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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evanjones: Never attribute to conspiracy what one may attribute to idiocy.
Remarkably similar to my “Never attribute to conspiracy, that which can be accounted for by incompetence.”
Either I read this somewhere, and forgot enough to lose the source; or its a universal truth.
I agree. Its such an elemental error, that it has to be a simple mistake.
It does warm my heart, though, to see Hanson’s name attached to it.
[REPLY – Many variations. An oldie but a goodie. ~ Evan]
[Reply 2: Never assume malice when stupidity will explain it ~ my variation, charles the moderator.]
I wonder. If the oceans are getting colder, where is the heat going? Is it evenly and well distributed in the atmosphere? Does it evenly dissipate into our outer atmosphere and beyond? Given that nothing else we have finally seen pictures of, I doubt it. Warm air escaping from cooling oceans likely swirl and glob over the land masses before finally loosing energy to the upper atmosphere and beyond. It is not out of reality’s realm to consider that dissipating warm ocean air can ride the wind to warm different parts of the planet before eventually leaving altogether and leading to global cooling. But at first, it probably starts with uneven application, just like CO2, ozone, etc.
Hey ej, that bird you’re holdin’ is pinin’ for the apparently warm fjords.
============================================
It should be simple to find the error source. The NCDC, Hadley and GISS all use NOAA data.
If everyone has the same tropical October, its the NOAA. If only GISS has palm tree October, then its GISS.
This is assuming that the NOAA is the clearing house for foreign data, as well as domestic.
Well, its beau’iful plumage is blue with cold.
ning,
That the climate changes, I conclude, cool. I love the seasons. According to my study, the Earth’s climate has never remained constant, especially to the tenth of a degree, the last four billion years.
You are here to save us from climate change. Are you sure you really want this? What to you is the perfect global temperature? And in light of the geological record, how do we prevent the climate from changing. Start geo-engineering the atmosphere? Surely you don’t think spending trillions to try to manipulate 0.000002 ppv of our atmosphere of CO2 would create a tipping point.
We can’t hardly even measure this, can we? Hang out with some other people, eh?
And you are saying that we need to reduce our output of CO2 by how many 100 thousandths ppv? Have you not ran the calcs?
GISS uses the GHCN v2 data. I have confirmed that the GHCN data from NOAA is the problem. Thus we should be complaining about NOAA quality control issues rather than GISS quality control issues.
It’s eminently possible for land temperature in the northern hemisphere to get out of whack with the ocean temperatures after a La Nina year because atmospheric moisture levels take a dive during the La Nina. Then, when the northern hemisphere has summer, there is a greater than usual reduction in cloud cover. Result is more than usual heating of the atmosphere over the land masses. China and Russia get lots of sunshine.
Meanwhile the thing that has caused the La Nina, an increase in cloud cover south of the Equator continues, the southern hemisphere has a very cold winter and when the northern summer ends the ocean is found to have lost energy. Then, watch out because the swing to cold may catch you short of heating oil.
If the tropics are cold the supply of moisture streaming to high latitudes may not be enough to give an outstanding snow fall.
All very well. And I do not question your theory.
But the other metrics don’t see it, and it looks as if there might have been a rather embarrassing data error involved. So I think we need to take a wait-and-see attitude here.
–Just noticed. JG sayeth it’s an NOAA screwup.
BTW, for purposes of clarification, I am NOT username “EJ”, although those are my initials.
I do have other problems with how GISS records monthly mean temperatures over in Russia. Generally, the US and Western European GISS mean temps correlate pretty well with the mean temperatures that publicly available. Here’s a comparison between WeatherUnderground and GISS mean monthly temps for a couple random cities:
Dijon, France
Oct. 10 10.2
Sept. 13 13.8
Aug 18 18.6
Jul 19 19.8
Jun 17 17.8
May 15 15.9
St. Louis WU GISS
Oct. 14 14.6
Sept. 21 21.8
Aug 24 24.8
Jul 26 26.3
Jun 25 24.9
May 17 17.3
And then here are the comparisons between the two for a couple of Russian cities in Centigrade:
Moscow WU GISS
Oct. 7 10.9
Sept. 10 10.9
Aug 17 17.5
Jul 18 19.1
Jun 14 15.6
May 10 11.3
Krasnoyarsk, Russia
WU GISS
Oct. 3 8.6
Sept. 8 8.6
Aug 14 15.2
Jul 17 18.8
Jun 16 18.0
May 8 9.5
We now know that the October temps are just wrong, but why are all of GISS’s mean temperatures 1-2 degrees higher? Given that data from Russia result in a huge part of the temperature anomaly over the past 22 months, it seems to me that it may be due to this discrepancy. Any thoughts?
But wait; it gets even stranger. Erbogacen at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.222248170006.1.1/station.txt is missing Sept, but has Oct
Year Sep Oct
2000 4.7 -7.9
2001 4.6 -4.0
2002 5.7 -5.8
2003 6.4 -5.0
2004 5.8 -4.3
2005 7.3 -3.9
2006 6.1 -8.9
2007 5.8 -2.6
2008 999.9 5.0
The 5.0 would make more sense in Sept than Oct. And change my earlier question to how does one get all the NOAA/GHCN data in one download.
I hope we all know too that man could cease all output of CO2 and the atmospheric CO2 could still rise, at the same rate, prior to the demise of mankind. We killed ourselvses for no reason.
Reason is a good word to ponder here.
Nothing new here. GISS trend has been running ahead of everyone else for some time. For this year through October, regressing GISS gives nearly twice the positive slope of RSS. For whatever reason, this is a consistent pattern over the years. NASA would do well do address this credibility problem. But alas I suspect that fear of charges of ‘muzzling’ and ‘interfering with the integrity (sic) of the scientific process,’ not to mention reprisals from Congress, rule out any rationalization of what everyone knows is a corrupt result.
Good, informative blog. Keep it up.
ning, you’re making the exact same mistake (By design?) that the AGW profits, er, prophets are making when you attempt to correlate increased wildfire activity across North America with
“anthropogenic global warming”“anthropogenic climate change”— Correlation, no matter how unproven, does NOT equate to causation.The mythological creature that goes by the name of “anthropogenic
global warmingclimate change” has, in no way whatsoever, been scientifically proven* to be a significant, nor even minor, contributing factor to the progressively increasing wildfire activity that we’ve been seeing over the past few decades.If you know anything about fuel loading in the wildland fire environment, (and the history of fire suppression in the US & Canada) you know that the fuel loading (grasses, shrubs, trees, houses, businesses, etc.) across just about all biomes in North America have been increasing, sometimes exponentially, since plants don’t propagate in a linear progression. (Look up the spread of exotic invasive plants species, as an example. Once a “tipping point” is reached, the population explodes.) Widespread fire suppression, poor forest management practices and dramatically increased wildland/urban interface (humans moving into non-urban areas) are THE proven overwhelming factors in the increased wildfire activity. Period.
*Note: Any modeling based on Algore’s & Hansen’s data doesn’t count. It has to be boots-on-the-ground, hard data to be considered “scientifically proven”. The Biggest & Baddest™ “UberFuelModels” have failed miserably when put to the test in the real world. The actual experts in Southern California had to give the modelers the bad news recently. (The researchers had to give the “Please don’t sue us, model makers!” disclaimer at the conference before they revealed to us that the models they’d used in their studies had taken the dive into oblivion.)
Now, back to those balmy Siberian Indian Summer beach parties on the Arctic ice floes! Surf’s up! (That WAS the topic of this post before I swerved OT, wasn’t it?)
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.
–The Fantastiks
[…] the post and comments atWatts Up With That for […]
John Goetz: your
GISS uses the GHCN v2 data. I have confirmed that the GHCN data from NOAA is the problem. Thus we should be complaining about NOAA quality control issues rather than GISS quality control issues.
Technically, I agree.
But, in business, if one of my suppliers makes a mistake, my client does not sympathize with ME. Rather, he blames me.
Rightly so. I should have checked the product before sending it out.
“Any modeling based on Algore’s & Hansen’s data doesn’t count. It has to be boots-on-the-ground, hard data to be considered “scientifically proven”. The Biggest & Baddest™ “UberFuelModels” have failed miserably when put to the test in the real world.”
Seven-six-eleven-five-nine-an’-twenty mile to-day –
Four-eleven-seventeen-thirty-two the day before –
Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!
There’s no discharge in the war!
–Kipling
I think anything associated with Hansen & co. should be tossed out as unreliable.
They have too much money and political power at stake to be credible.
The world data is telling us very different data:
Ice refreezing at record rates in the north, glaciers accumulating mass, and temps down.
Yet here is this GISS graph, with crazy numbers?
I smell more of Hansen’s back filling to jsutify the desired answer.
Walter Dnes:
My guess is that Hanson’s averaging algorithm put in a value of 5 degrees, for Erbogacen, based on neighboring stations.
If the neighbors were 5 degrees for Sept, then the algorithm would insert that value for Erbogacen for September, to replace 999.9, and that would also be the misplaced value for October.
So GISS have used Asia’s SEPTEMBER averages for October. In so doing, have falsely created a massively high October anomaly….
It’s amazing that GISS could make such simple mistake. To just take a massive Oct. anomoly of .078c without pause for thought…. Is to realize that these people are blinded by their own bias.
Anthony: in a post by Patrick K (19:09:38) :, he shows consistently higher temps for selected cities, when comparing GISS to Weather Underground.
Does not Hanson claim to account for UHI? It wouldn’t appear so, based on that limited sample. Quite the opposite, in fact.
off topic… but of interest.
The Sun Shows Signs of Life
After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life. “I think solar minimum is behind us,” says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. “Last month we counted five sunspot groups,” he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. “This represents a real increase in solar activity.”
I applaud John S. for identifying the source of the problem so quickly. I personally was surprised by the anomaly and by the magnitude of change in central Asia, but I did not actually look at the underlying data as John S. did. People like John S. constantly humble me and my abilities to dig the truth from data.
But the “Russian problem” still doesn’t explain the UK discrepancy (comment #1). 🙂