In my post on the Mohonk Weather Station, the question came up about “raw” temperature data. Tom in Texas complained that he’d looked at data from the observer B91 forms and that it didn’t match what was posted in published data sets.
Neither NOAA nor NASA serve weather station data “raw”.
We’ve all seen examples posted here of how GISS adjusts data. But, it is not only NASA GISS that does this practice, in fact, NOAA adjusts temperature data also, and it is by their own admission. For example here is a NOAA provided graphs showing the trend over time of all the adjustments they apply to the entire USHCN dataset.
As illustrated in the graphs above, in simplest terms NOAA adds a positive bias to the raw data reported by weather station observers with their own “adjustment” methodology.
It is important to note that the graph on the bottom shows a positive adjustment of 0.5°F spanning from 1940 to 1999. The agreed upon “global warming signal” is said to be 1.3°F (.74C) over the last century.
The NOAA source for these graphs is: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ndp019.html
Bear in mind that these are USHCN1 adjustment methods.
But the NOAA has wised up: On their USHCN2 adjustment page, they have lots of very wise-sounding verbiage. NO GRAPHS and NO BOTTOM LINE. They learned their lesson when the injudiciously ‘fessed up on their USHCN1 page. Now they know better.
USHCN2 seems to be WORSE: A poster calculated some time ago that it is a +0.42C/century adjustment (as opposed to 0.29C/century for USHCN1). But he had to calculate it–it was NOT anywhere on their page where I could find it.
(That’s when the 0.6C 20th Century global trend “turned out” to be 0.72C.)
However, NOAA relies on a questionable ToB estimation method, rather than use the actual ToB, which is recorded by the observer (and from which the ToB bias can be determined statistically with reasonable accuracy). It appears in order to save a paltry few thousand dollars.
RATHER THAN USE THE ACTUAL TOB?!!!
AAAARGH!
And I’ve been going around defending TOBS adjustments.
Then just recently I’ve been sort of wondering about whether the NOAA TOBS adjustment method could be the ONLY thing the NOAA got right . . .
AND THEY’RE NOT USING THE ACTUAL TOB?!!!
AAAARGH!
~snip~ me before I kill again!
Looking at this Redoubt webicorder it looks like an eruption of some sort might have started at around 2045UTC. It’s dark there now, so we won’t know until morning.
REPLY: Sure looks like it. – Anthony
Adjusting the raw day … ugh. I looked at the ornl page on the subject and all I can say is wow. What a complicated can of worms. Of course the charts are meaningless unless you can dig into the individual cases to see the justification for each adjustment. I wonder if they can see the warming signal in completely unmodified sites; ones that were good years ago and are still good because they are located in rural locations. Call me crazy, but I wonder if these issues will show up in the courts down the road if they haven’t already.
RE: Redoubt http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php
Greetings to All,
I looked into this issue (temperature adjustments) in a fair amount of detail in late 2007 after seeing a graph that seemed to suggest that daily minimum temperatures were going to surpass daily maximum temperatures within a few years. This was in a document which I obtained from a government source (in a jurisdiction that will remain anonymous).
My suspicions really peaked when I discovered substantial snowfalls recorded as “0” for my locality. This caused me to dig harder and I turned up a number of physically impossible events on the official record. (Have you ever seen bare ground accumulate several feet of snow overnight without a snowfall?)
It took some digging and a series of e-mails, but I got my hands on some papers that explain how adjustments are made (something which varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). I discovered troubling methodology that would undoubtedly impair some (but not all) lines of research.
I understand very well that there are a number of legitimate issues with data quality management that result in all sorts of headaches with no easy fix – and I think the reasonable thing to do is provide both the raw & adjusted datasets, along with detailed, truthful annotation (about both) to empower researchers to apply balanced judgement.
Sincerely,
Paul Vaughan.
There has to be a bunch of raw data out there. I and Orwell contend we need to archive whatever raw data is left. Simple, uncorrupted (uncorrected) data.
I fear we may have no uncorrupted data after Dr. Oz, er, Hansen adjusts them.
Is there a uncorrupted data set?
If the NOAA is adjusting raw data, they have to have raw data in order to adjust it. And it has to be in soft copy. Yet that data does not seem to have been made available.
So we start to consider transcribing B91 data (assuming it is sufficiently legible).
Well, don’t be amazed if B91s suddenly cease to be made available to non-subscribing “guests”. Or are greenwalled. You don’t have to ban a thing to make it impractical.
If I am wrong and SOFT COPY unadjusted data is available, please put up a link.
All this data adjustment might keep the politicos happy, but who will get the blame when TSHTF?
I’ve compared raw and Bureau of Met-adjusted temperature data in 32 cities/towns/outposts across Western Australia from 1876 to February this year, including different comparisons for high population locations (UHIs), and coastal vs inland.
A rough comparison of adjusted data from 1910 to 2008 suggests a .7 degree increase in minima and a .5 degree increase in maxima. But the raw data from 1876 to 1899, compared to adjusted data from 1979 to 2008, suggests a .4 degree minima increase and a .25 degree maxima decrease over the ~130 years.
If you’re interested in Western Australia temperatures, check http://www.waclimate.net
Can someone help me here. Is there any relationship between the GISS data and the NOAA USHCN data, or are they independent. Also are they used as confirmation of each others data if they are regarded as “independent”.
Would we not expect LESS adjustments as time goes on? Surely our equipment and knowledge have improved, right? This makes no sense to me. Are our methods and equipment now that much worse than they were in 1900?
this haphazardly and grudgingly sharing (or not sharing) of research materials, data and results is a quite common behaviour of public servants in the climate science community:
“…This is the same Phil Jones who said:
We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider…”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3119
“…It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. ..”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2322
Comparing GISS/Hadcrut global averages with satellite data, easily some third of last 30 years observed warming is UHI and/or adjustments.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:2002/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2002/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:2002/trend/offset:-0.1/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2002/trend
I’d be fascinated to follow how error bounds are first calculated and then adjusted through the adjustments.
Surely the error bounds should enclose all of the data on all of the graphs, since it was adjusted because of “errors”.
Catlin Arctic team on the move..
“Ice Team cover an impressive 20km in 36 hours…only another 902km to go…”
Is it a lie? – No
Does it tell us how statistics are used among AGW people? – Yes
I think NOAA puplished their (honest) adjustment graph for the US around 2005. Im not sure we know what adjustments where made 2005-9.
This is indeed grotesk, Especially since all the adjustments are made to the temperature graph data 1940-2000. The thing is, nature has itself provided a quick warming up until 1940.
So the late 20´th century warming of 0,3 Kelvin is 0,25 K adjustment, it seems.
John (23:35:01) :
“Can someone help me here. Is there any relationship between the GISS data and the NOAA USHCN data, or are they independent. Also are they used as confirmation of each others data if they are regarded as “independent”.”
AFAIK, both GISS and NOAA outputs are based on the same data, but every organization performs their own calculation procedures /adjustments.
Jurav
If you use RSS rather than UAH, and use all the data rather than stopping in 2002 (Why?) you get this …
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.1/plot/rss/from:1979/trend
In fact, if you compare the trends in UAH, GISS, RSS and HADCRUT over the lifetime of the satellite measurements you find that UAH is the outlier, trending lower than the resr, indicating that whatever adjustments are being applied to the surface record are legitimate…
Anthony
do you know if other countries are using the same or similar adjustment methodologys, if they are and I think it is probable they are, due to some international agreement, then much of the worlds ground weather data is also contaminated. What is NOAA’s responce to the queries about data manipulation and unwillingness to provide raw data. Do the public have any legal recourse ?
OT, Code Red, Redoubt has erupted, plume at 50K.
All relevant links can be found here: http://www.seablogger.com/?p=13119
I have seen limited raw data on-line. Long-time-series raw data from siting that seemed less susceptible to UHI seemed to indicate little or no AGW signal. Not a comprehensive or overly scientific analysis by me.
Can the major repositories of the global raw data be “forced” to make the raw data available through freedom of information (or some other tactic)? Or, has the original raw data already been lost? — that is, the archived data all has “corrections”?
The thing is, nature has itself provided a quick warming up until 1940.
I wouldn’t put that down to nature. Most of the warming we see in the early 20th century (on graphs anyway) was due to the expansion of US cities and towns. From the end of the Civil War up until the 1940s those American cities experienced their most rapid growth. So that warming is a growth of the urban heat island effect.
OT, serious plume marks Redoubt Eruption:
http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar_lite.php?rid=ahg&product=NCR&loop=yes
We know, with absolute certainty (more or less), that the global average temperature is 14.44 +/- 2(+) degrees C, based on the temperature series as reported and the information on the quality of the measuring sites at surfacestations.org.
Isn’t that “close enough for government work”? 🙂