I’ve been following this issue a few days and looking at a number of stations and had planned to make a detailed post about my findings, but WUWT commenter Steven Douglas posted in comments about this curious change in GISS data recently, and it got picked up by Kate at SDA, which necessitated me commenting on it now. This goes back to the beginning days of surfacestations.org in June 2007 and the second station I surveyed.
Remember Orland? That nicely sited station with a long record?
Note the graph I put in place in June 2007 on that image.
Now look at the graph in a blink comparator showing Orland GISS data plotted in June 2007 and today:
NOTE: on some browsers, the blink may not start automatically – if so, click on the image above to see it
The blink comparator was originally by Steven Douglas. However he made a mistake in the “after” image which I have now corrected.What you see above is a graphical fit via bitmap alignment and scaling of the images to fit. This is why the dots and lines appear slightly smaller in the “after” image. I don’t have the GISS Orland data handy at the moment from 2007, but I did have the GISS station plots from Orland from that time and from the present, downloaded from the GISS website today. If I locate the prior Orland data, I’ll redo the blink comparator.
I believe this blink comparator representation accurately reflects the change in the Orland data, even is the dots and lines aren’t exactly the same thickness.
Douglas writes in his notice to me:
It appears that RAW station plots are no longer available, although NASA GISS (Hansen et al) do not say it in this way. Here is the notice on their site:
Note to prior users: We no longer include data adjusted by GHCN and have renamed the middle option (old name: prior to homogeneity adjustment).
I don’t know about the “renamed” option, but the RAW data appears to be NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
Here’s a detailed blink comparison of Orland. All their options now give you an “adjusted” plot of some kind. The “AFTER” in this graph show the “adjustments” to Orland.
Here is what the GISS data selector looks like now, yellow highlight mine, click to enlarge:
Above clip from: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
Here is the “raw” GISS data plot of Orland I saved back in 2007:
And here is another blink comparator of Orland raw -vs- homogenized data posted by surfacestations.org volunteer Mike McMillan on 12/29/2008:
And here is the “raw” GISS data for Orland today, please note the vertical scale is now different since the pre-1900 data has been removed, the GISS plotting software autoscales to the most appropriate range:
Source:
And it is not just Orland, I’m seeing this issue at other stations too.
For example Fairmont, CA another well sited station well isolated, and with a long record:
Here is Fairmont “raw” from 11/17/2007:
And here is Fairmont from GISS today:
Source:
This raises a number of questions. for example: Why is data truncated pre-1900? Why did the slope change? The change appears to have been fairly recent, within the last month. I tried to pinpoint it using the “wayback machine” but apparently because this page:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
is forms based, the change in this phrase:
Note to prior users: We no longer include data adjusted by GHCN and have renamed the middle option (old name: prior to homogeneity adjustment).
Appears to span the entire “wayback machine” archive, even prior to 2007. If anyone has a screen cap of this page prior to the change or can help pinpoint the date of the change, please let me know.
It is important to note that the issue may not be with GISS, but upstream at GHCN data managed by NCDC/NOAA. Further investigation is needed to found out where the main change has occurred. It appears this is a system wide change.
The timing could not be worse for public confidence in climate data.
I’ll have more on this as we learn more about this data change.
UPDATE1 from comments:
GISS also just started using USHCN_V2 last month. See under “What’s New”:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
“Nov. 14, 2009: USHCN_V2 is now used rather than the older version 1. The only visible effect is a slight increase of the US trend after year 2000 due to the fact that NOAA extended the TOBS and other adjustment to those years.
Sep. 11, 2009: NOAA NCDC provided an updated file on Sept. 9 of the GHCN data used in our analysis. The new file has increased data quality checks in the tropics. Beginning Sept. 11 the GISS analysis uses the new NOAA data set. ”
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I think it is interesting that many of the adjustments are relatively small after 1979. Perhaps the availability of satellite temperatures from then on has “discouraged” further large adjustments over this period. Increasingly, it is looking like ever larger adjustments downwards are being made to earlier temperatures to maintain the appearance of rising temperatures over the long term. Correspondence with the satellite temperatures from 1979 is then used to justify the whole series including its cooled earlier temperatures.
Sorry if someone else has admonished. We need to either find and archive the ‘raw’ data, or create a new database just like surfacestations was done. We may have to create it by going to the library and getting High/Low and records from the local newspapers.
A dedicated website to the raw temperature record for every station on record.
Let’s evaluate the ‘adjustments, fudging, UHI corrections, siting and equipment adjustments for each agency. Thus the ‘value added’ can be compared to any station.
It seems to me that with the billions upon billions of dollars we are forced to spend on this ‘research’, they could set up a data base of empirical observations for our temperature record.
I hate to be Orwellian, but the actual record should be archived!
Query to you experts: What about the UAH data? How does it compare to the corrupted data sets of CRU and NOAA?
Isn’t John Christy a steward of the UAH dataset? He appears to be genuinely interested in the truth in the data and not an agenda. He does not appear to be one who would monkey with the data to serve an agenda.
Further re: Prof Christy, I saw him on the tube, the watched his lecture from 2007. His lecture was absolutely outstanding…much more so than in the debates on tv. Would that he would have used his personality while being interviewed live.
P.S., Laura Ingraham just debated an “environmentalist” Tyson Slocum. She appeared armed with some info against his recitation of the talking points…emails don’t disprove rigorous peer-reviewed science, the code didn’t modify any data used in any specific publication.
A little more tutoring would serve these talking heads to good end.
Someone is going to win a Pulitzer or its equivalent for taking on this issue in depth…either for or against.
[REPLY – UAH tracks fairly closely (but with a bit less of a trend). But the deal is not so much what CRU & crew have done since 1979, it’s what they’ve done to the record before that, before UAH records. Such as possibly flattening that inconvenient 1930s bump. ~ Evan]
Jack Kendrick (15:40:48) :
‘I’m not really swift at this stuff but it seems to me that with all these adjustments the “Warmers” have set themselves a trap that is going to burn them in the future. (Or maybe it already is and that is why temperatures have leveled off for the past 10 years). They can’t just keep adjusting temperatures ever upwards. Pretty soon, it is going to be obvious that the temperatures bear no relation to reality.’
Not to worry. We’ll just pull the old “Hansen/Gore trick”. We’ll just turn the heat up in your room until you are sitting in your underware wondering why it’s getting soooo hot outside.
I cannot believe that any scientist would knowingly throw away raw data. It is so fundamental to their life’s work.
They may well have taken a copy and “enhanced it”, but the raw data will still be somewhere, and their must be an audit trail for colleagues, etc to find their way around.
I guess you have to be VERY specific in any future FOI requests.
If they claim, in response, that there is no audit trail, then that exposes them to further criticism.
Imagine a company’s Financial Controller saying, “Well, our accounts did not match the bank balance, so we just changed the numbers to make them agree”. Or worse yet, ” … we just took the excess money out of the bank to make the balance agree with our accounts”.
Isn’t everyone a little tired from all this leaping to conclusions? Mr. Watts has asked an interesting question. I see no factual basis for the conspiracy “answers” on this post other than a deep mistrust. That isn’t nearly enough.
Thanks for the newspaper links, Roger Knights. 🙂
Oh, and a new slogan:
Climate Data Archive Administrators – making sure science will rely on dendrochronologists for centuries to come.
Not the actor E.M.
Me thinks these are the only people who could pull all the strings to pull this whole AGW scam.
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/house-of-rothschild-no-one-can-understand-what-has-happened-to-the-planet-without-reading-this/
Imagine what another “Super Duper Solar Storm” –similar to the 1859 event– would do to ‘modern’ science’s records. EMP sizzling all over the place. Not only would we literally be back in the Dark Ages, there wouldn’t even be a paper trail in Latin or Greek to fall back on. Tower of Babel kinda scarry don’t you think?
Anthony, is it because they now use the USHCN data, I’m thinking this option is the TOB adjusted data before homoginization
Folks, if you want GOOD RAW DATA, you’re going to have to go into the land grant university system.
As it seems to me the data is still available on the USHCN network. FTP link provided earlier. But the question still is why would they throw away the raw data before the 1900’s.
FTP: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ushcn_v2_monthly/
Some graph i made: http://img10.imageshack.us/i/orland.jpg/
USHCN Data was the raw data (No modifications for TOB)
GISS Data was the data “raw GHCN data+USHCN corrections”
On note, diff 0 line is 14C (Calculated diff and added 14)
George Turner (17:06:30) :
In effect yes. ISO9000 – Fail. (Although I work in Pharmaceuticals and compliance to ISO is somewhat superceded by the requirements to comply with MHRA and FDA guidance and regulations)
I was struck by Roy Spencer’s post “What if this was Cancergate?”. I understand you sarcasm in your follow up remarks but as far as I can see there is absolutely no traceability in who has made the temperature adjustments and why, a basic tenet of medicinal manufacture. The Pharma industry is not without its own faults but at least there is a legally responsible person who is liable if medicines are released for sale which do not meet prior and licensed specifications for manufacture and testing.
Without the traceability and audit trail any explanation, so long as it has some sort of grounding in science, could be advanced which would lead to further endless discussion regarding the adjustment’s validity. Alternatively no one could own up to some or all of the adjustments and we’d have no idea whether the data was raw or adjusted (value added!! 😛 – Seems to me that “value added” might in actual fact be better expressed as “devalued”).
Somewhat ironically, the “Harrys” of this world would probably end up carrying the can for adjustments when it seems clear to me that he didn’t enjoy the process of untangling the data and was entering often cynical comments in the code. Reading between the lines, it seems his cyncism came from being pressed in some way from above.
Speaking with 20/20 hindsight, a better approach would have been to state explicitly in the form of a data specification, exactly what adjustments would be made under what circumstances up-front. I see various statements on the data websites about adjustments for station moves etc. but not the methodology to be employed to derive the appropriate adjustments necessary.
If the raw data cannot be verified then I can’t begin to imagine the scale of scientific literature which would be undermined.
@ur momisugly Dane Skold (17:59:46) :
An example of this is that I went and checked State College Pa and graphed it out. This is one of the best datasets I’ve seen so far, not 1 month missed since 1895. However What you find is that GISS lowered the 1895 Temp almost 1 full degree Celcius and then they gradually work their way down ward -.8C then -.6C and so forth so that by the time you get to the present day the Raw and the ADJ is exactly the same. This dataset went from a cooling trend to a warming Trend. Then again this is the home of Michael Mann so is it any suprise there is Mann-Made Global Warming there.
Anthony/Mods
Might it help with organising the incoming data if you make thread on which those who are doing the analyses can post comments and findings, but those of us who are not suitably competent to do the analysis cannot post?
It would be easy to moderate – if the post doesn’t contain an analysis then it gets deleted. There’s some good work being done here but it’s a little swamped by well meaning but verbose comments – my own included.
That Orland before and after pretty much sums up the whole climategate. If this is what they have done to raw data that is easy to understand for the average person, then who knows what they have done to data that you need a degree to understand. I feel more than ripped off and cheated. I feel sick to the core that this deception has gone so far and its results have been so damaging to Western countries.
well, amazing tech and splendid graphs and data…
smiling all the way to Christmas!
How many unverified bits of research used these two sources, and can no longer be verified because the data they used isn’t available?
Michael (17:04:20) :
LA Times
The silliness of Climategate
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten12-2009dec12,0,2096153.column
I have written a letter to Mr. Rutten, the author of the opinion piece you cite:
Mr. Rutten,
You really need to dig a little more deeply into the climate science situation. You ask, “Who benefits?” Indeed. Let’s think about politicans who would love to have a reason to raise huge taxes to spend for votes — you would disagree? How about scientists who know that to be funded by those politicians they need to demonstrate support for AGW? How about people who just “know” that modern civilization is “bad” and “must be” destroying the planet? You don’t think that supersitition is what is selling your papers and paying YOUR salary? So, who benefits? Look in the mirror…
Second, have you taken any time to look at the GCHN or GISS data sets? I think you would be surprised at what you would find: consistent adjustments that lower temp data before 1940 and consistent adjustments that raise temp data after 1940.
Finally, you really must question the “establishment,” isn’t that the entire purpose of having a free press? Your article shows clearly you have abandoned that mission because nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE, do you or your paper indicate you have thoroughly investigated AGW science (which is, at this point, the clear “establishment”). You keep repeating “consensus” and “peer reviewed” as though that absolves you from your fundamental responsibilities.
I cannot find anywhere a coherent explanation for how “the science” has proven AGW that does not have huge scientific holes in it. I have an engineering background and a PhD, so I figure I’m smart enough to read this stuff and make sense of it. I’ve corresponded with significant AGW researchers and I can tell you they cannot give me explanations that aren’t fundamentally flawed.
If you cannot respond to my last paragraph in a way that makes sense, then you really ought to take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and ask yourself some hard, existential questions.
Regards,
Climate fanatics on the run in OZ
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/a-change-in-the-way-we-think/story-e6frg6zo-1225809450139
Climate “Devil’s Dictionary”
DATA: Instrumental readings which must be folded, bent, spindled and mutilated before becoming part of the “global temperature record”.
GLOBAL CLIMATE MODEL: Computer software which projects a folded, bent, spindled and mutilated future from data which has been folded, bent, spindled and mutilated.
GLOBAL CLIMATE MODELER: A modern day Rumpelstiltskin.
CLIMATE TREATY: “…a system designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.” (Apologies to Herman Wouk.)
🙂
Pascvaks (18:31:12) :
“Imagine what another “Super Duper Solar Storm” –similar to the 1859 event– would do to ‘modern’ science’s records. EMP sizzling all over the place. Not only would we literally be back in the Dark Ages, there wouldn’t even be a paper trail in Latin or Greek to fall back on. Tower of Babel kinda scarry don’t you think?”
More like the Library at Alexandria.
What you’re talking about here is a systematic corruption of a dataset, demonstrable in real time. Right?
Here’s my piece, summing up everything that’s been posted about this sort of thing since Keen’s Alaska study six days ago. Did I get any of it wrong?
http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m12d11-Global-weather-dataset-being-systematically-corrupted
On the Peter’s dad thread I noted that the current West Point NY GISS chart seemed to have changed from my recollection. And then this thread started so I started searching and found a previous West Point chart in the Surfacestations.org pdf.
I made a blink compare gif file of the two charts. If anyone wants it, let me know. I see a trend upwards that was barely there before if at all, and cooling introduced into the earlier decades of the record. ventana54@gmail.com
Pascvaks (18:31:12) :
[Off topic]
Searching for 1859 – http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=1859 – I get
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/07/a-reminder-to-us-flyspecks-on-an-elephants-butt/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/25/compared-to-the-suns-power-we-are-a-fly-speck-on-an-elephants-butt/
I suspect there’s a bit more paper available now than there was in 1859.