UPDATE: see the end of the article for a response.
Reposted from TBR.cc Investigate magazine’s breaking news forum:
New Zealand’s NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking
The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.
The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.
In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:
The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:
From NIWA’s web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).
But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:
Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.
The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:
Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?
Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!
Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?
It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.
Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.
Proof of man-made warming
What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.
About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.
One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.
We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.
NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.
NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.
“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”
“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the temperature adjustments.
Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.
UPDATE: see this new post More on the NIWA New Zealand data adjustment story
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And the 5 metre away asphalt carpark would not have been there in 1925.
God, can’t you people just google the names of these organisations before you take their words as gospel? The objecting organisation is a astroturf group funded in-part by the Heartland Institute.
Grant (08:20:42) : “To get a Ph.D in climatology, you should be required to have a Post-Graduate degree in Statistics with possibly a double major in Logic and reasoning.”
How would that help with honesty? Would it not make the dishonest even harder to catch.
Data from this or that weather station is interesting, but only insofar as it bears upon something larger. At this point, we are seeing larger evidence of global warming: melting of permafrost in arctic regions, melting of glaciers, shrinking of the north polar ice cap, rising sea levels, severe droughts in Australia and the American Southwest, increasing acidity in the oceans. All of these things are predicted by the various models.
You will always be able to find some contrary data. In fact, to have all data pointing in the same direction is typically evidence of a faulty process and/or hypothesis. The existence of anomalies does not invalidate the larger idea. Often, the exceptions prove the rule.
I realize none of my arguments will be considered here, because this site isn’t about science but rather about politics, and you are convinced of your thesis. I’m not particularly convinced of anything, but I do respect such a strong consensus among the overwhelming majority of scientists who have examined these issues.
They might still be wrong, but it’s going to take much more than anomalies to convince me. And then there are still the changes we’re seeing globally. I suppose it will be worthwhile to have a new water route from Japan to Northern Europe, but if the Himalayan glaciers melt, I dare say that there are going to be some issues as half a billion Indians or more people migrate northward owing to the drying up of the Indus and Ganges rivers.
Same goes for the Colorado River. It too is drying up. The reservoirs are less than half full. Things are going to change whether we want them to or not.
Reads like Michael Critchton’s State of Fear!
LOL. If scientists wanted money they would have become investment bankers or got a job at a pharmaceutical company.
Have you considered the possibility that the time of day for taking the observations has changed?
Acementhead: 11.06.09
The reflected heat from the Car park and Road nearby will distort the readings I thought the people operating this Weather Station where Scientists.
Interested Amateur – this does bear on something larger: the quality of the global temperature record.
Any hypothesis is only as good as the data with which it can be tested.
bugs (12:47:04) :
Based on behavior, investment bankers maybe. Not much call for people who can’t archive data and keep good records in the pharma industry.
“LOL. If scientists wanted money they would have become investment bankers or got a job at a pharmaceutical company.”
If thieves wanted money they would have become investment bankers or got a job at a pharmaceutical company.
Interested Amateur – were glaciers static prior to 1960? or 1940? or 1850?
Charlie
It is reasonable to believe that the advent of the industrial revolution (moreso STEAM ENGINES) around 1850 could be responsible for a global cooling trend until cleaner burning methods were discovered and implemented.
When we first started to really burn coal we burnt it in ways that released an enormous amount of particulates into the atmosphere – Think an effect similar to volcanoes which cause global temperature drops.
Now whether or not mankind was releasing enough particulate to actually have a global cooling effect is probably impossible to determine.
If he or NIWA cannot fully account for their adjustments, then the NZ NIWA graph is simply gobbledook. Why adjust the raw data ? I know that one adjustment for Wellington was because the Met Station moved up a hill and a change of height adjustment made – a hill in the middle of the city.
For example, the Wellington figures had to be adjusted down when the official weather site moved from the Thorndon waterfront to Kelburn. “That’s a move up of about 120 metres – that is the equivalent of a degree of cooling.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3101413/Climate-scientists-attack-criticism
so what i want to know is what was the actual adjustment NIWA made i bet it was more then 1c . Also they dont know the actual hight above sea level becasuse the say “about 120 metres” . even if they out by 10 metres it make a difference of +/-0.08c. And also what side of the hill did they put the censor on, north side would be warmer than thw south side.
Jim (08:23:02) :
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crosspatch (23:30:58) :
I don’t agree with the call for “jail” or trials of any sort for what I believe to be because it is the fault of the entire community that this sham has been allowed to continue. Why has the scientific community not demanded to see these results? I mean the ENTIRE scientific community.
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Let’s not forget the journal’s role in all this. They are analogous to the ratings agencies that gave sub-prime loan derivatives a high rating. The journal’s didn’t require the researchers to give them all raw data and code. How can we bring pressure to bear on them?? Cancel subscriptions?
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Another guilty party is the FOI bureaucracy and its eager / willing complicity with establishment / peer-reviewed science, skillfully exploited by the Team. When we’re pointing finger, let’s not leave that group out. (They are analogous to the see-no-evil regulatory agencies that turn a blind eye to the rating agencies.)
Robinson (08:35:59) :
“Nick Smith is “hell bent” on rushing through a climate bill through the legislature.”
I still haven’t heard or read a valid explanation of why this bandwagon is so powerful. I don’t buy the “politicians want power”, or “they’re all stupid”, or “they want to tax us” meme. It’s similar to the European Super-State concept. It must go through, regardless.
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This is a question that deserves deep thought. A good place to start would be to ask the few political leaders who have opposed CAWG (like Klaus) why they think their colleagues have bought into this so strongly.
IMO, It’s partly a bandwagon effect, and it’s partly the effectiveness of well-funded greenie groups at politicking and mobilizing, and there are all sorts of weird psychic / sociological factors that should be considered (e.g., it fits the “template” of the modernizing / environmentally responsible state), but mostly, I think, it’s been the intimidating endorsement of CAWG by the organs of establishment science (journals and societies) that has made most of them cave in and “get with the program.”
Official bureaucratic, gate-keeper-ed science will lose its halo as a result of this, and it deserves to. Get rid of it–its day has passed.
Sorry – attributed this article highlighting the absurdity of national Emissions Trading Schemes at (06:05:29) : to Telegraph UK, should be Daily Mail UK.
Here’s the story: How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html#ixzz0Y0GkWfZk
Blooper shows the perils of obsessive behavior in the wee small hours. Also miss-read “servers of East Anglia” to be “sewers of East Anglia” although on reflection I’m not sure there’s a distinction.
New Zealand Govt has rammed through a revised ETS while confronting Climategate with an Ostrich-like stance. Process in Australia a little more fraught, however.
Scientists yesterday rubbished claims from New Zealand climate-change sceptics that temperature data from around the country had been deliberately tampered with to show a higher degree of warming.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3101413/Climate-scientists-attack-criticism
Yes and i bet these were all the Government payed Scientists that said this .
Alan Wilkinson, the quality of the global temperature records might not be very good. I am not any sort of specialist in this stuff; I do have technical expertise, but in completely unrelated fields. In evaluating sloppy data, researchers commonly adjust it, and then allow for uncertainties and look elsewhere for corroboration, contradiction, and confirmation.
My understanding is that climate change has attracted heavy multidisciplinary support. There are too many stories of people who started off looking for one thing and found evidence of climate change for me to dismiss all of this on the grounds of what those with a vested interest in knocking it down say they’ve found.
I’d love the argument against climate change to be the correct one, but I’m not seeing very much evidence that it is. Anyone who’s ever really closely researched anything knows that you’ll have data pulling in more than one direction. You have to look at the preponderance of evidence, and then connect it to the larger phenomenon that you’re studying.
There are some big things going on in the environment. Carbon dioxide levels are high and rising. The oceans have turned more acidic, but are reaching their limit of absorptive capacity. This is affecting the food chain at the most basic level, i.e., the plankton. Which, soon enough, will mean a big problem with the fish. Or so it would seem.
An awful lot of people have to be telling an awful lot of lies for this to be wrong. And they have to be doing that in a bunch of widely disconnected subspecialties. Like I say, I am not a climate change specialist by any stretch, but in my fields of interest I’ve dealt with plenty of scientific researchers. Most of them are too busy and/or too independent to be telling lies at all, much less coordinating them as they’d have to be for this all to be a conspiracy.
The weight of evidence and opinion, anomalies notwithstanding, is heavily in the direction of climate change, and of man’s role as a catalyst and/or cause. I must also ask the skeptics a couple of questions that I have never seen them address: What if you’re wrong? What evidence would satisfy you?
I honestly think the skeptics are fighting a political battle, wrapped up in partisan U.S. politics. I think that’s pretty foolish. Last time I looked, the Colorado River’s watershed is pretty heavily Republican country. I wonder what all those people will say in 40 or 50 years when cities are being abandoned for lack of water.
Interested Amateur (13:59:02) :
“I honestly think the skeptics are fighting a political battle, wrapped up in partisan U.S. politics. I think that’s pretty foolish. Last time I looked, the Colorado River’s watershed is pretty heavily Republican country. I wonder what all those people will say in 40 or 50 years when cities are being abandoned for lack of water.”
I respect your opinion, but holy cow, isn’t the above one big political statement?
I wonder what the Democrats will say in 50 years when Phoenix is a tropical jungle.
Honestly, I’m doubtful that in 50 years there will be a Democratic party.
Interested Amateur (13:59:02)
When you use a word you should know what it means(El Guapo, ¡Three Amigos!).
Barbara Bush once used the word demagogue(described Saddam Hussein as such) during the course of an interview. The interviewer, quite reasonably(because most people would not know its meaning), asked her what it(the word demagogue) meant. She was totally unable to define it or give even an approximate meaning. it made her look very silly. So it is with you.
Interested Amateur you do not know what “watershed” means do you? I suggest that before using “big” words in future you take the trouble to learn their meanings and thus look less foolish(although it won’t save you from the feebleness of your writing).
NIWA
“For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.”
Get two people and two thermometers together,that read the same temp. at the same location (digital,reading 1/10 of a deg.C). Move one to Kelburn the other to Thorndon, communicate via cell-phones and post the result.
We risk being labelled armchair philosophers,here is a good opportunity to test the adiabatic lapse rate for this site. For goodness sake, Wellington is a University city, can’t two people run this experiment ?.
I wonder what the Democrats will say in 50 years when Phoenix is a tropical jungle. Honestly, I’m doubtful that in 50 years there will be a Democratic party.
There is absolutely nothing political about what you cited, but like so many of those who’d like to deny what’s going on, you have turned it into a partisan U.S. issue. You don’t know me, or my politics. Frankly, I don’t think the Democrats have even remotely clean hands on these issues. One small example: Look at the promises Obama made to the coal industry to win votes in Virginia last year.
The Colorado River is in trouble. Every local and state official knows it. Its reservoirs are 46% full. As we speak, they’re working overtime to cut new, lower intake valves to Las Vegas can continue to have water. Either next year or by 2011, Arizona is going to start seeing its allocation cut. From what I understand of their politics, I’m not sure I’d be investing in long-term building projects in Tucson right now.
You know what they’re talking about to replenish the Colorado? Cloud seeding. Think about that one a second. If that one even works, let’s imagine the future battle between the Southwest and the Great Plains, which has been in a multi-year drought of its own, masked by accelerated pumping of the big aquifer underneath. From what I understand, those water tables are dropping, and what (reduced) rain does come across the mountains is needed very badly to replenish it.
That only scratches the surface in the U.S., and we are far from alone. I was in China a couple years ago. In addition to their unbelievably horrendous chemical pollution issues (in one of their largest provinces, the groundwater is so polluted that nothing grows), big parts of that country are in the midst of an epic drought. Towns on the outskirts of the Beijing metro area have been abandoned for lack of water. They only have one party in China.
I think there are two real issues here with respect to American politics. One is that you’ve got a significant chunk of the economy based directly on mining, mostly of coal, oil, and methane. Those industries are not only large but very profitable, and they want to keep it going. The other is modern interpretations of free-market ideology, which aren’t even very accurate in their internal logic.
Both of those issues are being overridden by physical realities. We are only seeing the leading edge of it now, but we’re soon going to see a whole lot more of it. What happens when the Colorado drops below Vegas’s new valves? What happens when the oceans rise a couple feet on average, and (according to the models) more than that along the Eastern Seaboard? What happens when the worldwide fish catch essentially disappears because plankton can’t survive in a highly acidic ocean?
That goes back to the questions that I never see addressed on sites like this one: What if you’re wrong? What evidence will you need to change your mind?
Interested Amateur (15:05:14) :
Glenn (14:32:13) :
I wonder what the Democrats will say in 50 years when Phoenix is a tropical jungle. Honestly, I’m doubtful that in 50 years there will be a Democratic party.
“There is absolutely nothing political about what you cited, but like so many of those who’d like to deny what’s going on, you have turned it into a partisan U.S. issue.”
Uh, just what did I say that causes you to claim I have turned “it” into a partisan US issue??? And just what am I denying, pray tell??? I don’t know you or your politics? Get a grip!!
Interested Amateur (15:05:14) :
I have said this in another form before, but, Interested Amateur, if you are genuine, just keeping absorbing the information contained in the comments, threads and links provided by this site,compare them with the information that you have that you apparently base your comments on, weigh these two sides up and see if you come to the same conclusions.