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.
I’m sorry,I’m tired.Yes just look at the graphs and you’ll see the huge offset downwards in adjusted data right from the start.They’ll never explain it.Mr Watt,please delete my previous two posts?
I’m confused. Which weather station is it that’s on a rooftop next to the air conditioners? The NIWA station survey pdf file seems to be for Newmarket (Auckland), not Wellington.
Re: Wellington, the weather station was moved to Kelburn in 1928 and then to Airport ~1970.
RK (13:27:11) :
“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.”
Or, better yet, BUY the data from that recalcitrant 1%. There’s enough money in the Climate Research budget to pay for it a million times over. (Just look for spare change under the cushions at the IPCC.)
Patrick Hadley (13:39:43) :
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.
What are you talking about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please see this document which gives the changes made
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/ParkerHorton_CET_IJOC_2005.pdf
RK (13:27:11) :
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.
“Yeah, that’s the ticket”
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf
Forget the station movements!! THEY CRANKED ALL THE DATA DOWN BY AT LEAST 0.5 DEGREES CELSIUS RIGHT FROM THE START OF THE DATASET.(Apart from Dunedin). It’s so outrageous my mind couldn’t even grasp it!!
RK (13:27:11) :
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,
This has already been released by giss for many years
Ron (13:04:20) :
“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.”
Not really OT, since the article above says there is no overlap data.
I suspect your method could well introduce a larger bias than with just A and B having overlapping data. Suppose
Station A is 10 miles from B. Station C is 5000 miles from Stations A and B. So technically there is overlap data. Your method would get a correction, would you depend on it? Who gets to choose which station 5000 miles away is the one used, and on what basis would it be chosen, and how would the result be tested?
Each station has a unique weather condition history, which can not be interpolated from another unless several complete historical factors are known of each station, which do not exist in early historical records (or not sufficiently accurate). This applies even to stations that are 10 miles from one another.
Look at the Airport graph.
Data for ~1990-1995 missing.
Inconvenient?
Will Kiwis ask?
The reason only one was released is because it is the one least implausible.
For those interested, I had an email discussion with Dr. David Wratt, Chief Climate Scientist for NIWA, about this issue and he felt there were no issues with the station location. You can read more here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d27-Debate-continues-about-New-Zealand-climate-records
Am I wrong is seeing this as a red herring?
The offset, at worst, would cause a step offset in the data starting at Jan 1, 1928, either up or down depending on whether they under or over estimated the effect of the altitude change. The “corrections” caused a rising temperature slope over time.
As I see it this station change is irrelevant.
@ur momisugly janama (12:51:32) :
here’s NASA GISS temp for Auckland Airport.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=507931190002&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
no warming there.
I was surprised to see there was an airport in Auckland in 1880
One more time.
Check the mecury in these crooks and fraud thermometers.
Check the calibration on the thermometers.
Check, Check,Check, and keep in mind one of the leaders of the Democrats in the U.S.A. is John F. Kerry [snip – maybe I agree, but it’s very pejorative and off topic ~ Evan]
grumpy old man (16:34:47) :
“Am I wrong is seeing this as a red herring?
The offset, at worst, would cause a step offset in the data starting at Jan 1, 1928, either up or down depending on whether they under or over estimated the effect of the altitude change. The “corrections” caused a rising temperature slope over time.
As I see it this station change is irrelevant.”
Others don’t:
“Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.”
Look, I spend plenty of time in both Kelburn and the airport. I don’t think the airport is warmer than Kelburn as such, it’s down by the south-facing sea (i.e. cold). The Met Service building up in Kelburn is up at the top edge of the Botanical Gardens, prominent to look at from below. It’s just in a cold windy spot, probably the coldest place in Kelburn. But on a sunny non-windy day, the flat roof of a building is a terrifically warm microclimate. Anyway, it looks like NIWA is being systematic about the temperature differentials, but it’s a shame to have to be suspicious they are cooking the books in some fashion. An agenda is a terrible thing, in science.
@ur momisugly Ed Scott (12:29:41) : This Just In! [Mark Steyn]
————
Well, Mark Steyn (often a great read!) caught part, but not all of it. Just a few days ago the director (I believe that was position) of our USA Nat’l Institute of Env. Health was on about this same issue. She was saying in a televised interview that reducing CO2 levels actually will not just help the enviro, but save lives – because reducing CO2 reduces heart disease, reduces respiratory disease, even reduces some types of cancer.
Ya, I’m buying all of that, aren’t all of you? I’m just sure they’ve had some good well designed controlled studies of people in low v high CO2 levels, ones that did a fine job of addressing all possible confounding factors too, right?
Ah, here it is, I’d posted (vented about) it to the WUWT tips & notes section on the 25th:
Tonights Jim Lehrer News report, just did interview with I think, Laura Burnbaum, director of Nat’ Institute of Environmental Health. She’s going on about how addressing climate change could not only help us economically and environmentally, but could save many many lives because reducing CO2 and Methane, etc., will, get this, will reduce heart disease, respiratory disease, even certain types of cancers!
Ray (13:02:22) :
Arnold (12:44:39) :
[Ray (12:06:44) :
Oh! I though that the Internationally accepted technique to adjust temperatures was to use tree rings and readjust the temperature of real thermometers. So, what they really should have done is cut a tree at Kelburn and another at Thorndon and do the Mann trick… Et Voila!]
Ow man, i was just spraying coffee after this remark 🙂
——
Good! Evaporative cooling!!! Very good against global warming!
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Oh, gosh darn, I’m so VERY sorry everyone!!! We just missed a chance at some major global cooling from evaporative effects – I didn’t happen to have a mouthful of coffee at the moment I read the last reply. Blame global warming on me, my bad.
John in NZ (16:48:07) :
@ur momisugly janama (12:51:32) :
here’s NASA GISS temp for Auckland Airport.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=507931190002&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
no warming there.
“I was surprised to see there was an airport in Auckland in 1880”
I’m sure Orville and Wilbur would have been surprised in 1900 as well.
I don’t suppose anyone has an idea of how large an effect on global temps this could have? I mean with all the averaging, griding, filling in of missing data, massaging, etc., etc., just how much actual global area is NZ winding up covering/affecting for the last half of the century & start of this?
(p.s., that’s what I was referring to in my previous post in terms of how a couple of evaporative events from coffee spews separated by significant distance might account for global effects, based on the way it appears GIStemps & CRU data is ‘mann-handled’ if you’ll forgive the expression)
A kiwi ate my data!
I support Wratt. Keep all the data secret. Bury it in the backyard. No, hide it in East Anglia, UK. No, that won’t work. Eat it. That’s what secret agents do. Print the data on edible paper and eat it before the dudes with the badges come knocking.
I just took a quick gander at global CO2 levels versus life expectancy across 100-year and 200-year timescales. I think Burnbaum must have her series upsidedown – or something.
As for the New Zealand data, I’m not sure if anyone has pointed this out but the graph they provided to explain the station change and the adjustment is missing an entire year. 1927 is just gone. Poof. Never happened, even though they opened the new station on Jan 1, the day after the old station closed (Dec 31).
I only noticed it because I assumed the gap was real, and I was frustrated that an entire year was missing.
I’d say they cut it out of the graph to make an obvious, visible gap that would make people think “Gee. The curve could’ve down like they said, because there’s room the gap for a year’s worth of decline.”
“Wratt is refusing to release data his organisation claims to have justifying adjustments on other weather stations, meaning the science cannot be reviewed”.
NIWA statement:
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.
Indeed! Release the analysis Dr Wratt! We are not interested in your statements. Do you take us to be bloody fools?
I have already sent him a text to this effect on his cell phone when I saw the NIWA report. I shall ring him on monday and email him if he refuses to talk to me.
whaleoil (14:15:23) :
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 post is misleading. The building pictured is not Kelburn, in Wellington, but Khyber Pass, in Auckland.
Rational Debate (17:28:17) : I don’t suppose anyone has an idea of how large an effect on global temps this could have? I mean with all the averaging, griding, filling in of missing data, massaging, etc., etc., just how much actual global area is NZ winding up covering/affecting for the last half of the century & start of this?
I suspect quite a large effect. There is not much land in the southern hemisphere and most of it is Antartica with few thermometers.
We have a large number of thermometers and so I imagine would punch well above our weight. Specially if our “analysis” of the readings take us from 0 warming to 1.9 C.
On the Team side, this may be of interest. Apparently problems have arisen, someone has exposed himself, and Mossman might have had Stevensen screens.
“With the SH around 1910s there is the issue of exposure problems in Australia – see Neville’s paper. This shouldn’t be an issue in NZ – except maybe before 1880, but could be in southern South America. New work in Spain suggest screens got renewed about 1900, so maybe this happened in Chile and Argentina, but Mossmann was head of the Argentine NMS so he may have got them to use Stevenson screens early. Neville has never been successful getting any OZ funding to sort out pre-1910 temps everywhere except Qld.Here’s a paper in CC on European exposure problems. There is also one on Spanish series.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1017&filename=1254147614.txt