After GISS’s embarrasing error with replicating September temperatures in the October analysis, the NASA GISTEMP website was down for awhile today (at least for me).
This evening, the new gridded data was posted, and I generated a world temperature anomaly map with the new data. It clearly has some changes in it from the previous erroneous version.
See below:
GISTEMP 11-12-08 – Click for larger image
You can plot your own here at this link to GISTEMP’s map maker
Now compare the above corrected version with the erroneous one below:
GISTEMP 11-11-08
I’m sorry for the small map, as I was traveling during much of this debacle, and was not able to be online much at all. This one above comes courtesy of Kate at SDA who saved one (thanks Kate).
Note the bottom scale, the top end on the erroneous one was 13.7°C, while the corrected one tops out at 8°C. That alone should have set off alarm bells at GISS. Personally, I don’t believe the 8°C anomaly either, since much of the Russian weather data is suspect to start with, and the data distribution is sparse.
So far, no mention of the new data beyond this yesterday at the NASA GISS news page:
2008-11-11: Most data posted yesterday were replaced by the data posted last month since it looks like some mishap might have occurred when NOAA updated their GHCN data. We will postpone updating this web site until we get confirmation from NOAA that their updating programs worked properly. Because today is a Federal Holiday, some pages are still showing yesterday’s data.
We live in interesting times.
jcbmack (03:21:59) Here’s another clue to their discomfort with you. Your basic argument seems to be that the science is ‘settled’. Some of those guys, whether they will publicly admit it or not, are beginning to wonder if the science really is as settled as you believe and that many of them still think. This prolonged period, where temperature has not risen, and has started to fall, really makes no sense in the CO2=AGW paradigm. Gavin Schmidt himself has said something along the lines of if the cooling continues for another decade they may have to rethink things. Here’s a thought problem for you. Why does two decades of temperature not rising make such a big difference when one decade does not?
One of the biggest questions I have about this whole mess is why don’t the warmers even make the slightest effort to question their assumptions in the face of falling temperatures? Much too much energy is wasted on the effort to find continuing justification for the CO2=AGW paradigm in the face of evidence to the contrary. The simplest, most elementary, act of the scientist is to wonder. You don’t, and the true believers don’t. You are missing out on the most wonderful mystery of our age, and frightening yourself with ignorance.
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Comment #219, by Jonathon, at RealClimate’s Mountain and Molehill thread is worth a read.
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Go kim! And thanks JCB-of-the-many-consecutive-RC-posts for provoking the normally brief and rather elusive kim into one of the most revealing and interesting expressions of her take on the AGW “debate”
btw kim I think (hope) i posted my thanks for your ealier comments about me, but i’m worried that the post either failed, i forgot, or it got lost/buried amongst the recent mountains of other posts!
Chris (10:04:05) Oh, yes, I noticed, and you are welcome. I’ll never forget your laugh as you finally figured out what had happened.
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[…] anomaly – “It’s all pipes!” 15 11 2008 As most readers know by now, the problematic GISTEMP global temperature anomaly plot for October is heavily weighted by temperatures from weather stations in […]
The warmers are wrong because they’ve exaggerated the sensitivity of climate to CO2.
After all the dust has settled it does seem to come down to that. And to zero in precisely, it’s the question of feedback amplification.
Few skeptics would deny – any – CO2 effect at all. Yet few on the warming side would argue that direct effect of CO2 alone is tremendously significant.
It’s all about whether CO2 is the domino that triggers feedback loops.
Are positive feedback loops running the show or not?
Is it a row of dominoes that will bring down the house? Or just one lone domino falling noiselessly in the forest?
Here is a satellite infrared image that shows small fires in Russia.
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/photos/satex/nooa_avhrr/hotspot_4b.jpg
The red areas with plumes are the fires, but St Petersburg is the same shade red because of UHI.
I think we need alot more pictures like this one.
Here are some pictures from the Urban Heat Island Pilot Project. It includes an infrared image of Sacremento.
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd20nov98_1.htm
This is good… WUWT is mentioned in the following article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml
Kim, I enjoy reading your responses… My confidence stems from knowing that warming is actually occuring, from the majority of data sets, current (2008) and past, no, not just a reliance upon NOAA or NASA. I know I know what I am talking about, however, I do believe that Hansen is overstating things; Gavin’s interview in Scientific American indicates (as do his more conservative realclimate responses) reveals he and many others have more conservative views than Hansen and a few others. Also if you see my posts you will also see I am not denying that a volcano eruption (or two) could seriously offset warming trends and one of enough magnitude (and placement) could even drive another ice age. When I have more time I will post and display evidence of global warming due to green house gases; predominately from humankind’s activities. This is one reason I rely upon so many sources which I read thoroughly and examine in light of all the resources available to me. The issue on realclimate is real simple, most of the people who shout stop gobal warming do not understand the science; nor is there a denial that errors occur. To his credit, however (Hansen) he has made accurate predictions in the past and he is not wrong about the detriments about CO2 and water vapor feedbacks. (what occurs as opposed to magnitude)
The biological (ecological, niches) observations and the changes in ocean chemistry (besides doomsayer predictions) and the extinction of animal species and the changes in lemming populations due to snow types and patterns (this months issue of Nature) and the increased incidence (and prevalence) of cancers from environmental toxins, and ozone layer depletion (which was predicted to be repaired by 2000, but was not due to changes in atmospheric conditions; more on that in a separate post) along with CO2 SO2, SO3 CH4 and so forth; their contributions… plant life is being teased and localized carrying capacity is being changed due to slashing and burning, plant life releasing CO2, and plant life not adapting (exceptions exist, but the overall is a net effect of CO2 release increases , not absorption) as well as was at first hypothesized. The models have holes and limitations; the vertical ice in the artic gets thicjer due to increased precipitation, this is old news; weather systems tend to move west to east, irrespective of wind direction; dynamic equilibrium is not the same as equilibrium; as factors and environmental conditions change there will be negative feedbacks as well as, positive, and the models do not factor in enough negative, however, the net warming is empirical, not mainly from the models, therefore, the industrial era ushered in the now o.6-1.1 or so degree warming; global mean, not localized chaotic weather patterns, though some of these has changed indeed, as people in the field making observations will tell you.
Kim if you are no longer elusive then I have done my job:)
The trouble they give me at realclimate is a pleasure, as it gives me a chance to educate.
We are cooling, jcbmack, for how long, even kim doesn’t know.
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The cooloing is a short term phenomena; the gobal mean is still warmer ans the statistical paramaters over the longer term are still accurate in showing such warming… the precipitation in the artic is temporary and will reverse and has been known about for many years and taken into consideration. Just as different altitude clouds, LW and SW absorptions reflection and ice cover changes which further influence such activities; the models here, have wiggles, mutliple ensemble combinations and then to further accuracy, the older 3 and six box models depict accurate readings that the more advanced models neglect (the more complex an artificial system; elcetronic especially, the more can go wrong,or become overlooked) AOS princton online has interesting information as do several other research and training univeristies, ivy league and otherwise (Harvard for example) independent of NASA and the NOAA;; therefore, when research, observations, models, and so forth validate global warming trends, outside of political agendas and with their own data, this strongly supports the 30n year data or so.
In my own observations and reviews of the literature, it has become clear that something is happening to the oceans due to global climate change’s influence on ocean chemistry, and that overall we have witnessed an amazing amount of melting of the polar ice caps, near extinction of many species of animals and plants due to warming and some dimming (global cooling) which is due to the fluxes in ghg’s and aerosols, (black carbon) and the weather events themselves, even if ‘natural,’ they have worked antagonistically and agnoistically with human’s burning of fossil fuels; the fossil fuel chemistry and interactions is well known, more causally than you might think; the ocean- atmospheric dynamics are complex, however, the picture has become far clearer; no the globe is not cooling, we still have sa warming trend, however even when transietn cooling occurs, it does not negate warming, and dimming has been known about and worked with for quite some time as well. What is a fact and not in dispute at all, is that the ozone layer is still depleted, and increased UV light exposure is leading to more skin cancer cases, and the ghg’s are contributing to more asthma related morbidity and mortality; in the last 30 years the globe has significantly warmed, and the air we breathe has increased incidence and prevalence of lung cancer. CO2
The cooloing is a short term phenomena; the gobal mean is still warmer ans the statistical paramaters over the longer term are still accurate in showing such warming… the precipitation in the artic is temporary and will reverse and has been known about for many years and taken into consideration. Just as different altitude clouds, LW and SW absorptions reflection and ice cover changes which further influence such activities; the models here, have wiggles, mutliple ensemble combinations and then to further accuracy, the older 3 and six box models depict accurate readings that the more advanced models neglect (the more complex an artificial system; elcetronic especially, the more can go wrong,or become overlooked) AOS princton online has interesting information as do several other research and training univeristies, ivy league and otherwise (Harvard for example) independent of NASA and the NOAA;; therefore, when research, observations, models, and so forth validate global warming trends, outside of political agendas and with their own data, this strongly supports the 30n year data or so.
In my own observations and reviews of the literature, it has become clear that something is happening to the oceans due to global climate change’s influence on ocean chemistry, and that overall we have witnessed an amazing amount of melting of the polar ice caps, near extinction of many species of animals and plants due to warming and some dimming (global cooling) which is due to the fluxes in ghg’s and aerosols, (black carbon) and the weather events themselves, even if ‘natural,’ they have worked antagonistically and agnoistically with human’s burning of fossil fuels; the fossil fuel chemistry and interactions is well known, more causally than you might think; the ocean- atmospheric dynamics are complex, however, the picture has become far clearer; no the globe is not cooling, we still have sa warming trend, however even when transietn cooling occurs, it does not negate warming, and dimming has been known about and worked with for quite some time as well. What is a fact and not in dispute at all, is that the ozone layer is still depleted, and increased UV light exposure is leading to more skin cancer cases, and the ghg’s are contributing to more asthma related morbidity and mortality; in the last 30 years the globe has significantly warmed, and the air we breathe has increased incidence and prevalence of lung cancer. CO2 does have a lag phase and the 380 ppm, even if we really agressively lower it today, we still face consequences for years to come.
Oh and as noted in realclimate and discussed on pbs.org, and several reseacrh websites, the models predict a slow melting, in the artic and currently there is still some melting in atrtic regions; so the cooling is not even universal in this region… and as already noted, the global warming average and artic melting average are both net effects.
jcbmack (13:57:54) :
Did you mean to use the plural?
Also, I’d be interested in the literature citation showing “global climate change’s influence on ocean chemistry” .
John M. the oceans and the atmosphere are more of a coupled system; the changes in atmospheric conditions effect ocean absorption of heat, Co2 levels and so forth influence this; local warming (or cooling) as awell as global are cycles, rather than only one effecting the other (global climate change effecting oceans and their chemistry, or oceans interacting to effect winds and temp gradients etc…) they both interact and as the biomass and diversty in the ocean changes, so too does carbon cycling trends and chemical compisitions and diveristy in the oceans.
Oh yes, I meant plural… it is not simple that this causes global climate change or this does… it is, of course, the synergy. As CO2 rises with other GHG’S and more radiation is trapped in even in lieu of increased cloud formation, the bodies of water which have high heat capacities, reach limits of how much q can be absorbed before their temperature rises; as a result some aquatic life adapt, some need so such adaptation as of yet, others get sick and die; also the absorptions of about 33% CO2, leads to changes in the ph of the ocean, and carbonic acid may form. Aside from CO2, however, just the changes in temperature and some wind trends (and the coupling of advection and convection;) influences aquatic life chemistry as well.
The Changing Ocean Carbon Cycle By Roger Brian Hanson, J. G. Field, Hugh William Ducklow,
Joint Global Ocean Flux StudyBiology of the Southern Ocean By George A.
Knox
Climate Change and Northern Fish Populations By Richard James Beamish, National Research Council Canada, Canada Dept. of Fisheries
Climate Change 2007 By Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Susan Solomon, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel
jcbmack, climate sensitivity to CO2 is undetermined. My guess is that it is variable.
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Climate sensitivity still needs to be worked out quantitaitevly, to be sure; you are correct, however, besides the indirect proxy data and GCM’s, we have more eomirical research showing global teasing by pollutants, rainforests at the equator being destroyed and more CO2 being given off. The 350 ppm or slightly below goal, may not be very realistic, but that is an accurate median figure in regards to the gateway to more dangerous CO2 levels, increased rate of global wamring and resultant sea level rise. We may have not reached peak carrying capacity, but the GHG’s and the indistrialization of China and India are not helping matters. Humans can adapt to quite a lot, but we should not always test the limits before we do something.
Here’s something highly amusing and revelatory. First note my comment above on 11/15 at 09:07:27, calling attention to a comment #219 by a Jonathan in the ‘Mountains and Molehills’ thread on RealClimate. Note that subsequently at RealClimate several people criticized Jonathan. Now see post #295 by FredB there sneering at Jonathan. Now look at comment #441 by Jonathan at Climate Audit in the ‘Is Gavin Schmidt Honest’ thread. The story Jonathan tells captures the fundamental dishonesty of Real Climate in all its glory.
jcbmack (14:03:54) Don’t you think we should figure out climate sensitivity to CO2 before we demonize carbon, impoverish half the world to below its present subsistence living, and wreak havoc on the economies of the rest of the world? The effects of which you speak may be caused by past warming, but you have no proof that that warming was from CO2. Besides, the globe is cooling now, for how long, even kim doesn’t know.
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From Richard111 (00:56:06) :
Why is latest data allowed to “adjust” previous data?
Because if it didn’t you would never be able to see the global warming!!!! You see, if the present data show no change from the prior data then the *fact* that we’ve warmed would be obscured so we must adjust the old temperatures until it shows up!!!
(Ouch. I think I just sprained my tongue on my cheek…)
From Neil Fisher (15:25:55) :
Don’t forget everyone – we are not only talking about deviation from average, but that average is the average of max and min. Therefore, increasing minimums can appear to create the same issues as increasing maximums. In fact, the maximum can drop and the average still go up –
From jcbmack (13:58:43) :
The cooloing is a short term phenomena; the gobal mean is still warmer ans the statistical paramaters over the longer term are still accurate in showing such warming
For both of these I have one question: Just, exactly, what is the meaning of “global mean temperature”? How is it different from the Global Mean Telephone Number or the Global Mean Shoe Color?
My first and largest issue with the whole global warming thesis is that it is based on the notion that taking two extremes of temperature during a day and averaging them together, then averaging together a varying number of these averages scattered over space, then averaging many of these averages over many days; that this has any meaning whatsoever.
The *fiction* that global mean temperature has any meaning at all is broken. If lows drop 10 degrees and highs rise 10 degrees everywhere, it says “nothing happened”. If Siberia gets 10 degrees warmer but Sahara gets 10 degrees colder, nothing happened. If Sahara gets 20 degrees warmer, but Siberia only gets 15 degrees colder, we have Global Warming!!! And if lows rise 10 degrees but highs drop 8 degrees, we have Global Warming!!! even though it’s cooler.
And to top it all off, the actual temperature data are fudged in strange and mysterious ways to “interpolate” it (as defined above – i.e. make fiction…).
So we build this house of cards on a foundation of sand.
BTW, the wind chill forecast for Orlando Florida tonight is 26F – 29F. Yup, it sure is warm… :-‘) Add the ‘snow’ in Sydney, the snow in N. island New Zealand, the 10 degrees below average for most days in Fairbanks Alaska, the list goes on and on. Google “2008 record cold snow” and stand back! But I’m sure it’s just global local weather… yeah, right.
jcbmack, this is *not* just a short term weather thing. Its a 200 year cycle of solar output. The AGW side just measured one small part of the cycle and projected it linearly into the future. A common form of error, but completely unacceptable. There is also a 1500 year cycle that makes for even more cold, but the last time this happened was Bond Event 1 and the Dark Ages… (See: “Unstoppable Global Warming! Every 1500 Years”).
The good news is that we are headed for at least a Dalton Minimum type event (1800 and froze to death) starting now and for the next 30 years or so. That will kill the AGW thesis, hopefully before too much damage is done to civilization. The bad news is that we are at just the right distance from Bond Event 1 that this could be Bond Event Zero; a thought that is scary. During the last one we had the fall of the dominant empire and most civilization along with the deaths of millions.
The better news is that more folks are catching on to the notion that the Sun did it -AND- are showing the mechanisms.
From the wiki:
In orbits, the angular momentum is distributed between the spin of the planet itself and the angular momentum of its orbit:
Ltotal = Lspin + Lorbit;
If a planet is found to rotate slower than expected, then astronomers suspect that the planet is accompanied by a satellite, because the total angular momentum is shared between the planet and its satellite in order to be conserved.
end wiki.
So, using sun / planet rather than planet /moon, as the large planets get closer to the sun, and the sun to the barycenter of the solar system, the sun has to spin faster to conserve angular momentum. This, since the sun is not a solid, lets the sun flatten and the equator rotate faster than the poles. This modulates solar output and sunspots. That then modulates (via several things including total radiance and mag field flux variations) cosmic ray density and cloud formation leading to weather changes on earth.
The last time the sun / planet / barycenter configuration was like now was the Dalton Minimum. (See: Charvatova “Can origin of the 2400-year cycle of Solar Activity be Caused by Solar Inertial Motion”).
That the planet configurations can be mapped to the cycles of solar output and sunspots is shown by: I.R.G. Wilson in his paper from The Australian Institute of Physics 17th national congress of 2006. He shows that several of the major sun cycles are the same as sidebands of the jovian periods.
The point? That “the sun did it” is well attested, matches the current temperature trends quite well (unlike AGW), has passed the test of prediction (see: Landscheidt several papers and predictions made 20 years in advance including “New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming? ) and has both well supported theoretical AND physical solar observation evidence that is consistent. AGW has a computer aided fantasy and phony data. Think about it.
So the really good news is that we are in a race condition between the solar cycle heading us into a Very Cold Time (“The Al Gore Cold Period” 😉 driven by a record low sunspot number (The Landscheidt Minimum, since he predicted it) and the AGW Mania heading us into a global economic meltdown. Oh Joy. And I’m hoping that the little ice age gets here quicker…
At least we have a known time interval. Solar cycle 24 will peak about 2012 and we get very very cold about 10 years from now. Hopefully not too much damage can be done by 10 years of AGW hysteria and/or 2009-10 are cold enough to kill it in this cycle. What a choice.
For further evidence of jovian planets influencing the sun, also see:
Long-term variations in solar differential rotation and sunspot activity
J Javaraiah
L Bertello
R K. Ulrich
ABSTRACT:
The solar equatorial rotation rate, determined from sunspot group data during the period 1879-2004, decreased over the last century, whereas the level of activity has increased considerably. The latitude gradient term of the solar rotation shows a significant modulation of about 79 year, which is consistent with what is expected for the existence of the Gleissberg cycle. Our analysis indicates that the level of activity will remain almost the same as the present cycle during the next few solar cycles (i.e., during the current double Hale cycle), while the length of the next double Hale cycle in Sunspot activity is predicted to be longer than the Current one. We find evidence for the existence of a weak linear relationship between the equatorial rotation rate and the length of sunspot cycle. Finally, we find that the length of the current cycle will be as short as that of cycle 22, indicating that the present Hale cycle may be a combination of two shorter cycles.
and:
Titre du document / Document title
Sun’s retrograde motion and violation of even-odd cycle rule in sunspot activity
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
JAVARAIAH J. (1) ;
Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)
(1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, 430 Portola Plaza, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, ETATS-UNIS
Résumé / Abstract
The sum of sunspot numbers over an odd-numbered 11-yr sunspot cycle exceeds that of its preceding even-numbered cycle, and it is well known as Gnevyshev and Oh1 rule (or G-O rule) after the names of the authors who discovered it in 1948. The G-O rule can be used to predict the sum of sunspot numbers of a forthcoming odd cycle from that of its preceding even cycle. However, this is not always possible because occasionally the G-O rule is violated. So far, no plausible reason is known either for the G-O rule or for the violation of this rule. Here, we show the epochs of the violation of the G-O rule are close to the epochs of the Sun’s retrograde orbital motion about the centre of mass of the Solar system (i.e. the epochs at which the orbital angular momentum of the Sun is weakly negative). Using this result, it is easy to predict the epochs of violation of the G-O rule well in advance. We also show that the solar equatorial rotation rate determined from sunspot group data during the period 1879-2004 is con-elated/anticorrelated to the Sun’s orbital torque before/after 1945.
Well I am not E. M. Smith; but s/he makes a number of points that I have often stated.
I’m told that daily temperature reports are usually the daily max, and the daily min, and if you split the sum of those you get the mean of those two numbers. That isn’t the same as the time averaged mean temperature throughout the day; and will only be the same if the daily temperature variation consists of s cyclic variation having no even harmonic components.
but more importantly, the average if you could measure it (globally) which you can’t, is quite without any scientific validity or meaqning whatsoever. It is simply the result of applying a mathematical algorithm to a set of unrelated numbers, which differ from each other for completely unknown reasons; they are supposed to be different. Also there is no physical relationship between the temperature measured in any location and the energy flows going on at that location. An absolute temperature measurment can be used to compute an expected near black body radiation intensity; but it can’t tell you anything about other transfers by conduction, convection or evaporation. You have lateral transfers in the form of winds or currents, and vertical ones, and none of thse processes can be determined by simply measuring the temperature at a single spot. You learn even less when that temperature is ionly used to drop into an averaging process.
EM uses the same telephone number average that I have promoted in other locations. I’ve never used the shoe color method; but it does make the point. I have suggested counting the number of animals ber square metre or km taking anything bigger than an ant as an animal. elephants and locusts don’t exactly give you the same information; but that is very comparable to measuring local temperatures.
Then of course there’s the whole Nyquist question. There are fundamental laws governing sampled data systems, and the requirements for data recovery from sampled sets. Failure to observe those rules is what causes the wagon wheels on oyur TV set to run backwards in your favorite horse opera.
You only have to violate the Nyquist sampling criterion by a factor of two to make the average unrecoverable. And aliassing errors that ressult are in band signals that can’t ge removed by any filtering process. The central limit theorem cannot buy you a reprieve from Nyquist violations.
Which is why I say, that GISStemp measures GISStemp, and nothing else; it is not the mean global temperature, or even the mean global surface temperature, in fact they seem to go out of their way to NOT measure the surface temperature. Yet the surface is the most logical place to measure since it is the origin form the majority of the emitted infra-red radiation, and also the ultimate sink for the incoming solar radiation.
The air does radiate; but its heat capacity is so low that radiation changes its temperature, unless it is replenished from somewhere else, which is usually the surface.
Now I am not going to suggest that meteorologists who have access to these station raw numbers (if they do) can’t use them (in concert) to make near term weather projections; that’s an art I have no skills in; but simply pouring those separate numbers into a chwood chipper to shred them all, is not a usemful process.
As I have stated before climate is NOT the average of Weather; it iS the integral of weather; and what happens next depends on everything that happened in the past as a starting point. (besides being quite unpredictable).
Here we go again! NOAA GHCN have released a statement that October, 2008, was the second hottest month recorded – NOT SO FAST!
A number of science bloggers has discovered that October, 2008, was actually the tenth warmest.
It is quite evident that NOAA, GISS, GISTEMP and GHCN are skewing their datasets toward the higher temperatures – could this be deliberate?
From George E. Smith (10:50:35) :
Well I am not E. M. Smith; but s/he makes a number of points that I have often stated.
…
EM uses the same telephone number average that I have promoted in other locations
end quotes.
Um, I’m a “he” not a shehe… English does allow for the use of ‘they’ for the non-gender singular, though at some ambiguity as to number…
I picked up the telno example elsewhere, probably from you… so you DID have an impact! (I made up the shoe color example – feel free…).
The notion of the temperature as proxy for climate is broken.
The example that I like for illustration of the issue is humidity. Water flows into / out of the air can drastically influence temperature, yet a temp measurement tells you nothing about the heat & water flows. If a nearby lake is putting tons of water into the air, dropping as snow nearby, but keeping the temperature higher than under a dry clear sky, is the target area warming? Last night low, 26 F, tonight with snow 28F, would have been 25 F if dry and no clouds. Was there warming?
Is 28 F with tons of ice warming or cooling relative to 25 F and dry? Later when the snow melts at a constant temperature, is the area ‘cooling’? If the highs don’t rise like last year but the lows don’t drop either? Is it ‘warming’ if very sunny so 5 feet up the air is warm while the snow melts lower down?
There is a similar problem with clouds. It gets cloudier due to more humid air in a slightly cooler air mass. The ground doesn’t radiatively cool as it would have that night. Is it really warming? Is the race condition between the lows being higher and the highs being lower under clouds really indicating anything useful when it says +1 vs -1?
Basically, temperature is not heat. Averages of extreme temperatures are not representative temperatures. Averages of Averages are???? Made up data points are? (Yes, someone gets to make up a missing high / low.)
And massaged interpolated averages of massaged interpolated averages with variable numbers of sources of questionable quality is garbage.
Then, adding insult to injury, there is the idea that I’m supposed to get excited about a 1/10ths place variation in this number when the original data was rounded to full degrees on the reporting sheets. Never let your precision exceed your accuracy… And I do wonder about the +1 degree step function when you transition from xx.4 to xx.5 on a broad basis.
Then we feed all the garbage to a computer and: GIGO! Garbage In Garbage Out
FROM: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/F6info.html
Temperature is measured electronically. High or low temperatures for the day may be estimated when necessary. Temperatures are measured in degrees and tenths fahrenheit, and reported as whole degrees, rounding down from .4 and up from .5