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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April E. Coggins (22:02:00) :
I’ve seen similar things happen in other fields. Counsellors and trainers, who, despite having a Code of Ethics, still think that they can have sexual relations with clients.
Maybe I’m not being fair, but I begin to wonder if the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me is an occupational hazard of having some sort of high profile.
DaveH (22:19:05) :
It might be a good idea to get a screenshot of that data, you know, before it gets “lost.”
Can we really trust average temperature numbers from 1850?
It’s appears to spread to Kalgoorlie as well
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=wa&station=012038&period=annual
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=012039&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
and
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=012038&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Combined
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/kalcomb.jpg
We have lost a whole degree out of some of the 1930’s
Here is a sample of NZ airport stations, it covers a geographic slice of increasing latitudes of around 1200 kilometers and the trends (station specific) get progressively cooler towards the higher(polar) latitudes.
Auckland 0.0086c/yr (extrapolating to 120 yrs + 1c)
Wellington 0.0016c/yr (extrapolating to 610 yrs+ 1c)
Christchurch -0.00649c/yr (extrapolating to 160 yrs- 1c)
Invercargill -0.076c/yr (extrapolating to 13 yrs -1c)
Here is the series since 1960 WMO station Wellington Airport.(reported data)
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/wgtntemeraturetrend.jpg
Alvin (20:47:15) :
Seems to me the new peer review process is a little more open than the “Gang of 114”. If the NIWA information is “unequivocal” and “robust” it will withstand scrutiny – or not.
I live near the Met station at Mt Maunganui that John in NZ (19:13:17) : describes. The influence of newly built warehouses, tar-sealed roads etc must produce a local warming effect not present in earlier measurements, but to bundle this local and resent warming effect into a “Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.” aggregate does not sit well with me. Of course it will be warmer if the temps are influenced by new radiant surfaces (bit like the coefficient of runoff for water varying for different surfaces for same rainfall). I think there was a controversy in the USA re the siting of stations in similar regard.
To put this in perspective, temps at extremely cold stations (Antarctica) are read remotely to exclude the effect of human body warmth. At the other extreme it is not unusual for temps at Tauranga/Mt Maunganui CBDs to rise above 40 degrees C in the height of summer but it is impossible to exclude this effect from the reading.
Begs the question: are temperature measurements by thermometer from say 10 stations that are then applied to the NZ land mass (3 major islands plus how much ocean?) any more valid than 10 temp proxy tree-ring samples from Yamal applied to the global land mass plus ocean?
And Geraldton
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=wa&station=008051&period=annual
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/gero.jpg
With respect to my comment (22:38:15) : , have I accidentally stumbled on the Heat Island Effect?
Craig (22:16:08) :
“Please define “lay person” I’m a professional engineer, despite my spelling handicap. People who want to communicate the excellent job they did will not just tell you they adjusted numbers; they will tell you the value of the adjustment; why the adjustment was made and are prepared to show documentation that the value of the adjustment is reasonable. I think I can handle that much information and I think most people can.”
I used the term because Wag (the dog) did. So it’d probably be someone outside the circle of “Trust me, I’m a climatologist” people in this case. Although I didn’t actually speak to a living soul, I remember scoring an “A” in an online Interpersonal Communication course.
I agree about sharing, and especially in the field of climatology data and methods (including code) should be available to any reasonable request, and kept until it is outdated. Certainly an FOI shouldn’t be met with a number of contradictory excuses. “Hiding behind” a claim of copyright or IPCC bothers me the most.
Re NIKFromNYC (18:07:04)
Thanks for resurrecting that 2007 CA post that I had commented on, but lost in a disc crash earlier this year. I belatedly added an additional comment to bring my earlier responses up to date.
And Southern Cross
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=wa&station=012074&period=annual
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=012074&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
It’s contagious!
Thank you, Marine Shale, you have solved some long-standing puzzles.
From the Excellence in Broadcasting Golden Microphone:
“You know, it’s a bubble here. Look at it this way. The global warming bubble, we just heard it burst. The question is: How will that explosion affect the Universe of Lies? This past decade, we have lived and suffered through a dot-com bubble, stock bubbles, the housing bubble. We all know the problem with bubbles: They eventually burst. Bubbles refer to things that are grossly overvalued. When bubbles burst, values leave the Universe of Lies and reenter the Universe of Reality. The dot-com bubble brought reality to the stock market. The housing bubble brought reality to the housing market. And so will the global warming bubble eventually bring reality to science. Man-made global warming may be in the process of reentering the Universe of Reality, finding its true value. It’s a debunked theory of junk science promulgated by junk political scientists. Big Science can no longer be trusted as things stand today. Science, the media, government, and academia: The Four Corners of Deceit in the Universe of Lies.
Bubbles are self-perpetuating climbs in value that defy free market principles. They defy checks and balances. They’re lies — counterfeit truth, if you will. Bubbles occur when hope triumphs over reason, when speculation jumps ahead of fact. It all becomes obvious in hindsight after values have fallen back to earth and reality. A bubble occurs when speculators note rapid increases in value and buy in anticipation of further increases, rather than buying because something is undervalued. Bubbles are false values. It’s why everybody worries about them. It’s why everybody worries, “When’s this bubble going to burst?” Because everybody knows when you’ve got a bubble, you’ve got a fraud. You’ve got false values — and when those bubbles burst, we all fall back into the Universe of Reality, and it can be a very hard fall.”
Folks, the bubble has burst on AGW. It will never be looked at the same. In hindsight, it will be one more false scare to add along side “The Population Explosion”, “Worldwide Famine”, Raw Material Scarcity”, The New Ice Age”, etc.
Now for the entertainment…………….
Hope you all enjoy!
Hmmm… It looks like they used a Bezier curving “trick” to pull the data down; weighting the curve’s point around the year 1905.
As the guys at Real Climate like to say, that’s “a good way to deal with a problem…”
Cheers
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.
When people claimed to have invented cold fusion, they were not allowed to keep their stuff secret. Why has no scientific journal refused to publish information based on their climate information until they have explained it?
This is a failure along the entire chain that is supposed to prevent stuff like this happening. There seems to be great financial incentive for the institutions involved to keep quiet as it brings a lot of research money and “prestige” to them. As long as everything is kept quiet, that is.
As Dr. Jones’ dog apparently ate the raw data and for some reason they don’t even have the meta data that describes the original data, then the entire database is junk. It can not be replicated. It can not be shown to be right or wrong. We must simply trust Dr. Jones with data on which policies costing huge amounts of money are based. I don’t think so.
The responsible thing to do is build a new database with new data that is fully documented. The current one can not be verified.
– NASA’s Latest Discovery: SUN HEATS THE EARTH (American Thincker, June 05, 2009) – Robert Calahan at NASA’s Goddard Space Center could be in big trouble — for telling the truth. Here is a headline for an article in the Daily Tech: “NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming”… World’s Largest Science Group Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears…
– Pentagon/NASA: Global Warming/Global Cooling… THE PENTAGON WARNS CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BRING GLOBAL CATASTROPHE… Now the Pentagon tells Bush (Guardian.co.uk., 22 February 2004): climate change will destroy us… Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/07/worlds-largest-science-group-rejecting.html
Have just read “Does this make sense?” from yonason (22:19:51) : re Heat Island Effect so now up to speed. The following quote is telling:
“Note that no one gets a number for the Urban Heat Island effect less than 1 degree C, and many hover around 6 degrees (delta temperature from urban location to surrounding rural countryside). Just a bit higher than the 0.2C assumed by the IPCC. Why would they assume such a low number in the face of strong evidence? Because assuming a higher number would reduce historical warming numbers, silly.”
WHAT? – “0.2C assumed by the IPCC.” you have got to be joking, what a load of piffle. Do these IPCC people know nothing about heat transfer? If the temp at the urban station is 20-30 Deg C and the temp at the local CBD within cooee is 40 Deg C guess what will happen? or do they have a different “adjustment” for this gradient scenario than the aforementioned “(delta temperature from urban location to surrounding rural countryside)” gradient.
And this science is “settled”. I’m going now, my head hurts.
“”Folks, the bubble has burst on AGW.””
There are a lot of smart people who say that “carbon” was supposed to be the next big bubble to drag the stock markets of the world back from the brink. Australia is going through the same things the US is re: the tax and cap stuff. The Liberal leader (US eqiv. being the R’s) is a proponent of taxing carbon and is a past employee of Goldman. Follow the money.
“the pursuit of money is the root of all evil”
Benford’s law might be applicable on numerical values making up the graphs? To my knowlege no one has tried that yet.
When a recording station is moved to a significantly different location then a new data stream is created.
Assuming the new values can be simply and directly related to the old ones by a y = x + c relationship is just invalid without evidential proof.
That presumption alone shows the dataset is garbage and the trend conclusions are GIGO.
Anthony and others
Warwick Hughes has just provided links to an UNADJUSTED NewZealand temperature record.
First an overview
http://www.warwickhughes.com/nz/land.htm
Second the north Island Average
http://www.warwickhughes.com/nz/ni_hughes94.gif
Third the South Island Average
http://www.warwickhughes.com/nz/si_hughes94.gif
Now most of the stations these are from are REMOTE stations largely unaffected by UHI and need no “adjustment”. Question to Dr Wratt if he is reading, why are these “pristine” data not used in preference to the contaminated official data. There may be a good reason, but lets hear it. The data by the way comes from the NIWA database, so we assume it is accurate.
” I bet independent groups could find falsified data in these governmental figures all over the globe” – Joseph in Florida
I’m sure they could* – IF the custodians of this (public-funded) data were willing to release it rather than “accidentally” delete it. Which is kind of where we came in. (*And if, unlike “Harry” they were able to make any sense of it!)
If confirmed, though, this New Zealand scandal turns the smoking gun into a smoking cannon. Confirmation that raw data is being manipulated to create an imaginary warming trend there combined with persistant insistent refusal to publish raw data here will really make them look bad.
“he does the usual job of villifying the skeptics by claiming that they are all in the pay of Exxon Mobile.”
Actually, AIUI the oil companies are actually making rather a nice income from the carbon scam, partly because it’s increasing demand for oil/gas over coal and partly because they are in a position to sell carbon credits.
The National Health Service in the UK is paying a fortune to the oil companies here by way of buying carbon credits. So why would these companies be paying people to upturn this lucrative apple-cart?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533275/NHS-carbon-trading-sees-millions-go-up-in-smoke.html
Can’t stop gnawing this bone.
Glenn (22:45:05) :, Craig (22:16:08) :
Point taken re “adjustments” but there is an infinite number of adjustments that can be made when you go down that track and are they “adjusting” in a scientific sense or “fudging” to satisfy a predetermined outcome or both? This can only be determined by unbiased peers replicating results independently but if the underlying methodology is questionable, what’s the point of raking over the same data?
There cannot be a reliable and measurable average temperature for a country plus surrounding ocean (say NZ) as in “Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.” without extensive sampling. At the moment it seems to be a battle of best estimates; sensible vs fudged.
Weren’t CRU measuring tree-ring proxy temps to 1/10 of a degree? That’s more accurate than a thermometer.
Alan Wilkinson (20:33:42) :
“The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.”
Wellington is one of the windiest places on the planet. I should imagine it has had a major UHI effect since 1928. Did they adjust for that?
KimW (21:40:53) :
I happen to have spent a long time in Wellington. … all that hill is subject to the UHI effect. That adjustment for altitude – might be OK on a barren hillscape, but not on a built up hill area.
Keith Minto (22:12:39) :
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.
Kiwi (22:43:32) :
With respect to my comment (22:38:15), have I accidentally stumbled on the Heat Island Effect?
.
Could be.
Adiabtic lapse rate for the elevation difference between Kelburn and Thorndon means Kelburn should be 1.2°C cooler. Since they show only 0.8°C, 0.4°C might be attributable to UHI, depending on the site surroundings.