Just over a month after Climategate started, we have breaking news from Climate Audit
Steve McIntyre writes:
The UK Met Office has released a large tranche of station data, together with code.
Only last summer, the Met Office had turned down my FOI request for station data, saying that the provision of station data to me would threaten the course of UK international relations. Apparently, these excuses have somehow ceased to apply.
Last summer the Met Office stated:
The Met Office received the data information from Professor Jones at the University of East Anglia on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released. If any of this information were released, scientists could be reluctant to share information and participate in scientific projects with the public sector organisations based in the UK in future. It would also damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector and could show the Met Office ignored the confidentiality in which the data information was provided.
However, the effective conduct of international relations depends upon maintaining trust and confidence between states and international organisations. This relationship of trust allows for the free and frank exchange of information on the understanding that it will be treated in confidence. If the United Kingdom does not respect such confidences, its ability to protect and promote United Kingdom interests through international relations may be hampered…
The Met Office are not party to information which would allow us to determine which countries and stations data can or cannot be released as records were not kept, or given to the Met Office, therefore we cannot release data where we have no authority to do so…
Some of the information was provided to Professor Jones on the strict understanding by the data providers that this station data must not be publicly released and it cannot be determined which countries or stations data were given in confidence as records were not kept. The Met Office received the data from Professor Jones on the proviso that it would not be released to any other source and to release it without authority would seriously affect the relationship between the United Kingdom and other Countries and Institutions.
The Met Office announced the release of “station records were produced by the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.”
The station data zipfile here is described as a “subset of the full HadCRUT3 record of global temperatures” consisting of:
a network of individual land stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organization for use in climate monitoring. The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations…
The stations that we have released are those in the CRUTEM3 database that are also either in the WMO Regional Basic Climatological Network (RBCN) and so freely available without restrictions on re-use; or those for which we have received permission from the national met. service which owns the underlying station data.
I haven’t parsed the data set yet to see what countries are not included in the subset and/or what stations are not included in the subset.
The release was previously reported by Bishop Hill and John Graham-Cumming, who’s already done a preliminary run of the source code made available at the new webpage.
We’ve reported on a previous incident where the Met Office had made untrue statements in order to thwart an FOI request. Is this change of heart an admission of error in at their FOI refusal last summer or has there been a relevant change in their legal situation (as distinct from bad publicity)?
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I see they include Gatwick airport near London but exclude the “gold standard” site of Ross-on-Wye (a site that has only changed once in 80 years). I could understand if the sites had been chosen to be evenly distributed as they claim they are – but the map shows that they have a funny idea of “even”.
A suspicious person might claim that Ross was excluded because it doesn’t show warming, whereas for some strange reason London Gatwick does. Curious.
Chris Gilliam
The “value added” is clear and striking.
The differences between the BoM and “adjusted data” are obvious to see, as is the intent of the adjustments.
Have they no shame?
This is blatant fraud.
Good work.
The CRU station data can be plotted at: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climate.aspx
Individual or multiple stations can be plotted in terms of temperatures or anomalies.
When plotting a station, the NOAA unadjusted GHCN data can be plotted for the same station for comparison – the amount of adjustment that CRU made to the station is then observable.
OMG! Don’t you people realize that this release of state secrets is going to cause an INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT???
Do you think countries like Berserkistan are ever going to TRUST the HadMetCRU ever again?
This is the end of science as we know it, and the beginning of World Data War I. Looks like it’s back to the bomb shelters for the plucky British as the affronted leaders of Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and other countries operating under the Rule of Circumstantial Law turn their collective backs and flatulize the former Empire.
The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations…
I didn’t see that anyone’s mentioned it again, so are they saying they’ve used only about 300 stations for the whole rest of the landed World apart from the U.S.? [And where’s the Ocean, which was supposedly Jones’ great contribution to Humanity, otherwise known as “ipcc Climate Science”?]
Or is the number of stations the CRU used for land up to a whopping 1500 for the landed “ROW” compared to the U.S.’s ~1200, a country which represents “only” ~2% of the land+sea ROW [actually about 6.7% of landed ROW],
So that according to the Team ~”the U.S. doesn’t matter”, since the instrumental U.S. temp. record, such as it is, doesn’t show much warming at best?*
While the U.S. record would also comprise at least about 12/27 = 44% of the total land record. So that the ROW must really be burning up [no doubt due to U.S. “imperialism”].
I know I know, I start sounding pretty crazy to even try to put an apparently little thing into “context” within Climate Science. But hey, not as crazy as “Climate Science”!
*According to yet another spurious debate the evil anti-scientist, Steve McIntyre, caused with the Team, at least as claimed by that Climate Science “tribe”
-“tribe”, so hat tip also to Little Judith Curry Rambling Wreck, from Georgia Tech..
I have put up a page of the combined data for Sacramento 5 ESE back to 1853
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SacMonthlyAMS_COOP.htm
which I have plotted with overlap.
Included on page is the station data for Sacramento from the MET release.
I’ll plot it later, but it looks to preserve the Urban Heat Island effect.
I keep wondering if the missing legal agreements that Jones was talking about were ones that prevented the agency supplying the data from releasing the raw data. Then the CRU or Met Office would become the official source….
GWG (MO-B)
Our parent company feels that any major investigation of our Norwich restaurant facility at this time may reflect badly on our other Restaurants. It was felt that even the suggestion of Cockroaches may have resulted in irreparable damage to our restaurants across the country, particularly as we move into this festive period.
“Roaches blame light switch operator in restaurant food heist”
Bill Parsons (09:58:25) :
Unfortunately, while Harry was reconstructing the CRU TS2.1 data to produce TS3.0, he complained constantly that there was no information available to him that explained how and why changes were made to the source data. Much of the source data used by his predecessors appears to have been lost (deleted) along with any documentation. So, it becomes evident in his project notes that he just assumed they got it right before dumping the project into his lap. Near the end of the reconstruction of the dataset, he exclaimed how fortunate he felt to have achieved 0.5C to 1C accuracy. So much for two place precision in the CRU time series (TS) data product.
Mike D. (10:56:08) :Don’t forget Chavez also subsidizes London buses with low prize oil. All you need now is some bananas.
rbateman (11:17:46) :
Included on page is the station data for Sacramento from the MET release.
I’ll plot it later, but it looks to preserve the Urban Heat Island effect.
As it should. Temperature is temperature, regardless of the factors influencing it. I think it is a mistake to try to homogenize the UHI out of urban temperature records, a la GISS. Let’s get as “clean” a data set as we can, and then argue about what has caused any long term temporal, or secular, changes in temperature.
Look at the map.
“The subset of stations is evenly distributed across the globe and provides a fair representation of changes in mean temperature on a global scale over land.”
Does it look that way? No. Look, not one station at ROC Taipei is used in the subset, but every station in New Zealand–remember the posts about the scandal there?
There is all sorts of imbalances-look at the preference for industrialized Western Europe.
I believe the map alone, and this topic, may deserve its own thread.
Also, the t rise graph. from about 1920 on the subset and crutem3 look so similar the “subset” might be near the crutem3 total. But earlier years crutem had some colder records. Must be dodgy.
Where is the t rise 1910-40, and decline 40-70?
And does not crutem3 use Ocean temps? How can crutem3 without ocean temps seem so identical in the graph to the subset, a subset that is only land stations?
Tenuc (08:56:58): Now you can give him the correct information a bit at a time and hopefully change his perception of reality.
Exactly! I always read you posts with great interest Tenuc! It is difficult to remove a delusion. You have to do this slowly. Otherwise arguments usually backfire! Another technique is to not have too many arguments. A single argument or possibly two trivial arguments may be sufficient. Too many arguments and each argument become weaker. More here:
Eight ways to get exactly what you want
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826551.400-eight-ways-to-get-exactly-what-you-want.html?full=true&print=true
Merry Christmas to Anthony, Svalgaard, Steve, rbateman, Tenuc, Lord Monckton and the rest of all the brilliant and honest people here at WUWT:
Christmas greetings from Invariant:
http://www.neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
I just caught this from their FAQ:
During the 1980’s the UEA/CRU was funded, primarily by the United States ‘Department of Energy’, to collate a global land temperature record. Since then they have undertaken several major updates to the record increasing station density and time series completeness. This is why the UEA/CRU owns the primary IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) for the land climate records.
Well, that clears it up. The “land climate records” were funded primarily by the United States Department of Energy (back in the day), but since the UEA/CRU later did some “value adding” since then, it became dib-hox-dice-we-own-it-all-now.
“OWNED” by the UEA/CRU. As in “private property of”.
Well, since we’re not interested in the “several major updates to the record” anyway, give us just that part that was paid for by the public – and namely, the U.S. Public.
Better yet, get out of intellectual dishonesty mode, stop implying that funding from the U.S. was somehow limited to the 1980’s, and recognize that the UEA/CRU doesn’t “OWN” data that is PAID FOR BY THE PUBLIC, and WHICH AFFECTS THE PUBLIC INTEREST, and is SUBJECT TO FOIA REQUESTS.
I took a look at the data for about twenty of the stations in the UK. All but two of these stopped at 1998 (Why?). Of the remaining two, one stopped at 2004. Ross-on-Wye which was an official Met Office measurement site which used mercury thermometers for eighty years and only had one minor site change during that time as the site was the pet station of one keen meteorologist – is not included in the data.
The only site I could see that had a bang up to date record (right up to November 2009) was Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. Funnily enough I took the known lat and long of the Lerwick site and tried to find this station using satellite images. The location seems to refer to a barren patch of land with no structures of any kind on it.
The Met Office take max and min readings every day from a large number of stations not included here. Just in my locale Bristol and Fairford weather stations are not included here. The Met Office should release their own records, as paid for by the taxpayer, for all sites over all years.
This data has been cherry-picked, massaged and chopped about in every conceivable way. It is useless as a resource.
ARE you not aware of a process called ‘transcription’?
It used to be that ‘raw input’, human written data, records, forms filled out etc. would be key punched by individuals known as key punch operators, bascially a process of transcription.
NOBODY kept ‘scans’ of raw documents on-line in the 80’s (define for me then the system, the processor, the software by which this was accomplished then. Show for me a a ‘page scanner’ the likes of which a business or univeristy department could afford … now price for me computer-interfaced graphics terminals from this era …)
TI used to have a columnar-based ‘form’ that served specifically as the input for key punching onto data onto an 80-column Hollerith IBM punch card.
ANY raw data would have been transcribed to an ASCII or EBCDIC form then stored on line … possibly followed by incorporation into a crude database/datarecord format of the era …
.
.
When the wolves are at the door, you toss the dog a bone, and then shut the door real fast.
Also you make sure to release the tasty tidbit of data just after Copenhagen, not just before.
I am quite certain these CRU fellows are hoping all they release has the effect of dragging a red herring across the trail which howling hound dogs are following. I fear I have lost all faith that they want to get to the bottom of anything. They are not friends of the truth.
The question is, will they succeed in their attempts to divert, confuse and befuddle those who seek truth?
I doubt it. It is truly amazing how many willing minds get to work, all across the web, when the Alarmist obfuscators attempt any obfuscating tactic. A red herring which might have side-tracked the hounds for months in the old days barely slows the pursuit, now.
(Isn’t it wonderful how these Alarmist fellows raised the word “obfuscation” from the dead?)
The joke of it all is that air temperatures don’t really measure whether the world is warming. They measure what the sea is up to, and the sea has poorly understood responses to warming and cooling, many of which take decades, centuries and (in the case of thermohaline circulation) millennium to occur. So the very subject of air temperatures is itself a red herring of sorts.
Plotted up the data for Vardoe Norway (file 010980) from 1840 to the last date of 10/2009. Showed a warming trend of 0.0092±0.0014 C/yr. Slope from 1840 to 1930 was 0.0092±.0037 and from 1930 to 2009 0.0095±0.0041
So it looks like a slow gradual warming trend that was not effected much by industrialization in the 1900’s.
More on the map of stations.
To my eye, most, but not 100% of station appearing oceanic are actually small islands, and likely all the subset stations are islands.
On land other anomalies are the preference of Western US stations over eastern. Taiwan has not one station used and nearby Philippines seem to have a lot omitted from the subset. There is favoritism to stations in large coastal cities of Australia–already noted every NZ station is in subset (already known they know how to “play ball”)
All Somalian stations are used. Have they had one work since when? (shown inland, prob. coastal ports.) No nearby Yemen sites included. What’s wrong with them?
The Selectors do not like Italy or Portugal. Lower Volga River not used either. Recall how temp red/blue maps often leave this area valueless. No cone of South America used except in Atlantic ocean side. The Selectors ‘dis Cuba too.
Hawaii is loved, but US Navy observers such as at Midway are omitted.
Okay for now. But until we have the entire set of stations included plus any excluded along the way, cherrypicking is to be presumed.
I’ve gone from not trusting their adjustments to not trusting their selection of stations. I’d like to see what every official station — HCN or not — says.
If the data is not the original raw data, but the “value added” data, what good is it? It will only show the “warming” they have claimed. This is an attempt to claim they are being open with critics. Don’t let them get away with that.
_Jim (15:23:55) :
The transcribed product might have mistakes, it may not have the observers comments (especially if being key punched). It would no longer be raw data, information would be lost if it were destroyed.
I will grant you that “transcribed raw data” is likely the best starting point and may already exist. Errors could be kept under control by spot checks and homogenization software that reports likely errors so they can be checked against the raw data.
since original raw temp data is gone or unreliable why not start now as ground zero and see what happens in the next 75 years as far as spike in temps. Bet this will not be considered. These power grabbers are only interested in one thing – power.