by John Goetz
Update: Thanks to an email from John S. – a patron of climateaudit.org – we have learned that the Russian data in NOAA’s GHCN v2.mean dataset is corrupted. For most (if not all) stations in Russia, the September data has been replicated as October data, artificially raising the October temperature many degrees. The data from NOAA is used by GISS to calculate the global temperature. Thus the record-setting anomaly for October 2008 is invalid and we await the highly-publicised corrections from NOAA and GISS.
Update 2: The faulty results have been (mostly) backed out of the GISS website. The rest should be done following the federal holiday. GISS says they will update the analysis once they confirm with NOAA that the software problems have been corrected. I also removed the subtitles since the GISS data no longer reflects October as being the warmest ever.
GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISSTemp) released their monthly global temperature anomaly data for October 2008. Following is the monthly global ∆T from January to October 2008:
Year J F M A M J J A S O
2007 85 61 59 64 55 53 53 56 50 54
2008 14 25 62 36 40 32 52 39 50 78
Here is a plot of the GISSTemp monthly anomaly since January 1979 (keeping in line with the time period displayed for UAH). I have added a simple 12-month moving average displayed in red.
The addition of October has changed some of the temperatures for earlier months:
GISS 2008 J F M A M J J A S O
As of 9/08 14 25 62 36 40 29 53 50 49 ..
As of 10/08 14 25 62 36 40 32 52 39 50 78
The 0.78 C anomaly in October is the largest ever for October, and one of the largest anomalies ever recorded. Although North America was cooler than normal, Asia apparently suffered from a massive heat wave.
Also, after several months of being downgraded to a 0.61 C anomaly, 2005 has been lifted back to 0.62 C.
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An Inquirer said:
“The need for the UAH adjustment was due to the discovery of a phenomenon not previously explored – orbital decay.”
No, they had an arithmetic error in the formula they used to calculate the effect of orbital decay.
You think the GISS errors show “a continuation of sloppy and questionable practices”. What about an arithmetic error that goes uncorrected for 20+ years? What does that show?
I only brought this up to show the double standard that’s been applied here by posters who have said things like “GISSTemp should no longer be accepted in any peer reviewed paper!”.
I am not condemning UAH!!!! I only used it as an example because I know how much a lot of the posters here LOVE UAH. 😉
The fact is that ALL the data sets have had errors. I am sure they ALL will have more errors in the future.
The important thing is that they get corrected, right?
We like UAH because it operates in the clear.
Yes, the important thing is that the errors are corrected.
And while we’re at it, any agency that conceals any part of its procedures should be decertified and dismissed as non-science. Data. Algorithms. Operating Manuals. Code. After all, what reasonable person could possibly argue with that? GISS? NOAA? HadCRUT? Yoo-hooo!
Besides, how else will we be able to correct the errors?
Meanwhile, General Ripper, what about a nice spot of tea and the code?
[…] Via Headless Blogger comes this quote by Aussie blogger Andrew Bolt after an error was discovered in the GISS dataset for October. September was the hottest October ever recorded. Posted in Quote […]
I am unfamiliar with these studies, but is that bias quantifiable? If it is, it is correctable. And GISS and Hadley both take steps to do that.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008465.shtml
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/jgr07/M&M.JGR07-background.pdf
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v33/n2/p159-169/
And for good measure:
http://www.ejournal.unam.mx/atm/Vol21-2/ATM002100202.pdf
At Least Chris V has put a possible valid point across re satellite data complexities point taken from a die hard skep[tic
Chris V.-
Sorry, but you cannot compare the mathematical formula error that UAH had with this glaring and much more obvious error. Why did the UAH error take so long to find? Because it wasn’t very obvious. This GISS error was so obvious that it was discovered within 24 hours of GISS releasing their October numbers…and yet somehow their own people did not catch it.
There is no excusing it, this is an example of very poor quality control.
Smokey (12:35:04)
Not really, because Oct 2008 is not the 5th coldest over the entire data set. Also I posted when the headline of the thread stated GISS had it at the warmest ever. None the less I understand your intent.
What’s up? The data that was withdrawn from the GISS website last night until the mess will be sorted out seems to be back and the same as before?! The explanation at the beginning of the page that there are problems with data is removed and the graphs bear a text: “(Last modified: 2008-11-10)”. No, it’s not in my cache…
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.txt
What’s up? The data that was withdrawn from the GISS website last night until the mess will be sorted out seems to be back and the same as before?! The explanation at the beginning of the page that there are problems with data is removed and the graphs bear a text: “(Last modified: 2008-11-10)”. No, it’s not in my cache…
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
What’s up? The data that was withdrawn from the GISS website last night until the mess will be sorted out seems to be back and the same as before?! The explanation at the beginning of the page that there are problems with data is removed and the graphs bear a text: “(Last modified: 2008-11-10)”. No, it’s not in my cache…
Vincent Guerrini Jr (20:54:50) : Jorgen F: The Scandinavians have been quite smart about this whole AGW thing – except for Bert Bolin, and appointing Al Gore to be a Saint, they seem pretty canny, with Segalstad, Svensmark, Humlum, and others… must be all those years hands-on in the Arctic… seeing fluctuations every year…
The “Long Tail” of small mistakes that add up – Joe D’Aleo comments in What’s New and Cool (ICECAP) on the factors: “How about looking at the known warm biases… like a 66% station dropout, tenfold increase in missing data, little or no urbanization or land use change adjustment based on flawed science and bad siting. Even here in the US, recall Anthony Watts’ band of volunteers have found only 4% of the nearly 600 stations surveyed thus far met the government’s standards for ideal siting and 69% were poorly or very poorly sited.
It would be nice to see a piece of work that puts all these together clearly, Lomborg-style – or tell me if it already exists please!
Sorry for cross posting with Climate Audits’s thread…
Re my post at 01:58:26 – the data and maps are gone again from GISS site, though the explanation about errors in source data that was there yesterday is still missing?!
I couple of days ago in another thread I pointed out that GISTEMP had spiked before and hence this wasn’t particularly unusual or likely to persist. But the revelation of this error has made me think – has this happened before?
Looking at the monthly deltas of GISTEMP:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/derivative
there are some pretty big spikes in there, some even bigger than this month’s error.
OT
According to Spaceweather:
“New-cycle sunspot 1008 is growing rapidly. The sun is purple today because the picture was taken through a violet Calcium-K filter, which reveals bright magnetic froth around sunspots. Photo credit: David Leong of Hong Kong”
I wonder why the SOHO sun image link at the top right of this page has not been updated. Is this spot visible without the filter?
More october heatwaves in Siberia.
Maybe someone would like to check the situation for 2007 and 2005.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=2007&year2=2007&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=2005&year2=2005&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Just a quick note: Since GISS have now withdrawn the data I’ve also backed out the errored data from WFT; it seems only fair. Hence the plots above now won’t show Oct 2008; that’s the problem with dynamically generated graphs!
(but I did keep a copy for posterity 😉
The plots are for October 2007 and October 2005
I find it strange with these Octonber heat waves in Siberia previous years
In October 2000 there is a very strong heat wave in Murmansk.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=2000&year2=2000&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
In October 1999 there is a heat wave in central Siberia.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=1999&year2=1999&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Back in October 1997 Siberia was boiling 🙂
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=10&year1=1997&year2=1997&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Dotto,
That October 2007 graphic is telling. Wasn’t that huge anomaly precisely when the Arctic sea ice was making a historic comeback? Perhaps Hansen used this trick before and wasn’t caught.
I think there is more in it than just problems in October 2008. Looking back one finds relatively frequent heat waves in Siberia. Maybe there is a general problem with data from this region due to: large temperture drops in Sept-Oct transition, slow data fram Russia, very few measurement spots per area. All this results in high impact for Earth:s temperature.
Could someone who knows how to do it check for dupilcated tempertures in the areas and years seen in the plots above?
Hmmm I can’t seem to get the any GISS link to load. Did they shut down the website?
The “climate scientists” a couple of hundred years back weren’t all that honest either…
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/the-story-of-the-witchdoctor-and-his-climate-predictions
Enjoy!