/101835/Hokitika-Adjustments.pdf
“Adjustment of Data in Period 1866-1880
For completeness in regard to the Hokitika record, it should be noted that Salinger
(1981) also made a small adjustment to the earliest Hokitika temperature data prior to
the gap in the record over 1881-1893. By comparing the 1866-1880 period with the
1913-1945 period between Hokitika and three other early sites (Nelson, Christchurch,
and Dunedin), he estimated the 1866-1880 Hokitika mean temperature was 0.2°C too high relative to post-1912.”
(highlight assed)
See how easy it is to manufacture slope. Find some other sites that were cooler and just “estimate” that another site needs to be cooler too (who ever took those temperatures must have needed glasses for they are really old ☺) so just knock it off but only if very old records.
If adjusting recent records, just reverse the logic, look for surrounding warmer sites and assume and estimate away. (but do search out only peer-reviewed sources)
There is no question that raw temperature data needs adjusting. No one here would argue that some adjustment must be made for UHI, for example. Different time-of-day readings introduce bias, as do instrument and station changes. If there was a nation-wide instrument change implemented over a decade that biased the latter record warm, then ‘skeptics’ would be scrambling to make that problem known.
The problem is not that there are adjustments – they are necessary – the issue is the quality of those adjustments. This is the key point in the top post, but it remains unresolved.
NIWA identified 11 stations from their list that have no significant site-changes recorded, and plotted the raw data. Here is the result.
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/temperature-trends-from-raw-data
There is a clear warming trend 1930s to present.
Now, I do not make the argument that this record is robust. Instead I ask many of the commenters here to reflect before they insist that raw data is the best with which to create temperature records. In the above case, I am fairly sure that, despite the result being based on raw temps, it will be asserted that there must be problems (ie, with UHI).
It is contradictory to assert that any adjustment is fraudulent, and then to argue that a factor (UHI) must be taken into account and subtracted from the record.
Many honest skeptics have attempted to reconstruct the global record using raw data only (unadjusted GHCN & GSOD, for example), and discovered that the official records are not only robust, but that in some cases the official record is lower than the raw-data plots – depending on period and data set (for example, GISS is lower than all the raw reconstructions starting from 1960s or earlier). In effect, there is not a significant difference between raw and adjusted for the global record – as constructed by skeptics. This only happened recently, after years of ‘skeptics’ presuming that the adjusted records exaggerated warming.
It would be great to see some decent reconstructions of the NZ raw temperature properly weighting the data. Even better would be a robust reconstruction taking into account as much as possible of the departures that can be caused by station moves, UHI, TOB and instrument changes – done by a skeptic who is keenly interested in extracting the truth using as much information as possible. Plotting the raw data is insufficient.
I will ‘watch this space’ for such an effort, as well as following the matters raised in the top post.
evanmjones said: Second is SHAP. It is almost certain that station history would require an overall cooling adjustment. Some stations might have been moved to cooler locations, but urbanization and encroachment would need to be accounted for as well (not to mention microsite issues).
NOAA SHAP adjustments have had a net upwards effect on US temps so may have had the same effect on NZ temps. This can been seen here where, if I have understood the explanation correctly, stations are moved to cooler areas and subsequent temperatures are adjusted upwards. This strikes me as exporting UHI to more rural areas and a more appropriate adjustment would be to adjust downwards the temperatures recorded prior to the move to a cooler location.
In New Zealand, NIWA is often known as “No Idea What’s Ahead”!
This is slightly off topic (but really goes towards motivation) but there’s an extraordinary one hour interview with Dr. Tim Ball by Michael Coren of CTS in Canada (who also did an excellent interview with Lord Monckton recently) here –
http://australianconservative.com/2010/10/michael-coren-with-dr-tim-ball/
It explains a great deal from someone who is not only eminently qualified to speak on the subject of climate but has felt first hand the punishment inflicted on those who dare to question the orthodoxy. Its split into 5 parts and each is more interesting than the last. I was really sorry when it ended, as was Michael Coren.
I wonder if anybody gloating here about the NIWA temp data has actually made the effort to visit their website and see the data, find the references to the calculation methods of adjustments, peer reviewed papers and all, and did the math?
Here you go: http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record
If you do not like the adjustments due to stations being moved or instruments changed in the distant past then just ignore data before say 1960. What do you see?
Ah! A 0.9 deg/century increase linear trend. Wonder why?
To the data in the distant past, these were often less reliable than today, used different instruments and crucially some stations were abandoned and others moved, sometimes with significant elevation changes.
Those who plot a simple graph like Mr. Watts up here that takes none of these changes into account will end up with a totally meaningless picture. While it might be suitable to foster the illusion that the world is not warming to do, its rubbish indeed.
Niwa also posted a series from the most consistent 11 stations in the country on their website and its here:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/?a=99837:v1$
This also confirms the trend of about 1 Deg / Century warming in NZ.
While this is less than that in some more effected countries due to NZ’s maritime location it is still significant.
Your post here is a rather crude and unscientific misrepresentation of the facts.
Perhaps it should be noted that Dr Salinger no longer works for NIWA having been dismissed for disobeying instructions to stop talking to the News media about global warming. Dr Salinger originated what became the NZ temperature record as part of his thesis, which is where the now unobtainable adjustments were originally made.
Samoht @ October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I wonder why the NIWA distanced itself from the NZTR if, being as you claim, to be a true and accurate record of NZ’s temperature..
Then again, some people will believe anything.
Just keep dishing out for your ETS !!
The thesis is available through your local university library. It is a published and extensively vetted (PHD Process) paper.
Dr. Salingers sacking was politically motivated to gag a climate scientist. Nothing new, happens all the time, especially during the Bush era in the USA.
SHAP methodology was applied to a US data set. Why do you imagine it would have been applied (equally?) to NIWA NZ adjustments?
“Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm”
The accuracy of thermometers hasn’t changed in a long while. And where are these 11 stations situated?
Owen says:
October 9, 2010 at 7:52 pm
“NIWA have a new 11 station series PROVING the warming – but it’s 77 years long starting in 1930 – which was the bottom of a cooling trend. They have carefully selected a series to maximize the upward trend. I am ashamed (as a New Zealander) that NIWA could stoop so low with such a shallow “trick””
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/temperature-trends-from-raw-data
Have a look at the stations. They are supposed to be “stations with long-term records where no significant site changes have occurred.”
Who are they trying to fool. Hamilton Ruakura, Tauranga Aero, and Palmerston North have had massive urban growth over this period. I know these sites and they all used to be rural. They are now urban.
Also why have they included Campbell Island? It is hundreds of kilometres south of NZ in the Southern Ocean.
Argument? Whether the tilting record is naked fraud or abject incompetence?
Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
One of the many points of the post is that NIWA, subsequent to a judicial review of adjusted temp data they have been touting for years as proof of global warming, is really just informal data for internal use only.
“Ah! A 0.9 deg/century increase linear trend. Wonder why?”
I totally give up. Why?
Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“I wonder if anybody gloating here about the NIWA temp data has actually made the effort to visit their website and see the data, find the references to the calculation methods of adjustments, peer reviewed papers and all, and did the math?”
“Niwa also posted a series from the most consistent 11 stations in the country”
I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived. As I said in an earlier post, Hamilton Ruakura, Tauranga Aero, and Palmerston North have had massive urban growth over this period. I know these sites and they all used to be rural. They are now urban.
The stations may not have moved, but the cities have grown to encompass the sites. I live close to the Ruakura site. It was rural until the 60s. It now has suburbs on three sides. As a child in the 60s I used to visit an elderly relative on the Tauranga Aerodrome Road. I remember it as a dusty gravel road out in the countryside. The Airport is now surrounded by industrial developments. I went to University in Palmerston North. In the 70’s the airport was out of town. Now it is on the edge of town. I would be surprised if these sites do not have a couple degrees C of UHI warming. These are not “consistent” sites. I do not know the other sites well enough to comment but I would not be surprised it some of them also have a warming bias.
Perhaps the NZ Climate Science Coalition could do a surfacestation.org type survey of these sites.
It is of benefit to see the raw trend, greatly reduced from the adjusted. I would love to see a realistic UHI adjustment to the raw trend.
Samoht says: October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“Those who plot a simple graph like Mr. Watts up here that takes none of these changes into account will end up with a totally meaningless picture”
Why is it meaningless, assuming it is correct? The fact they use multiple stations from the 7 sites automatically makes it more than 7 shorter temperature records. You can’t actually adjust different stations at a site accurately, just treat them independently.
And for example barry says: October 9, 2010 at 10:10 pm “No one here would argue that some adjustment must be made for UHI, for example” I would argue against a UHI adjustment as again there is no way to do it accurately. The best you could do is use very rural stations very close to the UHI, and adjust based on them as a best guess. But why not just throw away the record with what you think is contaminated data and just use the rural stations, they must have measured pretty much the same weather.
John in NZ: “I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived.”
As a New Zealander, I take exception to claims that New Zealand scientists are in the business of deceiving their countrymen. New Zealanders are among the most honest and upright people on the planet, and their institutions are regarded as the least corrupt in the world.
I think it’s shameful to bad-mouth and defame honest and hard-working scientists in international forums where they are unable to defend their reputations. By all means question the science, but leave off the accusations of fraud and deceit.
There is more confusion.
By private email of March 28, 2006, Phil Jones of CRU emailed to me about discrepancies in historic Australian land temperatures –
“I would suggest you look at NZ temperatures. … What is clear over this region is that the SSTs around islands (be they NZ or more of the atoll type) is that the air temps over decadal timescales should agree with SSTs. This agreement between SSTs and air temperatures also works for Britain and Ireland. Australia is larger, but most of the longer records are around the coasts.
So, NZ or Australian air temperatures before about 1910 can’t both be right. As the two (countries – GHS) are quite close, one must be wrong. As NZ used the Stevenson screens from their development about 1870, I would believe NZ. NZ temps agree well with the SSTs and circulation influences.”
If any avid reader has a later statement explaining how these differences were reconciled, I’d be delighted to hear it. You know, settled science and all that.
This is also a heads up for the Australian BOM cross checking, because the probability exists that the BOM will argue points about Stevenson screens and early cooling adjustments.
“Geoff Sherrington says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:51 am
As the two (countries – GHS) are quite close, one must be wrong.”
This is a joke, yeah? Approx 3500kms, Aus east coast to NZ west coast, close?
Hmm.
Chart two is not exactly a hockey-stick, is it. Golf club, perhaps – a one-iron (or whatever their smallest stick is called).
” Richard Treadgold says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Wow! That was fast, Anthony — you seemed to echo our posting almost immediately. Thank you.”
Anthony, I do not share Richard’s belief that you were fast on this one. When you commented on Richard’s web site I was comparing paragraph by paragraph the two legal papers. Not that I might not have done the work myself but before I did I checked to see what you and Bishop Montford had to say about this event. You had nothing but the commenters at Bishop Hill were hashing this out fairly well. It blows my mind that NIWA invokes this strategy. As pointed out the new datasets might be just as distorted but if BoM rubberstamps it this might be good enough. Will the Met office do this also with their new data release? Regardless it is apparent to me that the only recourse to buddy-review journal publication is litigation.
Raw data is what scientists endeavour to get as accurate as possible by careful design of the measuring equipment and careful placement. So why is adjustment necessary? unless it is to prove a point of political correctness.
IANAL, but isn’t deliberately manipulating data so important to public policy decisions a starting point for a fraud charge?
Say this was coupled with personal financial interest in industries that stand to benefit from the deliberate error – such as owning shares in industries such as ‘alternative energy’?
What would they need to prove to make this stick?
Looks like temps now are the same they were in 2002. October 2010 so far – normal and going below LOL
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
The real danger of the Hockey Stick is that it gave people working on or around climate the idea that no claim is too extravagant, no impudence too great, provided it confirms AGW.
AGW is not underpinned by fraud, but by emotion. It is emotion of the blackest kind, that strips the most logical and mathematical mind of all basic judgement while leaving the computational ability intact.
As to the source of such misanthropy and self-loathing, I suspect that long after we have solved the fantastic complexities and vagaries of climate, the human heart will still be terra incognita.
As a New Zealander, I am proud that my country has been measured recently as currently the least corrupt nation. Sadly, that cannot be translated as ‘the nation that suffers nil corruption’.
The very senior and eminent American physicist that very recently resigned so publicly from his American professional association due to the corruption of climate science and the deathly silence from professional scientific associations world-wide speaks volumes about that corruption .
New Zealand has a large number of research institutions dedicated to various types of farming and forestry out in the rural hinterland, many of which have been there since the early and mid twentieth century. I find it difficult to believe that only seven accurate thermometers not suffering the depredations of UHI and with an acceptable unbroken length of service can be found by NIWA.
“Alexander K says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:05 am”
Re corruption, so wrong regardless.
“I find it difficult to believe that only seven accurate thermometers not suffering the depredations of UHI and with an acceptable unbroken length of service can be found by NIWA.”
Errrmm….Govn’t grants (read cash – for life if pro-AGW “results”). NIWA, been there done that. I’d trust NIWA as much as my friends’ “card reader”….
Mooloo
October 9, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Your reference to mangroves set me thinking. The mangroves of Ohiwa harbour (the worlds most southerly @38 degrees south) are tiny little scraggly things rarely more than 2 feet high. Compared with the mangroves of the Bay of Islands they are miniature. Bay of Island temperatures are not what I would call greatly different to Bay of Plenty temps, but the difference in size of the mangroves is astounding. If the difference in size is an indication of temperature, then the Ohiwa mangroves would surely be one of the most sensitive proxies of warming known to humankind.
In the 50 years I have lived in the western BoP area I cannot say that the Ohiwa mangroves have increased in size. They are still the tiny scraggly things that they have always been. I wonder if any botany dept. at any university has been recording them? Information in this regard may be just the needle needed to burst any “new” NIWA bubble.
It is time to standardize the temperature thing. I have a plan to do it and it is about ready to release. Check out my site tomorrow. It won’t help New Zealand, but at the global level it will help.
More satellite measurements would also help.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Brendan H;
I think it’s shameful to bad-mouth and defame honest and hard-working scientists in international forums where they are unable to defend their reputations. By all means question the science, but leave off the accusations of fraud and deceit.>>
John advised that in his opinion you have been deceived and made a rather strong case in regard to the reasons why, which constituted the bulk of his response. I note that you cry foul over the word “deceived” but spent not one iota of your time and thought on the legitimate factual information he presented. You demand a discussion about science, but when presented with one, you focus on a single sentence out of several paragraphs and protest that. Where is your response to the factual issues raised? If you are so eager to discuss the facts, THEN DISCUSS THEM!
My experience is that those who have committed to the global warming mantra don’t want to discuss the facts. The scientists you claim can’t defend themselves in this forum are perfectly able to defend themselves, it is an open forum, and Anthony has a pretty much open door policy in regard to warmist scientists posting articles on his site, yet they rarely accept his frequent invitations.
I really am tired of warmists screaming about ad hominem attacks when confronted with a post that is 98% factual discussion and refusing to discuss the facts. If you accept the facts as presented, then the only logical conclusion is that you have been deceived. Dispute the facts if you believe them to be in error, or better still, get one of those honest, high integrity, intelligent, dedicated researchers to refute the deception on this site.
Just one.
No pressure.
Patrick Davis, I suspect we are making the same point!
From a previous post : “The 7SS does show a trend over the length of NZ” … and in
like vein NIWA makes the claim that its 7SS is “representative of New Zealand”.
I don’t think so. The four in the South Island are all coastal or near-coastal.
All they can represent is about 5% of the South Island land mass (and not, for
example, the vast bulk of Canterbury, Southland, Fiordland, Central Otago,
Southern Alps, & etc)
Yes… Caught red-handed with their trousers down 🙂
“…it emerged that NIWA had adopted some 34 non-replicable adjustments proposed in 19ese 80 by Salinger, whose calculations had been lost…”
Sounds like these guys got their training from Dr. Jones at the UEA CRU. It would seem these true believers in the CAGW conjecture will prevent any evidence becoming public which refutes their belief.
It is no surprise that fewer and fewer of the peoples of the world believe in this global warming scam – like the DoDo it is well and truly dead!
“In its Statement of Defence, NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the Bureaux of Meteorologists (BOM) for peer review.”
Can someone explain to me please how this can be called “peer reivew”. I was under the impression that peer review was a double blind process. I you pick who reviews your work and they know where it’s come from that’s just mate schatting over a beer not the true process of peer revies.
I did not say the scientists were the ones deceiving him. It is a case of self deception. He is assuming that the 11 station graph is an accurate representation of what is happening. I think a little closer look at the rest of the station sites and how human activity around them has changed might show some interesting things.
Campbell Island is very isolated, but a number of DOC workers have been there eradicating rats and sheep from the Island. This could have resulted in changes to the micro climate around the met station.
According to Dept of Conservation, “Campbell Island became a reserve in 1954. Many of the feral sheep died out, and from 1970 the rest were progressively culled. The last remaining sheep were eliminated in 1992.” from http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/historic/by-region/southland/southern-islands/campbell-island/
davidmhoffer: “I note that you cry foul over the word “deceived” but spent not one iota of your time and thought on the legitimate factual information he presented.”
My comment focused on the matter of alleged corruption. I highlighted this issue because it has become second nature among climate sceptics to assume lies and deceit by climate scientists, and in my view this assumption poisons the debate.
Offhand, I don’t have any information about UHI effects in New Zealand, but a while back NIWA released an explanation of adjustments to the Hokitika station, which should give a flavour of the reasoning for temperature adjustments.
http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/101835/Hokitika-Adjustments.pdf
#
#
Brendan H says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:31 am
“John in NZ: “I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived.”
As a New Zealander, I take exception to claims that New Zealand scientists are in the business of deceiving their countrymen. New Zealanders are among the most honest and upright people on the planet, and their institutions are regarded as the least corrupt in the world.
I think it’s shameful to bad-mouth and defame honest and hard-working scientists in international forums where they are unable to defend their reputations. By all means question the science, but leave off the accusations of fraud and deceit.”
Hi Brendan
I am sorry you took my comment that way. I said nothing about the scientists.
It is a self deception.
I tried to post a reply but it disappeared. This may end up a double post.
I also think the Campbell Island site may well have changed enough to affect the temp record.
Dept of Conservation (DOC) have removed the Campbell Island Sheep. According to DOC “Campbell Island became a reserve in 1954. Many of the feral sheep died out, and from 1970 the rest were progressively culled. The last remaining sheep were eliminated in 1992.”
from http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/historic/by-region/southland/southern-islands/campbell-island/ Did they die because they were starving due to overgrazing? Remove the sheep and change the habitat and therefore microclimate?
In 2001 they began their rat eradication program.
http://www.newzeal.com/theme/antarctic/NZ/Campbell/CampbellRat.htm
This means a lot (relatively) of human activity.
The met station was automated in 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Island,_New_Zealand
In my experience, once you automate something you tend to forget about it. The met station is at Beeman Cove which from the image in this link has had a few buildings and roads construsted. I wonder how far the MMTS is from the nearest road.
For Brendan H, Alexander K and others who may take exception to accusations of deceit and/or corruption levelled at NZ scientists and bureaucrats.
Firstly, the global corruption index that I have seen regularly published in NZ (showing NZ to be the least corrupt country in the world) is, I believe, produced by an NZ institution. It is perhaps therefore wise to regard it with some caution.
Secondly, we do not know, and perhaps never will, the causes of what has gone on at NIWA. It could be changes in personnel, the normal bumblings of bureaucracy, incompetence, emotion-led thinking, conscious or unconscious bias, or some form of corruption. It matters little, since the effects are the same. We do know, however, that NIWA’s case for Global Warming is neither open, nor transparent, nor peer-reviewed, and that the NZ government and others continue to rely on it. I suggest this is a far from satisfactory situation.
Lastly, the price of freedom from corruption is eternal vigilance by citizens. This is a true in NZ as anywhere. What bloggers like Anthony, and parties such as those that have taken NIWA to court are doing is exercising this vigilance. I take my hat off to them.
All the best.
“If the new document seems respectable, the parties may well be able to resolve their remaining differences. Watch this space!”
So they just ignore that this either Fraudulent or Criminally Negligent poor science was promoted to the gubmint and by the gubmint as reason to pass a number of bad policies which damaged many New Zealanders financially?? They also ignore how the authorities attacked the Deniers and Sceptics who tried to correct the corrupt science?? (I realize that trying to follow the money to determine chicken and egg on the grants and payments is likely a bridge too far)
Sounds typical of here in the States also. Not too many embarrassing bodies lying about, carry on.
I live in a small provincial City in NZ.. Our Global Warmist Mayor sited OUR temperature records for our City as showing us to be TOO cold !. ( The sensors are out away from industrial heat pollution. ) SO they where moved .. to and inner-city location within meters of a busy road and a sports dirt track.. Guess what ” Headlines one year on “Wanganui hottest year on record” Global Warming hits our City”
Correction to my above post: I assume that when it is mentioned that NZ is “the least corrupt country in the world”, that people may be referring to the reports published by Transparency International (TI). NZ appears to be equal first with Sweden and Denmark in their survey of perceived corruption (not actual corruption) for 2008. The NZ chapter of TI is at:
http://www.transparency.org.nz/
They have an article from FEB 2010 entitled: “Are we as good as we are perceived.”
Next international perception survey due later this month.
All the best.
I am getting interested in Campbell Island.
It is about 700km southeast of the South Island. (S52.33 E169.09 ) Sub-antarctic. Very cold. A change in vegetation from overgrazed grass to un grazed scrub and tussock could have a big effect on temperatures being recorded.
According to people who were counting Albatross in 1996
http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/science-and-technical/sr101-Entire.pdf
“There have been significant and continuing
changes to the vegetation of Campbell Island since feral sheep ( Ovis aries)
were systematically removed from parts of the island between 1970 and 1990.”
When they first tried to farm sheep on the island (late 1800’s), they began by burning the existing vegetation. Next came overgrazing. They stopped trying to farm in 1931 but let the sheep run wild. After the removal of the sheep there should be an ongoing change to the islands vegetation. This could continue for decades. The removal of the sheep should result in an increase in vegetation. This in turn should provide more shelter and therefore we should see recorded temperatures rising.
I definitely did not take offence at the idea of corrupt science and scientists in NZ.
The NZ government has been persuaded to bring the infamous ETS legislation into law; the information must have come from somewhere and NIWA is the obvious choice.
Brendan H;
My comment focused on the matter of alleged corruption. I highlighted this issue because it has become second nature among climate sceptics to assume lies and deceit by climate scientists, and in my view this assumption poisons the debate.>>
If that is your position, then for starters, the fact that the scientists in question are from New Zealand has nothing to do with it. I live in Canada, easily one of the least corrupt countries in the world. I’m also in sales in high tech. I remember in graphic detail the first time I was asked for a bribe, some 30 years ago. I sort of remember the second one. I stopped counting well over two decades ago, and if you ask me when the last one was, I really couldn’t tell you. When there are large amounts of money at stake, corruption happens, and living in the least corrupt country in the world by no means confers immunity, and is not a defense. The facts are the only defense, and on the facts, John made an excellent case that your perception is not in line with reality.
On the larger front, there are certainly a litany of accusations, and yes, some skeptics assume deceipt. But the bulk of them engage in discussions of the facts, frequently disagree openly with each other, and are eager to debate with the warmists.
If the debate has been poisoned, may I suggest that you consider:
The 10:10 video in which skeptics, even children, are nonchalantly murdered merely for disagreeing.
Greenpeace’s threat of violence against skeptics including “we know where you work, we know where you live”
Repeated calls by Hansen, Suzuki, and others to criminalize skeptic beliefs.
Studies, multiple of them, suggesting that skeptics are deficient in intelligence, upbringing, or geneticaly predisposed to being amoral.
The coining of the word “denialist” to discredit skeptics by associating them with holocaust deniers.
I could go on. And on. And on. If you take exception to the notion that you have been decieved when it is coupled with a thorough explanation of why that may be the case, then I must assume that you are equally appaled at the antics of some of the warmists whose actions have gone beyond poisoning the debate. They have instead refused to debate and instead engaged in a blatant attempt to discredit and silence skeptics, going so far as threats of violence and criminalization.
These are the signs of a movement that no longer has the facts on their side, and rather than reconsider their position, have instead resorted to the presentation of magic sufficiently advanced that it may pose as science. So don’t be wagging your finger from within your cloak of morality. It was woven by the same tailer that clothed the emporer, and it exists in your mind only.
Enough please with the No True Kiwi defence of NIWA.
Its position in August was”We are confident that, in the unlikely event that [a court case] proceeds, then our stance and our science will be fully vindicated.”
Some in the Anglosphere will be put in mind of the defiant words of British politician Jonathan Aitken in a libel case against The Guardian newspaper:”If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today. Thank you and good afternoon.”
Yes, he was quickly proved to be a liar and sent to prison for perjury.
Likewise, for all NIWA’s fighting words and bluff, when (forcibly) given the opportunity to demonstrate the quality and veracity of their “science” it folded. It has been exposed as a peddler of falsehoods.
Unless and until heads roll and there is a thorough cleanout it is now irrelevant in the debate and its output worthless.
As the saying goes in New Zealand, NIWA, yeah right.
Brendan H says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:31 am
Clearly Brendan you are a deluded fool. Of course it is a reasonable assumption that government warmist scientists are lying. After so many examples it is the default position.
Corruption? Did you see where it has been reported by Bob Woodward that the Obama administration and Gen David Petreus that the Karzai government was a “criminal syndicate”? Of course it is, just like any government at any level.
I emailed David Wratt (Chief Scientist at NIWA) and invited him over here to respond to this post, in particular give reasons why NIWA are still prominently displaying the NZTR as proof of global warming when they can’t explain or defend the temp. adjustments made.
In the real world most things tend to saturation (which is occasionally devastating as exemplified by the collapses of the Roman Empire and Chinese Dynasties).
Urbanization is no exception. Many cities across the globe have already reached or are reaching the final phase of urbanization, which should diminish the UHI effect and is actually reflected by the flattening of measured temperatures.
In addition to the slumbering Sun and the start of the cooling phase of AMO and PDO, this may be drastically changing the discussion on global warming oops climate disruption in three to five years. Really interesting times ahead.
By the time they’re through, the new homogenized data will be…
worse than we thought!
John in NZ: “I am sorry you took my comment that way. I said nothing about the scientists. It is a self deception.”
The relevant comments were as follows:
samoht: “Niwa also posted a series from the most consistent 11 stations in the country”
John in NZ: “I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived.”
The implication from the above is that NIWA is doing the deceiving. A number of comentators on this thread have assumed fraud and nefarious purpose on the part of NIWA, while having little understanding of the issue. Your comment appeared to be more of the same, so I think my inference was justified. But I accept your retraction.
I can’t make any comment about land-use on Campbell Island, but the pdf I posted for the Hokitika site (one of the “seven-station” series) posited three reasons for the adjustment of temperatures: site changes, instrument error, and comparison with another New Zealand site.
The paper also explains the reasons for choosing these adjustment factors and the methodologies used to adjust the historical temperatures. I’m not qualified to make any judgement on these explanations, but NIWA has made major efforts to communicate the science. I think they should be commended for this rather than condemned.
davidmhoffer: “If that is your position, then for starters, the fact that the scientists in question are from New Zealand has nothing to do with it.”
On the contrary, I think the culture of a country does have some relevance to the way its institutions operate. A culture that is perceived to be low in corruption doesn’t get that way by accident, and since culture is pervasive, the wider culture will have an effect on the way institutions carry out their functions.
“I could go on. And on. And on.”
So could we all. Many climate sceptics now seem to have an almost instinctive opposition to climate science, an attitude that I think is corrosive to rational debate.
It was when the debate over climate science descended to accusations of fraud, lies, cheating etc that climate sceptics crossed the line to take the issue away from the science and into ideology.
This an implicit admission of defeat on the science. In my view, this aspect of climate scepticism has done immense damage to science by breeding a casual cynicism towards especially public institutions that do science.
John in NZ Oct 9 at 11.32p.m.
The main Palmerston North met site at the old D.S.I.R. at Turitea near Massey University is stll a rural site thanks to having been moved away from the ever increasing number of out buildings, and tar sealed roads belonging to Agresearch who now gather the data on behalf of the NZ public. I am trying to track down just when this shift happened. I have managed to photograph some sections of large aerial photo’s that the City Council has at the city library. The photos cover the years 1951, 1961,1971,1975, 1986, & 1993. Up to that latter date the met site was as I first remember seeing it in 1975 when I had a part in surveying the setout of a section of road that possibly came inside a 100m radius.
The aerial shots available through the City Council’s web site show the new location several hundred metres west of the old site, where the earlier aerials show a copse of cabbage trees in a paddock.
The current P.N. airport site is within 100m of a hardstanding tarmac where they park the small training aircraft of the Massey School of Aviation (part of Massey Uni.). From my own memory the previous site was close to the isolated control tower. I am currently trying to identify that old site on the relevant aerials.
I applied for and obtained the following raw data from NIWA earlier this year, D.S.I.R. Turitea 1972-2010; Aorangi (Kairanga) on the flood plains about 8 miles west of the city for 1972-1990; Ohakea Air Force Base, closer to the coast again and around 20 miles west of the city, 1954-1991. These three sites give a good indication of the weather/climate in the lower Manawatu basin, from the foothills of the Tararua Ranges to the sunshine belt along the west coast. The overlapping raw data shows the rural sites to be slightly warmer, but it does vary.
I have also been given access to the P.N. long-term Means from June 1928 through to the present. I know trained metorologists look at annual means for obvious reasons. For the southern hemisphere looking at annual groupings sees the end of one summer at the start of the year thrown in with the start of another summer at the end of the year.
When looking at the seasons in isolation one finds that there are distinct differences from one summer to another. To simplify things a little I have settled on a Two-Season Year, i.e. hot & cold, or summer & winter. The southern ‘summer’ runs from November to April, whilst winter is May-October. Very hard for you northerners to get your head around that I’ll bet.
Just looking at the T-Max Means for these ‘2’ seasons we see wide variation during the 1930’s (it cracks me up when people nowadays state that the weather is SO variable. Well actually no. It was more variable back in the ’30’s!. Far more extreme in fact.)
The hottest (T-Max Mean) summers for here are in order, 1934-5, 22.40 C; 1937-8, 22.35 C; 1974-5, 22.32 C; & 1998-9, 22.13 C.
The winters were showing a slow rising trend from the very cold winters of the 1930’s up until 2005. The coldest winters were 1941, 12.80 C; 1930, 12.88 C; 1931, 12.92 C; & 1992, 13.07 C (the latter was Pinatubo affected, as was the summer of 1991-92).
Whereas the summers of the 1930’s show great variation from one year to the next, it is the winters of the first part of this decade that show that feature, with swings of over one degree celsius from one winter to the next. This peaked with the very warm winter of 2005, 15.56 C. Since then the trend has been noticeably downwards.
In addition to these figures I have been monitoring the mountain snowfalls for both the Tararua and Ruahine Ranges since 1980. By noting the severity and altitude of each visible snowfall, as seen from the panoramic Manawatu plains I can attest to the fact that the last three years have seen the heaviest aggregate of mountain snow in the past three decades based upon my own weighted system. As an independent back-up to this has been the return of avalanches to the Tararuas as of August 2008 for the first time in over 75 years! The Tararua Ranges are the only non-volcanic region of the North Island to have glaciers during the last glaciation.
just to show how much things haven’t changed in the past 30 years it was noted on the TV news tonight that there was snow down on the hills behind the small port of Picton (many travllers to N.Z. may remember this place as their first point of contact with the South Island when crossing from the north by ferry). According to some of my notes from back then the same thing happened on Oct 5th 1980! You would think that after 30 years of increasing CO2 that this sort of thing wouldn’t still be happening!
As an amateur astronomer I’d rather be watching a clear sky, but with weather and climate being what they are it isn’t hard to see how one can become addicted to watching them too!
Cheers, Coops.
“It was when the debate over climate science descended to accusations of fraud, lies, cheating etc that climate sceptics crossed the line to take the issue away from the science and into ideology.
Well that’s certainly put Professor Hal Lewis in his place.
To : James allison says:
October 9, 2010 at 9:51 pm
See a spring lamb proxy is the go. Seems those disappearing snow fields (predicted by various “climate scientists”) did OK in A & NZ. Wonder if snowfield property is decreasing in value as we approach the TIPPING POINT. By the way, we will take Robbie and Split Enz- legends!
Ian Cooper – from memory (which is fallable now, I know) the Stevenson Screen at Palmerston North’s Milson Airport was sited about eqi-distant from the control tower and the old Middle Districts Aero Club premises, on the lawn under the aerial complex during the 1050s and ’60s. In the same period, PN Boys High had a Stevenson Screen on the sports feild which was bounded by Featherston and Rangitikei Streets, plus another out at the old DSIR station on the river flats opposite the original Massey College road entrance and yet another at the research station on the old Milson Estate in Milson Line, not far from the aerodrome. I have vague memories of another Stevenson Screen on Jennersmead, the Glaxo research farm between Bunnythorpe and Feilding.
The Lands and Survey farm that was once out near the Manawatu Gorge on the Aokoutere road before it was subdivided was named ‘Siberia’ and for good reason!
” ‘it emerged that NIWA had adopted some 34 non-replicable adjustments proposed in 1980 by Salinger, whose calculations had been lost.”
Don’t you just love those “The dog ate my homework” excuses?
Bad doggie.
Wonder how big of a fish the “Pier Review” will determine to have gotten away?
Brendan H says: “. . . this aspect of climate scepticism has done immense damage to science by breeding a casual cynicism towards especially public institutions that do science.”
Amazing! The fault lies with people who want to verify and replicate — not with people who hide data, lose data, claim a right to keep data manipulation procedures a secret, conspire to prevent opponents from publishing, letting political interests trample scientific principles . . . .
To those who have posted laments that it is “too late” (NZ and Oz): Have some Tea.
Over here in wonderland, we had the same problem once. We solved it. The problem re-surfaced. Fortunately (or not), the original solution provides the current remedy; it is called the vote.
Source:
“Declaration of Independence – Transcript.” Government. U.S. National Archives, July 4, 1776.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Alexander K Oct 11th 7.54 a.m.
Nothing wrong with your memory mate. I was at P.N.B.H.S. from 1971-73 and can’t recall the little met site that you mention. I think when I was there that particular area had been sold and was being turned into commercial premises.
You must track back a bit before my time also in your reference to Massey College! The D.S.I.R. (Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, now defunct) site opposite Massey is the one currently being looked after by Agresearch (another Crown Research Institue, I think), and is now more commonly referred to as Turitea (the spelling used to be Tiritea, but was found to be incorrect).
Thanks for the info on Milson Airport. I was coming up short in my attempts to identify anything close to the control tower on the old aerials. I believe Jennersmead is still operating ( I did some work there about 10 yeras ago). I have a vague recollection of the Aokautere site you call “Siberia,” but another DeSIRe (as we used to call them in those days) site that comes to mind with a similar reputation as the latter, was Ballantrae on the Woodville side of the Saddle Road, up where the Te Apiti wind farm now is. I always figured you must have done something bad in a past life to end up working for any length of time in such places as Ballantrae and Siberia!
Cheers
Coops
Brenden H
If you grab all the raw temperature data from each long-duration climate record for the Southern portion of NZ then do a 1st differences-style analysis you will find that there is no justifiable reason to adjust the early part of the Hokitika record to a colder level. The data is available at the NZ Climate Database (cliflo database).
I have studied the NIWA justification for its Hokitika adjustments and it does not impress me at all.
There are long/early records available from Nelson City, Christchurch Gardens, Lincoln, Dunedin, Queenstown, Wellington, Queenstown, Chatham Islands, Bealey (pre 1900) and pre 1930’s records available from many sites including Hanmer, Naseby, Invercargill, Ashburton/Rakaia, Tapanui, Waimate, Gore, Tekapo, Ophir, and Timaru. Relevant pre 1960’s records include Blenhiem, Appleby, Westport, Greymouth, Jackson Bay, Omarama, Waipiata, Mt Cook (The Hermitage) Lake Rotoiti, Molesworth, Rudstone-Highbank (Methven) Milford Sound and a number of other sites.
So I would suggest that before you trust the NIWA Hokitika to Auckland long-distance correlation exercise that you should try a correlation with a basket of nearby climate stations, particularly ones with no obvious urban warming trends. When you do this you may note, as did I, that the need for downward adjustement of pre-1930’s Hokitika temperatures disappears.
As one who has obtained all the relevant early NZ temperature data from the cliflo database I would suggest to you that if you have an enquiring and open mind and were to do likewise you will find that the NZ emp trend is not as advertised by NIWA. Until then you would do best to avoid bieng too gushing in your support of statements made by NIWA.
Rob R: “I have studied the NIWA justification for its Hokitika adjustments and it does not impress me at all.”
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m not qualified to judge the methodologies used by NIWA. I linked to the article as a matter of information, and to illustrate the good faith of NIWA in being prepared to offer an explanation for adjustments to the historical temperature record.
If you’re not convinced by the explanations in the linked paper, and are able to persuade NIWA or other qualified people that your explanation is superior to theirs, I will of course accept that new knowledge. But for now your explanation is merely a claim.
Niwa Are still doing their BIT for AGW…
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/publications/all/cs/annual/aclimsum_08
Quoting “Wanganui,Spriggens Park 14.5 0.6 SCINCE (1937) 4th highest
CONVENIENTLY forgetting that the Wanganui Site was moved by the Local Global Warmest mayor http://www.weatherforum.org.nz/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1665#p24264
The site was moved (2007) to an URBAN HEAT Island, Very convenient for Tourists and NIWA alike !!
Maybe I missed a similar response, but as for Robinson’s 50 year trend:
The only reason you see that 50 year trend in the second graph is because you are choosing to start at a high temperature in the past and only going out far enough to reach a very low point. Then you start the second trend at an anomalously low point and trend it up to the recent anomalously warm years.
You can’t start and stop your trends at the highest and lowest points on the graph. That’s cheating.
I’ve looked at Australian weather staions which are clearly away from urban heat islands – mainly lighthouse sites, small islands and the data shows no clear trend that I can see in the past century. Yet overall the BOM has maps of Australia suggesting everywhere is warming. Whatever is happening needs plain unadjusted data to help us know the truth.