Things are changing with global sea level data reporting. As I mentioned in my post April 6th:
What’s delaying UC sea level data from being updated?
As you can see in the graph above, the data has not been updated since mid 2010. Normally an update would appear sometime in Feb 2011 based on their previous update schedules.
I had sent email queries, and they went unanswered. So I made a phone call. I got an answer, described here:
An answer to the question about why UC’s sea level data has not been updated since mid 2010
The answer from the chief researcher, Dr. R. Steven Nerem, was:
“We are updating our web page to a new design, and that is the reason for the delay.”
I replied with: “OK I understand, but the SL data hasn’t been updated since mid 2010, and people are asking questions about it.”
“Well we only update a couple times per year anyway. Sea level changes pretty slowly you know.”
I said: “Yes, but in looking at your previous release schedules, you would have been due for an update in February 2011, and that hasn’t happened. “
To which he replied:
“This new website design won’t work with our current format, so if you can just be patient and wait a couple of weeks we’ll have it online.”
During the same post, in comments, Peter Miller found what might be the “new” website and commented:
Anthony, here are the updated figures – you may be using a redundant site.
A little scary as you can see ‘this new improved version’ shows a greater rate of sea level rise than previously, but most important and ominously it is clearly obvious a whole heap of data points on the chart have been/changed/manipulated/strangled.
But why?
That website had some updated “look and feel” and an updated graph, which matched the presentation of the SL graph on the http://sealevel.colorado.edu website, but the data for the graph still ended in mid 2010 even though it had a 2011_rel1 stamp on it.
I figured: “OK, they are making a new website on another server, and they are going to switch it over and redirect the DNS pointer to the new server at some point. I didn’t even bother to make a screencap of the new website since I figured it would be updated soon.
In the meantime, WUWT and CA regular, stats guy RomanM got impatient and decided to find out for himself what the most recent data looked like. He was able to locate that JASON data and plot this ensemble. Note the slight downtrend in the last year.
While that in itself doesn’t prove anything, since we have had slight short downtrends before in the satellite SL data, it was interesting in that it appears this one has been going on a bit longer.
Today I got an email from a colleague wondering “what’s going on with sea level” and saying that he too was not getting any response from Dr. Nerem regarding his email inquiries. That prompted me to check http://crozon.colorado.edu/ again, and to my suprise, I found it “forbidden”, blocked at the server:
And the main website still isn’t updated: http://sealevel.colorado.edu
But they do have this message:
2011-04-25: We are currently making improvements to this site, and a new site and sea level estimate will be released shortly. Thanks for your patience.
So, we’ll watch with anticipation to see what the new website and data might look like.
They’re giving it a Green (paint)job.
These people need to learn to communicate a bit.
Otherwise, we assume the worst.
A simple note on the front page would be enough:
“Sorry for the delay in updating data. We’re upgrading the website and can’t take the 20 minutes to add a single data point to this page. Please check back in the next few weeks for the new roll out.”
Saying nothing implies either incompetence or evil intentions.
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
I hope that all the /data/ from previous versions of the sea level reports are archived somewhere. I like to see the numbers and from them make my own graphics, which are slightly unconventional, enabling me to spot possible change points.
The current procrastination looks somewhat contrived to me. Have they something unpalatable to disclose (or hide)?
Robin
The new website is likely getting some new mirrors installed and new smoke generator.
Maybe they have discovered a new torture method that makes the data tell the “truth”.
hide the decline … another “trick” / good scientific practice ?
charlatans and con men the lot of them …
REPLY: Let’s see what the new website says before passing judgment – Anthony
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
I think you might be wrong, the better explanation is that they simply don’t care to publish anything that will potentially abuse their cause. I would hazzard to guess that they had this update going and have just kept it going longer then was necessary do to the “longer” trend in sea level data. So in essence it started off as simple incompetence with the upgrade…..and now they just hold it back until sea level starts going back on its track. Question of course is whether we are seeing a change or not, which in itself could mean something. More then likely, the data we have says otherwise, but we can not know that at this point.
Not that I believe this changes facts in the greater war so to speak, but I do think its important to realize that most of the scientists who research based on political whims such as AGW are not outright malicious…most of the time they just don’t want to give the wrong message and lose their pay from those who hold the purse-strings.
It wouldn’t make sense for them to release information and lose funding due to political reasons. In a way, I don’t blame them, these scientists did not make the rules of the way funding works from the US Gov., so they are simply put the best scientists who know how to please the ruling politicians at the time. So in essence, its like I said…not malicious, but it is a political ploy and if you look at the actual consequences of this happening at every university across the country, our scientists have ceased to become scientists in every classic definition of the word and are most simply just lap-dogs for politicians who tell the beauracrats and politicians what they want to hear and let others tell them the bad news if they are even ever told the bad news.
That might be a generalization, but the good scientists have taken on real work and left the universities behind. It might be a sad truth. but real science is dying everywhere except from volunteers and scientists who spend their own blood, money, sweat and tears to figure out the truth.
If evidence exists that disproves or contradicts even small parts of a certain crusade, you can be sure that the scientists in charge of it will make sure that they are not the messengers who bring bad news. It does not say there is a conspiracy, but I do believe vboring might be correct on this issue for the most part.
Perhaps evil intentsions is not the term to use here…but regardless the person who is generally shot is the messenger who brings the bad news. Just goes to show…these scientists are smart in that sense that they realize this and don’t want to lose their funding (which I would put on par with being shot as they see it.)
crosspatch says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:14 am
Maybe they have discovered a new torture method that makes the data tell the “truth”.
=============================================
lol, waterboarding data.
Looks like the climate science geniuses can’t figure out to pay a 20-something like maybe 50 bucks an hour to straighten out their site in a week. Fishy.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
vboring says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:07 am
These people need to learn to communicate a bit.
…
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
###
I can sympathies. As someone who has sometimes needed to maintain a website as part of my duties, I found it a big PITA and disruptive of my main activities; much worse the my weekly status reports. But these days there are so many tools and software packages to help. BTW isn’t this what interns are for?
OTH, I can’t help but wonder if the priority is not somehow related to how well it supports the “narrative”.
Last May, the Heritage Foundation sponsored an international Climate Conference for actual scientists, aka skeptics. There was a sea level expert there, a man who actually measures sea levels. He told us that sea level rise is not uniform. That amazed me, but while Venice is sinking the Pitcairn Islands are rising with respect to tidal levels.
Tuvalu, with the famous pictures of an underwater meeting held with snorkels, is rising.
I think more should be made of this amazing fact.
And massaged data should be called out big time.
So a couple of weeks have passed. Where is it?
Obviously the data does not fit the narative so it doesn’t get updated. Argo data, which shows stable ocean heat contant is hard to find. Pielke points out just today that water vapor data that shows declines in humidity even though the atmosphere warmed a bit is hard to come by. Now sea level refuses to support model projections. What would it take for someone in the concensus climate science community to realize they are a scientist first and advocacy is a distant second?
If the ocean temperature is not warming, then thermal expansion will be reduced. Just like the CU chart shows.
googled site:crozon.colorado.edu
The results include hundreds of pages that will not open. Google has caches of the pages.
The image search yields three images. This one is intersting: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://sealevel.colorado.edu/jason_tgcal_2010_rel4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://crozon.colorado.edu/share/4/3087&usg=__Xqy-92Js_x9GpztQK2l7npi_PDI=&h=425&w=610&sz=53&hl=en&start=0&sig2=L7NiA8Do5GrU4V-kGSTeNA&zoom=1&tbnid=_B7k2ZkRW7fbYM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=180&ei=76W1TYfpApSCtgfCgvjpDg&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsite:crozon.colorado.edu%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4ADSA_enUS417US417%26biw%3D1643%26bih%3D867%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=328&page=1&ndsp=3&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&tx=109&ty=67
I assume that link will work. I hope it will open a Google cache of the image.
I don’t think at this stage these people can or should be given the benefit of the doubt as time and time again they have proven to be fraudsters (re Hockey Stick, most temp adjustments etc).FGS its over…
Let’s see the data hasn’t been updated since the middle of 2010. Just speculating but that might be about the time that the grad student or even undergraduate who was taking care of this website might have left the school. So they trundle along only to discover late in the game that no one could decipher how to update the current page.
Or option 2, the new page keeper had grand ideas for great improvements that ran in to the all to frequent, unexpected glitches.
Hey! Give the guys a break. After all, they really have to scramble for their bucks. It’s kind-of like there are three meal tickets available, and there are six people competing for them. Here’s an article that outlines the problems our PhD friends are having.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/the-phd-problem-what-do-you-do-with-too-many-doctorates.ars
h/t Instapundit
Anyone care to bet that when, if ever, Nerem sees fit to publish UC’s precious-few updated sea-level measurements, they will prove to be “adjustments” rather than raw inputs?
Why, in any case, should public monies fund research amenable to indefinite sequestration by a bunch of frothing academic ideologues? From 1988, if not from 1999 et seq., this pattern has become entirely familiar. Who does Nerem think he’s kidding?
I think a little intellectual tension is good for the system. Nothing at ALL wrong with ensuring that researchers are aware that people are interested in their work.
Trust, but verify…. Thanks, Anthony, Roman et al…. Fascinating stuff.
They have already done that at least once with release 5, 2005 after 28 November 2005. It contains data from 5 December 1992 up to 9 August 2005. If you pay careful attention you will notice they have changed data retrospectively for this period in subsequent releases including the last one on 15 December 2010 to the effect trend was increased from 2.9 mm/year to 3.4 mm/year for that early period. This is how they could maintain a roughly 3 mm/year rate for the entire satellite period up to last year, but because current rate was falling below 2 mm/year, that could not be done indefinitely. So they needed some more tweaking and it takes time. Anyway, do a
$ wget -m http://sealevel.colorado.edu
while it is available.
Could it be that when compiling the new web page they reloaded the data from 1994 and couldn’t get the graph to show that upward trend line? The climate “scientists” have turned me into a cynic.
JKB says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:52 am
Let’s see the data hasn’t been updated since the middle of 2010. Just speculating but that might be about the time that the grad student or even undergraduate who was taking care of this website might have left the school. So they trundle along only to discover late in the game that no one could decipher how to update the current page.
That’s silly. Had they released original raw satellite data along with their code to transform it to the value-added product they have on the website, there would be tens of thousands of willing competent professionals out there who could do the update for free. Some may even venture as far as to do a complete audit for them.
Maybe they are consulting Hansen.
Back towards reality . The Dutch coast is protected by poles of wood hammered into the sand in double rows . This is a measure to keep the current away from the coast and to prevent heavy erosion of the sand in front of the coastline . What are we seeing right now ? At low tide the waterline is falling back so far away from the coast that it is becoming easy to walk around the wooden pole-rows without wetting your feet . This has not been possible for many years and is showing a lowering of the sea-level here , which is of course an embarresment to all believers in warmist theories . With the us government it could well be that all scientists employed by mr. obama are so scared of loosing their jobs that it is better for their own health to manipulate reality ……
Lonnie E. Schubert says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:51 am
That’s quite the link.
The graph at that location is something I’d not want the general public to see. If accurate it would pull the wheels out from underneath the kool-aid truck.
As frustrating as the CU sea level page is, I would caution taking a look at the UAH daily temperature site before declaring that the sea level page’s untimeliness are driven by CU’s beliefs. While I do not believe that Dr. Spencer should be blamed for the satellite problems which lead to 10 of 12 channels not functioning, I am quite frustrated that he does not explain the “Average” line in the AQUA ch05 02 screen. It obviously is not the average against which he calculates monthly anomalies — anomalies compared to this line is much lower than what he reports. Perhaps it is the average of pre-AQUA days. Or maybe it is the old twenty-year average instead the new thirty-year average. Whatever that orange average line is, it is not well explained.
So are these the only people in the world who are tracking sea level change at this level of accuracy? I find that hard to believe and if true, very scary indeed. Surely the Dutch, who have more than a passing interest in and knowledge of things oceanic are keeping score?
As for updating the web page, the issue might indeed be one of using graduate students, who after all are looking for employment. The task is neither difficult nor time consuming for the type of web site they are presenting. Your average middle-schooler could do the job as homework and still have time for TV.
BTW, the “forbidden” web page located by Lonnie shows Jason data going in the exact opposite direction of their trend. WUWT?
I’ve learned to expect incompetence in most circumstances, but you have to have a very low opinion of someone to think they aren’t competent to update a single data point on an existing chart.
Maybe my definition of evil is different from yours. I’m a scientific materialist.
If one chooses to obscure scientific reality in any way or hinders the progress of science for any reason, that is evil.
Our research center has a web site that is updated with layout changes and new content from time to time. None of the doctors, statisticians, or database administrators touch any of the code that makes up the site. Our IT folks manage any layout or content changes to the site. Any time a change is required, it is first coded and tested in a development and test server. Once the changes are made and tested, the production server is then updated. The updates are performed during the wee hours of the morning (maintenance window) and generally have the site down for no more than 10-15 minutes so most site visitors would never experience an interruption in the site’s services.
The CU is an educational institution for crying out loud. If they can’t be bothered with an IT department or contract to a web development company, you would think they could recruit some students to work on the site. I’m sure at least one of them has a laptop or the CU has a computer in their computer science department to keep the web project on. It’s really not that difficult or expensive. If a much smaller research center like ours can muster the experience and adopt modern technology to manage our web site, I’m shocked that the CU, with all of its resources, is so pitifully inept.
@Lady Life Grows says: April 25, 2011 at 9:32 am
[..]
“Tuvalu, with the famous pictures of an underwater meeting held with snorkels, is rising.”
Actually that was the Maldives. Same con trick, different bunch of SnakeOil salesmen.
They can adjust the data points until the cows come home, but it doesn’t make one bit of difference.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can go down to their favorite beach and see immediately that there is no sea level rise that can be discerned.
So, who do they think they’re fooling?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain….
Sometimes it takes time to “Fix” the data so it shows what it is supposed to.
I wish I wasn’t so suspicious and cynical, but it seems that now that Hansen has told them which way the data is supposed to go… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/21/nasas-hansen-thinks-sea-level-rise-will-be-accelerating-i-think-not-offering-a-new-paper-and-updated-story-on-hansen-to-show-why/
Are they rushing to make the “data” fit the story? One thing is certain if the recent downtrend suddenly becomes an uptrend, retroactively. I am going to doubt the result and the people producing it. There is way too much retroactive fudging of data going on, always in one direction, for me to take any of it seriously anymore.
ew-3 says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:04 am
Lonnie E. Schubert says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:51 am
That’s quite the link.
The graph at that location is something I’d not want the general public to see. If accurate it would pull the wheels out from underneath the kool-aid truck.
————————————————————
….. and if it’s what it looks like on its face, we have the real reason the posting is delayed.
I’ve uploaded it to Imageshack, since Google probably controls Google caches:
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7755/jasontgcal2010rel4.jpg
Jeff Carlson says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:17 am
hide the decline … another “trick” / good scientific practice ?
charlatans and con men the lot of them …
———————————————————————————————-
REPLY: Let’s see what the new website says before passing judgment – Anthony
———————————————————————————————-
Anthony, there is already some evidence in…
1. The page has been active for years. It stopped being updated coincidentally at the same time the data became off message.
2. The excuse “We are updating the page” is lame at best. It was mentioned, correctly in my opinion, that updating the old page would cost them nothing, the old page was still up, adding a data point or two should be a matter of a moments work. After months it, choosing not to update the old page because of a page redesign is beyond belief…
These two items together lead me to think that the real reason for the lack of updates is not what we have been told. And taking their story a face value is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Obama was right – the Seas are retreating.
Much too much is made of sea levels as it is somewhat meaningless to construct a rather pointless ‘average’.
In some places sea level is rising rapidly, in some places falling rapidly in others it is static. Land rises and land falls complicating everything (most sea level change is caused by land movement) and all measured by a woefully inaccurate satellite that isn’t used in the real world of flood defences ( tidal gauges would invariably be used as some sort of reliable record of the immediately surrounding area)
Sea levels even within the same tidal basin-such as the North Sea can vary by up to 6cm.
tonyb
Well done, keep the pressure on Anthony!
Science should be done with data on the table. Even if the data does not fit the theory it has to be published.
Who is afraid of the sinking sea level?
Anthony,
When he said “A new site AND Sea Level Estimate”, is that at all suspicious to you? Or did I take this out of context?
I am not a fan of the Constantly adjusting and altering data, if these folks decide to adjust the data, I’d ask for an FOI immediately.
I’ve read better descriptions of tide gauge measurements, but this one at CU seems adequate. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/tidegauges.html
Yes, some measurement sites are sinking and some are rising. Yes, that’s been known for years. Measuring sea level changes precisely with a tidal gauge is enormously difficult, but the older mechanical measurements are remarkably close to more recent satellite observations of sea level.
No, the warmists seem not in the slightest concerned about the fact that a century’s worth of sea level rise measurements — tidal gauge and satellite — shows a fairly constant rise in the past century of less than a foot and no perceptable acceleration. They don’t deny it. It’s in the ARs. They seem not to feel that it’s relevant to their dogma that climate change is an enormous threat and that if we do not panic now, we are all gonna die.
I think that the technical term for that is cognitive dissonance.
If you are not suspicious and cynical, you have not been paying attention. The institutions responsible for climate related data are well known for their loyalties and biases. This ain’t science, it is politics. We must use science to find the truth.
philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:57 am
————————————————————
….. and if it’s what it looks like on its face, we have the real reason the posting is delayed.
—————————————–
In the spirit of honesty, that image may not be what I thought it was. It appears to be Jason only data starting in 2002. There is no data up past early 2010.
Oddly it does not match well with their final product for during those years at
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Anyone know what kind of data massaging is done to the data?
(Lonnie E. Schubert’s graph)
I believe that’s a calibration graph (representing the relationship between sea-level measured by Jason1 and by tide-gauges); not an actual sea-level time series.
Careful, now, lads – you don’t want to give Tamino material to work with.
It’s the new scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, if the data doesn’t agree with they hypothesis…the data must be wrong.
The models don’t jive with the data, so which should we throw out?
Warning: your answer to that question may land you in thermally uncomfortable Political Incorrectitude.
A landlocked university in a landlocked state has global academic primacy in measuring sea level data? That’s very funny … ocean data is being collated by an academic who lives 920 miles from the nearest ocean.
They’ve been holding their breath so long
while awaiting the prayed-for apocalyptic ‘acceleration’
that they’ve passed out,
and hence can’t answer their phones or e-mails.
To sum up:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Robert M says: “The page has been active for years. It stopped being updated coincidentally at the same time the data became off message.”
The May 2008 update was 134 days after the previous update. We have currently waited 132 days for this one. The July 2009 update took 127 days.
OK, so they have more recently been updating every 70-90 days, and it is frustrating having to wait for what is expected to be turning-point of the cycle, but I don’t think that any of the accusations of bad practice (absent concrete evidence) are justified. The next update is obviously going to be scrutinised pretty carefully. I have taken a copy of the current data – 4 datasets on http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php.
Jeron B, in Government contracting there is a phrase: “Errors so egregious as to constituted deliberate fraud.” I think we’re rapidly approaching that point in Climate (so called) Science.
Note even NOAA stopped updating data at their SeaLevel site on 15 January 2011. That’s more than 3 months ago.
A blink comparison movie of four graphs from sealevel.colorado.edu to visually compare the changes in plotting and data over approximately six years.
The four graphs are from 20040215, 20041223, 20060930, and 20100923.
The video has a HD 720p quality for best viewing.
Looking back in time at the sealevel.colorado.edu main page the graphic they present changes as they add more data on the right side… however they seem to stop plotting peak data points on a number of the graphs. I don’t know if that is just their plotting program settings or if it is an attempt of some form of manipulation, it is curious though. A detailed analysis should be done to see if the graphs have other hints of data manipulations of earlier data in later graphs. If they do they better have damned good and already well documented reasons for such mannipulations.
Also they don’t expand the size of the bit map at all, you think as they added data they’d make the bit map wider but they don’t. The effect is that the slope of the sea level rise steepens. I find that this practice in climate science to be deceptive. In presenting information to humans you must keep the graph consistent in scale. Altering the x-axis scale as you add data will lead to misconceptions about the data. I’m surprised that scientists don’t know this, or maybe they do and take advantage of it. Clearly they should provide a version with the same scale if they wish to be honest and have scientific integrity.
Jeroen B. says:
April 25, 2011 at 2:36 pm
To sum up:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
That goes against the precautionary principle. One always have to assume a worst case scenario when evidence to the contrary is lacking.
“philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:57 am
Anyone know what kind of data massaging is done to the data?”
I really have very little idea about the processing, but I do know from the JASON-2 products handbook that the raw data may include measurements that the prudent user might not want to use. At the very least, they seem to think that one might want to discard data that has the (very heavy) Rain or Ice flags set because the data probably is not a valid sea level measurment (might somehow be useful for someone interested in sea ice though). http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_handbook_v1-3_no_rev.pdf
ew-3 says:
April 25, 2011 at 1:55 pm
philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:57 am
In the spirit of honesty, that image may not be what I thought it was. It appears to be Jason only data starting in 2002. There is no data up past early 2010.
Oddly it does not match well with their final product for during those years at
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
—————————————-
Right, the calibration curve looks like it went totally off-kilter in late 2009, early 2010, but the final posted data pretty much follows the trend. This would almost certainly cause problems with this years data if, in fact, sea levels were decreasing or even plateauing then.
Martin Brumby says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:36 am
@Lady Life Grows says: April 25, 2011 at 9:32 am
“Tuvalu, with the famous pictures of an underwater meeting held with snorkels, is rising.”
“Actually that was the Maldives. Same con trick, different bunch of SnakeOil salesmen.”
And a reporter had the presence of mind to ask the governor/mayor/whatever how much house prices had fallen because of the rising waters. Of course, the governor said none. I am watching this closely. I want a bargain basement house in the Maldives.
rbateman says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:38 am
“Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can go down to their favorite beach and see immediately that there is no sea level rise that can be discerned. So, who do they think they’re fooling?”
If you talk to a Green sea level person about this, they will explain to you that local conditions prevent your personal sea level from rising while the global average sea level continues to rise. /sarc, yeah, but this has really happened to me.
Anthony,
Oceans fluctuate but overall they lose .00025mm/yr to the escape out of the atmosphere.
In simpler terms this translates to 2.5mm/ 10,000years.
It was a few hundred meters lost at 1 billion years.
“We are updating our web page to a new design, and that is the reason for the delay.”
Very odd, and very incompetent. The new website should be up an running, fully designed and operational BEFORE the old one has ceased updates, then the switch can happen in a couple of hours.
Imagine the effect of a 5-6 month delay on upgrading a commercial web page, while no updates happen on the old one.!!
Guess it IS only tax-payers money they are using , so it doesn’t matter.. they have an assured flow of funds.
To be uncharitable, they are trying to figure out the algorithm to
hide the declinecorrect the errors in the data recording systems.A slow 2 second blink comparison movie (it speeds up at the end) of two graphs from sealevel.colorado.edu to visually compare a noticeable change in plotting and data from 20041119 and about a month later on 20041223. The graph format changed and possibly the data points where changed or deleted.
The 60 day smoothing doesn’t show the peaks in the later graph that is showed in the earlier graph. This is a statistical distortion and is disturbing.
I find this deceptive as the smoothing line hides the actual data and thereby distorts the graph giving a different impression; they should plot the data with a line between the data points and then add the smoothing line.
The earlier graph show more red data points at the 1997-1998 peak, a cluster of red dots that are not shown in the later graph a month later. This is of concern, what happened to those data points? Where they deleted resulting in data distortion fabrication? What happened to them? Are they just not plotted? If so why not?
There are also many other red dot data points that seem to move from their values. That is disturbing and hits at data manipulations. They better have a good explanation that isn’t just hand waving.
Looking back in time at the sealevel.colorado.edu main page the graphic they present changes as they add more data on the right side… however they seem to stop plotting peak data points on a number of the graphs. I don’t know if that is just their plotting program settings or if it is an attempt of some form of manipulation, it is curious though. A detailed analysis should be done to see if the graphs have other hints of data manipulations of earlier data in later graphs. If they do they better have damned good and already well documented reasons for such mannipulations.
Also they don’t expand the size of the bit map at all, you think as they added data they’d make the bit map wider but they don’t. The effect is that the slope of the sea level rise steepens. I find that this practice in climate science to be deceptive. In presenting information to humans you must keep the graph consistent in scale. Altering the x-axis scale as you add data will lead to misconceptions about the data. I’m surprised that scientists don’t know this, or maybe they do and take advantage of it. Clearly they should provide a version with the same scale if they wish to be honest and have scientific integrity.
One lesson for the climate scientists is that when they make their presentations of graphs they need to always provide a link to the data used in the graph they are showing preferably with the commands to the graphing software to reproduce the graph exactly pixel for pixel. They also need to show the RAW unmodified data as part of their chain of custody to prove it’s not been modified or distorted by their “smoothing” function or other statistical games. In other words they need to show their work on public web pages just as they are supposed to do in scientific papers. They seem to fail to realize that they now have caught the attention of a serious scientific literate audience in the public who won’t put up with their shoddy work and graphs and lack of access to the data they represent in their communciations. Sure they need to learn to communicate better, they need to follow basic protocol of the scientific method and communicate ALL the steps of their work in visual and numeric forms! They need to back up their conclusions with the data and graphs step by step. In other words they need to communicate their work by showing it!
I suspect they now realize that many people are watching them and that changing the data instead of updating it is a bad outcome for them. And yet a drop in sea level is bad outcome for them if their masters want to see another rise. I don’t envy them at CU.
Due to the number of times I was making adjustments to the blink comparison of Mean Sea Level graphs at Colorado University I converted the comment into an article here, http://pathstoknowledge.net/2011/04/25/questions-about-the-historical-global-mean-sea-level-graphs-from-the-university-of-colorado , and I’ve added the static pictures for the graphs in question as well as additional observations and questions.
Poor fellows are dependent on their funding. If the outcome is not as predicted, do you think they are likely get any more funding? Less likely than if there was a continual and accelerating rise, I think.
This is not about sea level but about reluctance to display data. Here is the link http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2010 I have used this for some years and the data has been displayed objectively and accurately. Now if you examine the graph you will see that since August 2010 it has not been updated. This also applies to RSS data. He has lots of other data sets that can be displayed all which are up to date. I suspect the author has just lost interest but maybe someone on here knows about it. In the meantime I have located the another email address for the author so I will try him again.
Another thought: is the another site that provides the same service?
Climate 4 you – http://www.climate4you.com/ has sea level data up to january 2011 and you can download a txt file of the data.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.txt
‘Also they don’t expand the size of the bit map at all, you think as they added data they’d make the bit map wider but they don’t. ‘
One word: Marketing.
They also choose millimeters, which makes the slope steeper.
How many millimeters in Jim Hansens 10 feet?
3048
How many millimeters has the graph risen?
55
janama says: “Climate 4 you – http://www.climate4you.com/ has sea level data up to january 2011 and you can download a txt file of the data.”
Sea level data appears to be exactly as on colorado.edu and goes only to Sept 2010.
If the ‘calibration’ graph (as in Thon Brocket’s comment) is the second on this page, then it may only be more correctly a graph establishing the continuity from satellite to satellite, not establishing any absolute calibration between the satellites and any “fixed” site on the earth’s surface, if such exists. Are the satellite orbits stable to within a few millimetres, or are variations monitored to that accuracy? How do changes in wave profiles and swells affect the measurements?
He was able to locate that JASON data and plot this ensemble. Note the slight downtrend in the last year
when I used to monitor HADCRUT each and every month (until I learnt just how much of a conniving bunch of untrustworthy people they were and how much they actively changed data through climategate), I noticed that almost without exception, cooler months were delayed compared to warmer months. Given it was a monthly figure, the data would be delayed by over a week if the previous month was cold. In my naivety I assumed this meant they were doing “extra checks” which in itself told me they were biased about their analysis.
To this day, I still can’t fathom how any real scientist could delay results based on the monthly direction of trend. You can’t be a scientist and be partisan about data, because by its very nature the data must all be treated equally to be scientific.
I hear the climate widget is still showing February C02 levels… I rather expect CO2 levels to track sea level rise. Now if the rise in both is slowing significantly, it really is the end of the current incarnation of AGW and the script needs to be rewritten. Well, Team, this is what you need for the mo:
Anthony,
A good acid test on this would be to see if they have ever been late with an update before. How long has the site been running? Has it ever taken this long to update? Whilst i am also happy to give them the benefit of the doubt on why it is taking time to update, you must admit that it is not a good look to be so evasive.
Allan
They’ve cooked the dish (data), and will serve it to the public ASAP!
Mistakes are very common but it makes me nervous to find them on NASA’s site as well.
Sea level from this NASA page [ http://climate.nasa.gov/ ] is stated as “3.27 mm per year” yet if you continue to the Eyes on the Earth 3D page, its stated as “3.27 mm since 1992”.
If you continue on to look at the current visual representation by entering Eyes on the Earth 3D and choosing OSTM / Jason 2, you’ll find a 10 day variation that shows the areas with negative and positive sea level rise on a scale that isn’t defined.
IMO, they’re not going to win any prizes for technical communications dispute the fact that they should; wonderful presentation graphics and approach. Also, why do we even need UC’s 2 cents when NASA is already processing the data?
correction to my last post last para s/b:
IMO, they’re not going to win any prizes for technical communications dispite the fact that they should; wonderful presentation graphics and communications approach. Also, why do we even need UC’s 2 cents when NASA is already processing the data?
I agree with the feeling that the oceanas will cool and the will CO2 drop with it if the cooling is large enough. It seems to lag temperature on both a short and long term basis.
Perhaps the sea level data has gone to the Ministry of Truth for a full examination of its truthiness and suitable adjustments made to the past, where necessary, to preserve a proper respect for the Party.
I visited the EMATEC (CSIR) Earth, Marine and Atmospheric Science and Technology
Global Atmosphere Watch http://gaw.empa.ch/gawsis/reports.asp?StationID=35 a couple of weeks ago with a team of researchers. There are all sorts of interesting things going on there. One of the startling discoveries was made when switching from airborne mercury measured daily to measured per 5 minutes. There are hours-long extinctions of mercury caused by unknown processes even in very pure air blown from the south. The atmosphere is full of surprises! Maybe even a CO2 blip.
Perhaps it will be more productive to seek data from sources other than those with a known history of massaging its truthiness. The seas are cooling, the level should be dropping. It should not come as a surprise.
Nils-Axel Morner – Sea level specialist – Climate scare is over
Recently spent some time on the North Sea and Irish Sea. If sea level were truly rising, then why is the Holy Isle still a peninsula twice a day (and has been for hundreds of years)? Why are the Moracambe sands still exposed at least once a day sufficiently to allow crossing? Again- been that way for hundreds of years. The slopes involved here are very small. Even an increase of a few centimeters would make an immense difference.
As a result of gentle prodding by MikeO and others, I have now updated WFT to UAH 5.4 and RSS 3.3. Not part of a global data-hiding conspiracy, just a change of focus for a while!
The baseline period shift in UAH is going to need a recalculation of my standard baseline offsets and the WTI formula. Watch this space…
Get ready for some changes…
“2011-04-27: Over the last few months, we have been working to update the sea level estimates to the latest models and corrections. These include new orbit solutions, updated sea state bias models, incorporation of the TOPEX center of gravity correction, updated ocean tides, and incorporation of the GIA correction. This is an attempt to produce the best sea level estimates and be able to compare our results to other groups producing similar estimates.”