One way adjustments: The Latest Alteration to the U.S. Climate Record

This of course being completely pointless, since we all agree that the USA is only 3% of the planet ((c) J Hansen)

Which is closer to the truth??? Trick question? If the truth is known why not publish that? If the truth is not known there is no valid answer to the question.

Just a minor adjustment of the temperature record to better fit the CO2 record. What’s the problem!

many of the “click to enlarge” features are not working .

They are both wrong and that’s the truth

I’m just trying to figure out why, when you look at those graphs as a whole, you can’t clearly see World War I, the Depression, or World War II.
You can see the Depression in the Michigan chart (but not the others), but if temps are tied so strongly to CO2, you’d think a couple of world wars (with attendant increases in overall production and emission of CO2) would show up, at least a little.

George Orwell had this in 1984.
Re-write history into a version of events that suits the current governments needs.

According to the abstract, these adjustments were intended to fix:
“1. For the TCDD, each divisional value from 1931-present is simply the arithmetic average of the station data within it, a computational practice that results in a bias when a division is spatially undersampled in a month (e.g., because some stations did not report) or is climatologically inhomogeneous in general (e.g., due to large variations in topography).
2. For the TCDD, all divisional values before 1931 stem from state averages published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rather than from actual station observations, producing an artificial discontinuity in both the mean and variance for 1895-1930 (Guttman and Quayle, 1996).
3. In the TCDD, many divisions experienced a systematic change in average station location and elevation during the 20th Century, resulting in spurious historical trends in some regions (Keim et al., 2003; Keim et al., 2005; Allard et al., 2009).
4. Finally, none of the TCDD’s station-based temperature records contain adjustments for historical changes in observation time, station location, or temperature instrumentation, inhomogeneities which further bias temporal trends (Peterson et al., 1998).”
The land-based temperature data no longer has any meaning. Good stations without siting problems don’t show these same trends thus invalidating this exercise. The foxes are gaurding the henhouse.

Well I was assuming that they actually provided an error estimation for their data. So far I have not been able to even find one!
However this is interesting on the removal of degree.day fields since underlying data not long exist 😕 Huh?
>>
Qualitative Note on Degree Day Values: Preliminary analysis of degree day
data indicate that some values may be noticeably different from current
values. There are two primary reasons for this:
1) General: New dataset and methodology (see prior notes on changes to how
climate division data are computed)
2) Specific to the degree-day products: Population weights have been updated
to use 2010 Census data.
>>
Run that again? Degree.day products depend on population count ? WTF?
If any aspect of your temperature record moves because of a change in “populatin wieghts” you have a problem with your data processing!
The closer you look the worse it gets.

Michael E. Newton says:
April 29, 2014 at 8:38 am
How can climatologists predict the future when they can’t even predict the past?
>>
Sure they can. We can safely predict that in the next few years the past will get colder.
This is obvious from the lack of warming or “pause”. Since there is no warming this decade, the effect of GHG forcing is to make the past cooler.
You have no grasp on how climatolgy works, Where have you been ???

IF the observable data does not match the predicted data, then just change the observable data sets to match the predicted data look better .. Most would call this pure corruption of data while others seem to pass this off as sound climate science. This has little resemblance to any science.

Well then. The ‘climate change’ we are currently not experiencing must be that much worse due to the steepness of this new incline.

This is the real McCoy for all you lukewarmers and skeptics who actually believe some warming is occurring.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-microwave-sea-surface-temperature-update-for-feb-2013/
O, Zilch, Nada please wake up and stop feeding the warmist trolls LOL

I reckon Mosher will not make any comment here

Galling. These keepers of the record are simply lying. There is no other way of telling the story. Unless you fake it. And they continue to sneer and snide and condescend.

and they expect to be credible, how exactly ?

The Hockey Stick Is Real
Posted on April 18, 2014 by stevengoddard
NOAA has set an all-time world record for data tampering in 2014. So far this year they have adjusted US temperature upwards by an average of 1.185 degrees at all USHCN stations, creating a genuine hockey stick.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/the-hockey-stick-is-real-3/

Yes I see that Mosher commented above same BEST drivel as usual. He hasn’t read the posting evidently. Doesn’t want to I would not blame him he probably gets paid by BEST ect to maintain the AGW industry going. BTW no offense meant I have appreciated much of his delving work into Gleick especially LOL He should stick to that.

Mosher,
“A) when you add more stations, you will find the past is cooler than previously estimated.
B) when you add more stations, you will find that the present is warmer than you think.”
No, when YOU comment on temperatures we find that YOU always conform to the Warmer narrative.
So, we can either decide that temperatures always conform to the Warmer narrative, or we can decide that YOU conform to the Warmer narrative.
Which is more likely?
Andrew

Greg says:
April 29, 2014 at 8:41 am
Run that again? Degree.day products depend on population count ? WTF?
==================================================================
By God man, you found it!!! AGW is PEOPLE!!!!! Remove the people, all the body heat dissipates into space in a few years and the problem is solved— once the Eloi decide on how many Morlocks are actually required in Utopia.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cirs/drd/divisional.README
Differences of the biases were small (>
So no clear statement of the uncertainty in the data presented but an implicit statement that there remains some biases of the order of 2 deg.F and that an error 0.3 is regarded as being “small”. , presumably meaning in relation to other errors like the 2F ones.
There’s an error in my last : sqrt(120) should have been sqrt(1200)
Since Dan Travers gives us decadal trends lets stick with sqrt(120) : as an uncertainty scaling for 120 monthly readings.
Now taking the undeclared but infered uncertainty to be +/-2F that gives , for the old DRD data:
2/sqrt(120) = +/-0.18 F/dec on a decadal trend.
“Errors in ɳClimDiv are likely less than 0.5°C for temperature ” Rather unhelpful for data given in fahrenheit. Did they even mean 0.5°C ??? Taking it as stated that’s 0.9F.
0.5*9/5 / 2/sqrt(120) = +/-0.082
California goes from 0.09 +/-0.18 F/dec to 0.22 +/-0.08 F/dec
a change of 0.11 F/dec for a drop in uncertainty of 0.1 F/dec
ie all the errors in the earlier version of the were in the same direction , and than some.
So we’re back to the same old storey , all errors that were ever made in temperature measurement were masking the true horrors of global warming. And only the new “algorithms” and “bias corrections” allows us to see the true scale of what is happening to the planet.

Steven Mosher says:
April 29, 2014 at 8:54 am
…
Didn’t they also reduce the number of stations over time which would achieve the same result (adding more data to the past)?

I love the name at the top – National CLIMACTIC Data Center. Is the debate reaching a climax? That would be fun!

@Mosh
I should add that I presume no such ‘correction’ can or has been made, otherwise how can your observations be seen? Again, logically, if the correction/adjustment procedures are statistically and physically ‘sound’ – one would presume significant differences due to ‘number of stations’ should be relatively unnoticeable? Just asking……

Data rigging reaching a climax , more like.

To suggest that scientists of the early 20th were misreading thermometers by three degrees F is simply unsupportable. If there is a reason to believe there was a 3°F error that can be detected and corrected now the proper correction is to throw out the bad data. At the very least cease cocantation for the purpose of establishing trend.

Zeke,
In your first link, you are linking to yourself blogging.
Are you asserting that you are an authority on this “obscure product”?
Are you officially connected with the product, or are you commenting as an objective observer?
Andrew

At 9:06 AM, pablo an ex pat says…
“and they expect to be credible, how exactly ?”
I’ll give you three ways:
1) How would you like to lose your job, today?
2) How would you like to be investigated by the IRS?, and
3) ‘We have found some irregularities in your medical records; you’ll notice these impacts January 2017.
That’s how.

So does “adding more stations” to the past mean they’ve added the same stations they’ve since closed in the meantime? Or are these newly discovered past stations?
Andrew

Could anyone direct me to a link with the original data set (pre modified?) Where can I download that? Thanks Sher

Auto-tumescence in numerology.

Looks like as much fantasy as the Federal Budgets (which they also stopped publishing). Anyway even at their rate that’s less than 1 degree per human lifespan and I don’t think that’s a problem…

The reason the entire record cools is NCDC is now adding an adjustment for elevation. There is a sampling bias towards low elevation sites, since that is where most people reside and take weather observations. Cooler high elevation sites are under-sampled, so they are attempting to adjust for that, hence a lower temperature.

Mark, they will always find a way to adjust up….for UHI

You know what they say, “If you can’t beat ’em then cheat ’em”.
Which roughly translated says that every time you feel you are losing the AGW argument just make the data more extreme. Science, honesty and objectivity be damned.

DBStealey,

Mark, are you advocating censorship?

No! Quite the opposite. I think Steven’s correct in this.
The trouble is, of course I’d think Steven’s correct in this. I’ve heard his argument, and I haven’t invested the time that he or AW has in investigating temperature records. What I’m really asking is, does anyone I respect have any good counterarguments that I haven’t heard. Just trying to be a good skeptic. Having heard why Steven thinks he’s right, why is Steven wrong?

Oh. I understand what you’re saying now Stealey.
TY.

“Just trying to be a good skeptic”
Mark B,
The first step in being a good skeptic is to not just take someone’s word for something. So, if someone on the internet says:
“A) when you add more stations, you will find the past is cooler than previously estimated.
B) when you add more stations, you will find that the present is warmer than you think.”
You should require that they provide all the evidence that is relevant to their assertion, or conclude it’s mere assertion.
In the case of the above, we can conclude it’s just assertion, since no relevant evidence has been provided.
Andrew

This is interesting.
Of the 119 entries there are only 28 which represent an Above Normal or Much Above Normal value for Contiguous United States Annual Temperature Anomalies (1981-2010 Base Period).
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/maps/us-climate-divisions.php
Much Above Normal anomalies are found in, among others, 1921, 1931, 1934, and 1953.
Climatological Ranking Definition
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/dyk/ranking-definition

Greg says:
April 29, 2014 at 8:46 am
Sure they can. We can safely predict that in the next few years the past will get colder.
This is obvious from the lack of warming or “pause”. Since there is no warming this decade, the effect of GHG forcing is to make the past cooler.
You have no grasp on how climatolgy works, Where have you been ???
————————-
But a few years after that, they’ll adjust it again, making their previous prediction of the past incorrect. Every time they adjust the data, they prove that their previous predictions of what already happened was incorrect.

This new method of deriving temperatures appears to completely eliminate CO2 as a climate driver. The graphs shown seem to indicate that, since temperatures have been on a fairly steady upward trend since 1895, long before large amounts of CO2 were emitted by industry and transportation, there is less evidence that man-produced CO2 had much if anything to do with the increase in temperatures (at least in the US). If temperatures rose dramatically from 1895 to 1940, as the graphs indicate, with no possible connection to CO2, why then does the increase after 1940 need to be attributed to CO2, and why is the increase before 1940 were apparently at least as rapid, or more rapid, than after 1940? (I was unable to download anything from NOAA, so my observation is based on the graphs above and therefore based on limited input)

Sorry, you need to click on the Drd964x vs. nClimDiv link when you get to the http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/maps/us-climate-divisions.php apge.
My previous comment was based on the Drd964x vs. nClimDiv data.

It’s simply amazing how EVERY “error” they find in the record always seems to require cooling the past and warming the present. If someone flipped a coin ‘heads’ 10 times in a row I think I’d have already asked that someone else do the tossing with a new coin and do it where everyone can see it.

Guest essayist by Dan Travers said,
“As seems to always happen when somebody modifies the temperature record, the new version of the record shows a significantly stronger warming trend than the unmodified or, in this case, discarded version.”

– – – – – – – – – – –
Dan Travers,
Yes, your quoted statement above does seem to be the case. Changes to datasets from the major institutional bodies who make them do seem to have the effect of showing higher warming rates after the changes compared to before the changes.
POSSIBLE CAUSE CATEGORIES (PCC) – these are the possible reasons all the major institutional bodies who make GAST datasets always increase the rate of historical warming when they make changes to their datasets
PCC #1 – It is just a coincidence
PCC #2 – Climate science is a young developing science so all changes are improvements from the earlier state of the dataset construction techniques and data measurement analysis. Improved science is just finding more warming rates in reality, so it is expected that all the major institutional bodies will always have increases in the historical warming rate.
PCC #3 – The major bodies are just professionally collaborating with each other closely and they are all openly and professionally coordinating closely the changes. So it is expected that the changes are in the same direction across all dataset changes and all major institutional bodies.
PCC #4 – outside pressure on each of the major bodies is causing creeping warming rate exaggerationism in their datasets
PCC #5 – the scientists involved with the major institutional bodies have a commonly shared consensus that there is a need to communicate better to save the planet. They are increasingly changing the historical warming rate because they think it is a better way to communicate climate science in order to save the planet.
PCC #6 – its karma
So, which of those PCCs are the more likely reasons and which are less likely reasons that all the changes to datasets from the major institutional bodies who make them do seem to have the effect of showing higher historical warming rates after the changes compared to before the changes?
Take your pick.
For me it is a toss-up between PCC #2 and PCC #5 as the reason the changes are always increasing the historical warming rate. Although PCC #6 should be given some focus.
John

E. Martin says:
April 29, 2014 at 11:44 am
Wouldn’t reporting the names and positions of the “adjustments” perpetrators at NCDC inspire them to justify their changes?
=======
This may have less to do with the actual data, it looks like the criteria used for Anomalies is of interest.

This is a good illustration for the U.S., and the like far beyond U.S. data alone is shown at http://hidethedecline.eu
Rewriting of data by the usual suspects is paramount, as without it climate history is consistent, logical, and believable, not having events occurring without a cause (from the “pause,” to the global cooling scare of the 1960s-1970s, to the LIA), basically ending up with my usual illustration: http://tinyurl.com/nbnh7hq .

This is more evidence that as someone on WUWT said a few months ago: “In climate science only the past is uncertain.” Does anyone think this will be the last attempt to modify the temp records? Has the record been perfected now or will there be more adjustments to it?

Illustration http://saraegoodman.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/vectorstock-174507-angry-greek-god-vector.jpg, although I’m convinced that Josh could better that.

A matter of considerable popular interest investigated during the year was the proposed establishment of a number of suburban meteorological stations around large cities with a view to getting at truer records. It appears, however, that, with the shelters now in use and considering the various corrections applied, the readings are substantially the same. The question was submitted to observers at a number of selected stations, and lengthy and valuable reports made thereon. It has long been established in meteorology that the average temperatures observed in large cities are higher than those observed in the country nearby….
-The Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau for 1892, p. 577
What means “the various corrections applied”? Anybody know?

Boy were those climate scientists from 1895 ever stupid. They couldn’t even read a thermometer.

Hi Steve Mosher…
Very simple question. How on earth can you ‘add’ stations to the past ?
Can you just explain this one statement please. It makes no logical sense. At all.
There is another argument as well….
Data is just pure data. Climate science makes its adjustments valid as they are peer reviewed adjustments.
If a business adjusted its books….. It would get done for fraud.
I genuinely don’t see how any adjustments of the climate record are valid at all.
The data is what it is….. You can’t justify modifying it because it doesn’t fit your theory.
If the temperature in place a was recorded at 110 degrees 20 years ago. That’s the only valid data we have.
Why do climate scientists think that just because their methodology of adjusting the data has been peer reviewed it makes it valid ?

Mark Albright says:

The reason the entire record cools is NCDC is now adding an adjustment for elevation.

Doesn’t explain the difference in trend …

Thanks Mod for the correction to my last post — it was very kind!
Reading over the comments, I find it absurd to believe any Scientist in NOAA/NCDC, NASA, or any other scientific agency of the US government would intentionally falsify data for gain. There simply isn’t any gain to be had and it flies in the face of reason to think otherwise.
If alterations to data sets, collected over time, is required then there is a logical reason for doing so. They didn’t destroy the original data sets.
I do have an issue with projections based on an evolving understanding of control data but you’ll find Scientists never to this.
Your target(s) for the misplaced anger should be more insightful and should be based on the “conclusions” from those who release “results”.

Richard M says:
April 29, 2014 at 2:07 pm
I completely agree if we’re discussing Pharma but climate science isn’t a hard science. Its a soft science based more on “educated guess” than scientific fact. Its in its infancy yet evolving well thanks to all the global milk.
The issue isn’t the real need to understand, the issue is the rush to judgement! Scientific dialogue over an issue we can share globally is what we need — not action as its poorly defined. Stupid solutions to an issue that has yet to be properly defined is a Carnie hire.

At nick stokes…. That’s an assumption of what they need to do. Just because it’s a paper doesn’t make it a valid adjustment

It has warmed so much that Lake Superior is still 60% ice covered, probably the highest level for this time of year since 1895. How can it be so much warmer. The freeze temperature of water has not varied in 13 billion years so it must be colder!!!.
We cannot rely on the numbers produced by the NCDC. They have adjusted the records about 10 times now. Are they saying, that the 9th adjustment made last year was not accurate (at the time, they said it made the record perfect). Are they saying that the 1st adjustment in 1988 was not accurate (at the time they said it was fully corrected at that point).
The climate is not different than it was in 1900. There is no record from 1900 produced by the NCDC that we can rely on anymore.
We need a forensic audit team to go in and fix our temperature history.

John Whitman says:
April 29, 2014 at 2:18 pm
John,
Thanks for the comment but the part no one seems to understand or refuses to is the reality. Scientists are free thinkers here and bound by nothing political.
No question we have the characters who game the system but they lose all merit when they do.
I think the distinction you’re looking for is the notion “Scientist” in soft science in relation to the real thing?

Bad Andrew says: April 29, 2014 at 8:50 am
Mosher Drive By in 3…2…1…
Andrew
Too easy.

Bill ILLIS
You said “We cannot rely on the numbers produced by the NCDC. When one sees this level of adjustments , I tend to agree with you . The new apparent warming rates by state have changed in a major way. About 1/4 of the 48 states had their apparent warming rate increased by a factor of 2, 4 ,12 and even 26 times higher. Another 1/4 had their warming rate stay the same or slightly reduced . The rest all had their warming rate increased but by lesser amounts .. How can one go to states like Maine or Michigan or Texas and say oops, but your climate has just warmed more by a factor of 26,12 or 9 times since 1895. Eventually NCDC may get to the point where the public no longer believes or trusts any of their data. . To announce this apparent 50% warming trend increase of the entire Contiguous US just after US experienced its 34 th coldest winter and when their annual and winter temperatures have been declining for 17 years is even more peculiar.

The graph for Maine seem to show a cooling trend which became a warming trend .How much more of a cooling trend would there have been with out past data changes?

I think you folks are all missing the most important post in this thread, by JonF, I believe….
Let them make 1895 cooler by whatever means they choose.
This introduces a HUGE rise in temperatures well before manmade CO2 could have possibly played an influence on our climate. It simply destroys the theory that the 1970-1997 rise HAS to be CO2….
Game over…..

This data churning is the equivalent of ‘confusion marketing’.
Anyone who has tried to study cellphone/internet sales literature will accept that it is not possible to come to firm conclusions, on the basis of the information given, about which is the best deal.
With all the major data running against their modelled scenarios they are throwing in another dollop of confusion in an attempt to maintain their failed narrative.

Please Note based on my last Comment.
The Scientific Community is held-harmless in this UN mess. Scientists are the Hero — UN and political goofs the ignorant mistake!

“He who controls the present controls the past.
He who controls the past controls the future”
Big Brother is alive and well in the present day.

Given the fact that so many sites have so many unique characteristics and given the long term quality of the data, the simplest approach is the one most likely to give an accurate idea of what is happening in the long run. Not interested in weighted averages, etc. What is the trend for maximum temperatures for all stations, unadjusted. Possibly an urban heat island adjustment will be required, but even that should be avoided if possible, by excluding stations that are found in built up areas that weren’t previously built up.

omnologos says: April 29, 2014 at 8:04 am
This of course being completely pointless, since we all agree that the USA is only 3% of the planet ((c) J Hansen)
And apparently misses the whole point of the article:
Which is about adjustments to historical temperature records, not about whether USA temperatures are indicative of global warming.

AJ says: @ April 29, 2014 at 4:35 pm
Thanks for the link to your source code Zeke. I’m interested in you breakpoint and kriging logic and whether it’s applicable to sea-level and precipitation trends. Any thoughts?…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Krigging:
http://www.geostatscam.com/index.htm
(Several articles listed on left)

Let’s assume that they are correct and the past was cooler and the past warming trend is correct.
Since the present warming trend is flat, the total temperature record is very good evidence that the affect of increased CO2 levels is cooling.
Sometimes it isn’t necessary to do anything, maybe we should just let them dig a deeper hole.

Anthony,
I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life, 1/2 mile from Lake Huron. As one who has been ice fishing since 5 years old, in the next 57 years it didn’t take a lot of brain power to figure out that when temperatures go above freezing and the sun gets higher in the sky, the ice melts. Throw in some rain and it goes away quickly. Instead it remained very cold and continued to snow. Our heating bills speak for themselves and can be lowered by making it colder in the house, but water cannot change its freezing temperature.
Virtually nobody I know living in Michigan remembers such a cold winter and extended ice fishing season. Spring 1960 was colder than 2014? Not a chance. I just find it incredulous looking at the “new and improved” Michigan temperature records NCDC spews out can be taken seriously. I don’t care how many peer reviewed approvals Mosher/Stokes/Zeke references, THE ICE DOES NOT LIE. My mother is 93 years old this July; lived in Michigan her whole life.
There is no other state in the country that can validate/invalidate temperature data by simply looking at the ice. Seriously, these adjustments are absurd, even the 2009 version is a joke. My mother is 93 and would ask what school taught you the last ten years in Michigan were warmer than the 1930’s.
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/screenhunter_253-apr-17-06-04.gif

Mike Jonas – excellent point.
Steve Mosher – I don’t understand how it automatically follows that, if the past was cooler than the present, and you then add more stations from the past to the existing records, that this will cool the past further. As a thought experiment, what if there was an extra 100,000 stations out there which we haven’t yet added the records from? Would the past be cooled every time we added another batch? How large would the temperature adjustment be, by the time they were all added?

After seeing this it’s impossible to deny that global warming is the result of man’s hand. 😉

So, can anyone falsify Moshers claims by doing what he suggests, and coming up with a different answer?

Nick Stokes says:
April 29, 2014 at 4:19 pm
DR says: April 29, 2014 at 3:53 pm
“As observed by Steven Goddard, there have been massive adjustments for Michigan temperatures.”
===============
Nick says..”They aren’t massive adjustments to the same data. They are different datasets with a different mix of stations. You just can’t compare regional averages unless they use anomalies.
=================================
What Mr. Goddard’s graph shows is the total difference between NCDC reported temperatures and GHCN HCN raw temperatures. What Mr. Goddard often does is take ALL GHCN continuously active stations, and use those for a basis. In this case, using those stations, the reported T matches the Northern and more Southern Great lakes record smashing ice as the clear cut coldest march on record. This is ,IMV, both constructive and informative. In the case of the US as a whole this method far more closely matches the early official US charts, shown in this post of Mr Goddard here… http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/
You see, when you attempt to factor in THOUSANDS of station changes, and just as many disparate sitting issues at each station, and a very uncertain science on UHI with disparate views by educated people, and add in a legitimately questionable TOB adjustment, and you shake and bake the entire record into regional averaging and anomalies of ever changing stations, the chances of ending up with a FUBAR record grows exponentially.
EM Smith did some excellent articles on this.cauldron of mashed assumptions and stations changes. Mark Boffill, I highly recommend you go to his sight here. E.M. is both brilliant and a very very rare straight shooter. http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/agw-and-gistemp-issues/
The concomitant cooling of the past, (both the attempted scrubbing of the MWP, as well as the false cooling of the late 30 and early 40 in the US and other places), in combination with questionable adjustments and recent divergence from RSS , and, in addition, UHI questions etc, all lead to my perspective that the VERY MINOR warming detected, (certainly nothing outside of past periods of warming) plus the failed predictions of doom, is “much ado about nothing”.

Fascinating stuff, but you guys should be very wary of seeing conspiracy in everything. A sober analysis of the justifications and the methodology is badly needed, but the changes should not be dismissed as part of THE AGENDA out of hand.
Remember that this is USA-only ground station data, and it will be no more than a footnote to the greater debate, unless of course the same kind of adjustments can be rolled out globally…
But what is also clear is that, if we take the revised data at face value, it becomes much more difficult to establish any ACCELERATION in the warming trend for USA, as it backdates much of the warming to the earliest part of the graph, a time when CO2 emissions were substantially less, thereby flattening the curve. So if it IS a conspiratorial move it may be counter-productive.

Alpena is only one location, assuming raw and no sitting issues, and assuming no adjustments to the past record at that location. The ice is not subjective, The Great Lakes are less affected by currents then the ocean ice shelves. (No warm of cold currents from far away locations) Wind is likewise less of a factor on the Great Lakes,(landlocked body of water) and can be both positive and negative.to ice coverage.
Beyond that, the Great Lakes cover a massive area, and the ice is, to a degree, one massive thermometer covering a vast area. It is the coldest year on record ON the Great Lakes, and in the continuously active GHCN stations, and not by just a little. (This covers a very large area) Adding in the testimony of the Great Lakes ice being massively above the previous record, is a cogent and constructive argument.
Also, my general arguments on using all continuously active locations are sound, as are my points with regard to the likely errors of the current system you advocate, which I call FUBAR.
Your point on the differences between the two data sets is not without potential merit however. A map of the differences in the locations would be informative Keep in mind, the location of the storm tracks and the cold air following those weather systems, can easily overwhelm a hundred or more miles of N/S difference In addition Goddard’s number one coolest ranking for those stations is ALSO based on a past of those same locations..
Additionally most of Mr.Goddard’s map do not compose of different data sets, as this link shows..
.http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/

John F. Hultquist says: @ April 29, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Gail Combs says “I caught them lying …”
Perhaps the NWS reported “Water Equivalent” rather than snow depth insofar as snows are greatly different in the former.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NO
Jeff Masters originally reported the February 12th readings as RAIN and the temperatures as above freezing. I called him a liar on his blog. He then changed it to a high above freezing and snow. When I called him a liar a second time, he changed the records to a high of 31°F and 0.37 inches of snow.
I wish I had gotten screen shots to prove what I am saying but I did not. One does not expect the past to change like it does in some Orwell novel.
Another example is the Norfolk City vs Norfolk International Airport I posted here on WUWT a few years ago.

…Here is a quick look at the only city & close by airport listed for North Carolina. The city is on the North Carolina/Virgina border and right on the ocean. Take a look at the city vs the airport! Norfolk City and
Norfolk International Airport
Here is a graph of the raw 1856 to 2009 Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Amazing how the temperatures follow the Atlantic ocean oscillation as long as the weather station is not sitting at an airport isn’t it?

The Norfolk International Airport was a straight line of ever increasing temperatures while Norfolk City followed the oscillations of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
Now those charts are no longer available and the Norfolk International Airport chart matches Norfolk City and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
What is also interesting is NONE of the NC ‘official weather stations’ are any further into the mountains than Chapel Hill in the middle of the state (Piedmont.)
Again from that older comment of mine.

I live in North Carolina and did a quick look at my state. It is VERY interesting.
There is nothing closer to the mountains than Chapel Hill which is just west of Raleigh. All the areas with longitudes further west are also further south and that puts them on the seacoast. Chapel Hill is on the plains. Seems the mountain areas are no longer part of the record, imagine that.
I also found that at Wunderground the Moncure NC station is no longer available, it flips you to the new Sanford NC airport. It was available the last time I looked. Asheville NC is the big city in the mountains, home of the Biltmore Estate (1895) Its weather station now only goes back to 2005 at the AIRPORT of course. The site also directs you to the “nearby” (80 miles) city of Greenville (downtown) which only goes back to 1970. That site has been declared “unofficial” The “official” station is now the Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina (Airport)….

E. M. Smith in looking at the “Death of the Thermometers” found similar situations where the thermometers that were dropped were in the mountains.

GHCN – GIStemp Interactions – The Bolivia Effect
Alright Already, what is this Bolivia Effect?
Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It has a patch of high cold Andes Mountains where most of the population live….
One Small Problem with the anomally map. There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990.
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.
So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data from the last 20 years?
Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Chili, Peru and the Amazon Jungle.
Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks and high cold desert, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know? (The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…)

So THEY LIE and they have been caught at it repeatedly.

Re Nick Stokes @5.09;
“Are you saying that knowledge of the effect of TOBS should be suppressed? ”
Are you saying that there is some new knowledge of TOBS that we did not previously possess and that this knowledge resulted in a unidirectional change to 100 year old data?
The fact that there have been a series of these corrections, and that they always go in the same direction, tells me more about the scientists than the data or our knowledge.

Nick Stokes says:
April 30, 2014 at 6:14 am

TOBS is clearcut. Many observing times changed. The changes have been recorded. It was a systematic change from the previously set 5pm to a now common 9am or 10am. It affects readings in a predictable way. It’s hard to justify not correcting.

Ah, no. This is an utter fabrication. The adjustments are not at all in line with any reasonable TOBS adjustment & you know it.

Nick, your understanding of TOBS differs from mine in such a way that one of us is just making up a story that does not reflect reality.
From GHCN;
The TOB software is an empirical model used to estimate the time of observation biases associated with different observation schedules and the routine computes the TOB with respect to daily readings taken at midnight. Details on the procedure are given in, “A Model to Estimate the Time of Observation Bias Associated with Monthly Mean Maximum, Minimum, and Mean Temperatures.” by Karl, Williams, et al.1986, Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 15: 145-160.
SO . . . Mr. Stokes, since your story varies wildly from what the GHCN claims on their own website, maybe you ought to think about looking into things before making assertions.
“From the previously set 5pm to a now common 9am or 10 am.”???
Typical warmist sheep. You don’t bother looking into things and asking why. You just accept the gruel you are fed and defend those who provide it, to the point of just making things up as needed.
Nick, the data set without TOBS shows about half the warming of the data set with TOBS added. The most recent data set increases the difference. How is it that our understanding of temperature observations 100 years ago now allows us to more accurately adjust them ALL DOWN?
Doesn’t that even pique your curiosity, just a little bit???

Nick Stokes says…
David A says: April 30, 2014 at 3:16 am
“One finale point about the continuously active GHCN stations. if they were in error due to random station location, they would show both a warmer or cooler past and present, compared to your “well chosen” stations. However the GHCN stations CONSISTENTLY show a warmer past, and a cooler present”
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Nick…”Yes, of course. They aren’t located randomly. GHCN stations are predominantly in the south of the state. That’s why you get a warmer average. But SG attributes that to “adjustment”.
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David…, assertion without evidence,, and, as my post made abundantly clear, this is consistently true throughput the US. BTW, I notice you forgot to mention the cooler present, which I stated. If they are further south, why are they not warmer in the present?
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Nick says…You get more warmth in the past because that’s when GHCN was just collecting whatever it could. When it became an ongoing program in the mid 90s, that got rationalized, with a more even distribution.
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David, Hum?,, fails basic logic I again stated that random distribution would produce random results. The warmest side has consistently been criticized for every all their the adjustments , cooling the past, warming the present, just happens to lead one to increased perception of CAGW,
Once again, if those station continuously active stations were consistently [too] warm in the past, they would be to warm today, but now, those random unbiased stations, just happen to be [too] cool in the present. Sounds like you are trying to have your cake, and eat it to.
Again, they are warmer in the past, and cooler in the present; clear evidence of the artificial and likely wrong nature of adjustments.
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Nick says…People who do averages properly know all this. They use gridding and area weighting to avoid distribution biases. And they use anomalies to counter the effects of things like latitude.
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David..”Nick, I am sorry if I do not bow at the feet of those who can decipher the holy book of CO2, but rudimentary logic precludes your assertion. By only answering one small part of my post, and very poorly at that, you are not convincing. Also, as I already stated, when you attempt to factor in THOUSANDS of station changes, and just as many disparate sitting issues at each station, and a very uncertain science on UHI with disparate views by educated people, and add in a legitimately questionable TOB adjustment, and you shake and bake the entire record into regional averaging and anomalies of ever changing stations, the chances of ending up with a FUBAR record grows exponentially.
The truth is the stations choices have a curious tendency to move towards airports, cool the past, warm the present, and through algorithms and elimination of many stations, spread [their] anomalies to large areas. Now, we are not talking about a major movement of whatever minor or non existent warming, but even .10 or .05 over ten or so years, is a large swing on the graphs that are produced. As I said, the increasing divergence of RSS from the surface data sets, is as great as the predicted warming trend. I also challenged you or Mr. Mosher to just explain the Iceland adjustments. I also linked you to a series of graphs by Mr Goddard here, http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/ where your mix of data sets does not even happen for the most part. and you and Mr. Mosher failed to respond.

Nick, here is one state, same station raw to same stations raw to same stations with “corrections…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/noaa-blowing-away-all-records-for-data-tampering-in-2014/

If we ignore for the moment the mechanics of the recent temperature adjustments , do the resulting warming rates make any sense .The data shows that the greatest warming rates( 0.2 to 0.29F/decade ) are for the NORTH EAST, EAST NORTH CENTRAL and WEST NORTH CENTRAL or mostly states close to the Canadian border . This looks strange as one would expect the SOUTH or CENTRAL parts to have warmed more . However when one looks at the warming rates in Canada, things have warmed more. Canada as a whole has warmed 1.6 C since 1948 mostly due to the extra warming of the ARCTIC and the Atlantic Ocean . This equates to 0.432F/decade compared to 0.135F/decade for CONTIGUOUS United States . However the CANADIAN regions next to United States have warmed less . For example , the Great Lakes and St Lawrence Valley region only show an annual warming rate of 0.9C over about 64 years or 0.25F / decade. This is similar to the 0.2 to 0.29 F /decade for the US states close to the Canadian border as per the new adjustments . So I cannot say that the new warming rates are high. The figure of 0.135F/decade also equates to 0.74C/CENTURY which is similar to the warming rate for the globe for the past century.
What is interesting is that the annual and winter temperatures for Contiguous US are declining since 1998 or the last 17 years and the greatest cooling is for the very states next to the Canadian border . So things are changing recently from the 1895 -2013 warming trend.
Winter temperatures in United States have been declining now for 17 years at about 1.78F/ decade according to NCDC/NOAA, CLIMATE AT A GLANCE data. Matter of fact, in United States, 8 out 12 months of the year are cooling. Winters, spring [2months] and fall are all cooling while only 3 months, namely March , June and July are still warming. ANNUAL US temperatures are declining at (-0.36 F/DECADE) since 1998. So there is very little evidence of global warming in United States for the last 16-17 years.

Globaly the ice thermometers have been trending up for some time. Ice is not a perfect thermometer, but I think it is better then tree rings.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/april-28-global-sea-ice-area-third-highest-on-record-highest-in-22-years/

How is temperature measured to 1/1000 of a degree going back to 1895. What is the error band?

I just can’t see calling this “climate change” any more. We need to call it “Climate alteration” and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alteration.
You can easily figure out the acronym for that one.

@Phil “Because the mean trend changes doesn’t mean that all the past observations are adjusted downwards. Clearly if one wants to accurately present past data along with today’s it’s necessary to put them on a common basis, this is what the TOBS adjustment does”.
your adjusting the temperatures pure and simple.
Wouldn’t it be cleaner to just admit the historical temperature records are a mess ?
You can’t accurately present past data with present data if the data isn’t similar or a match otherwise your making subjective adjustments to what you think the data should be now what the data was.
The fact is, you can’t really compare past data to present, because when you do…. it doesn’t show the global warming trend.
thus you have to adjust the past data to make it “comparable” and he presto a slight warming trend appears.
Why on earth should a temperature on a given date and time be adjusted ?
That was the temperature recorded accurately then. You can’t legitimately say because it was X Degrees at 9pm is should be Y degrees at 3pm. Thats impossible.
The NOAA and NDCD data then becomes a temperature estimate and not a temperature record….. no error bars are shown and the entire GHCN data set is a complete mess… but no one has enough balls to say this.
the adjustments aren’t really legitimate and deep down i think all you guys know that.
Its your opinion thats their legtimate based on a few peer reviewed papers.
Go ask an accountant what would happen if he started adjusting a companies books….

Phil. says: @ April 30, 2014 at 9:25 am
….Because the mean trend changes doesn’t mean that all the past observations are adjusted downwards. Clearly if one wants to accurately present past data along with today’s it’s necessary to put them on a common basis, this is what the TOBS adjustment does.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Six min max thermometer invented in 1782, has been around for over two hundred years. TOBS adjustment causing “Warming” which the raw vs ‘adjusted’ data shows therefore just does not make sense. All you are doing is assigning Thursday’s “high reading’ that was read in the morning on Thursday back to Wednesday. Only when the pattern of reading was changed should an adjustment actually matter and given all the other blanks, station moves… it is a really minor factor unless operators changed frequently.

Frank K. says:
April 30, 2014 at 9:28 am
Does anyone have access to the TOBS adjustment algorithms that NOAA uses? I can’t access the software at the link Zeke H. posted earlier? I’m looking for actual code. Thanks.
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Try EM Smith’s site and on the subject graph he has at least two main headers with over fifty posts. Some of the dealt extensively with just this I think. He may be starting to post more, and he responds to over 90 percent of comments.
BTW Frank, the old records, even Jim Hansen’s through the early 1990s confirm the very warm US
USHCN stations in continues operation from the early 1900s to now, set the vast majority of their records highs in the 1930s and 40s. (Same station, and there is no adjustment on the record highs.) I have linked these to Nick, Zeke and Mosher several times. They never comment.