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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Todays forecasts tells that we will have quite a cooling within 14 days:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/prog1.jpg
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/prog2.jpg
Explanation for the above:
Left column: Temperature anomaly for 10-17 nov
In the middle: Temperatures 10-17 nov.
Right column: Temperatures 18-26 nov
On the above you see that there are 8 coolings vs 1 warming region when going from 10-17nov to 18-26 nov.
I find it interesting that with all the technology available to us and all the money being spent we cannot get to a figure we can all agree on. Yet we are suppose to believe that scientists can figure out with total certainty what the temperature was a thousand years ago from looking at a few tree rings, sea shells and other proxies.
However does GISS manage to do these things?
Silly question. Try this little trick, courtesy of a November 5 posting at ICECAP’s Blogosphere column (sorry, no direct link).
http://icecap.us/index.php
In that post there’s an image in pdf format (listed below) that compares two GISS graphs, sort of a before and after comparison, showing the effect of the adjustments GISS makes. When you click on the link and the pdf file comes up, use your arrow keys to alternate between the two images. You can see how earlier temperatures are adjusted downward and more recent temps are adjusted upward. As the author notes, Hansen seems to be creating his own hockey stick.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NASATEMPS.pdf
GISS — what’s that stand for? Gore’s Institute for Silly Science?
“Near-surface air temperatures in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska were more than 7 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal and the warming extended well into higher levels of the atmosphere.”
(from the latest NSIDC press release)
Doesn’t seem to fit with this:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
(click on “Anomaly”)
Also, surface temperatures at Barrow were far from record-breaking at a mean of -5.1C
(compared with e.g. 1902 at -3.8C, 1911 at -2.7C, 1938 at -3.8C, or 1949 at -4.5C to name some much earlier Octobers that were milder, alongside many more recent ones)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.425700260000.1.1/station.txt
[ Of course, there’s also more urban heat effects these days, even at these high latitudes http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/HinkelEA-IJOC-03.pdf ]
I clicked on a station from Russia near the center of the huge temp anomalie (link posted by Bill Illis)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.222300540001.1.1/station.txt
A third of that data in the monthly set is 999.9 (which I assume means it is missing).
I suspect the problem is that the GISS “algore-ithm is actually adding in the 999.9 as if it was real data.
How can Hansen be so out of step with the other data sets and the common sense observations? This past October was simply not that warm, whether one considers the general impression of weather reports or the satellite data. We will no doubt see the news media and the politicians pick up Hansen’s extreme without consideration of the other data sets.
Well guess what?. On some days here in North Wales (UK) it was really cold in October and on some other days it wasn’t. But that’s only weather.
However, if its warm in Siberia its climate according to GISS. Are they credible anymore?
Hi Leon,
How long before the “Equatorial Global Warming Measurement Project” is initiated with the steady installation of new temperature stations along the equator that are then averaged over the world ground station data set.
A 10 year program that would provide a convenient method to keep the warmists happy.
(Just joking).
Well that’s interesting! The first station I click on in the “offending” dark orange area of Russia has a mean temperature of 8.1C for October. That’s pretty damn warm for 65.8 degrees north! And appears to beat the previous record by an impressive 7.5C. Except….. the mean temperature for September was also 8.1C. Coincidence?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222234720005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Hmm, better check with its neighbour. Oh dear, it’s also well into positive numbers at 6.9C, way way way over previous years. OK I’m truly alarmed for the first time. The first station’s figure must have been correct. Except…. The second station had a figure of 6.9C for September too. Double coincidence?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222235520002&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Silly question …
I’m facing a religious problem.
I do not know how to express my feelings.
Let us pray
GISS:
…and forgive us our trespasses,(emissions)
…but deliver us from CO2.
Maybe one day, will be compulsory in schools from around globe.
FM
Also Cryosphere Today ice maps from October show noticeably less ice over Northern Asia than previous years.
RussS asked for a comparison of GISTEMP with satellite. Here’s the unsmoothed data of GISTEMP and RSS (baselines adjusted):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/plot/rss
and the same smoothed:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12
Two things to note:
1) There have been times when GISTEMP has been way higher than RSS before, and vice versa
2) On average they track fairly well together.
I think this is probably a one or two-month blip, but given its magnitude granted it’s interesting to speculate on why it might be in terms of on-the-ground reality…
I have the perfect “win-win”
Obama should appoint Hansen to an Adminstration post.
He can publish the monthly GDP numbers.
Dow 15,000, here we come!
Bruce
Really interesting idea. Is there some way to get the data from the different measurements stations. The link you provided seem to be dead.
A previous occasion when GISTEMP went wild for a short time:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1994/to:1997/offset:-0.24/plot/rss/from:1994/to:1997
I hate to say this, but I fear science is not involved. This amounts to unmitigated gall. I feel it is pure propaganda.
I have become such a cynic that I believe they had two sets of data: One would be released if Republicans won, and another if Democrats won.
I confess I have no evidence to substantiate such a suspicion, but the way they re-re-re-re-adjust data just makes my stomach turn. Have they no shame?
OK, I’ve found 5 more Russian stations with Oct 08 mean temp identical to that of Sep 08. I don’t know how to react except by laughing. I mean, here we are in the 21st century, using the most incredible technology to communicate with each other around the world, in an era where we can send probes to Mars and watch videos on a mobile phone. And yet…… we’re wasting our time having to spot ridiculous errors in a simple database used to track mere surface temperature recordings?
My last comment (16:26) followed on from an earlier one, but the earlier one looks like it may have vanished? Just in case it doesn’t re-appear, here it is again:
Well that’s interesting! The first station I click on in the “offending” dark orange area of Russia has a mean temperature of 8.1C for October. That’s pretty damn warm for 65.8 degrees north! And appears to beat the previous record by an impressive 7.5C. Except….. the mean temperature for September was also 8.1C. Coincidence?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222234720005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Hmm, better check with its neighbour. Oh dear, it’s also well into positive numbers at 6.9C, way way way over previous years. OK I’m truly alarmed for the first time. The first station’s figure must have been correct. Except…. The second station had a figure of 6.9C for September too. Double coincidence?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222235520002&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit forwarded me an email from John S. that said:
Steve did a spot check on some Russian sites and…sure enough…John S. is correct!!!
I will need to do some more research tonight to see if the source is GISS, NOAA, or the Russian Meteo.
I apologize for being slow here. I had leg surgery recently which has, literally, slowed me down some.
I had to walk out of the opening general session of a wildfire conference in Tampa this past week when, during an “expert” panel discussion, the gentleman from NOAA announced that the wildfires in Alaska will most assuredly become larger and more frequent over the next century, due mainly to the 20°F rise in temperature, caused, of course, by AGW. (The rest of the world is going to burn to cinders from AGW, too, but Alaska’s temps are, apparently, going to equal sub-Saharan Africa… Nevermind that almost a century of intensive fire suppression and unscientific forest management practices [Read: Zero logging in fire-suppressed forests] have been scientifically proven to be the de facto reasons for increased fire intensity and severity, along with the vastly-increased wildland/urban interface areas, across the US & Canada.)
During the course of the next few days, I talked to a number of fellow
pyromaniacsfire professionals who just shook their heads in disgust at the unmitigated, unsubstantiated AGW fear-mongering by the NOAA representative. We’ll keep on doing our parts to try to help keep the citizens of the U.S. safe from wildfires and Anthropogenic Global Cooling™ by continuing to do what we do best— Burning the woods and adding millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. 🙂Keep up the great work, Anthony [snip]
During September I was looking regularly on the wetteronline.de weather prediction maps of Asia and Northern Amerika in order to find out why certain parts of the Arctic sea were gaining some much ice extent so rapidly.
The biggest gains in ice extent happened along the Siberian coast, temperatures there were much colder than in northern Alaska. Also, there was a lot of snow falling in Siberia during October, more than last year. See the UIUC ice extent maps.
All this is inconsistent with the GISS October map mentioned here.
In contrast, Russia up to Ural quite often had considerably warmer temperatures than Germany.
My best guess is they made an honest mistake like the one suggested by Bruce.
Wow, I can’t believe GISS would make the mistake of carrying over September’s Russian numbers into October (if that indeed is what happened)…that certainly would explain the huge area of ridiculous warmth (up to 13.7C above normal, apparently, lol) over Siberia – no doubt greatly contributed to the warm GISS number for October.
As several of us have been saying, temperatures that warm would simply not support the rapid ice/snow growth seen in that area over the past month.
Russ asked:
“Can you over lay the GISS plot with the Satellite plot, to show the difference?”
Here’s another one, comparing GISS, Hadley, UAH, and RSS:
http://cce.890m.com/giss-vs-all.jpg
Once you get past the short-term noise, there isn’t a heckuva lot of difference between them.
How anyone can claim that GISS is somehow fudging their data is beyond me.
Quite simply, there is an input error.
In completing random check of the cities in warm area, every city with October 2008 data has identical data for both October and September:
Moskva 10.9 both months
Kraznojarsk 8.6 both months
Turuhansk 8.1 both months
Tarko-Sale 6.9 both months
Bor 8.1 both months
These were just the first five I’ve checked. I did also look at data in the US (St. Louis) and France (Dijon), and these appear to be actual temperatures.
Given that they are using September temperature readings for October, it is no surprise that they are getting such a large positive anomaly. I would be interested in finding out if there is an efficient way to notify NASA of these errors, so that they can correct their number.
You all know I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but could this be a sneaky way to set up the BO presidency with an urgent need to regulate CO2?