UPDATE: The “ghost author” has been identified, see the end of the article.
When I first saw it, I laughed.
When I saw the internal memo circulated to top managers at NOAA, I laughed even more.
Why? Because NOAA and NCDC are rebuking an analysis which I have not even written yet, using old data, and nobody at NOAA or NCDC had the professionalism to put their name to the document.
First let’s have a look at the National Climatic Data Center’s web page from a week ago:
I was quite surprised to find that my midterm census report on the surfacestations.org project evoked a response from NCDC. I suppose they are getting some heat from the citizenry and some congress critters over lack of quality control. I was even more surprised to see that they couldn’t even get the title right, particularly since the title of my report defines most of what NCDC is all about; Surface Temperature Measurement.
Here’s the title of my report released in March.
“Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”
But NCDC calls it: “Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?”
True, a small omission, the word “surface”. But remember, this is a scientific organization that writes papers for peer reviewed journals, where accuracy in citation is a job requirement. Plus, the director of NCDC is Thomas Karl, who is now president of the American Meteorological Society. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society is considered a premiere peer reviewed journal, and Karl has written several articles. For him to allow a botched citation like this is pretty embarrassing.
[NOTE: For those that just want to read my report, please feel free to download and read the free copy here PDF, 4 MB]
But the citation error is not just in the NCDC webpage, it is in the PDF document that NOAA and/or NCDC wrote up. I can’t be sure since they cite no named author.
You can download it here (PDF 91KB)
I had few people point out the existence of the NCDC rebuttal to me in the last week, and I’ve been biding my time. I wanted to see what they’d do with it.
Over the weekend I discovered that NOAA had widely circulated NCDC’s “talking points” document to top level division managers in NOAA. I was given this actual internal email, by someone whom appears not to agree with the current NOAA/NCDC thinking.
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:26:48 -0600
From: Andrea Bair <Andrea.Bair@noaa.gov>
Subject: Talking Points on SurfaceStations.org
To: _NWS WR Climate Focal Points <WR.Climate.Focal.Points@noaa.gov>,
_NWS WR MICs HICs DivChiefs <wr.mics.hics.divchiefs@noaa.gov>,
_NWS WR DAPM-OPL <Wr.Dapm.Opl@noaa.gov>,
Susan A Nelson <Susan.A.Nelson@noaa.gov>,
Jeff Zimmerman <Jeff.Zimmerman@noaa.gov>, Matt Ocana <Matt.Ocana@noaa.gov>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302)
Recently I was asked if we had any official talking points on the surfacestations.org report that came out recently. Attached are some talking points from NOAA that we can use.
AB
Note the “NWS WR MICs HICs DivChiefs” It seems pretty much everyone in management at NOAA got this email, yet a week later the citation error remains. Nobody caught it.
I find it pretty humorous that NOAA felt that a booklet full of photographs that many said at the beginning “don’t matter” required an organization wide notice of rebuttal. Note also some big names there. Senior NOAA scientist Susan (1000 year CO2) Solomon got a copy. So did Matt Ocana, Western Region public affairs officer for the National Weather Service. Along with Jeff Zimmerman who appears to be with the NWS Southern Region HQ. The originator, Andrea Bair, is the Climate Services Program Manager, NWS Western Region HQ.
There are lots of other curious things about that NCDC “Talking Points” document.
1. They give no author for the talking points memo. An inquiry as to the author’s name I sent to my regular contact at NCDC a week ago when I first learned of this has gone unanswered. Usually I have gotten answers in a day.
2. They think they have the current data, they do not. They have data from when the network was about 40% surveyed. They cite 70 CRN1/2 stations when we actually have 92 now. Additionally, some of the ratings have been changed as new/better survey information has come to light. They did their talking points analysis with old data and apparently didn’t know it.
3. They never asked me for a current data set. They know how to contact me, in fact they invited me to give a presentation at NCDC last year, which you can read about here in part 1 and part 2
Normally when a scientific organization prepares a rebuttal, it is standard practice to at least ask the keeper of the data if they have the most current data set, and if any caveats or updates exist, and to make the person aware of the issues so that questions can be answered. I received no questions, no request for data and no notice of any kind.
This is not unlike NCDC’s absurd closing of my access to parts of their station meta database in the summer of 2007 without notice just a few weeks after I started the project:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/07/07/noaa-and-ncdc-restore-data-access/
4. They cite USHCN2 data in their graph, but they can’t even get the the number of stations correct in USHCN2. The correct number from their AMS publication is 1218 stations, they list 1228 on the graph. While the error is a simple one, it shows the person doing the talking points was probably not fully familiar with the USHCN2.
On page 6 of Matthew J. Menne, Claude N. Williams, Jr. and Russell S. Vose, 2009: The United States Historical Climatology Network Monthly Temperature Data – Version 2.(PDF) Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (in press) there is this sentence:
As a result, HCN version 2 contains 1218 stations, 208 of which are composites; relative to the 1996 release, there have been 62 station deletions and 59 additions.
Sure maybe it is a typo, but add the fact that they couldn’t get my report title correctly cited either, it looks pretty sloppy, especially when you can’t count your own stations.
When I was invited to speak at NCDC last year, I had a lengthy conversation with Matt Mennes, the lead author of the USHCN2 method and peer reviewed paper here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/12/ncdcs-ushcn2-paper-some-progress-some-duck-and-cover/
What I learned was this:
a) The USHCN2 is designed to catch station moves and other discontinuities. Such as we see in Lampasas, TX
b) It will NOT catch long term trend issues, like UHI encroachment. Low frequency/long period biases pass unobstructed/undetected. Thus a station that started out well sited, but has had concrete and asphalt built up around it over time (such as the poster child for badly sited stations Marysville, now closed by NOAA just 3 months after I made the world aware of it) would not be corrected or even noted in USHCN2.
5. They give no methodology or provenance for the data shown in their graph. For all I know, they could be comparing homogenized data from CRN1 and 2 (best stations) to homogenized data from CRN 345 (the worst stations), which of course would show nearly no difference. Our study is focusing on the raw data and the differences that changes after adjustments are applied by NCDC. Did they use 1228 stations or 1218 ? Who knows? There’s no work shown. You can’t even get away with not showing your work in high school algebra class. WUWT?
For NCDC not to cite the data and methodology for the graph is simply sloppy “public relations” driven science. But most importantly, it does not tell the story accurately. It is useful to me however, because it demonstrates what a simple analysis produces.
6. They cite 100 year trends in the data/graph they present. However, our survey most certainly cannot account for changes to the station locations or station siting quality any further back than about 30 years. By NCDC’s own admission, (see Quality Control of pre-1948 Cooperative Observer Network Data PDF) they have little or no metadata posted on station siting much further back than about 1948 on their MMS metadatabase. Further, as we’ve shown time and again, siting is not very static over time. More on the metadata issue here.
While we have examined 100 year trends also, our study focus is different in time scale and in scope. If I were to claim that the surfacestations.org survey represented siting conditions at a weather station 50 or 100 years ago, without supporting metadata or photographs, I would be roundly criticized by the scientific community, and rightly so.
We believe most of the effect has occurred in the last 30 years, much of it due to the introducing of the MMTS electronic thermometer into the network about 1985 with a gradual replacement since then. The cable issue has forced official temperature sensors closer to buildings and human habitation with that gradual change.
NCDC’s new USHCN2 method will not detect this long period signal change introduced by the gradual introduction of the MMTS electronic thermometer, nor do they even address the issue in their talking points, which is central to the surfacestations project.
7. In the references section they don’t even cite my publication!
References
Menne, Matthew J., Claude N. Williams, Jr. and Russell S. Vose, 2009: The United States Historical Climatology Network Monthly Temperature Data – Version 2. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, in press.
Peterson, Thomas C., 2006: Examination of Potential Biases in Air Temperature Caused by Poor Station Locations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 87, 1073-1080. It is available from http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/87/8/pdf/i1520-0477-87-8-1073.pdf.
Yet they cite Mennes USHCN2 publication where the 1218 USHCN2 station number is clearly found.
It seems as if this was a rush job, and in the process mistakes were made and common courtesy was tossed aside. I suppose I shouldn’t be upset at the backlash, after all bureaucrats don’t like to be embarrassed by people like me when it is pointed out what a lousy job has been done at temperature measurement nationwide.
I’m working on a data analysis publication with authors that have published in peer reviewed climate an meteorology journals. After learning from John V’s crash analysis in summer 2007 when we had about 30% of the network done, few CRN1/2 stations, and poor spatial distribution that people would try to analyze incomplete data anyway, I’ve kept the rating data and other data gathered private until such time a full analysis and publication can be written.
As NCDC demonstrated, it seems many people just aren’t willing to wait or to even respect he right to first publication of data analysis by the primary researcher.
By not even so much as giving me a courtesy notice or even requesting up to date data, it is clear to me that they don’t think I’m worthy of professional courtesy, yet they’ll gladly publish error laden and incomplete conclusions written by a ghost writer in an attempt to disparage my work before I’ve even had a chance to finish it.
This is the face of NCDC today.
UPDATE:
WUWT commenter Scott Finegan notes that Adobe PDF files have a “properties” section, and that the authors name was revealed there. Here is a screencap:
Thomas C. Peterson is the author.
NCDC and GISS are really the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Ah, and Peterson was co-author of that “Myth of 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” paper with William Connolley.
The “obvious” effects of warming are:
“For example, lake and river ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. Plants are blooming earlier
in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting. And a multitude of species of birds, fish, mammals and plants are extending their ranges northward and, in mountainous areas, upward as well.”
Are not every one of these GOOD for nature and society??!!??!
Thomas C. Peterson of NOAA is also involved in the eco-activism movement (see photo here).
Why did Peterson commit to this “hush-hush rush-rush” job under the cloak of anonymity, when based upon his eco-activist credentials he should have been proud to stand behind his work?
Dr. Thomas C. Peterson is a research meteorologist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. After earning his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University in 1991, Tom primarily engaged in creating NCDC’s global land surface data set used to quantify long-term global climate change. Key areas of his expertise include data archaeology, quality control, homogeneity testing, international data exchange and global climate analysis using both in situ and satellite data.
I’m glad I don’t have his job. He seems to be the head doc in charge of everything known to be f’d up.
“The language in the doc is generally very neutral and cautious. ”
Are you high? There is nothing neutral at all about that document. It is extrememly clear about where NOAA stands on the issue.
Don’t they have an internal critical review system in place before getting those things out?
hunter (05:26:57) :
This is just part of the pushback. Now that AGW has eaten our political system, we will only see more politicized efforts to silence skeptics.
AGW is too big to fail.
But it has failed with 48% American voters disbelieving AGW, 34% believe. (Rasmussan Reports national telephone survey, April,2009) And then there is the hard science. Ten years cooling.
geo (10:01:08) :
Ah, and Peterson was co-author of that “Myth of 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” paper with William Connolley.
Surely that’s not ‘the’Billy Connolly? – the Glasgow comedian? Well, the Global Cooling Consensus was very much there in the ’70s: I was there too and I remember it well.
I agree with the vast majority of contributors here in that Anthony and his study has caused some serious concern in the higher echelons of AGW…
Slightly off topic but as I was walking home this evening I could see a beautiful crescent moon, about 2 days after new, and the brightest “old moon in the new moon’s arm” I have ever seen! This is caused by light reflected back from the earth. Perhaps the earth is very cloudy and reflective at the moment? I believe the phrase “old moon in the new moon’s arms” dates from around the time of the Manuder Minimum but I’m not sure. It would be nice if it did…
They sooo know they are going to get embarrassed. You’ve definitely ruffled some feathers over there, Anthony. I tipped the cookie jar for support.
OT: looks like Warren Buffett has just Pelosi’s Cap and Trade bill on CNBC !!!
GlennB (07:35:26) :
On a lighter note, I’d really like to see where fish are extending their ranges upward in mountainous areas.
Yes – I’d like to see that too. Ihe image it conjures up in the mind is pretty funny. A team of crampon-wearing fish tied together with ropes. How about the ‘Hash House Halibut’ shouting ‘On! On! On!’ as the make their ground breaking ascents ever upward…
Meh… In the first paragraph he mentions the Nobel Prize the IPCC received. Too bad he forgets to say it was the PEACE one. Clearly, this paper wasn’t peer reviewed.
David (09:23:35) :
The following statement is preposterous:
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I think its now clear that the real “peer review” is happening in the better science blogs. The journalistic “peer review” is beginning to look more and more like the “crony review”, rather than the much-vaunted intellectual review it probably never really was.”
That, no matter how one feels about the issue of climate change, is a sad indictment on the attack on science today.
And I have had scientific research both accepted and rejected via the peer review process.
What is preposterous, David, is “peer review”, IMO. I too, have had papers accepted. And I have been a reviewer. I didn’t have much respect for it in the 60s and 70s, and I don’t now. Too many times it was a battle of egos, rather than a critique of science.
I’m not attacking science, I’m continuing to attack the the pomposity of it. As both this site and Climate Audit have shown, to name but a couple, a paper will get a much more thorough wringing out here than it will in any peer review, and I dare say, better than the published article will in the general audience, if recent history is any gauge. If it’s actually good, it’ll pass muster in the blogs, if not, well, que sera sera. While there are many learned defenders of peer review here, I’m not one of them.
If, as a reader, you can’t discriminate between apt criticism of a paper in a blog, and idle chatter on it based on an agenda, then the paper is likely over the reader’s head anyway. I’m one of those people who really doesn’t care for people who like to tell me what to think about stuff.
1. People who did the survey aren’t “scientists”
2. It wasn’t “peer reviewed”.
3. Analysis by highly-qualified NOAA scientists indicates statistically insignificant differences between the good and the bad & ugly
3. Therefore, it “doesn’t matter” and so,
4. It’s time to “move on”.
Come on, Anthony. Get with the program!!!
In the Swedish administration we used “talking points” when we had ministers that did not know the subject. Any similarity?
Gösta Oscarsson
ex central bureaucrat
There are various AGW myths and memes propagated by the “How to talk to a Skeptic” sites that claim to debunk all the skeptics’ arguments. Unfortunately, those sites do no such thing and have themselves been debunked over and over.
But the claim of debunking skeptics live on. Whenever somebody calls into question the quality of the data, they will inevitably reference this document and claim there is no problem with the data whatsoever.
“Thomas Peterson, NOAA, National Climatic Data Center, Asheville. A lead author for Nobel prize winning IPCC: “Global Warming: Focus on Southern Appalachia.” After earning his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University in 1991, Tom primarily engaged in creating NCDC’s global land surface data set used to quantify long-term global climate change. Key areas of his expertise include data fidelity, international data exchange and global climate change analysis using both in situ and satellite data. ”
No wonder he is angry and will get angrier. He hasn’t been doing his job. It is he that is guilty of not finding bad locations and skewed data. “Data fidelity” Does that mean data that is just wrong? It is ok if it is wrong in the same magnitude?
Looks like he dropped the ball and should be workin’ more and talkin less. Like they tell kids. he needs to be on task.
When he got up this morning, I suspect he didn’t predict a thread would be online discussing him, identifying him and pondering why he is in charge of data fidelity and others are showing great numbers of weather stations are rendering junk data.
Petersen? His paper, as I recall, on “the myth of cooling”, only had 1 reference to Kukla, and none to Lamb. Lamb of course, was a leading proponent of cooling, and founded the Hadley Climate Center out of this concern.
This is my recap of an NOAA paper on the history of climate offices in the US. Its quite odd that Petersen missed it.
1972 – Kukla-Mathews publishes in Science, an article about the end of the current inter glacial. Also writes a letter to Nixon in 1972, specifically warning about global cooling.
1973 – First Climate office started in Feb 1973 (ad hoc Panel on the Present Inter Glacial). This was after a meeting of 42 of the most prominent climatologists, and apparently there was consensus about cooling. Especially as the NOAA, NWS and ICAS were involved.
1974 – Office of Climate Dynamics opened.
1978 -Carter signs Climate Program Act, partly due to the SEVERE WINTER experienced the preceding winter.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
These are papers and references to Lamb, and cooling.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1792334
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v223/n5212/pdf/2231209a0.pdf
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000698/069895mo.pdf
From the UNESCO meeting in 1961, published in 1963. The meetings discussed cooling, and its implications on the world. Some 115 scientists from 36 countries took part in the symposium. The following is from the wrap up speech.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the evidence presented by Dr. Murray Mitchell, Dr. Rodewald and some of the other speakers is the way in which it falls into a pattern. Not only air temperature, but also subtropical rainfall, the tendency of hurricanes to move along certain tracks or seasurface temperatures, show a reversal of the preceding [warming] climatic trend during the last one or two decades. The true physical significance of Dr. Murray Mitchell’s result lies perhaps in the combined evidence, based on so many different variables.
it has been extremely difficult by this means to avoid the conclusion that the warming trends [up to the 1940s] for the world as a whole, and for the Northern Hemisphere in particular, are truly planetary in scope. On the other hand, it cannot yet he demonstrated in this way beyond a reasonable doubt that the net cooling since the 1940s has likewise been planetary in scope. That this cooling is of such nature, however, seems reasonable and this should be verifiable if the cooling in the data areas were to continue for another decade or two in the future.
All authors have been able to show, by using records dating back to the end of the eighteenth century that the warming up of large parts of the world from the middle of the nineteenth century until recently has been statistically significant. However, as pointed out especially by J. M. Mitchell and also shown for sea temperatures by M. Rodewald this increase in temperature has recently declined.“
I am impressed with this thread.
Today we read the EPA is having meetings secretly to discuss findings which hurt their global warming political agenda.
we find they are thin on money which explains why they are bigger on bluster
We find data gathering people are complaining about anthony and haven’t been doing work they were hired to do
NOAA is with NCDC planning an attack mode to save face.
I am sorry, but when they claim health costs are high, so are costs to run gubment machines. A lot of the moneys are spent to CYA. Cover Your Anatomy.
When AGW proponents combine a classic ”appeal to authority” with the logic of the moveon.org crowd (as in the post by Billy Ruffin above), you gotta know they are seriously worried that a major support structure for their elaborate but flimsy Potemkin village is at risk of collapse.
Major kudos to surfacestations.org and Anthony, for this important public service.
From the stridency of the defense of these talking points by some posters here I suspect that that whoever directed the dissemination of this paper has received a number of inquiries whose main gist is “WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING!” They at least realize how easy this will be to use to discredit the whole organization. The public gives short shrift to who have a problem and attack instead of just fixing the damn thing.
If I’m NOAA, this would be the moment to claim that weather station siting doesn’t matter, because the purpose of their work is not to document the actual temperature, but the change over time. Similarly, a bum thermometer as seen at HNL doesn’t really matter, it’s change they’re trying to document.
And at first glance this can be a fairly convincing argument. What it ignores is that the siting of weather stations, to one extent or another, can show temps trending in only one direction, up. This is because the station itself disturbs the natural environment to begin with, and the human propensity to improve matters seems irresistable.
First we improve access to the site by paving the road. We eliminate fire danger by abolishing vegetation. Next we build a small shop to simplify analysis of the data. But that’s uncomfortable, so heat and air conditioning are installed. Thus, a transformer is added to the site.
For convenience of access, most new weather stations will be sited close to built-up areas which, in the nature of things, tend to expant to engulf the original, pristine site.
Rarely do we unpave, de-air condition, remove transformers or tear down structures, so the direction of change over time will always be upwards.
Anthony–
Ah, my mistake, they did make it public. Okay, that makes it more fair game. And I’ll grant you that not even mentioning your name is downright weird.
As to getting the name of your “mid-term census” wrong, I wonder what he was working from? I say that because the .pdf of your document only uses the word “surface” in the title on the cover and the requested citation at the bottom of page 2 (that certainly should have been followed). Internally starting on page 3 and at the top of every page the title is given without “Surface”. Was there a last minute title change, or just a lack of space for pager header information?
Rarely do we unpave, de-air condition, remove transformers or tear down structures, so the direction of change over time will always be upwards.
One such (rare) example is The Blue Hill station in Massachusetts. When an access road was put in recently, the observers covered it with a thick layer of sand and carpeted the sand with vegetation. Saved ’em from a CRN4 rating.
Good People, there.
And I’ll grant you that not even mentioning your name is downright weird.
He-who-must-not-be-named.