NIWA issued a response statement regarding the charges leveled by The NZ Climate Science Coalition here:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/niwa-confirms-temperature-rise
They say:
Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.
NIWA’s analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. 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.
I’m not too impressed, especially when you see where the weather station for National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) is, right on the rooftop next to the air conditioners:
Here is the station survey: NIWA_station_survey (PDF) and the Google Earth KML file
Thanks to: Dieuwe de Boer who did a good portion of station surveys in New Zealand last year.
The NZ Climate Science Coalition responds:
NIWA’s explanation raises major new questions
The NIWA climate controversy took a new twist tonight with the release of new data from the government run climate agency.
Reeling from claims that it has massaged data to show a 150 year warming trend where there isn’t one, NIWA’s chief climate scientist David Wratt, an IPCC vice-chair on the 2007 AR4 report, issued a news release stating adjustments had been made to compensate for changes in sensor locations over the years.
While such an adjustment is valid, it needs to be fully explained so other scientists can test the reasonableness of the adjustment.
Wratt is refusing to release data his organisation claims to have justifying adjustments on other weather stations, meaning the science cannot be reviewed. However, he has released information relating to Wellington temperature readings, and they make for interesting reading.
Here’s the rub. Up until 1927, temperatures for Wellington had been taken at Thorndon, only 3 m above sea level and an inner-city suburb. That station closed and, as I suspected in my earlier post, there is no overlap data allowing a comparison between Thorndon and Kelburn, where the gauge moved, at an altitude of 135 metres.
With no overlap of continuous temperature readings from both sites, there is no way to truly know how temperatures should be properly adjusted to compensate for the location shift.
Wratt told Investigate earlier there was international agreement on how to make temperature adjustments, and in the news release tonight he elaborates on that:
“Thus, if one measurement station is closed (or data missing for a period), it is acceptable to replace it with another nearby site provided an adjustment is made to the average temperature difference between the sites.”
Except, except, it all hinges on the quality of the reasoning that goes into making that adjustment. If it were me, I would have slung up a temperature station in the disused location again and worked out over a year the average offset between Thorndon and Kelburn. It’s not perfect, after all we are talking about a switch in 1928, but it would be something. But NIWA didn’t do that.
Instead, as their news release records, they simply guessed that the readings taken at Wellington Airport would be similar to Thorndon, simply because both sites are only a few metres above sea level.
Airport records temps about 0.79C above Kelburn on average, so NIWA simply said to themselves, “that’ll do” and made the Airport/Kelburn offset the official offset for Thorndon/Kelburn as well, even though no comparison study of the latter scenario has ever been done.
Here’s the raw data, from NIWA tonight, illustrating temp readings at their three Wellington locations since 1900:
What’s interesting is that if you leave Kelburn out of the equation, Thorndon in 1910 is not far below Airport 2010. Perhaps that gave NIWA some confidence that the two locations were equivalent, but I’m betting Thorndon a hundred years ago was very different from an international airport now.
Nonetheless, NIWA took its one-size-fits all “adjustment and altered Thordon and the Airport to match Kelburn for the sake of the data on their website and for official climate purposes.
In their own words, NIWA describe their logic thus.
- Where there is an overlap in time between two records (such as Wellington Airport and Kelburn), it is a simple matter to calculate the average offset and adjust one site relative to the other.
- Wellington Airport is +0.79°C warmer than Kelburn, which matches well with measurements in many parts of the world for how rapidly temperature decreases with altitude.
- Thorndon (closed 31 Dec 1927) has no overlap with Kelburn (opened 1 Jan 1928). For the purpose of illustration, we have applied the same offset to Thorndon as was calculated for the Airport.
- The final “adjusted” temperature curve is used to draw inferences about Wellington temperature change over the 20th century. The records must be adjusted for the change to a different Wellington location
Now, it may be that there was a good and obvious reason to adjust Wellington temps. My question remains, however: is applying a temperature example from 15km away in a different climate zone a valid way of rearranging historical data?
And my other question to David Wratt also remains: we’d all like to see the metholdology and reasoning behind adjustments on all the other sites as well.
Glen, you are of course right, you can have big differences but that is not important. Let as say the Station A has been replaced by Station B with no overlap but that both have an overlap of some years with station C. You compare difference in average between both Stations A and B with Station C. Let us say that Station A is 0.8 C warmer than Station C and Station B is 0.3 C cooler than station C. This means that Station A is 1.1 degrees warmer than Station B. That gives you your correction.
N. Zealand population 1881: 533,000
N. Zealand population today: 4.1 Million
No of cars in N.Z. in 1881: Zero (?)
No of cars in N.Z. today: several million?
Ditto for electricity, airports, central heating? air conditioning? etc.
Man made warming? Sure perhaps a little. But Global Warming, not exactly.
How does the computer code correct tree ring data for those trees planted near some sort of thermal mass or heat source? Those elms on the lawn at Old Main must benefit from the local change in growing season, no?
Anthony, what is the status of the Surface Stations update. Some further results would be very timely.
Global warming has turned into a Wratt trap.
Is this worth looking at?
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420 re possible posting for your consideration BTW nip if not relevant
Even if one could completely trust the temperature sensors as providing “hard data”, which can be a challenging proposition at best due to localized heat island effects like being positioned next to heat sources like building air conditioning equipment and site changes not to mention issues with the devices accuracy and calibration, have the “soft data mannipulations” and adjustments seems to be a major source of human induced error or misdirection. As we’ve seen from the Climategate affair the alleged scientists involved (are they still scientists if they don’t follow an ethical and verifiable scientific method?) “misdirection” is now not just a very real possibility but a high probability especially when those involved have deep connections to the Climategate Fellows of Deception.
Anyhow, the alleged professional climate scientists at NIWA) sure know how to destroy a nice graph showing no temperature change in over a hundred years! http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf.
If I understand what is being said, the entire alleged human caused global warming climate change for New Zealand is from the “adjustments” to the temperature sensors and that without said adjustments the trend is as close to zero as one could expect a Natural system to be if it’s stable?
Can the raw data readings be counted upon as reliable?
How many sites are located within heat islands?
Surely if there are a preponderance of sites in heat islands then they’d have to make adjustments downwards? Wouldn’t that indicate a cooling trend in later years as heat island effects would increase with larger cities and more machinery near sites?
How are the adjustments justified?
Is this the case for the Mann graphs too? Flat trendlines without the adjustments to the data?
If the adjustments to the data are subjective then the entire conclusions are also subjective, and thus subject to human error and foibles.
Sigh.
Imagine if the raw data collected in a clinical trial showed that the study drug had no effect. But the data, after adjusted for problems with the protocol and the measurement instruments showed that the drug was effective. Would the FDA consider approving the drug? Unlikely, but let’s assume there was a slim chance (actually a new trial would be demanded).
But the analogy here goes a bit further. The alarmists are effectively asking that the drug be approved based on the altered data, but they don’t think they need to show an audit trail of the changes, nor explain the methodology for the adjustments. Which would result in the FDA not only laughing the New Drug Application out of existence, but in debarring everyone associated with the research program.
Over at realclimate.org, Gavin said that the reason CRU had not released the global temperature dataset is due to the 1% of the entities who own the data has not agreed to the release. I have 2 suggestions to CRU: (1) release the 99% of the data that is not under the restraint, and (2) let the world know who these entities are so that the public can petition these entities to put the data into public domain.
Jim Steele (12:33:11) : There adjustment can be tested simply and fairly quickly, by comparing measurements simultaneously at each site.
Simply maybe, but not quickly. Here in the SF Bay area with its many micro climates close locations can have vastly different temperatures, with the sign of the difference depending on the time of the year. Oakland hills will be generally cooler than the other side of the hills, except in winter where the bay moderates the Oakland side leading to higher temperatures (at least higher lows). Thus would an overlap need to be for at least a year to determine a full difference pattern?
That’s the only half sensible way to do it,it seems to me Ron.(Doesn’t help with poor maintenance and gradual encroachment of urbanisation and plain stupidity (asphalt,AC etc).Perhaps Mr.Watt or the New Zealanders could do something fairly quickly with that.
So we are supposed to believe in an urban station on a freakin’ rooftop.
O! Ye immortal Gods!
The NZ situation is an interesting contrast to the Central England Temperature record. This has been kept since 1659 and shows that there is nothing unusual in variations of temperatures over decades and that there is no significant trend over the last 350 years.
It was taken over by the Met Office who have changed the location of the stations to warmer places, but made no adjustments to take this into account. As a result CET shows spurious warming over the last ten years. The Met has deliberately debased an historic record so that they can say that temperatures in England are higher than ever.
Oh oh – http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2009/11/hudson-hushed.html
“When contacted by the Mail, the weatherman said he was not allowed to comment and asked us to speak to the BBC press office.
A BBC spokesperson said: “Paul wrote a blog for the BBC website on October 9 entitled Whatever Happened To Global Warming. There was a big reaction to the article – not just here but around the world. Among those who responded were Professor Michael E Mann and Stephen Schneider whose e-mails were among a small handful forwarded to Paul on October 12.
“Although of interest, Paul wanted to consider the e-mails as part of a wider piece, following up his original blog piece.
“Last week, Paul spotted these few e-mails were among thousands published on the Internet following the alleged hacking of the UEA computer system.
“Paul passed this information on to colleagues at the BBC, who ran with the story, and then linked to the e-mails on his blog this Monday.”
@ur momisugly Patrick Hadley (13:39:43) :
Can you provide references or detailed data for this as it is extremely concerning
Patrick Hadley (13:39:43) :
It would make sense to have a universal protection agency that would protect the integrity of historical temperature instruments and sites/environment.
I know that NOAA was supposed to be it, but obviously, they’ve done a crappy job.
And on top of all this, what is not considered by Hadley or NASA?
How about +/- error on the temperature measurements?
That error should then be carried through to the climate models which are back-cast tuned to match the temperature record.
And then the model error needs to be incorporated into the model output at the year 2100.
No, the only error range that is considered at the year 2100 is the difference between all 21 general circulation models.
And then, the gall to say we are 90% certain the temperature will rise x degrees by the year 2100.
Can you retrospectively make an estimate for the adjustment where there is no overlap?
For example, 3m above sea level near the cost for an inland higher temperature site?
The solution is to start measuring at a selection of sites, and get a good estimate for the adjustment retrospectively.
It costs, but not unreasonable.
The building that the station is sitting on was built in the 1970’s so if the station was moved there in 1927 how did it get on top of a 1970’s building?
Or is there another move that NIWA aren’t telling us about?
The lack of warming of the lower tropospere (since 1979) is also evident from UAH MSU for the southern hemisphere’s extratropics :
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUSExt.html
Looking at the charts on the ‘global warming nz2.pdf’ from ‘The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition’ I see the problem! Apart from the Auckland chart which from 1860-1960 is fairly self consistent,it’s all a Donkey’s breakfast.So many ‘difference events’ between the unadjusted and adjusted data on a seemingly 5-yearly basis? I assume all measuring stations would have come under Government control at the same time/standards being laid down.Therefore why is Auckland so consistent for the hundred year period when the other stations are not? – Can’t be equipment changes? You can obviously see when a station was moved by the vertical adjustment line but some appear to have been moved many times and there are lesser adjustments too numerous to mention.I think many will never be satisfactorily explained.
“internationally accepted techniques”…again with the arrogance.
We’re in the middle of discussing how potentially, and international body of scientists used their collective “muscle” to bury the opposition, and this guy tells us that in effect, he has what amounts to their approval to do what he did, and we should all just shut up and go away.
I’m pretty sure that I can get international acceptance on a new technique which REQUIRES YOU TO SHOW YOUR DATA/METHODOLOGY.
When will these ass-hats realize that this is what the whole issue is about?
Man…I need to take up knitting.
JimB
What NIWA have actually done is basically move the Kelburn series up to match the airport readings. They are, in effect, saying that Kelburn and the Airport have identical readings.
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/niwa-confirms-temperature-rise/combining-temperature-data-from-multiple-sites-in-wellington
The fact that the temperature in Thorndon is being read off a roof is effectively meaningless, because in effect NIWA are using the Airport readings now, and the Thorndon series is just a proxy for earlier Airport readings.
But the clever bit off all this is that the movement over time of the Thordon thermometer and the UHI effects mean that it gets a small positive gradient.
So when it is used as a proxy to link the old Kelburn and new Airport values together, it gets to add a quite possibly entirely artificial slope.
Surely the solution is to compare thermometers near the old Thorburn site, the old Kelburn site (before it was on the roof), the current Kelburn site and the airport for an extensive period and sort out the actual relationship . The cost should be peanuts really.
The situation for Wellinton and Christchurch NIWA temps are more complicated when you look at GISStemp
Here the data fore the last 20 years or so is quite clearly the airport temps at both cities
The downtown map coodinates are attached to the airport file in error and I think that this happened somwhere in NOAA. ie Wellington airport data has the coordinates for Kelburn Gardens
DR Wratt knows of the error because I told him. He responded that he did not have resourse to do an audit
On the other hand I keep my emails
What I dont know is whether GISS increased the Wellington ?? last 20 years temps because of the false elevation of 300 feet
PS —NIWA station data are freely availabe by download
[snip – stop this crap- Anthony]
Perhaps NIWA have just been responding to all the complaints from Wellingtonians over the years that the Kelburn site, being up on an exposed hill, is not indicative of the temperatures experienced down at sea level amongst the concrete/steel/glass towers of Lambton Quay (a real UHI for sure).
I suspect that the Kelburn site was chosen only because it was on crown land. The Met site was positioned next to the old Dominion Observatory, complete with transit circle, and the Carter Observatory (formerly the National Observatory). Wellington is not only renowned for the strength of it’s wind, but also it’s hilly nature, similar to San Francisco by all accounts. Flat land is scarce and at a premium.
As to the siting of data stations relating to this ‘upward trend’ of the past 50 years. Surely we could look at the data from stations that a.) haven’t been moved. b.) aren’t affected by UHI, even if they don’t go all the way back into the 19th century with the data.
Our local station in Palmerston North would be a good one to try out. Situated at what was the D.S.I.R. (Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research near Massey University) in the 80’s it was in a paddock about 30 metres away from sealed roads and concrete. It has been moved even further away from anything of that nature since then, ostensibly still the same environment.