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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Robert L – we do have data of the ocean heat content, and it’s going up dramatically – far more than land temperature. It’s toward the bottom of this link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
Robert L (18:26:38) :
I have often wondered how GISS can add Sea Surface Temperature into the climate record and justify it. The measurements taken on land are measurements of the air, a gas, and the SSTs are a measurement of the water, a liquid. How can you a) expect the two to change at the same rate and b) combine the measurements to arrive at a global average temp (which is silly nonsense of its own)?
That NZ graph hasn’t been adjusted for UHI effect either. So they have indeed been “Hiding the Decline (hiding the decline)”.
If any “adjustments” needing to be made, UHI would be one of the most valid. So what moves and changes have happened to the Weather stations at Auckland, Masterton, Wellington, Nelson, Hokitika, Lincoln and Dunedin?
It would be interesting to find out….. NZ might have a Cooling rather than a warming….!
al
the wayback machine http://www.archive.org is your friend here
http://web.archive.org/web/20080720082852/http://climatechange.gov.au/science/faq/question2.html
Thanks al!
And isnt it a beautiful graph! As it says “adapted” from — but much better than — the IPCC 2001hockey stick. Do you think we will ever see it again? I’m gonna print it out and put it on my wall to remind me of the old days.
Craig (18:05:26)
____________________
The way I read it, the raw data were available but the revised data were not until provided (recently?) by “one of Dr. Salinger’s colleages”.
As another Kiwi has posted, Dr Salinger (ex CRU) was fired by NIWA earlier this year, allegedly for “talking to the media”. I wonder though if the real reason was something more to do with fudged statistics ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10611239
” R John (18:18:33) :
So, it is the adjustments by these folks that is “robust”?”
I don’t know, but is isn’t unprecedented or unexpected. Perhaps that is why the MSM ignores such things.
tokyoboy (17:25:35) :
“It would be great if you could extract and post the station location information.”
Sure. The 17 station names are: Abashiri, Nemuro, Suttsu, Yamagata, Ishinomaki, Fushiki, Nagano (where a winter olympiad was held several years ago), Mito, IIda, Choshi, Sakai, Hamada, Hikone, Miyazaki, Tadotsu, Naze, and Ishigakijima.”
Checked out the GISS data. Of course, all of this is adjusted. Poor correlation of names, but it doesn’t make much difference. Of the 33 stations listed, only 11 log data past 1990 and only 7 show as current. Curiously, all the stations that went off line in 1990 showed an eyeball average increase of 1.5C increase in the ending 2 years. Tokyo still on line and showed a 4C increase over the long period. I’m sure none of that could be due to UHI and needed to be adjusted upward by GISS.
How deep is this rabbit hole?
Where did Mann learn this “Nature Trick”? Did he have help merging “Tree temp” with “surface temp” programing.
How many other countries use some variation of this type of programing?
It looks like there is going to have to be a search for unadjusted surface station data around the whole globe. In the meantime, a glimpse of reality may be afforded by looking at temperature records for oceans. Those in the emails claim that land data is warming at twice the rate of oceans, and skeptics claim this is due to UHI and questionable adjustments to data. How to the oceans alone compare to the record of solar activity?
jh, Nice link to Nature. Story precis: Not important; just regular business; of course there are disputes in science; move on.
I call THAT attitude Climate Denial! Denial of the effing obvious … that people are REALLY PO’d about this. Lots of raging and gnashing of teeth.
I couldn’t even be bothered to send that dishonoured rag an e-mail of complaint. Let them sit there and wonder why subscriptions are down.
If we look at the SST anomalies (HADISST) for the Southwest Pacific Surrounding New Zealand (50S-30S, 160E-170W), there is much less of a long-term rise.
http://i46.tinypic.com/1174mtg.png
In fact, the linear trend for that dataset is 0.076 deg C/decade. Looks like the folks at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research slipped a decimal place.
http://i48.tinypic.com/nx2tk.png
About a month ago, I finally found time (retired) to investigate AGW — just in time to be able to follow the EAU-CRU revelations. WUWT is an incredible resource. Not only for content, but also for the links to other sites. Thanks!
A couple of observations germane to this thread:
The Urban Heat Island effect is no longer applied to USHCN raw data per http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/#urbanization . I expect New Zealand and/or CRU use the same reasoning.
Check out http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-surface-temperature-record-and-the-urban-heat-island/ for the rationale.
I’m not sure that any truly raw data is available. The USHCN lowest level data has passed “QA” and been manipulated as described by http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/#quality .
Raw? My BS meter is pegged.
Oops!! Should have read:
In fact, for comparison, the linear trend for that dataset from 1909 to 2008 is 0.076 deg C/decade. Looks like the folks at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research slipped a decimal place.
http://i48.tinypic.com/nx2tk.png
Someone upthread,
“What if the actual temperature is 2.6C below where CRUT3 says it is?”
One or both of two things?
One, all of the observations attributed to warming look even dumber than they did when they were made.
And AGW will become AGC as they tell us,
“We meant global cooling all along. Emissions must be reduced to halt global cooling. And all the other stuff we want too, so shut up”
E.M Smith, a regular visitor to this site, has done the work for everywhere on the planet, using freely available GHCN data from NOAA, to prove that the supposed AGW is simply an artifact of thermometer numbers and siting over time.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/ghcn-the-global-analysis/
If you dig around his site you’ll find all of the worldwide data from way back, and if you just eyeball this data, before any of the neat analysis that EMS has done, you can see that we’ve all been sold a pup by the Team and their hapless, wide-eyed supporters.
That site (and this) should be mandatory reading for all non-climate scientists and other basically numerate persons who believe they believe in AGW, unwittingly trusting that their climate scientist peers have been doing the right thing according to “the method”. There’s no fancy maths involved, just a probing analysis of raw data that shows how it’s been tortured to prove a point.
WAG (18:28:10) :
Doctor to patent’s relative: “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the operation was a success. The bad news is that the patient d**d”
Oops! UEA-CRU not EAU-CRU.
David (18:41:17) :
There are standard, precise, mathematical corrections for wind velocity, humidity, cloud cover, velocity vector of the vessel, wetness of the bucket, wave height, etc.
Trust me; I’m a climatologist.
URGENT have your say at the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/8375378.stm
see how many emails from you they will post. It might be important
REPLY – Better not go there. We don’t jail them; they don’t jail us. But we sure as heck don’t have to trust ’em. ~ Evan]
Evan:
Normally I agree with you, but I’m not inclined to agree to a quid pro quo. I’m a skeptic because from a sociological point of view the process of deviantization seemed more political than anything else. My question always was “Is there a reasonable alternative view to AGW?” The answer is “YES”. I did not fiddle with temperature records or attempt to suppress dissent or opposing views.
I want a Congressional Investigation. I want MORE money for a clean climate investigation network: more land stations, more ARGO buoys, more satellite coverage and more public oversight. I want jail time for people who willfully misrepresent the climate record to advance a political agenda or for personal gain. Make no mistake, this is happening.
End the lies. Congress, investigate now.
tthew Weaver (19:01:33) :
Yes. Check out Anthony’s surfacestations.org pages. I suspect he must be near completion of his project. Just in case he needs the bus fare over to some far off station in a downtown US city rooftop somewhere, I’m popping over to his tips jar to donate $10.
Let’s all do this!
@Third Party (16:56:53) :
“Sounds like NZ needs a SurfaceStations like documentation of siting and data for each of the subject stations.”
I can start. There is a station at 37deg 40min 14.74S 176deg 11min 47.64E
The Met station is visible on Google earth. In a fenced off enclosure a little to the north of the control tower and near the western end of Jean Batten Drive.
It is at the Tauranga Airport surrounded by the growing city of Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. They used to be two small towns. Now they are a small city. New Zealand cities admittedly are not very big. When I was young in the 1960’s our family would visit an elderly relative at Aerodrome Road, Tauranga. It was a long drive along a dirt road to get there. Look at it now on Google maps. It is bounded on one side by the city. The other side by the harbour. I expect the nearby mudflats and water may moderate the UHI effect somewhat but the nearby industrial estate to the north must have an effect.
My impression of how they adjust for the UHI is:
Long ago they didn’t know about it at all, so we subtract it.
When I was an undergraduate we knew a bit, so we subtract a bit.
Now we know all about it, so we subtract nothing.
It’s becoming clear that not only is there a lack of ethics in Climate Science but also a lack of intelligence.
Was New Zealand one of the countries Phil Jones said contractual agreements would not allow him to release the raw data? Did NZ supply him with raw or adjusted?