This just doesn’t seem to add up given what we’ve seen from anecdotal weather information and satellite data. For example the UAH global temperature for the lower troposphere shows that the temperature in 2008 doesn’t get anywhere close to this claim made by NOAA:
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was 0.85 degrees F (0.47 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C).
From my perspective as surveyor of the USHCN network, and knowing firsthand just how corrupted the data measuring system is, I have a lot of trouble believing this claim. The satellite data says otherwise.
Here is NOAA’s Press Release today:
Contact: John Leslie FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
301-713-2087, ext. 174 Sept. 16, 2008
NOAA: Global Summer Temperature Was Ninth Warmest
Tenth Warmest August Since Records Began
The combined global average land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was the ninth warmest since records began in 1880, and this August was the tenth warmest, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Summer (June – August) Highlights
- The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for summer 2008 was 0.85 degrees F (0.47 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C).
- Separately, the global land surface temperature for the summer was 1.12 degrees F (0.62 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).
- The global ocean surface temperature for summer ranked ninth warmest on record and was 0.74 degrees F (0.41 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C).
August Highlights
- The August 2008 combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.79 degrees F (0.44 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C) and tied with 1995 for the tenth warmest August on record.
- The global land surface temperature for August was 0.88 degrees F (0.49 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 56.9 degrees F (13.8 degrees C).
- The global ocean surface temperature for August was 0.77 degrees F (0.43 degrees C) above the 20th century mean of 61.4 degrees F (16.4 degrees C), which tied for seventh warmest August with 2001.
Other Highlights
- El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) neutral conditions continued in August, and are expected to last through the end of 2008, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- Arctic sea ice extent at the end of August was at its second lowest extent on record according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Sea ice declined by a record rate in August, decreasing by 950,000 square miles (2.47 million square kilometers) between Aug. 1 and Sept. 3. The current extent is 800,000 square miles (2.08 million square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 average.
- Tropical Storm Fay struck the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands between August 15 – 17, claiming 23 lives across the Caribbean. Hurricane Gustav affected the same countries August 24 – 31, claiming an estimated 95 lives in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica. Tropical Storm Kammuri struck southern China on August 6, bringing torrential rains to Hong Kong. Rain from Kammuri caused 120 deaths in northern Vietnam. On Aug. 20, Typhoon Nuri made landfall in the Philippines and killed seven people.
- In southern India, heavy monsoon rains killed 99 people, while in northern India flash flooding claimed 74 lives and left about 50,000 people homeless. Varanasi, India received 11.5 inches (292.1 mm) of rain in just 24 hours. Torrential downpours claimed 27 lives in northwestern Pakistan during the first week of August. In Laos, heavy monsoon rains raised the Mekong River to its highest recorded level of 44.88 feet (13.68 m). Also in August, extensive flooding affected China, Japan, Mexico, and Great Britain.
- On Aug. 17, Eyre in Western Australia registered a low temperature of -7.2 degrees C (19 degrees F), setting the record for the all-time lowest temperature for that Australian state, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
- Severe storms over northern France on Aug. 4 spawned a tornado that killed three people in the town of Hautmont. Another tornado hit Mykanów, Poland, on Aug. 15, killing three and injuring 37.
- Moderate-to-severe drought impacted northern parts of China during August, according to the Beijing Climate Center. Below-average August rainfall over parts of eastern and southern Australia worsened drought conditions in those areas. Parts of southwest Australia experienced their lowest August rainfall since records began there in 1900.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
On the Web:
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov
NCDC August 2008 analysis: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/aug/aug08.html
– 30 –
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“Have there been any studies to directly calibrate the various temperature standards? Casting doubt on GISS’ land surface temperature collection is not, IMHO, the most effective way to stop this nonsense. A definitive and scientifically accepted (i.e. peer reviewed and published) study that calibrates and reconciles the competing temperature standards (i.e. GISS, UAH, RSS, and HadCRUT3) is the most direct way forward.”
Mike,
That would be an excerise in futility. Comparing GISS with UAH, RSS is like comparing apples and organges. Everyone (including Hansen) knows the limitations of surface based weather observations; with the exceptions of military and civil aviation weather stations, there are no standards in how stations are sited, personnel trained, or quality control applied. The global observation network that Hadley, NOAA and NASA uses has been reduced by 2/3rds since the early 1960s, and the raw data is put through a series of adjustments that render it useless from a scientific perspective. The people at NOAA and NASA are perfectly aware of this.
The amount of divergence between remote satellite soundings and GISS is so great that even Hadely recognizes that GISS represents a statistical outlier. This in and of itself disqualifies GISS statistically. NOAA isn’t much better. But, both goverment institutions have political functions to perform, and what they publish get into the “written word”. For them, that is all that counts. I don’t think these bureaucrats understand the damage they do to thier reputations. When I told my wife that according to NOAA, our part of the country had its 9th warmest summer in Histroy, she said “Tell that to the farmers who had predict low corn yields this year due to cold temperatures.”
Mike Ramsey,
RSS uses climate models in their calibration process IIRC. UAH uses known standards and is described somewhere in more detail.
A recent paper (Hermann?) described the error of RSS trends as being warm biased and that UAH is the more accurate assessment.
As for Hansen et al, since he believes and testified in court justifying the destruction of private property to protect earth from the evils of coal energy, is it a stretch to assume he would also justify manipulating climate data; the ends justify the means. I’m just saying……
If these “scientists” in charge of reporting climate data from the surface station network were objective and unbiased, there wouldn’t be all the alarmist propaganda on their taxpayer funded websites. Their job should be assuring accurate and precise data and reporting the results; nothing more.
I get audited no less than 6 times per year. When was the last time GISS/NOAA/Hadley was independently audited? It would be a circus. I recall Phil Jones at Hadley telling Steve McIntyre (paraphrased) “Why should I show you our data when all you’ll do is find fault with it”. Enough said.
Mary,
Thanks for the graph, but I seem to recall a really big la Nina that lasted between 1999-2000 that was much longer and deeper than the brief La Nina that we experienced last winter and spring. Also, now that ENSO conditions have returned to normal, why are we not seeing a big spike in temperatures? It seems to me that global temperatures are currently declining, when if ENSO and Global Warming were the only things driving the climate, I would expect to see a return to a midpoint between now and 2007, which does not currently seem to be happening.
Time will tell, but it looks like we are going to see ENSO neutral conditions for the rest of the year, then a return to La Nina. My prediction is that 2009 will be no warmer than 2008 and could be cooler. I am basing this entirely on the fact that the PDO has shifted to its cool phase, which will make La Nina’s more common and deeper, and El Ninos less frequent, weaker, and shorter. Regardless, of the validity of the Svenmark Theory, shifts in the long term ocean oscillations should bring the global temperature average down.
Regardless, the next 5 years are going to be very telling about all sorts of global climate theories including CO2, solar cycles and various ocean oscillations. Now if we can just get our idiot politicians to take a wait and see approach rather than rushing in like fools, and our propaganda networks to start to provide real information to the non-nerd masses, then we will have something, yeah?
http://iceagenow.com/Some_high_Alpine_villages_snowed_in_most_of_summer.htm
Can anyone provide specifics on this? I have seen photos today of light snow cover in the mountains around Berchtesgaden ( at around 1800m), but heard nothing of any passes not opening or villages snowed in.
Yea the next 5 years could determine the state of the next 25!!!!
With climate instability and a financial crisis I definitely dont feel confident about anything 🙁
In other news, did you know Chuck Norris “developed” jeans?
http://andthisismyamerica.com/2008/09/17/good-ol-chuck/
The NYT article was a notch above the usual sky-is-falling report in that one of the scientists quoted crawled out on a limb and called this year’s melt to be the infamous “tipping point” we have all been waiting for. I am keeping a file of the most outrageous stories for future reference. Perhaps they can be served as a side dish with the crow that will need to be eaten in a few years.
You mean wind and solar can’t take up the slack?? I’m shocked! Shocked I say!
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
According to AMSU-A TEMPERATURE data as per the above web page , the plot of 2008 summer temperatures compares very closely with the record 2005 summer temperatures at 3300 ft or 1 km height. The data shows that the Troposphere at this elevation is warmer in 2008 than the 20 year average.
September 15
YEAR 2005 30.11 [F]
YEAR 2008 29.91 [F]
20 YEAR RECORD HIGHS 28.65 [F]
Here’s the deal.
We are around 385 Growing Degree Days short of “avg” at this point in the season. There have been an awful lot of days this summer where we have been 20 degrees below average. Some days the high is just above the “average” low. In short, I’m not buyin it. This is in Central MO. I still want to see a graph of the highs, and the lows, along an average to know where this “avg” temperature comes from, and how the temps that matter to the real world (aka agriculture) are reflected.
Anybody got that??????
I can’t find it.
DR,
NOAA and GISS are publicly funded institutions. They are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. A FOIA request for raw GISS and NOAA temperature data would be hard to beat down.
“Most of [Remote Sensing Systems] research is supported by the Earth Science Enterprise program at NASA.” Once again, a FOIA request seems in order.
These guys are spending our money. They need to be held accountable for how that money is spent. Congress seems unable or unwilling to perform that oversight. Perhaps private citizens or public interest groups need to get more involved.
One last point. Hansen has said that he uses “satellite-observed night lights to determine which stations in the United States are located in urban and peri-urban areas, the long-term trends of those stations being adjusted to agree with long-term trends of nearby rural stations.”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Note that the data is not discarded but adjusted. How is this data adjusted? Is the process open to outside review? Sounds like another FOIA request. The various efforts to investigate the condition of weather stations might better be focused on those stations being used to adjust the urban stations. If they are bad then the adjustments are bad.
–Mike Ramsey
How is this data adjusted?
Well, IIRC, from CA, around 40% is adjusted warmer. (Urban cool parks, you see.) Overall, I believe there is a minuscule cooling adjustment applied.
But then, NOAA adjusts SHAP warmer to account for site violations.
Is the process open to outside review?
CA has been trying to desconstruct the ASCII dump.
Mike Ramsey,
Both Anthony Watts and ClimateAudit have many posts on the ‘lights=0’ methodology of GISS discriminating between urban and rural. Where is the validation of this method?
It is not unlike arm waiving statements at NOAA et al that “urban heat island effects have been accounted for”. There are are numerous peer reviewed papers dispelling that assumption.
Further, micro site issues have also been documented at surfacestations.org and in other peer reviewed articles.
I am viewing these matters from experience in my field of work, not merely as a skeptic. Seriously, if industrial standards applied to climate “science”, submitting data claiming to be within +/-.075 C with the problems highlighted with these surface stations would result in revoking said lab’s certification.
Guess they leave out places that had a cool summer this year too.
“From my perspective as surveyor of the USHCN network, and knowing firsthand just how corrupted the data measuring system is, I have a lot of trouble believing this claim. The satellite data says otherwise.”
We, in the IT industry, have a more direct way of saying the above: GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.
Well, heck! Thought I would post something that would be of enormoous importance, and just put this topic to bed…..but I just don’t have the mental capacity or …..where was I? 🙂
Anecdotally, I can pull up my electricity bill and compare kwh usage for each month/year that I’ve been a consumer. My summertime usage was 75% less than just last year, 50% less then the year before last. Of course, if I mnassage my data in an arcane and unknowable way, maybe I can convince you that in fact, my bill actually increased?
I find it amazing that there is no standard for temperature recording, or one that is followed. That our temperature record is continually adjusted, “in the dark”, so to speak. This should absolutely be completely open, open to review and debate (as needed) so that the real “picture” could more easily be revealed. To do otherwise speaks loudly of the fragility of the process, and opens the door to calls of fraud and deceit.
Big Whoop!
I mean isn’t this what we’ve been saying all along. The climate is subject to normal and random variations. Warmists go to such great lengths to stretch everything to fit the AGW dogma, but as reasonable scientifically grounded intellectuals, we must see that there is no point in trying to rebut their assertions point for point lest we should enlist to the same madness. So this August was hot. It was sure hot here in California. So! Guess what, August 1987 was hotter. I very clearly reacall the week I spent sleeping in a tent at summer camp, when daytime temperatures were in the 100s. It doesn’t mean anything except what Anthony has asserted for so long, it is what it is.
In any debate it is important not to compromise your position by attempting to convey your points in someone else’s context. A hot August in no way shape or form contradicts the “normal variation” position. And while this would seem to also score a point for the Warmists, the fact that the months preceding August were so irregularly cold, the heating in August still goes further towards validating normal variation than it does AGW. Also keep in mind that many reporting agencies were inexplicibly in a heated rush to call a minor speck on the sun a sunspot recently . Many took this as a rush to dispel some theories about the suns role (imagine that) in alleged global warming. However again, justaposing new sunspots and a warmer August create a more compelling case for the natural variation crowd, than for the Warmists. So the “mania” ends up contradicting itself, and providing a well constructed case for the more rational thinkers. Good things happen when you stand firm in your beliefs.
Have you all heard that this year saw the second lowest Arctic Sea ice levels in recorded history, after last year. Sure you could also say that Arctic Sea ice levels are UP 9% from last year, but who would that scare.
DR,
I have done a little research. Hansen’s 2001 paper can be found here:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
Commenting on Hansen’s 2001 paper, Steve McIntyre had this to say,
“Indeed, a notable feature of the Hansen urban adjustment statistical method is that its efficacy is not actually demonstrated on a statistical data set of known properties, but is merely asserted and then implemented in an important practical setting – a practice that we’ve seen elsewhere in climate articles.” As you said, this is really bad science.
Positive and Negative Urban Adjustments
by Steve McIntyre on March 1st, 2008
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2815
Steve McIntyre did an audit of the 7364 stations in the GISS network. In this audit of the actual data Steve classified each station by the type of adjustmnet applied. The results are shown below.
… U.S. ROW Total
Negative 740 (39%) 1108 (20%) 1848 (25%)
Positive 1003 (52%) 1233 (23%) 2236 (30%)
“Bipolar” 324 (17%) 335 (6%) 659 (9%)
Subtotal:
Adjusted 1419 (74%) 2006 (37%) 3425 (47%)
Not Adjusted 353 (18%) 2220 (41%) 2573 (35%)
Not Used 149 (8%) 1217 (22%) 1366 (19%)
Total 1921 (100%) 5443 (100%) 7364 (100%)
The NASA negative adjustments *increase* the urbanization effects. What possible justification can there be for this?
“There are many striking aspects to the adjustment inventory.
First, 74% of all U.S. stations are adjusted, while only 37% of ROW stations are adjusted. This is a statistically significant difference by any measure. Is this because the ROW stations are, on average, located in more rural settings than in the US? Or is it because of a difference in methodology (or metadata)? While no one to my knowledge has carried out the engineering-quality investigations necessary to resolve the matter, my impression is that the US has made a fairly concerted effort to maintain weather stations in rural settings (Orland, Miles City etc.) and that many ROW stations are in cities and small towns (especially airports). Using a consistent apples-and-apples population classification, I would be very surprised if this very large difference between U.S. and ROW classifications held up.
Second, negative urban adjustments are not an exotic situation. In the ROW, there are almost the same number of negative adjustments as positive adjustments. In the U.S., there are about 50% more positive adjustments as negative adjustments – again a noticeable difference to the ROW. Some commenters on my Peruvian post seemed to think that negative urban adjustments were an oddball and very anomalous situation. In fact, that’s not the case, negative adjustments are nearly as common as positive adjustments. As such, extreme cases (such as Puerto Maldonado) need to be analyzed and explained. ”
Why is this not out and out fraud and scientific misconduct? Who is standing behind these guys?
Mike Ramsey
Derek D.,
The global sea ice coverage (arctic plus antarctic combined) is only running 2 million square kilometers below normal. That is a drop in the bucket.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Mike Ramsey
DR,
Thank you for the pointer to the paper comparing UAH and RSS Microwave Sounding Unit Derived Tropospheric Temperature data.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD008864.shtml
“Results indicate the greatest discrepancies were over time periods where NOAA-11 through NOAA-15 adjustments were applied to the raw LT data over land. Discrepancies in the LT channel are shown to be dominated by differences in diurnal correction methods due to orbital drift; however, discrepancies from target parameter differences are also present.Comparison of MSU data with the a reduce RATPAC radiosonde dataset indicates that RSS’s method (use of climate model) of determining diurnal effects is likely overestimating the correction in the LT channel. Diurnal correction signatures still exist in the RSS LT time series and are likely affecting the long term trend with a warm bias.”
UAH data
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.03Jan2008
is more accurate. Why hasn’t Remote Sensing Systems (Carl Mears) corrected its data?
Mike Ramsey
So it’s even worse than I thought, then. My bad. So UHI is like SHAP. As Al Gore once put it, “Everything that is supposed to be UP is DOWN and everything that is supposed to be DOWN is UP.”
I guess my mind just refused to retain such nonsense.
Is this because the ROW stations are, on average, located in more rural settings than in the US?
At a guess, it’s because US cities are, on average, better lighted.
Which factor alone would make a complete hash of the “lights equal” methodology.
evanjones,
Yes, this is not a pretty picture.
BTW, John Christy & David Douglass (citing the Randall & Herman paper) state the case for UAH MSU data being more accurate than the RSS MSU data and shows that the RSS MSU data contains a warming bias. See “Appendix A. Comparison of MSU and RSS” in http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
–Mike Jr
Leif Svalgaard (00:23:05) :
Figure (A1) seems to be correlation plot of smoothed values. If so, the R2 values are much to high [i.e. nonsense] as adjacent data points are not independent. This would [should!] never have passed peer-review [certainly not if I were a reviewer].
Leif,
Go back to the original data from
http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/jd0805/2007JD008864/
and look at
http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/jd0805/2007JD008864/2007jd008864-f01_enh.eps
Mike Ramsey
2nd consecutive summer with zero heatwave alerts in Britain. Astonishing.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Heatwave-alerts-stay-silent-for.4514147.jp
Dan wrote: “I am keeping a file of the most outrageous stories for future reference. Perhaps they can be served as a side dish with the crow that will need to be eaten in a few years.”
This is a great idea, not just for vengeance’s sake, but to create a cautionary document to be cited the next time hotheads go on a crusade–and to demonstrate the fallibility and worse of Science-as-an-institution.