From the “we told you so” department comes this paper out of China that quantifies many of the very problems with the US and global surface temperature record we have been discussing for years: the adjustments add more warming than the global warming signal itself
A paper just published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology finds that the data homogenization techniques commonly used to adjust temperature records for moving stations and the urban heat island effect [UHI] can result in a “significant” exaggeration of warming trends in the homogenized record.
The effect of homogenization is clear and quite pronounced. What they found in China is based on how NOAA treats homogenization of the surface temperature record.
According to the authors:
“Our analysis shows that “data homogenization for [temperature] stations moved from downtowns to suburbs can lead to a significant overestimate of rising trends of surface air temperature.”
Basically what they are saying here is that the heat sink effect of all the concrete and asphalt surrounding the station swamps the diurnal variation of the station, and when it is moved away, the true diurnal variation returns, and then the homogenization methodology falsely adjusts the signal in a way that increases the trend.
You can see the heat sink swamping of the diurnal signal in the worst stations, Class 5, nearest urban centers in the graphs below. Compare urban, semi-urban, and rural for Class 5 stations, the effect of the larger UHI heat sink on the Tmax and Tmin is evident.
In Zhang et al, they study what happens when a station is moved from an urban to rural environment. An analogy in the USA would be what happened to the signal of those rooftop stations in the center of the city, such as in Columbia, SC when the station was moved to a a more rural setting.
U.S. Weather Bureau Office, Columbia SC. Circa 1915 (courtesy of the NOAA photo library)Here is the current USHCN station at the University of South Carolina:The Zhang et al paper studies a move of Huairou station in Beijing from 1960 to 2008, and the resultant increases in trend that result from the adjustments from homgenization being applied, resulting in a greater trend. They find:
The mean annual Tmin and Tmax at Huairou station drop by 1.377°C and 0.271°C respectively after homogenization. The adjustments for Tmin are larger than those for Tmax, especially in winter, and the seasonal differences of the adjustments are generally more obvious for Tmin than for Tmax.
The figures 4 and 5 from the paper are telling for the effect on trend:
Huairou station and reference data for original (dotted lines) and adjusted (solid lines) data series during 1960–2008. The solid straight lines denote linear trends
Now here is the really interesting part, they propose a mechanism for the increase in trend, via the adjustments, and illustrate it.
They conclude:
The larger effects of relocations, homogenization, and urbanization on Tmin data series than on Tmax data series in a larger extent explain the “asymmetry” in daytime and nighttime SAT trends at Huairou station, and the urban effect is also a major contributor to the DTR decline as implied in the “asymmetry” changes of the annual mean Tmin and Tmax for the homogeneityadjusted data at the station.
In my draft paper of 2012 (now nearing completion with all of the feedback/criticisms we received dealt with, thank you. It is a complete rework. ), we pointed out how much adjustments, including homogenization, added to the trend of the USCHN network in the USA. This map from the draft paper pretty much says it all: the adjusted data trend is about twice as warm as the trend of stations (compliant thermometers) that have had the least impact of siting, UHI, and moves:
The Zhang et al paper is open access, an well worth reading. Let’s hope Petersen, Karl, and Menne at NCDC (whose papers are cited as references in this new paper) read it, for they are quite stubborn in insisting that their methodology solves all the ills of the dodgy surface temperature record, when it fact it creates more unrecognized problems in addition to the ones it solves.
The paper:
Effect of data homogenization on estimate of temperature trend: a case of Huairou station in Beijing Municipality Theoretical and Applied Climatology February 2014, Volume 115, Issue 3-4, pp 365-373,
Lei Zhang, Guo-Yu Ren, Yu-Yu Ren, Ai-Ying Zhang, Zi-Ying Chu, Ya-Qing Zhou
Abstract
Daily minimum temperature (Tmin) and maximum temperature (Tmax) data of Huairou station in Beijing from 1960 to 2008 are examined and adjusted for inhomogeneities by applying the data of two nearby reference stations. Urban effects on the linear trends of the original and adjusted temperature series are estimated and compared. Results show that relocations of station cause obvious discontinuities in the data series, and one of the discontinuities for Tmin are highly significant when the station was moved from downtown to suburb in 1996. The daily Tmin and Tmax data are adjusted for the inhomogeneities. The mean annual Tmin and Tmax at Huairou station drop by 1.377°C and 0.271°C respectively after homogenization. The adjustments for Tmin are larger than those for Tmax, especially in winter, and the seasonal differences of the adjustments are generally more obvious for Tmin than for Tmax. Urban effects on annual mean Tmin and Tmax trends are −0.004°C/10 year and −0.035°C/10 year respectively for the original data, but they increase to 0.388°C/10 year and 0.096°C/10 year respectively for the adjusted data. The increase is more significant for the annual mean Tmin series. Urban contributions to the overall trends of annual mean Tmin and Tmax reach 100% and 28.8% respectively for the adjusted data. Our analysis shows that data homogenization for the stations moved from downtowns to suburbs can lead to a significant overestimate of rising trends of surface air temperature, and this necessitates a careful evaluation and adjustment for urban biases before the data are applied in analyses of local and regional climate change
Download the PDF (531 KB) Open Access
h/t to The Hockey Schtick
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UPDATE 1/30/14: Credit where it is due, Steve McIntyre found and graphed the physical response to station moves three years ago with this comment at Climate Audit.
Here’s another way to think about the effect.
Let’s suppose that you have a station originally in a smallish city which increases in population and that the station moves in two discrete steps to the suburbs. Let’s suppose that there is a real urbanization effect and that the “natural” landscape is uniform. When the station moves to a more remote suburb, there will be a downward step change. E.g. the following:
The Menne algorithm removes the downward steps, but, in terms of estimating “natural” temperature, the unsliced series would be a better index than concatenating the sliced segments.
Has the journal been closed yet?
That’s beautiful. Looking forward to seeing your paper too.
What it needs is someone to examine the placement of all the temperature stations and then.. oh.. hang on. Never mind.
Does this explain most (or all) of the warming since the 1930s?
Or, are we really cooling since the 1930s, keeping in mind the NOAA adjustments chart: http://www.sustainableoregon.com/data_adjustments.html
Thanks
JK
What we ultimately find is that for USHCN stations from 1979-2008, the adjusted data shows a warming >50% faster than the compliant (Class 1\2) stations, >100% faster for the Rural MMTS subset. (And, yes, that’s after bumping up the MMTS Tmean trend by +0.02 C/decade as per Menne, 2010.)
And homogenization gets a good chunk of the blame.
It has been a somewhat lonely road, and a very, very long one. Over 2000 man-hours by now. I wonder how many peer-reviewed papers can say as much. But I have enjoyed every minute of it.
REPLY: and lets not forget the thousands of collective man-hours put in by surface-station volunteers – Anthony
Gosh, no! — Evan
Fig 6 is a puzzle. It looks like the adjusted trend is right. The moves caused two artificial drops, reducing the apparent trend, and adjustment restored it.
Now the apparent trend may include UHI. But that is not what homogenization is about. It tries to get the correct trend observed, allowing for artificial changes. It doesn’t attribute the trend.
REPLY: Still in “racehorse” mode, I see. Despite your puzzlement, homogenization is a highly imperfect tool that does little more than blend good data and bad data to make a big sticky unrepresentative mess. Better simply to remove stations that have been compromised than to try to make a temperature milkshake with strawberries and dead fish.
The problem with NOAA is that they think “one size fits all” when it comes to these adjustments, and clearly, as this paper demonstrates, it doesn’t – Anthony
Cue for Mosher drive-by to the effect that BEST proves UHI doesn’t have any measurable effect on the temperature record.
omnologos, it does not look like they violated the publisher’s peer-review policy or appointed editors with no relevant qualifications.
[snip – let’s not start a fight before all the participants are present, shall we? – Anthony]
BEST and their scalpel method should also produce figure 6 type errors, as they are just evaluating the inflated slope of each piece.
Even without relacation, same effect happening and not corrected for.
What the scientists who still do real science are basically saying is what most people realize intuitively. It is not getting warmer. At best, we are holding our own, and not slipping into another LIA.
Land-based temperature records are simply a farce. If businesses used the same type of homogenization techiques in accounting they would be incarcerated.
Let alone the exotic extrapolation and smoothing!
@Anthony Watts or Steve Mosher?
“…The analysis result based on the homogeneity-adjusted data in this paper also shows that the significant increase in annual mean Tmin at Huairou station might have been completely explained by urbanization, and the increase in annual mean Tmax might have been partially caused by urbanization,…”
A criterium to separate UHI affected / non affected stations may then be, if the difference Tmax-Tmin remained stable or if it decreased.
I would like to see exactly what “homogenized” means as it relates to each temperature measurement and it’s homogenized, result as a function or algorithm.
REPLY — You only think you would. I’ve barely managed to isolate the bottom line, and my eyes are still bleeding. ~ Evan
Say what you will about Obama, but with a State of the Union address bracketed by two Polar Vortex events, he’s certainly got that Global Warming thing licked.
When they homogenize the data, why does it always wind up pasteurized?
Well, I can tell y’all what the problem is with homogenization. Pops out of the data like a sore thumb. And the procedure is worse than a mere sticky mess that smears the errors around. That was my first impression, but there’s more to it than just that.
Homogenization takes the average of surrounding stations. If that station’s readings do not conform to the surrounding stations, it is considered an outlier and they adjust it to conform.
Problem is that they do not account for microsite. One out of five stations is properly sited (vis-a-vis heat sink) and they show lower readings. The result is that ~4 out of 5 of the surrounding stations is poorly sited. So the well sited is adjudged an outlier and adjusted accordingly.
The net result is worse than a mere smear. The result is that they are adjusting the well sited stations UPwards to match the poorly sited stations rather than adjusting the poorly sited stations DOWNward to match the well sited stations.
Now, if 4 out of 5 stations were well sited instead of badly sited, the homogenization would sort of work. Or if they adjusted the poorly sited stations downward before homogenizing (as they do with TOBS adjustment). Or even just plain dropped the badly sited stations.
But they don’t, so it ain’t, see?
Besides, why go to all the (large) bother of oversampling in the first place if you are going to go mush it all up by homogenizing it?
I may have misread the Muller’s comments on the Urban Heat Island Effect.
What I thought he was claiming was that the energy that causes UHI is so miniscule that it could raise the temperature of the globe by only a thousandth of a degree C. If so, then he was badly misunderstanding the whole issue related to UHI effects.
I don’t have the source, it was some time ago, and I wasn’t completely sure he meant to be taken that way, so its probable that I’m the one who was wrong, not him. But did anyone else read him that way? And do you have the source?
Dear Mr. W, these folks
Have that odd figure 6. Nick Stokes
Has got a point, to my surprise
The trend should be as he implies
It’s odd to be in this agreement
But it is clear to me what he meant
Adjustments fuzz the temps, that’s clear
But Fig 6 is the issue here
That slope is not the common case
The stations aren’t so hot in place
But if that one in Figure 6
Did what they say, then Nick’s point sticks
That data in particular
Shows rises that are secular
And so, without moves in between
The steep slope is what would be seen
Now maybe those moves had a reason
Creating warmth all out of season
But that’s not what the graph depicts
I’m puzzled, still, by Figure 6.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Noam Chomsky famously said: “Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is the concern for content.”
An individual who often posts on WUWT whose name starts with P and reminds us all of a popular breakfast treat (not to be cute – but writing it out seems to kick a post into automatic moderation) apparently disagrees with Chomsky, or believes there is no great content to be found in what is posted on this blog; as he is OBSESSED with Credentials. Favorite targets are well respected commenters like Willis (recently – ad nauseum) and Mosher (above at 5:10) who apparently do not have the proper imprimatur for P. Without a stamped ticket, your actual current WORK counts for nothing in his book.
Making things worse, P hides behind a screen name, or apparently denies any real name from which one could learn of his own credentials.
P. Please stop doing this. We already got your point of view, and it is tiresome. Give it a long, long rest. And anyway, you are wrong.
For what it’s worth, Anthony’s grand discovery: the MICROSITE effect on trend, packs a punch that knocks UHI effect clean out of the park. That shows up in the trend data, too.
The two effects are not entirely unrelated, but let’s not go conflating our microsite with our mesosite: Well sited urban stations average a lot cooler than poorly sited urban stations.
And, sure, cities show a much greater offset than rural. But we must be ever so careful not to confuse offset and trend.
I never knew that strawberry and dead-fish milkshakes were such a favorite among AGWers!
Well, heck, I believe in AGW.
But you have to bear in mind the Three Principles of Global Warming:
1.) Size Matters.
2.) So does the Motion of the Ocean.
3.) Regarding data “adjustment”: If you shake it more than three times, yer playin’ with it.
evanmjones says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:01 pm
——————————————–
The troubling part of the whole adjustment process is that it does similar magic on historical records as well. There is no justification for manipulating 80-120 year old records.
Just saying, the comments on malice or [incompetence] are both right.
Cheers ! From very cold Sarasota Florida once again!
What it needs is someone to examine the placement of all the temperature stations and then.. oh.. hang on. Never mind.
#B^D
And, as Anthony says, we’d like to thank all the unfunded volunteers out there who made this joke possible.
The troubling part of the whole adjustment process is that it does similar magic on historical records as well. There is no justification for manipulating 80-120 year old records.
You said it, brother.
It’s my ultimate ambition to get ahold of the entire GHCN raw data and the metadata (TOBS, moves, equipment changes, etc.) and do the Muller job properly (i.e., using the correct microsite metric). If it’s possible, which it may or may not be, depending on whether that information even exists.
But . . .
If the data on moves and TOBS is not sufficient, though, not only can it not be done, but the record we have — both adjusted and raw — is fatally compromised.
Mods a little help with my shivering spelling of incompetence would be appreciated 😎
This is why you dont adjust after station moves.
When a station moves its a new station.
You have to split the record.
Giss cru and ncdc have to adjust because then cannot use short records.
The approach pioneered by skeptics is to split the record.
We of course split records. A moved station is a new station.
(settles in with popcorn)
Following figure 6, you then get 3 short red trends instead of the 1 combined red trend. But each of your short trends still contains UHI, no improvement here with BEST.,
Manfred says:
“A criterium to separate UHI affected / non affected stations may then be, if the difference Tmax-Tmin remained stable or if it decreased.”
A criterium is a bicycle race on a short course. A criterion is a standard on which a judgement may be made.
From the map from your draft paper — did NOAA really ADD the increases sees in the Class 1 & 2 stations to the increases seen in the Class 3, 4, & 5 stations? To come up with an increase in temp HIGHER that either?
I think first to identify this problem was …..
http://climateaudit.org/2011/10/31/best-menne-slices/#comment-307953
Steve McIntyre…
OT Heads up.
Snowden Docs: U.S. Spied on Negotiators At 2009 Climate Summit
“WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency monitored the communications of other governments ahead of and during the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the latest document from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document, with portions marked “top secret,” indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that “analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries’ preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies.” ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/snowden-nsa-surveillance-_n_4681362.html
And here is the wonderful Watts, et. al., 2012!
Part 1: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
Part2: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/31/watts-et-al-paper-2nd-discussion-thread/
WAY TO GO, ANTHONY!
I’ve read the paper, and the analysis seems reasonable, as far as it goes, but there is bizarre logic. It seems that they do correctly derive the adjusted trend as per Fig 6, but they also do a UHI analysis based on different behaviour of Max and Min. Then they argue that adjustment overestimates the trend, as independently corrected for UHI.
But these are unrelated things, and illustrate the peril of analysing just one station. It happens that for Hairou, station moves approx compensate for UHI, but there’s no reason to expect that to happen generally.
I think BEST said there was no UHI detected in their set. But that is pretty nonsensical for several reasons
One – the idea that the rate of temp change is the same over time for rural and Urban stations makes little sense. This could only be true if the population, structures, impervious surfaces and the like stayed exactly the same in the urban area over time. There is no city in my opinion and belief that has not seen a large and significant increase in building mass and hard cover over time. And if building mass and hard cover has increased then there MUST be an increase in temperature over and above the natural warming signal.
Next – although related – if I recall the increase in temps over time is largely in overnight temps in urban areas. This too makes perfect sense – more building mass and more hard cover increases the heat sink dramatically. That increased heat sink stores and radiates that heat into the night, causing higher night time temps.
Here too however – the urban Tmin temps MUST increase over and above the natural warming signal, as the city is built out and the structural mass increases.
IF a city remained entirely statci over time – there were no changes to buildings, road, hard cover etc then it COULD be conceivable the warming in this urban city would match the trend for rural areas. Both would be subject to a static “base” and should reflect only the natural warming signal.
However, in any city that grew during the measurement period – which increased its structural mass and hard cover – there pretty much MUST be a mean temp increase in excess of the natural warming signal trend. There must be an UHI effect.
Simple common sense science says to me this must be so.
I still think it would be interesting to pair two top-notch stations – one correctly and permanently situated (an existing, long-standing station would be best), and one either robotic or moved by volunteers to honestly random locations in a 100m radius.
It should be possible to:
1) -directly- quantify some of the microsite issues
2) end up with an -apples-to-apples- thermal map (as opposed to a quick-and-dirty infrared photo)
3) start quantifying the -spatial- error
Wow … you know what really stood out last night on the LWIR satellite image with this cold air in place? The DFW metro area … all that concrete, the buildings contributing to the (drum roll please) UHI effect! … geesh …
.
So maybe the global warming has stopped because it hardly started in the first place.
There’s a lot of good stuff on HS at the moment.
Trenberth debunks himself: The oceans didn’t eat the global warming ‘missing heat’
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/trenberth-debunks-himself-oceans-didnt.html
NSIDC: 2013 sea ice was at record highs for the satellite era, record high winter extent & summer minimum
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/nsidc-2013-sea-ice-was-at-record-highs.html
“The troubling part of the whole adjustment process is that it does similar magic on historical records as well. There is no justification for manipulating 80-120 year old records.”
Come now! If you do not adjust those old records, how are you to get the alarming trend you’re looking for? Merely pumping more recent temperatures UP simply won’t get the job done. You must also push earlier temperatures DOWN.
Evan/Anthony: FWIW- thanks for the tenacity and long hours. The importance of the work you’ve done (and folks like M&M) is impossible to overstate if we’re ever to start redirecting the billions from the political beneficiaries of faux science to the truly needy of our world. Not to mention the regressively destructive effect of more expensive and less accessible energy and food.
While I’m at it- h/t to all the remarkable commentators here. It’s amazing how I slip in to catch the latest on the shenanigans of the hockey team and before long I’m waist deep in Newton’s Principia. WUWT is a reincarnation of the joys found following Silverlock’s epic jaunt through the Commonwealth of Letters- thanks very much.
JRP
REPLY — And don’t forget the volunteers. Hansen may have a bulldog, but Anthony has the “mercury monkeys”! ~ Evan
From the map from your draft paper — did NOAA really ADD the increases sees in the Class 1 & 2 stations to the increases seen in the Class 3, 4, & 5 stations? To come up with an increase in temp HIGHER that either?
It’s from the old paper. My updated map still shows a ~60% exaggeration of the surface record, but not the 100% you see there. Rural MMTS shows >100% exaggeration. Poor sites are now about equal to the adjusted version.
When we publish, I’ll explain all the hows, whys, and wherefores. A tale worthy of Willis.
Mosh —
Yes. New location = New station; that’s exactly how I see it.
And, yes, you were right about TOBS. I confess it.
In fact, rather than screwing around with TOBS adjustment, I say New TOBS ought to = New Station.
Bernie, if I did not have to read so many urban legends in the past I would not bother pointing out the liberal arts majors, some of which get taken way too seriously.
Station 1 shows no trend for 10 years. Station 1 is moved, now is called station 2. The next 10 years station 2 (now a “new” station) shows upward trend for 10 years. So what. It means nothing.
How can anyone consider that good metrological (as in measurement science) practice? It would get laughed out of any A2LA lab audit.
If machined hole in a block of aluminum is measured with appropriate NIST traceable instruments in a lab environment at 70F, was found to be undersize according to the drawing tolerance, then move it back out to the machine shop where it was made and it measures in tolerance, does that mean the diameter is actually within tolerance? Well no it does not.
There’s a reason why we have standards for measurement, but there seems to be no standards applicable to climate “science”; it’s made up as it goes along. I find the notion of homogenization of temperature data ludicrous. The process should be left to dairy farmers where it belongs.
A metrologist would have a field day in a question and answer session about how temperature data is collected and reported. No PhD required. Why? Because before you take measurements, you must first understand what it is you are measuring, the instrumentation used to take the measurements and the environmental effects of what is being measured. That’s just for starters. I find so called scientists with no metrological background quite sloppy in their methodology, no offense. Measurement equipment and the data collected by them in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing.
It seems WUWT had a metrologist guest poster some time back. He explained it quite well I thought.
Well gee, there might be hope after all
http://www.nist.gov/mml/aerosol_metrology_for_climate_workshop.cfm
Alas, even NIST has been poisoned; not surprising considering our dear POTUS has determined that no “deniers” will work in his administration. At least no more than 3% anyway.
http://www.nist.gov/iaao/upload/1-1-HSemerjian-NIST.pdf
Hey! I’m a liberal arts major!
Even worse, I have a graduate degree in Occupy Wall Street from an Ivy League University, no less.
Tonight in 20 minutes (10 PM Pacific, 1 AM Eastern), Coast to Coast AM radio will be interviewing:
Space historian Robert Zimmerman will discuss the fraud and dishonesty which has permeated the sciences of climate and environmental studies including how scientists at NASA and NOAA have consistently manipulated the temperature records.
You know this is a good-news-bad-news story for Warmers:
Good News: it explains the “pause” in Global warming (warming paused when NOAA stopped adding an offset.)
Bad News: When you remove the offending offsets, the whole 20th century is part of the pause.
Thanks Evan,
I thought I was alone.
REPLY — I haven’t done the forensics on the murder weapon, but I have done an autopsy on the mangled corpse. Ick.
Does this paper (not to mention Anthony’s) up the ante a bit for Warmists? I wonder how long it will be before there is a criminal investigation into deliberate manipulation of global economies through intentional doctoring of scientific data, for the enrichment of a few people (such a former vice-presidents) while contributing to the near-meltdown of the western economic foundations?
Ah the Chinese throwing some light on the sneaky revisions of temperature and station locations – when I read the title I wondered what the master of weird twisted logic would have to say in defence of the heatwave “milkshake” of smeared Desert temperature averaging that turns mild Australian summers into “angry summers”, didn’t have long to wait!!
Nick Stokes says:
January 29, 2014 at 7:58 pm
“I’ve read the paper, and the analysis seems reasonable, as far as it goes, but there is bizarre logic”.
What the!!!!
Now that is a bibful of dribbled doubt from the master of the bizarre excuses!!
I agree with our host!!
Don’t forget this paper which showed significant UHI in China’s major cities.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/new-paper-uhi-alive-and-well-in-china/
A nearly candid admission, and only thinly veiled. Baby steps.
WRT the example that is the antecedent of Mosher’s ‘This’ quoted above, the BEST “ninja blender” method produces the same WRONG result as does the critiqued homogenization scheme.
And that, of course, is the intended function of BEST. It replicates the same WRONG result by a method that appears to be different, so that it can be snarkily pretended to be different by drive-by warmist apologists. This lends CAGW an air of “independent confirmation” where none actually exists.
In that regard, it is very similar to the technique whereby one temporarily pretends to be a skeptic, so that one may falsely claim to the press a short while later that he is a “former skeptic” who has seen the light, when he is really a once and future warmist who has seen a dishonest path to personal profit. That is another method perfected by BEST.
Evanmjones: ‘Homogenization takes the average of surrounding stations. If that station’s readings do not conform to the surrounding stations, it is considered an outlier and they adjust it to conform’.
They remove the outliers from the station population. It is the most significant cause of the great dying of the thermometers. By comparing disappearing stations and survivors (survival analysis), you may find with respect to this aspect 20 sigma effects, a lot more than physicists needed for the Higgs. This kind of homogenisation creates a signal from noise. I am still looking for an article explaining that the artificial signal likely goes up.
Does this paper (not to mention Anthony’s) up the ante a bit for Warmists? I wonder how long it will be before there is a criminal investigation into deliberate manipulation of global economies through intentional doctoring of scientific data, for the enrichment of a few people (such a former vice-presidents) while contributing to the near-meltdown of the western economic foundations?
Oh, I don’t want to even go there. And I think the homogenization issue is an innocent error. An egregious error, yes, but an error, after all. All you have to do is accept Menne (2010) to fall into that trap. Or even Fall et al. (2011), and Anthony and I are co-authors on that.
I don’t like talk about jailing scientists. My reaction is like Kinnon’s when Ferris starts talking about the death penalty in industry — if you get the reference: “Take it easy, boy . . .”
Besides, that sword cuts both ways. Today we sentence them? Tomorrow they sentence us.
Winning the argument and putting the train back on the tracks will be more than sufficient for going along with.
Poptech says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:21 pm
I don’t care in the slightest if a man or woman is a liberal arts major, Poptech. I care if their scientific claims are correct. If their science is correct, their major doesn’t matter.
On the other hand, if their science is wrong … well, their major still doesn’t matter.
So I don’t care in the slightest that liberal arts majors get your panties in a twist, and neither do most folks here. Give it a rest, Poptech. Stop boring us with your endless stories about peoples’ degrees and the like, and start talking about the science.
There’s no need for you to say one more word about it. You’ve repeated it ad nauseum. We all get it—you are obsessed with paper credentials … so what?
So what? Stop with your endless whining about credentials. In addition to being crushingly stupid, it’s irritating, and more to the point, it’s meaningless. Give it up.
w.
A nearly candid admission, and only thinly veiled. Baby steps.
No, Mosh is right. It’s separate. I’ve been there. Okay, I so don’t much mind stringing both together if the site rating and the mesosite is the same.
But they are separate for sure if either of those are different. They just are.
I never knew that strawberry and dead-fish milkshakes were such a favorite among AGWers!
Some people can swallow anything.
I don’t care in the slightest if a man or woman is a liberal arts major, Poptech.
Just so long as she is a premium bride.
So the correct answer to Tim Yeo’s question in the AR5 hearings would have been
“No, 2000-2009 was not the warmest decade in the instrumental record”.
I wonder if the next bunch of scare merchants start telling us that once the “adjustments” are taken out, it really is worse than we thought. We’re going into a new Ice Age.
Willis,
You may want to give Poptech a break on the credentials issue. He’s responding to offal, such as, this from the ever magniloquent Monckton and more from others.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/lord-monckton-letter-to-martin-rasmussen-of-copernicus-publications/
I posted this yesterday at Tallbloke’s, but it was censored and never saw the light of day.
philjourdan says: @ January 29, 2014 at 5:30 pm
What the scientists who still do real science are basically saying is what most people realize intuitively. It is not getting warmer. At best, we are holding our own, and not slipping into another LIA.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is my take, I just got up to a temperature of 4 °F (minus 15.5 °C) in mid North Carolina. It is 2 °F at the nearby airport.(snow on the ground) The record cold for today was 7 °F (1977) After Hansen is finished with the data I am sure we will not break any records because they add 2-4°F to all or temperatures based on my daily observations. /snark
There are other bits of information about the climate that can be used to verify/validate the ‘Offical’ temperature records.
Koppen classification system: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322068/Koppen-climate-classification
Movement of midwest boundries by decade: http://www.sturmsoft.com/climate/suckling_mitchell_2000_fig2_3.gif
Study finds stream temperatures don’t parallel warming climate trend:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Study_finds_stream_temperatures_dont_parallel_warming_climate_trend_999.html
notice how they try to justify the discrepancy missing the point that the ground is subject to the same factors as the streams.
Ice classic break-up dates: http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/Breakup%20Log.html
Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover:
October http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201310.gif
November http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201311.gif
December http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201212.gif
January: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201301.gif
February http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201302.gif
and
March http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/snowcover-nhland/201303.gif
That is six winter months showing snow fall returning to “normal”
charles the moderator says: @ January 30, 2014 at 2:18 am
You may want to give Poptech a break on the credentials issue. He’s responding to offal……….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Can we bury the hatchet guys? There are already several threads on the issue and it does WUWT no favors to continue the in-fighting. It makes WUWT look stupid.
evanmjones says: @ January 29, 2014 at 6:01 pm
…Well, I can tell y’all what the problem is with homogenization….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That certainly explains why my local site (a ‘cow pasture’ town airport) is always adjusted up 2-4°F on the ‘official records’ the next day.
I hear ya Gail, and I feel somewhat the way you do, but this issue goes to the heart of the ethics and principles that brought many of us into these subjects, the quest for truth and integrity of science, wherever that takes us. The PRiPers have so distorted those principles, and created major setbacks which will come back to haunt us, that proactive pointing out over and over again what their failures have been, feels mandatory. This is not being vindictive or petty. As I wrote less than a week ago.
and The Pompous Git responded:
Engineering principles should underpin collection of data. Based on science true, but engineering none the less.
Ask a power engineer how he measures power. RMS. With a factor to account for wave shape.
Ask him how he would deal with a poorly sub-sampled in both space and time power field.
I doubt he would come up with most of what is considered ‘normal’ in ‘Climate Science’ or consider it valid either.
1sky1 says: @ January 29, 2014 at 6:23 pm
I never knew that strawberry and dead-fish milkshakes were such a favorite among AGWers!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And here I thought it was peanut butter and banana milkshakes they could not live without.
“Can we bury the hatchet guys? There are already several threads on the issue and it does WUWT no favors to continue the in-fighting. It makes WUWT look stupid”
Hear hear! Sadley Charles is starting sounding like “the team”.
TOBS (Time of Observation)
This is what WIKI says:
So the question becomes when were these used in each weather station? If I was an operator I would spring for the money to buy one ASAP. Who wants to go take reading at dawn or break work to take a reading at mid day? The cost would be off-set by not having to interrupt your day.
EVAN, ANTHONY, ANYONE, HELP ???
The following seems to have STILL fallen under the radar. I have NOT verified Goddard’s claim below.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_January_19_2014
Independent data analyst, Steven Goddard, today (January 19, 2014) released his telling study of the officially adjusted and “homogenized” US temperature records relied upon by NASA, NOAA, USHCN and scientists around the world to “prove” our climate has been warming dangerously.
Goddard reports, “I spent the evening comparing graphs…and hit the NOAA motherlode.” His diligent research exposed the real reason why there is a startling disparity between the “raw” thermometer readings, as reported by measuring stations, and the “adjusted” temperatures, those that appear in official charts and government reports. In effect, the adjustments to the “raw” thermometer measurements made by the climate scientists “turns a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” says the astonished Goddard.
Goddard’s plain-as-day evidence not only proves the officially-claimed one-degree increase in temperatures is entirely fictitious, it also discredits the reliability of any assertion by such agencies to possess a reliable and robust temperature record.
Regards, Allan
REPLY: It isn’t “under the radar”, I’m working another angle to verify independently what he claims. His method of overlaying graphs has limits, and there’s no point publishing anything until I have something of value to add. – Anthony
A. Scott says: @ January 29, 2014 at 8:00 pm
…. This could only be true if the population, structures, impervious surfaces and the like stayed exactly the same in the urban area over time. There is no city in my opinion and belief that has not seen a large and significant increase in building mass and hard cover over time. And if building mass and hard cover has increased then there MUST be an increase in temperature over and above the natural warming signal…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr Roy Spencer did a study of Warmng vs population Density you might want to look at.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/03/the-global-average-urban-heat-island-effect-in-2000-estimated-from-station-temperatures-and-population-density-data/
Gail Combs says:
January 30, 2014 at 3:15 am
“TOBS (Time of Observation)”
Give me a nice ‘continuous’ integrating recording to get the ‘true’ average temperature for a day, month, year, decade,….. any day (pun).
DR says: January 29, 2014 at 9:23 pm
As someone who ran chemical QC labs for years I am in complete agreement. The shoddy QC of the US weather stations (The best in the world BTW) makes me cringe. And then they say they can get temperature anomalies of 0.00°C from UNIQUE one off readings, many of which were rounded or truncated to the nearest whole number. link
Any one with any decent science or engineering training would be ROTFLTAO. That is why WUWT has so many engineers commenting. Scratch the surface of CAGW and the whole thing starts smelling of dead fish.
rogerknights says: @ January 29, 2014 at 9:44 pm
Tonight in 20 minutes (10 PM Pacific, 1 AM Eastern), Coast to Coast AM radio will be interviewing:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ghost to Ghost? Home of paranormal and UFO ‘Science’?
Not Good. That lumps Skeptics in with the Flat Earthers and other nuts and fringe groups. Lewandowsky and friends must be grinning with glee.
Mindert Eiting says: @ January 29, 2014 at 11:54 pm
Have you looked at E. M. Smith’s work:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/agw-is-a-thermometer-count-artifact/
Or Verity Jones:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-station-drop-out-problem/
There are several thread on the subject at both web sites – happy digging.
The temperature here in sunny warm North Carolina has now dropped to 1 °F it will be interesting to see what the ‘Official Reading’ for my location is tomorrow.
charles the moderator says: @ January 30, 2014 at 2:54 am
I hear ya Gail, and I feel somewhat the way you do…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So let them stand or fall on their data and methods. Tallbloke has said he will post the information when I asked.
Are they ‘Fringe’, yes but my field, chemistry had its beginnings in Alchemy. Fringe does not mean you can not trip over something very interesting. So how about we let them be and see where their digging takes them. As long as they include data and methods we should not be raking them over the coals.
We just let Willis dissect the individual papers if he wants. :>) That is the correct way to do science.
Let’s not forget most peer-reviewed papers are dreck:
Won’t most of the issues with
fiddlingadjusting the record be sorted once uscrn trends are long enough?RichardLH says: @ January 30, 2014 at 3:24 am
…Give me a nice ‘continuous’ integrating recording to get the ‘true’ average temperature for a day, month, year, decade,….. any day (pun).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>…
Agreed as long as it is calibrated.
I would still like to know when the min-max started to be used at weather stations. makes the Tobs adjustment questionable especially if it is across the board adjustment.
I know Anthony and Evan M Jones were looking into the matter. No wonder their eyes are bleeding!
Gail Combs says:
January 30, 2014 at 3:36 am
“As someone who ran chemical QC labs for years I am in complete agreement.”
As someone who has been ‘modelling the world inside a computer’ for many years……. 🙂
Is the SurfaceStations Project still accepting additions to the database?
Gail Combs says:
January 30, 2014 at 4:29 am
“Agreed as long as it is calibrated.”
Well if it’s not calibrated……
“I would still like to know when the min-max started to be used at weather stations. makes the Tobs adjustment questionable especially if it is across the board adjustment.”
Back in the days when men wore Top Hats daily I believe. And pen and paper to record the results. 🙂
RMS values (what ARE they?) of a voltage derived from an instrument, setup to reflect voltage as being a representation of temperature (to keep some here slightly happier?), would allow Min + Max / 2 only for sine wave 12 hour days.
All the rest should be some form of half wave sine plus offset and a ‘power factor’ to get it right.
Or a ‘continuously’ sampled output, ADC with anti-alias filter and then averaged down to the period in question.
Hour, Day, Month, Year, Decade.
You know, a step wise integral of voltage/temperature. Now when did I learn that is school? All that graph paper and counting squares……..
Isn’t measuring temps using urban thermometers like trying to measure the kitchen temp by using a thermometer in a pot of hot water while someone occasionally, randomly, increases the flame under that pot? The thermometer in the pot really only tells you about the pot not the room. Why do we even pay attention to urban thermometers?
Well, Art Bell, the show’s legendary former host, was the co-author of “The Day after Tomorrow,” so there’s that.
Robert Zimmerman’s views can be linked to independently of C2C at his website:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://behindtheblack.com/
@RogerKnights – You mean George Nouri has not been the host since Marconi invented Radio?
You destroyed my faith! 😉
MarcK says:
January 30, 2014 at 6:01 am
“Isn’t measuring temps using urban thermometers like trying to measure the kitchen temp by using a thermometer in a pot of hot water while someone occasionally, randomly, increases the flame under that pot? The thermometer in the pot really only tells you about the pot not the room. Why do we even pay attention to urban thermometers?”
Nearly true. The pot does reflect the temperature in the room as well. That’s its ‘heat sink’.
If we track how temps change in all the parts of the system and give them appropriate weights then we do get a correct overall picture.
Like adding the thermometer in the oven to that in the room to that in the outside air.
Yon need them all to get the true ‘average’. But you do also need to get the weighting factors right 🙂
Beg pardon, but I think that you have read it incorrectly. Monckton did not claim Roger was preeminent. He said that Roger and the others were "pre-eminent". See:
“To save time, the 19 authors of the 12 papers – all of them pre-eminent in their various fields – …”
I think we should all be able to agree that Monckton is correct, and that all 19 authors (including Roger) are not yet eminent in their various fields. This simple recognition of common ground should allow all of you to stop playing out this post-eminently silly and increasingly tedious game of “my ad verecundiam fallacy can beat up your ad verecundiam fallacy” on every thread. That situation being utterly embarrassing to all involved – testy-peer and toaster-pastry alike…
RichardLH:
At January 30, 2014 at 6:27 am you say
Sorry about the formatting error. Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 6:54 am
RichardLH:
At January 30, 2014 at 6:27 am you say
“And how could you know you had got them right?”
By doing an RMS (step wise integral) averaged sum of how they change over time associated with a volume calculation?
RichardLH:
re your answer to me at January 30, 2014 at 7:08 am.
Ignoring the computing power and time required to do “an RMS (step wise integral) averaged sum of how they change over time associated with a volume calculation” for all the possible combinations and permutations of weightings, what the Dickens would that tell you?
You are not doing a regression where minimising differences from the trend line has a meaning.
Richard
charles the moderator says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:54 am
I hear ya Gail, and I feel somewhat the way you do, but this issue goes to the heart of the ethics and principles that brought many of us into these subjects, the quest for truth and integrity of science, wherever that takes us.
—-l
Without wishing to offend or detract from the remarkable effort put in by poptech in this matter:
The intense focussing on credentials seems to be counter-productive to me. There are enough other transgressions to tackle and I feel that this has become a too personal matter for those involved. It might even be that there is a bit of baiting occurring, since the other lines of attack did not work.
I fully support the exposure of hypocrisy, but I think in this case Willis got it most right (in his usual style:))
hmm. My popcorn has gone stale. No surprise or outrage from anybody?
Did everybody already know about this except me?
Anthony,
The UHI is not caused by any “heat sink.” A heat sink, used in most electrical equipment, conducts heat AWAY from a component which may overheat without it. In other words, the excess heat goes into the “sink” and down the drain, away.
Heat-retaining buildings and pavement are “thermal mass” heated by sunlight, which does not happen to any Earth surface covered by vegetation. Naked rock might behave similarly.
DR! Hear hear! Please confirm. Engineers must know how to take data, and typically treat it with respect, or the data becomes noise. “Climate Scientists” get away with data murder, mostly because most of us engineers are not good at communicating to the public.
Most thermometers are used for weather reports. Weather reports never specify the temperature to a tenth of a degree, so most thermometers are only accurate to +-0.5 degrees, sometimes even less. Reporting the “average temperature” to the tenths, hundredths, or thousandths from these thermometers is simply meaningless, the reporter is claiming information that does not exist.
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:16 am
“what the Dickens would that tell you?”
It would give me a pretty good assessment of how the gas in my cooker was heating the kitchen in which it sat. The external heat sink (outside air) is just as important as the gas flame you know 🙂
Knowing or calculating the volumes would make the temperature conduction/convection sums easier as well.
regarding Anthony’s reply to Nick Stokes at 5:05pm #comment-1554048. Was that a “Bass-O-Matic” reference? If so, 1000+ up votes!
This whole mess is why I tried something different.
I went looking for the difference (diff) between how much the temp went up yesterday (rise), and then went down last night(fall) on a station by station basis.
So, take a rural station, with a wide signal, still day over day is just the change based on the ratio of day to night (seasons), and weather. Now, build a road near by. Tmin would go up, Tmax would go up, but once it stabilizes the diff stabilizes, once averaged over a year there might be a slight change in diff, but you still end up with a signal containing seasons and weather. Now average diff between 100 stations, if 10 had roads built this year, 90 didn’t, the more samples you have the smaller any individual stations change impacts the resultant diff. Similarly as long as each station regularly takes it’s measurement the same way, TOB is immaterial, either based on a specific time, or actual mn/mx and the difference between rise and fall (diff) will include only seasonal and weather. Weather is removed by averaging a large number of stations, seasonal signal by yearly averaging.
I don’t do anything except use actual measurements, no adjustments, no interpolation between stations, what I have is all measurement. It’s definitely not a “Global” average, that was by intention.
And it shows no warming trend (or so small it’s hard to identify). I also include averages on Tmean, Tmin, Tmax, Trise, Tfall, Rel Humidity, station pressure, precipitation, sample counts, station by station counts, station by station average Tmean, and google map station location.
My opinion is that all of the models of surface temps vastly over estimate modern warming.
Mosh thinks I’m an idiot.
P.S. This is an analogy you do realize, not an attempt to suggest that you could do this for Global Temperatures.
Mi Cro says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:32 am
“My opinion is that all of the models of surface temps vastly over estimate modern warming.”
The data says they do.
“Mosh thinks I’m an idiot.”
Mosh plays with jpg pictures of the world with the compression setting set to ‘high’. Me, I prefer raw myself 🙂
RichardLH:
There is an old adage which one should never forget.
What you don’t know does not causes you the greatest problems. What you think you know that is wrong does.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:35 am
“What you don’t know does not causes you the greatest problems. What you think you know that is wrong does.”
Top down analyse, bottom up implement.
Mods,
You didn’t like that? All strictly true from the textbooks…
When a climate scientist homogenizes and smooths data, he gets a grant. When an accountant homogenizes or smoooths data, he gets gets sued and goes to jail.
I maintain that apart from homogenisation, questions remain about the accuracy of original observer recordings due to their propensity in the old days to round temperatures to the nearest (or lowest) .0F.
At all 112 ACORN locations in Australia, the average .0 rounding proportion prior to 1972 metrication was about 44%. It now hovers around 12% in the Celsius regime, where it should be, although there’s evidence of a 20%+ jump in the late 90s, early 2000s when Automatic Weather Stations were introduced.
To compare annual .0 rounding proportions and annual min and max temperatures at all ACORN stations 1910-2013, have a look at http://www.waclimate.net/truncate/rounding-raw.html
As the page warns, its data is sourced to the BoM’s Climate Data Online so an unknown quantity of daily temps since 1910 have been homogenised by the BoM, different stations have intermittent missing data gaps, and many shifted from the PO to an airport at some stage – so the results aren’t precise.
Nevertheless, conversion of every day since 1910 from the existing celsius records back to fahrenheit, using a .0 definition of .94><.06 within the converted F temps, suggests 43.73% were .0F pre 1972. Either a majority of daily temps were unadjusted by the BoM or they were adjusted to convert to X.0F … unlikely. Most surviving original Fahrenheit records in newspapers, Year Books, etc, suggest 44% is an accurate estimate of .0 rounding pre metric.
Does .0 rounding affect annual temperature averages? If observers rounded equally up and down it would be indiscernible, but I believe the evidence suggests a greater number used to round down more frequently to the nearest degree on their thermometer – a natural tendency, particularly among amateurs in country towns.
The analysis suggests 1972 had the equal warmest annual min ever recorded in Australia, and the La Nina of 1974/76 was as warm nationally as the El Nino of 1968/70. Australian ACORN station .0 rounding of min dropped from 33.54% in 1971 to 20.84% in 1973, with max rounding down from 31.58% to 18.97%.
Too many variables, particularly natural, to pin a temperature influence, but food for thought.
My biggest problem with homogenization, is that it implies that the warming from UHI can be detected as individual events. Let’s suppose that it is true.
If a group of scientists were going to measure the temperature at the center of all the baseball fields in North America, would they find a UHI bias? I guess they should not, because it is probably impossible to detect the construction of a single house at the edge of a baseball field if you only have a temperature record in the middle of the field.
In fact, you can probably build a good dozen elements of urban development either on the first row of houses at the edge of the field or inside the field. So if each of those elements added at least 0.2°C, that would amount to a good 2.5°C total. That’s as much as the UHI in the most cases. So if all the UHI is due to individually detectable events, I guess the temperature in the middle of a baseball field should be independent of the level of urban development around the field, even when there is a lot of wind.
I think I will need some empirical evidence that homogenization has any value before I can believe any conclusion based on it.
Tom Stone says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:34 am
“When a climate scientist homogenizes and smooths data, he gets a grant. When an accountant homogenizes or smoooths data, he gets gets sued and goes to jail.”
When an engineer ‘smooth’s’ the signal you get to connect to the Internet.
What is the trend for raw, unadjusted RURAL-only Class 1and 2 long-term stations within the US? Can someone make a graph of that over time or provide the data?
I think first to identify this problem was …..
Note that he is essentially agreeing with Mosh.
As for me, the short answer is that if a station is moved, I drop it.
But each of your short trends still contains UHI, no improvement here with BEST.
Yes, they will contain whatever they contain. But those issues need to be addressed (or not), segment by segment.
ScottR says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:50 am
“What is the trend for raw, unadjusted RURAL-only Class 1and 2 long-term stations within the US? ”
There is no single trend as such. Or rather an OLS trend line will tell you nothing about what s going to happen in the future.
A continuous function, such as a filter, will give a set of patterns that may, or may not, repeat exactly.
They are much more likely to give you an outline for future evolution.
So the question becomes when were these used in each weather station?
Hazen Screen, CRS (i.e., Stevenson Screen), MMTS (a/k/a “Mickey Mouse”), ASOS, AWOS, and “other” (mostly, but no exclusively Davis Pro), they all operate on the Min-Max principle. So they are all subject to TOBS bias if the Time of Observation changes.
The CRN’s PRTs are round-the-clockers, though. With triple-redundancy. But they were established after the trend stopped (starting in 2002 and growing from that point). Therefore they are too “young” to hang a trend on.
The newer USHCN systems, MMTS/Nimbus-plus-the-new-toys, and ASOS/AWOS, have automated data gathering. So you don’t have to get up at 6:00 (one of THE WORST times for observation, BTW) anymore.
But it’s all the same Min-Max principle. (And that principle has slashed my dataset and gives me no end of headaches.)
A heat sink, used in most electrical equipment, conducts heat AWAY from a component which may overheat without it. In other words, the excess heat goes into the “sink” and down the drain, away.
We call it that in our neck of the woods to distinguish it from the more generalized term of heat “source”. A driveway is a heat sink because it does not generate heat. It just soaks it up during Max time and exudes it during Min-time. A steam pipe exhaust in a WWTP is merely heat source.
UHI, specifically, is both.
In our world, a heat source exaggerates the offset more, but a heat sink exaggerates the trend more (presuming there is a trend). For this reason, Class 3 and 4 stations, on the whole, exaggerate trend more than Class 5, though the latter do exaggerate trend somewhat. A heat source that is not also a sink may even dampen the trend because the waste heat is an overwhelming factor (I think).
If a station move causes a step change, sure, that will certainly have an in-your-face impact on trend, of course. (See Mosh.)
I maintain that apart from homogenisation, questions remain about the accuracy of original observer recordings due to their propensity in the old days to round temperatures to the nearest (or lowest) .0F.
The short answer to that is “oversampling”. It still is rounded off that way even today. I’ve seen the B-91s and B44s.
Of course, “in the old days” there were fewer samples.
Instead of just acknowledging UHI effect has corrupted the historic temp data and leaving it at that,these powers (NASA, NOAA etc.) have the hubris to change these data to what they think it really should have been (after removing an unknown, unquantified UHI influence).
Once they decided to change the data. It was all fiction. Their “frames” biased these changes. How could they not do, given a “Of course the past was cooler, Global Warming is Real.” mindset.
Now, only the RSS satellite temperature data can be trusted. period.
Let’s pray the Powers don’t start changing these data.
What is the trend for raw, unadjusted RURAL-only Class 1and 2 long-term stations within the US?
+0.145C per decade Tmean (+/-0.0366, standard error), 9-area gridded average for study period 1979-2008 For Majority MMTS, with MMTS upward bump added in. (TOBS and moves accounted for.)
+0.124 Raw, but that is without accounting for MMTS conversion and you really do need to do that. Not all adjustments are out of court (unfortunately).
(That being the current result.)
ScottR says: @ January 30, 2014 at 8:50 am…
Try this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
Gail: Bear in mind that those results are before we addressed the (valuable, albeit smarmy) criticisms.
evanmjones says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:58 am
“+0.145C per decade Tmean (+/-0.0366, standard error), 9-area gridded average for study period 1979-2008 For Majority MMTS, with MMTS upward bump added in. (TOBS and moves accounted for.)
+0.124 Raw, but that is without accounting for MMTS conversion and you really do need to do that. Not all adjustments are out of court (unfortunately).
(That being the current result.)”
A Linear trend has no real meaning outside of the data range it is drawn from.
It cannot, and does not, provide future (or past) information.
Willis Eschenbach says: Stop boring us with your endless stories about peoples’ degrees and the like, and start talking about the science.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Well said, Willis.
Errrr, I thought that was the idea. If politicians wanted cooling, we would get cooling.
Richard D says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:18 am
“If politicians wanted cooling, we would get cooling.”
Politicians in a democracy rarely want to increase direct or indirect taxes. Get’s WAY too difficult to get re-elected.
That’s why Cameron (UK) is reputed to have said ‘get rid of that green…..’.
Jimbo says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:30 am
Oops that was Jimbo not RichardD -sorry.
They remove the outliers from the station population. It is the most significant cause of the great dying of the thermometers.
That applies far more to GHCN than it does to USHCN. In the latter case it is generally stations that have been closed for many years but are still part of the record that are removed. About 50 were replaced from USHCN1 to USHCN2 out of 1200+. I have surveyed, I guess, at least two thirds of the new stations. They appear, on the face of it, to be around as bad as the old ones, in terms of siting. (Long live the new boss, same as the old boss? Maybe. TBD.)
But, yes, what you say is, in essence, correct for GHCN — I think — having not surveyed them myself (yet). And when most of the stations are poorly sited and therefore reading spuriously high, there is a distinct tendency to identify as outliers and remove the good stations and promote the bad. This has a profound effect on trend, quite apart from step changes in offset. That stipulates that bad microsite affects not only offset, but trend, which is what we are hypothesizing. But you know this already. That wouldn’t matter so much if the majority of sites were good and therefore it was the bad ones being identified as outliers.
Night. Dark everywhere, except a light pole where a drunken man is searching for something. Another man is approaching and having pity with him asks:
– What have you lost?
– My keys – managed to say the drunken man.
After some time of vain search the man is asking the drunken again:
– Are you sure you lost the keys here?
– No – says the drunken man – I must have lost them somewhere there – pointing towards a dark part of the alley
– So why do you search here?
– Well, here is light, I am not crazy to search in the dark? – answers the drunken man.
I thought at this joke when realising that the paper is coming from China (who found the key in our case).
Almost all our researcher act like the drunken man researching and finding things only under the light pole of grants of research for global warming and the kind.
And doing this we waste money & time for studies that drive in circles due to our own political correct grant allocation whilst the missing heat is travelling through space for ever lost.
A Linear trend has no real meaning outside of the data range it is drawn from. It cannot, and does not, provide future (or past) information.
Yes, quite. And even linear trends themselves are, in a strict sense, statistical porn. Of which you are well aware. Yet they are not nothing.
Perhaps you misunderstand me. By “current result” I mean the result of our current study as opposed to our (lower) result in Watts et al. (2012). I don’t mean this applies to the USHCN record outside of the 1979-2008 study period, or even internal variations.
I begged and pleaded the 1979-1998 and 1998-2008 trends out of Dr. Fall back in 2010. Those results are fascinating in tandem, although the study periods are lamentably short.
[snip – too stupid and insulting to print, grow up. Plus done with an anonymous proxy and an email address that can’t be verified – Anthony]
Hi Evan,
Are the station classifications available publicly at this time?
REPLY: no, not until our paper is published, we’ve been hijacked in the past by both NOAA and BEST for sharing this data ahead of publication, and I won’t do so again – Anthony
The rural / urban distinction, as it is used by climate scientists in denying UHI influence on trends, is just silly. Effect of UHI on temporal trends does not depend on size of settlement, but on rate of urbanization, that is, changes in local log population density, down to fairly small villages.
Let’s see an absolutely rural example.
International Journal of Climatology Volume 23, Issue 15, pages 1889–1905, December 2003
DOI: 10.1002/joc.971
The urban heat island in winter at Barrow, Alaska
Kenneth M. Hinkel, Frederick E. Nelson, Anna E. Klene, Julianne H. Bell
[snip Evan – the insulting and juvenile comment has been deleted since it came from a fake email address and from a proxy server, this is a known troll trying to weasel in, so let’s not engage him, sorry – Anthony]
REPLY — So be it.
REPLY: no, not until our paper is published, we’ve been hijacked in the past by both NOAA and BEST for sharing this data ahead of publication, and I won’t do so again – Anthony
Absolutely understand! 🙂 Thank you.
REPLY — Fear not. I did not devote a man-year’s worth of effort (not to mention the long, hard work on the part of all involved) just so the results can be disappeared or chucked in some obscure, difficult-to-access archive. We shall shout them from the rooftops, be assured. Besides, scientific method demands that they be made completely and easily available for audit, replication, and falsification. ~ Evan
Effect of UHI on temporal trends does not depend on size of settlement, but on rate of urbanization
That the rate is critical to the question is a given.
Yet it is possible that even a constant urban environment can effect trend. This appears certainly true for microsite, which is the gold speck in our findings. More study required. (I’m on it.)
[Snip. Invalid email address. ~ mod.]
The adjustments have always shown over the years they caused most of the warming and it makes a change to reflect this once in a while. I still find significant evidence we are little /no warmer than global temperatures during 1930s and 1940s. The Arctic suggests this and especially the Met Office are now saying how they missed the warming data in it. Therefore if the Arctic is the most important and no different now to back then, why should global temperatures be warmer now? Either polar temperatures warm and cool at higher rates proportional to global temperatures or they don’t. The Met Office suggests Arctic temperatures warm at higher rate proportional to global temperatures so how can global temperatures be warmer now than previous similar compared Arctic temperatures around the 1930s and 1940s? This only highlights a bias in warming caused by data changes.
Far more reliable DMI and satellite data disagrees with the Met Office and GISS Arctic nonsense. The changes to both HADCRUT and GISS are far too big to only be caused by limited uncovered Arctic temperatures. I have seen warming bias for decades with adjustments and I couldn’t trust them as far as I could throw any one of them involved..
Maybe the alarmist have been getting annoyed with skeptics because they personally know that they have warmed the recent period deliberately and are angry when skeptics point out its natural, when they cant say they know it was partly them. The downside to this global temperatures would have to be cooler than the 1930s and 1940s just to be equal with that data period in future. Data sets cant be comparable in the decades before the satellite data, with so many ongoing changes. The upside is they can only squeeze so much warming out without it becoming too obvious. The period of data changing is now becoming too obvious, so its only a matter of time. Carry this on any more and true scientists will only trust satellite data in future.
The main issue for me is not so much how data has been changed recently with Arctic, even though shows bad science with not being backed up. Satellites are keeping recent surface temperatures more honest, but still playing their warming bias games. The main problem is the alienation between recent decades and periods before satellite, Cant trust any of these being good enough precision data for good comparisons now.
See the UK’s average household energy bills. That is a tax and a wicked one too.
“Steep rise in winter deaths” 26 November 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25100497
RichardLH the other problem in the UK is that if all the electable parties have climate change on the brain then getting elected is not an issue.
‘the data homogenization techniques commonly used to adjust temperature records for moving stations and the urban heat island effect [UHI] can result in a “significant” exaggeration of warming trends in the homogenized record.’
Yes that is the idea , its not an accident if it produces the ‘desired’ result on a constant bases .
And for some it proves how well they work.
Matt G says:
January 30, 2014 at 12:05 pm
The gold speck in DMI (going all the way back to 1958) is that it shows considerable Arctic warming during the winter months, but the melt season trend remains as flat as Bambi-Meets-Godzilla.
Gail Combs:
I always suspected that AGWers drank gin-and-buttermilk martinis instead of kool-aid!
On a more serious note, Six’s max-min-registering thermometer has long been the standard instrument used by Met services in English-speaking countries. The TOBS error is a misnomer; it should be called “time-of-reading” error. Inasmuch as temperature at time of reading is always recorded alongside, the possible error introduced when one of the registered extrema coincides with YESTERDAY’S temperature at time reading can be readily fixed by simple clerical changes. Instead, Karl introduces a misguided blanket “correction” based upon empirical comparisons with hourly instantantanous temperatures, which have precious little relationship to diurnal extrema. Small wonder that no other Met service accepts his nonsense.
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
If NOAA adjusting Temperature Data To “over estimate rising trends” how can President Obama claim “Climate Change is a fact” ?
Just as “instantantanous” has little relationship to correct spelling!
1sky1 says: @ January 30, 2014 at 1:17 pm
… Six’s max-min-registering thermometer has long been the standard instrument used by Met services in English-speaking countries. The TOBS error is a misnomer; it should be called “time-of-reading” error. Inasmuch as temperature at time of reading is always recorded alongside, the possible error introduced when one of the registered extrema coincides with YESTERDAY’S….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AHHH That is what I thought. In other words it is a 24 hour shift in one reading. Given the data is to the nearest degree in many cases and all the data for the year got recorded – BFD
It is not only the increase in area and population density but also in energy consumption.
“In Tokyo, a study showed a 1-2°C increase in air temperatures due to AC usage during weekdays (Ohashi et al. 2007).”
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/505252main_demunck.pdf
Gail Combs:
IIRC, all the temperatures written into B-92 forms are in TENTHS of a degree F. They are rounded to full degrees only while computing monthly average Tmax and Tmin, which are then reported again to the nearest tenth. Good enough for government work!
BTW, the gin-and-buttermilk martinis are stirred–not shaken. It helps explain the “missing heat.”
evanmjones says:
January 30, 2014 at 12:49 pm
Matt G says:
January 30, 2014 at 12:05 pm
The gold speck in DMI (going all the way back to 1958) is that it shows considerable Arctic warming during the winter months, but the melt season trend remains as flat as Bambi-Meets-Godzilla.
—————————————————————-
DMI does show warming since the 1970s during Winter and it is fair to say summer temperatures change at a much smaller rates due to latent heat and very limited solar warming. What the DMI doesn’t show is how this warming was compared to the 1930s and 1940s and how that compares to 1950s-1970s being cooler than that using Arctic instrumental data.
DMII during winter has shown warming since 1970s, mainly very large yearly changes with very random peak and troughs related to AMO, AO and NAO.
One of the warmest winters was during 1976 with the well known PDO change at the time.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_1975.png
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_1976.png
Still have difficulty beating then recently.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2013.png
Currently not as warm either.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2014.png
HADCRUT and especially GISS have shown major warming even in the summer.
Evanmjones at 10:58 am. To explain my method, I used the GHCN data till 2010 and a simple statistical tool. Divide the earth into a number of latitude regions, twelve or so. Estimate with a conventional method for each region the regional temperature time series. Compute for each station the correlation (pmc) between its time series and the regional series over the period the station has data. The lower this correlation the more the station is an outlier. On the basis of this statistic you can compare stations disappearing and remaining. Comparing for example, from all stations included 1991, I found a 27 sigma difference regarding this statistic. Even among the younger stations you will find the effect. Succes with your approach.
How does / did the NOAA adjust for the urban heat island effect?
Could it be that the editor deletes sentences between unequal signs? I try it again: Comparing for example, from all stations included before 1970, those dropped during 1970-1991 and dropped (or not yet dropped) after 1991, I found a 27 sigma difference…
What I forgot to mention was with DMI temperatures showing huge changes every year, a warm or cool winter will have very little difference to anomaly global data. Make the Arctic much warmer in summer where the change is much smaller, then this will affect the global anomaly data a lot more. The HADCRUT and GISS are doing this, hence why too much warming from there data products are too large to be explained only by missing Arctic data.
Mindert Eiting says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:36 pm
Good question, Mindert. In HTML, such as WordPress uses, the < and > signs are reserved to indicate HTML instructions. They are not printed, but the instruction inside them is executed (like bold, italic, whatever).
So the excel style signs will not print at all … but you can use what other computer languages use, which is != …
w.
PS—If you want them to print, like I did above, use an ampersand (&) followed by either gt; or lt; for greater or less than. You need to include the semicolon.
[Willis: The mods request you reprint this paragraph into the “TEST” section at WUWT for future use by other writers. Mod]
Of course it does. There are more “outliers” in the cold part of the temperature. Look at the polar vortex scenario. You can have temps 40F below normal. For instance, I live in Ohio, and just guessing at the average winter high is mid 30. That would make a -10 reading (no wind chill) like Monday night 40 off. But the average summer high is mid 80s. Can you imagine what would happen in the news if there was a 125 degree reading in July?! Think that would get dropped off the record?
I don’t care either except when they are incorrectly referred to as a “scientist” as Roger has been repeatedly mentioned as one. These are factual errors that I notice and I believe the correction is meaningful. When I don’t make the comments, the urban legends live on.
Poptech says:
January 30, 2014 at 7:50 pm
Again I say, it is meaningless what someone is called. A woman or man either is or isn’t a scientist depending on what they do, not on their biographical details. In my opinion Michael Mann, for example, is not a scientist at all. Why? Because he’s not doing science.
To do science, you have to play by the rules. One of them is transparency. You’ve seen a sign outside a restaurant saying “No shoes, no shirt, no service”? For me, the rule for science is equally simple—”No data, no code, no science.” Science can’t work without perfect transparency. Michael Mann doesn’t provide data or code, so he’s not a scientist. And when Roger Tallbloke as Editor didn’t demand the same of Nicola Scafetta, he was not acting as a scientist either.
Now, I suppose I could take on the case of Michael Mann as my cause celebre. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him called a “scientist”, a “distinguished scientist”, an “eminent scientist” in the public press, when he’s nothing of the sort. And if I took on that quest, I suppose I could wander around every thread I could find, like this one on temperature adjustments, and spend my time posting things like
…
…
w.
There is no single trend as such. Or rather an OLS trend line will tell you nothing about what s going to happen in the future.
Right. What it tells us is what has happened during the study period. That is what are attempting to examine.
Nick and Andy: WIthout definitive metadata, we can’t know whether to correct or not correct for these breakpoints.
a) Let’s suppose that a breakpoint is caused by maintenance of the shelter protecting the thermometer. Let’s suppose, for example, that accumulated dust and grime on the surface of a station shelter cause an undetectable upward bias in the temperature trend. After a decade or two, the shelter is cleaned, causing temperatures to suddenly be cooler and creating an obvious breakpoint. Since cleaning restored the original observing conditions, it would be inappropriate to correct this breakpoint.
b) Let’s suppose that a breakpoint is caused by moving a station and that the trend at both the previous and new location is not biased by any artifacts. It would be appropriate to correct this breakpoint.
When a breakpoint is cause by NEW observing conditions, it should be corrected. When a breakpoint is caused by RESTORING the original observing conditions, correcting the breakpoint biases the trend. When BEST splits a temperature record at a breakpoint, the result is similar to correcting the breakpoint.
Mindert Eiting says:
January 30, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Evanmjones at 10:58 am. To explain my method
Quite interesting. Sounds analogous to the reverse of what I’ve been up to. Good luck with your research.
Nick and Andy: WIthout definitive metadata, we can’t know whether to correct or not correct for these breakpoints.
Gosh, yes.
Maybe the alarmist have been getting annoyed with skeptics because they personally know that they have warmed the recent period deliberately and are angry when skeptics point out its natural, when they cant say they know it was partly them.
Too funny.
(My better side would like not to think so.)
the possible error introduced when one of the registered extrema coincides with YESTERDAY’S temperature at time reading can be readily fixed by simple clerical changes.
Thing is, Gail, we don’t know when it’s an TOBS-bias error and when it’s not. Sometimes it really was 78 degrees at 4PM on Wednesday and at 4PM on Thursday. So now you are stuck trying to figure out what the odds are of that happening. And so on. It gets so mushy and ridden with MoE I don’t want to think about it.
Since it appears above, I’ll Illustrate TOBS bias:
Time of observation is (for some dumb reason) at 4:00 PM.
— On Monday at 4PM it is 90 degrees: Tmax is 90 for that day.
— On Tuesday at 4PM it is 80 degrees: Tmax is also 90 for that day because at 4:01 on Monday, it was 90 degrees and that was the highest during the 24-hour period from just after the reading on Monday to the reading on Tuesday.
— On Wednesday at 4PM it is 90 degrees: Tmax is 90 for that day
— On Thurday at 4PM it is 70 degrees: Tmax is 90 for that day (see Tuesday’s explanation)
— On Friday at 4PM it is 90 degrees: Tmax is 90 for that day . . .
So your average Tmax for the week is artificially high. It is 90, when in real life Tmax was actually 84. (Tmin. is just fine.)
Well, okay. Your readings are too high, but at least your trend will not be materially affected. (Well, maybe it will be, actually, but skip it for now, that’s the advanced course.)
So that’s screwy enough. But then, say you change that station’s Observation Time to 6:00 AM. Now instead of getting Tmax that is too high, you’re getting Tmin that is too low. (Tmax is just fine.)
So you were artificially too high, now you are artificially to low. And that obviously plays havoc with the trend.
There are only two solutions I can see.:
Do the Right Thing and split the trends.
Do the Wrong Thing and adjust the trend, using risibly circular logic that violates all normal rules of science and statistics. But it pleasingly (and spuriously), narrows you error bars.
But even that is better than Doing Nothing.
You will never convince me that credentials don’t matter or that titles are not earned. Nor do I conflate an earned title with quality of work. Michael Mann has certainly earned the title of “scientist” but that does not mean his work can’t be of poor quality or that he is not ideologically biased.
Your argument is rather ridiculous because you are saying I should not consider those with medical degrees and legal degrees – doctors and lawyers simply because you want liberal arts majors to be allowed to call themselves “scientists” without having earned the title. Sorry but I don’t buy that and never will. Anyone of course is free to be an amateur scientist all they want, they are also free to get the education and experience to earn the title of “scientist”. You are also of course free to fight this losing battle that credentials don’t matter and rally all those who apparently don’t apply for jobs to your side, but the people you need to convince will never buy it.
Roger is neither qualified to be an editor of a physical science journal nor is he a scientist so your sentence does not make any sense to me.
I am surprised that the authors do not show specifically the diagrams from Hansen et at 2001 which make exactly the same point as their Fig 6. See my links below.
It is great however to see another paper driving home all these basic points about UHI and how it is rife through global data.
I first mentioned this in Feb 2006 –
GISS/NASA/NOAA graphics illustrate significant UHI truths
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=38
Again in Jan 2011 –
Simple GISS diagram illustrating warming effect of conventional “adjustments” of “steps” in T data due to site moves outward from urban centre.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=753
And now I am talking about it again.
How many times does a truth have to be told ? – UHI warming has been cemented into global temperature series by adjusting for steps outward from cities
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2678
For the period from the beginning of 1979 to the end of 2012, RSS showed 82.9% as much warming as HadCRUT4 did, and UAH showed 87.3% as much. I don’t think adjustments that fail to consider growth of urban effects account for a majority of the warming trend indicated in HadCRUT4.
Meanwhile, there is HadCRUT3, which in many ways has closer resemblance to UAH and RSS than all other major surface indices, including HadCRUT4. RSS shows 91.8% as much warming as HadCRUT3 shows in 1919 through 2012, and UAH shows 96.6%.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl One can click the “Raw data” button for monthly figures for HadCRUT3.
One can click the “Raw data” button for monthly figures for HadCRUT3.
I love that site. But do remember that by “raw data”, it means “fully adjusted up the wazoo” data. Small error in translation going on.
Poptech says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:15 pm
I’m not trying to convince you of that. I’m trying to convince you to stop polluting every single thread you touch with your unpleasant monomania about Roger Tallbloke. In other words, I’m trying to convince you that you should start concentrating on the science, in particular whatever the subject of the thread actually might be, and give the other a rest.
In addition, I’m trying to get you to notice to you that people are starting to point and laugh, and that your single interest fanaticism is shredding your reputation. Perhaps that’s of no interest to you, but it’s a total drag from this side. Before you fell into this loony obsession I used to read and enjoy your posts. Now, when I see your name I wince.
As I said, none of that might be important to you, you may not mind being an object of ridicule.
But I would think that as a matter of common courtesy and politeness, now that so many people have asked you to stop with the incessant barrage, that you would give it a rest on unrelated threads. Read the line up at the top, it’s the title of the thread. I see nothing about Roger Tattersall, nothing about Lord Monckton, nothing about who is or isn’t a scientist. This is a thread about temperature adjustments, it’s not a place for your pet peeve, so please, in the name of decency, I ask, request, and implore you …
Give it a rest!
w.
Honestly we should NEVER forget that while a “.5” is literally HALF and doesn’t mean “0” or “1”, when people read a thermometer it IS a “1”.
The entirety of all data collected prior to digital thermometers is biased up because it was never supposed to be used in such a stupidly over-precise calculation.
For Donald L. Klipstein –
Three of my articles from last month show UAH has a severe warming drift compared to RSS (and surface groups) in various global regions. So until this is resolved I have gone off the idea that the 35 year satellite trends are worth much.
First over Australia –
Warming departure in UAH lower troposphere satellite temperatures compared to RSS over the period 2005-2006
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2496
I could have said colossal and sudden warming departure.
Then southern Africa –
Similar to Australia in 2005-06 – large grid box in southern Africa shows huge warming departure in UAH lower troposphere satellite temperature anomalies compared to RSS
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2501
Even recognizable over the USA 48 –
Difference between UAH and RSS satellite lower troposphere T anomalies has a distinct step change 2004-2005 over the USA 48 States – not as marked as Australia
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2554
It does worry me that satellite research groups might see trends in series like CRUT4 as something to stay near.
Anthony said:
It isn’t “under the radar”, I’m working another angle to verify independently what he claims. His method of overlaying graphs has limits, and there’s no point publishing anything until I have something of value to add. – Anthony
Thank you Anthony.
I am seeking credible independent verification, whenever that is available.
If correct, Goddard’s discovery appears significant.
Best regards, Allan
BTW Barack, how’s that global warming thingy working for you?
State of the Union = C-O-L-D
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/eastern-u-s-to-be-locked-in-cold-until-start-of-february.html
I wasn’t, I was responding to omologos’s implied comment about PRP and my snipped comment was about Mosher as was my reference to liberal arts majors. Then I just continue to respond to everyone else who made false assumptions about my comments – which I found entertaining but played along.
Yawn, anytime I read something I believe is factually incorrect, I will point it out.
The entirety of all data collected prior to digital thermometers is biased up because it was never supposed to be used in such a stupidly over-precise calculation.
Yet that doesn’t affect the trend. And the oversampling argument is valid (there must be a sufficient “oversample” of course).
And I think the digital thermometers do the same thing at least on the B91s that I can see. (But I don’t know how the auto-uploading stuff does it though.)
evanmjones says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:07 am
“Yes, quite. And even linear trends themselves are, in a strict sense, statistical porn. Of which you are well aware. Yet they are not nothing.”
Cowtan & Way used them as well. However C & W did it to patch up holes in the leaking roof by nailing planks across the holes instead of doing a proper repair.
They took small area, short term, localised sets from Satellite and Thermometer data series and used one to infill the other. Managed to perform the unlikely mathemagical ‘trick’ of getting a larger trend in the result set than is present in either of the two source sets into the bargain as well!
Now if I were looking at the result, I would wonder about the validity of the study based purely on that simple observation 🙂
Jimbo says:
January 30, 2014 at 12:31 pm
“RichardLH the other problem in the UK is that if all the electable parties have climate change on the brain then getting elected is not an issue.”
All is such a prejudicial word. As in “All …. are”, Fit intervening words as required.
Some parts of all of the parties have doubts about what they see being presented. Difficult for them to be heard is the problem.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 30, 2014 at 8:19 pm
“A woman or man either is or isn’t a scientist depending on what they do, not on their biographical details.”
Or any other of the trivia with which we seek to denigrate ideas and concepts without addressing them directly.
Always has been the poorest form of argument, always will be.
Poptech says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:15 pm
“You will never convince me that credentials don’t matter or that titles are not earned.”
Einstein was a clerk (with a degree true). On that logic you don’t believe in any of his work either.
RichardLH, is that some form of a joke? It is another urban legend that Einstein was some bumbling patent clerk, when he already had a college education and was looking for a teaching position when he took the patent office job. He also earned his Ph.D. while he worked there.
Albert Einstein, Undergraduate Teaching Degree in Physics and Mathematics, Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute, Zurich (1901); Ph.D. Physics, University of Zurich (1905); Assistant Examiner, Swiss Patent Office, Bern (1902-1909); Lecturer of Physics, University of Bern (1908); Docent [Associate Professor] of Physics, University of Zurich (1909-1910); Professor of Physics, Charles-Ferdinand University, Prague (1911); Professor of Physics, Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute (1912-1913); Director, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, Berlin (1914-1933); Professor of Physics, Humboldt University of Berlin (1914-1933); Dr.h.c. [Honorary Doctorate], University of Rostock (1919); Dr.h.c. [Honorary Doctorate of Science], Princeton University (1921); Nobel Prize in Physics (1921); Order Pour le mérite (1923); Copley Medal, Royal Society of London (1925); Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society, London (1925); Max-Planck-Medal, German Physical Society (1929); Dr.h.c. [Honorary Doctorate of Science], ETH, Zurich (1930); Visiting Professor of Physics, California Institute of Technology (1930-1933); Dr.h.c. [Honorary Doctorate of Science], Oxford University (1931); Professor of Theoretical Physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1933-1955); Benjamin Franklin Medal, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (1935); Dr.h.c. [Honorary Doctorate of Science], Harvard University (1935)
My logic has nothing to do with your strawman arguments.
Poptech says:
January 31, 2014 at 2:40 am
“RichardLH, is that some form of a joke? It is another urban legend that Einstein was some bumbling patent clerk, when he already had a college education and was looking for a teaching position when he took the patent office job. He also earned his Ph.D. while he worked there.”
I am very aware of the history and facts (as you would note if you bothered to look at what I posted).
I was pointing out that trivially simple observations (he was ‘only’ a Clerk at the time he submitted his important work) can easily lead to false impressions.
Luckily people assessed his work on merit, not title.
RichardLH, actually you are obviously not that aware, as he had just completed his Ph.D. at the time he submitted his work. So he held both an undergraduate and graduate physical science degree at this time. I don’t want you starting an urban legend that he did not have a Ph.D. or an undergraduate physical science degree (not liberal arts). So I will have to correct this anytime it is brought up.
RichardLH, I don’t get my science from liberal arts majors but rather those with PhDs in Physics like Einstein. Thanks for making my argument for me, you have been a great help.
Poptech says:
January 31, 2014 at 3:24 am
“RichardLH, actually you are obviously not that aware, as he had just completed his Ph.D. at the time he submitted his work. ”
I am all too well aware of the details of history. If you like to take the time and effort ( and Google) you will find that I have already previously quoted your information of other threads to make the point about the distinction between actual and Honorary degrees.
Still does not alter the fact that addressing the TITLE that someone happens to hold at the time they make claims is a stupid way to make any argument.
Shall I make a point about PhD is Doctor of Philosophy rather than Science?
About as useful, trivial and relevant as your claims and bias.
I am a liberal arts major. Am I an unworthy source, even if my work is peer reviewed?
Order Pour le mérite
So Einstein won a Blue Max? Interesting.
I was very careful to insert the words “electable parties”. And indeed ALL THE ELECTABLE PARTIES have climate change on the brain. Which ones don’t?
Sometimes “credentials” don’t mean squat. And I could go on of course but this should suffice for the average person of at least average intelligence.
Poptech’s silly argument is refuted everyday here at WUWT by scientists like Willis, Moshner and Bob Tisdale. And he’s taken quite a beating over at Jonovas. What are Poptech’s credentials again? Who made him gatekeeper to the scientific world?
Jimbo says:
January 31, 2014 at 6:48 am
“I was very careful to insert the words “electable parties”. And indeed ALL THE ELECTABLE PARTIES have climate change on the brain. Which ones don’t?”
As I was for 12 years (7 in office – County Councillor – nothing fancy) a member of one of those ‘Electable’ parties I stand by what I said.
Richard D says:
January 31, 2014 at 6:57 am
“Who made him gatekeeper to the scientific world?”
Strange how small the world is that some people inhabit. What was that Star Trek story again…..
RichardLH says: January 31, 2014 at 7:07 am
Strange how small the world is that some people inhabit. What was that Star Trek story again…..
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Indeed, it’s a myopic, ridged form of thinking that is peculiar to the religious ideologue or zealot, which is the antithesis of scientific thinking. I’m reminded of Bill Gates, the computer scientist. Wasn’t his terminal degree a high school diploma?
Jimbo: Sometimes “credentials” don’t mean squat.
Personal and first hand experience, too sad to relate in detail, confirms your position. One example will suffice.
Somewhere along the line I developed real skill at taking tests. This is a skill that can open career doors, and it is also a skill that can get you in trouble. (I think it is a real-world mechanism underlying the Peter Principle.) Anyway, back around 1963, I had a slow summer, so I decided to study for an FCC first class commercial radiotelephone license. Easily passed the test, with ship radar endorsement, no less. (To this day, I have never seen a ship radar.) A few months later I got some part time work rewiring the studio at a local radio station. One weekend, their chief engineer had to run up to San Jose for something or other, and their number two guy was also unavailable. They knew I had the paper, so they asked me to stand in over the weekend. No problem.
Until about 5:00 o’clock Sunday morning. I get a call from the studio that the transmitter, which had been shut down on its regular schedule Saturday night, would not restart. So I zip over to Eagle Rock, up the hill to the transmitter building and manually run through the startup routine, hoping the problem is just in the studio link. It wasn’t. Repeatedly ran through the procedure: Warm up the mercury vapor rectifiers, hit the plate supply, pffft…. Took a good look at the transmitter, a very trim 10 kilowatt GE FM installation. For which I have no schematic, technical manual, nor even an operator’s manual. Thought about getting into the cabinet. Thought better of it…. About that time I would have greatly appreciated help from an experienced ham operator, particularly one who had been running an outlaw 10 gallon rig somewhere back up the canyon.
Comes to mind what they said in the army about upper echelon maintenance: “They have a bigger hammer.” I thump good and hard on the cabinet. Rinse and repeat. Eventually the beast starts and we’re good to go for another week.l
Weeks later the thing acts up again and they pinpoint the problem. The RF finals are air cooled. As a safety measure, GE put a vane switch in the air duct so that if the cooling air stopped, the transmitter would shut down before those expensive tubes melted down. The switch was sticking in the off position; likely my thumping the cabinet jiggled it loose.
My point, of course, is that my FCC served only to get me in over my head. It proved nothing except that I could take a test.
Some climatologists seem to be in over their heads.
Juan Slayton says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:55 am
“Some climatologists seem to be in over their heads.”
And take very unkindly to Engineers pointing out logical, scientific, alternative, points of view.
Filters of Day, Month, Year are fine. Anything longer than that……
Discrimination I call it 🙂
Richard D says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:49 am
“Wasn’t his terminal degree a high school diploma?”
Yes but business and science are not necessarily the same.
Isn’t this what we have been telling Steve and Zeke for years.
Is a university degree requisite when helping mankind advance and achieve greater progress? http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/the-5-most-important-amateur-scientists/940
Yes but business and science are not necessarily the same.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Inventing/writing computer languages is scientific in nature as are otherl formal sciences – mathematics, logic, statistics, computer science. Interestingly, Gates not only funds but manages/directs significant, valuable scientific research with his foundation
No was my answer with giants like Faraday or Mendel on the list. I suppose Edison could be classed as an inventor and business genius rather than a scientist.
Strawman, I never made any such argument but actually the opposite.
Why are you incorrectly using the title “scientist”? You really need to listen to RichardLH and properly use the title on those with PhDs in Physics like Einstein. I can’t thank him enough for this great argument.
Strawman, pointing out a lack of relevant credentials is not “gatekeeping” but stating the obvious.
Says all those who don’t apply for jobs.
“Are we not men?”
(P.S., SOS – Save Our Swans!)
However, poptech; clarification acknowledged.
Still, note well that the entire surface stations study was instigated by the non-science degreed and actively opposed (and directly impeded) by those thus degreed.
Mendel was trained in mathematics and physics, which gave him the mathematical intuition to recognize patterns/ratios in inheritance In addition to foundational investigations into genetics (laws), he also studied weather.
I think Poptech ought to change his handle to STRAWMAN as it’s strawmen all the way down with him LOL. There are many logical fallacies in argument perhaps he could learn to spot others? And he definitely owes us an accounting of his academic and professional background so we may judge his comments and his List. What are his relevant qualifications? Well, i’m off to read non-Poptech approved threads here at WUWT (Award Winning Science Blog) by non credentialed, non-Poptech approved scientists.
I get poptech’s point. But I get Willis’ point as well.
I think we need to make peace.
I read the paper as well. My conclusion is that WUWT is mangling the interpretation. The authors show that the two station relocations, one in 1964 and even more so in 1996 were resulting in misleadingly low temperature readings. In other words, it is essential to apply homogenization to determine the true temperature trend. If the adjusted temperature trend is twice as high as the unadjusted temperature trend, there’s a good reason – it really is twice as high.
TomP says:
February 3, 2014 at 6:46 am
I read the paper as well. My conclusion is that WUWT is mangling the interpretation. The authors show that the two station relocations, one in 1964 and even more so in 1996 were resulting in misleadingly low temperature readings. In other words, it is essential to apply homogenization to determine the true temperature trend. If the adjusted temperature trend is twice as high as the unadjusted temperature trend, there’s a good reason – it really is twice as high.
yes Tom it is exactly what the authors say isn’t it?
Here what they say word for word:
” Urban contributions to the overall trends of annual mean Tmin and Tmax reach 100% and 28.8% respectively for the adjusted data. Our analysis shows that data homogenization for the stations moved from downtowns to suburbs can lead to a significant overestimate of rising trends of surface air temperature, and this necessitates a careful evaluation and adjustment for urban biases before the data are applied in analyses of local and regional climate change.”
But yes, the magical thinking isn’t it?
http://sultanknish.blogspot.co.at/2014/01/friday-afternoon-roundup-climate.html