NOTE: An update to the compendium has been posted. Now has bookmarks. Please download again.
I have a new paper out with Joe D’Aleo.
First I want to say that without E.M. Smith, aka “Chiefio” and his astounding work with GISS process analysis, this paper would be far less interesting and insightful. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude. I ask WUWT readers to visit his blog “Musings from the Chiefio” and click the widget in the right sidebar that says “buy me a beer”. Trust me when I say he can really use a few hits in the tip jar more than he needs beer.
The report is over 100 pages, so if you are on a slow connection, it may take awhile.
For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here or the image above.
As many readers know, there have been a number of interesting analysis posts on surface data that have been on various blogs in the past couple of months. But, they’ve been widely scattered. This document was created to pull that collective body of work together.
Of course there will be those who say “but it is not peer reviewed” as some scientific papers are. But the sections in it have been reviewed by thousands before being combined into this new document. We welcome constructive feedback on this compendium.
Oh and I should mention, the word “robust” only appears once, on page 89, and it’s use is somewhat in jest.
The short read: The surface record is a mess.
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As a skeptic, I urge people to take John N-G seriously. He is the Texas state climatologist, and he was one of the first scientists to bust the IPCC glacier scam.
He may be wrong or he may be right, but he is calling it as he sees it.
He is not a hack and he is not pulling punches.
hunter (17:40:22),
Who was the state climatologist who was fired for simply questioning AGW? I could look it up, but I’d bet that John N-G could name him in an instant. And John N-G would no doubt pucker up a little as he said the name.
That’s because state climatologists are political appointees – just like the entire IPCC. Therefore, we must have the presumption that they toe the Party line. And the Party line is AGW. Question it and pay the price. Argue for it and reap the rewards.
Anyone singing the praises of the resident GISS lunatic James [“Death Trains”] Hansen is apparently unaware of the USHCN “adjustment” of the temperature record: click [chart by Mike McMillan]. GISS provides [and alters] these temperature records. How can adjusted temperatures be “raw,” both before and after adjustment? It appears that the USHCN simply make it up as they go along.
I prefer to listen to an unbiased expert such as the internationally esteemed Prof Richard Lindzen, who heads the Atmospheric Sciences department at MIT – and who cannot be fired for giving his honest view:
The sad fact is that plenty of people have learned to game the system, and plenty of others go along with them for job security. Going ballistic over an on-line article, when there is really major corruption endemic to the whole AGW conjecture makes me wonder why these people feel so threatened. But I’m sure if I was a state climatologist, aware that a fellow state climatologist had been summarily fired for questioning AGW, I might write a newspaper column singing a lunatic’s praises too – and turn a blind eye to all the missing raw data, and the endless “adjustments” that always mysteriously go in an upward direction, and the thoroughly corrupt, scheming UN/IPCC, and the plain fact that the planet itself is falsifying the CO2-CAGW hypothesis: as CO2 steadily rises, the global temperature has been flat to declining for most of the past decade: click
So who are we gonna believe? The CO2=CAGW True Believers? Or planet Earth and our lyin’ eyes?
Smokey (18:42:25) – There were two (descriptions oversimplified for brevity). George Taylor (Oregon) had his State Climatologist responsibilities removed for arguing that global warming was not as significant as natural variability (i.e. from the PDO) for changes being observed in hte Pacific Northwest. Patrick Michaels resigned rather than accept restrictions on his speech regarding the magnitude of impacts of global warming and appropriate actions to take. I respect both of them, and am deeply resentful of the way they were forced out of their positions.
On the other hand, I serve Texas, and the idea that the Governor of Texas (Rick Perry) would take action against me for questioning AGW is ludicrous. The idea that I am ignoring all the other problems regarding the surface temperature record is also ludicrous, as I helped write two of the peer-reviewed articles pointing out many of these issues.
Stick to the facts, and skip the ad hominems.
“John N-G (08:13:03) :
[…]
Stick to the facts, and skip the ad hominems.”
Hansen endorses books that propagate the destruction of civilization. “Lunatic” is an apt yet maybe oversimplified description of his state of mind IMHO.
I should point out that while I’ve never met Mr. Nielsen-Gammon personally, I have read some of his work and heard recommendations from his peers. I have no issues with him of any sorts and he is correct to question issues that he sees as flawed in this report.
His questions have already made a contribution to the issue, even if detracting to our position. I’ll point out also he had the courage to admit an error and post it on his blog. See:
http://tinyurl.com/yec3ads
He also questioned the 2035 date in the 2007 IPCC report, being one of the first to do so, which we reported on here at WUWT.
So let’s not resort to labeling and personal attacks because some of you may disagree with him on points.
Working through the GISS code and NOAA procedures is the best way to resolve the issues.
-Anthony
John N-G may be the exception that proves the rule, but state climatologists are political appointees first, foremost and always. My concern with his post is the fact that he wrote an article in a major newspaper nitpicking a non-peer reviewed paper, when there are numerous peer reviewed studies that have been shown to be in error. Where are all the articles on those studies? Where are the articles debunking Michael Mann, or Caspar Amman, or the 100% political appointees that make up the IPCC, etc? Something stinks about that. There are thousands of AGW-related papers out there; why zero in on this particular one? Answer: politics.
And here’s a brand new post from the current WUWT article, “Debunking National Wildlife Federation Claims – Part 2”:
In my post @18:42:25 above there is a quote by Prof Richard Lindzen. Clicking on the ‘source’ at the end provides an explanation of exactly what is happening, and it debunks the belief that a few people who got onto the editorial boards of journals are revealing the thoughts of the entire membership wrt AGW. They are not. Lindzen’s piece should be required reading for those who still believe a handful of board members speak for thousands.
The professional journal system has been gamed just like the climate peer review system. With the exposé of the East Anglia emails, there can not be a rational, honest person who still thinks the climate peer review system hasn’t been exploited and used by the rent-seeking AGW clique for their own financial benefit and personal aggrandizement.
Smokey (10:04:37) :
“John N-G may be the exception that proves the rule, but state climatologists are political appointees first, foremost and always. My concern with his post is the fact that he wrote an article in a major newspaper nitpicking a non-peer reviewed paper, when there are numerous peer reviewed studies that have been shown to be in error.”
Arguing, and providing evidence, that a shift to warmer stations does not necessarily exaggerate a warming *trend* is not “nit-picking.” It goes to the heart of one of Anthony & Joe D’Aleo’s central claims. It will, I’m sure, force the latter to “dig deeper,” just as John N-G did.
There are many reasons to doubt how accurately the current methodology of NOAA, GISS, and CRU determine “average global temperature.” Whether those flaws misrepresent temperature *trends* is another question.
And the open-minded skeptic must be prepared to question not only the claims of alarmists, but those of other skeptics also.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/USHCN_revisions.htm
Great link!
To me I shows that historical data was altered to generate a overall warming trend, by copying the trend from UHI stations to all stations and the trying to prove that there is no difference in trends between stations.
Thus comparing homogezied data to homogenizied data is a null value study.
Anthony,
Assuming that Mr. Nielsen-Gammon is right, will you retract your outrageous accusations against NOAA and apologize to them?
Anthony, E.M. Smith:
Thank you both, volumes. I am intrigued by the issue raised by Mr. Nielsen-Gammon. I read his first blog piece, then his “correction” after Anthony listed the url. In the correction, he admits to being wrong about how temperature compilations are calculated. So, E.M., Anthony, you have him there. But he stands by his conclusion, that (mostly cold?) station drop-out would not lead to a warming bias. In effect, he’s saying he was mistaken about the precise method whereby which an anomaly is arrived at, but he still stands by his original claim. Which is a strong claim, isn’t it? One of you is wrong here, right?
Or am I missing something?
curious (02:43:46) says:
Did they hurt your feelings, curious?
Spare us the faux outrage.
Contrarian (01:00:52)
“And the open-minded skeptic must be prepared to question not only the claims of alarmists, but those of other skeptics also”
This is absolutely true. It’s called practicing the scientific method. In real science as opposed to the post modern science extolled by people like Mike Hulme from the Tyndall Centre the ‘Science is NEVER settled’. The science must and should always be continually challenged. IMO for it to even qualify to be called science it must be capable of being ‘falsified’. Sadly much of the ‘science’ practiced by climate scientists isn’t even falsifiable, yet we expected to believe that it’s ‘settled’, that there is no need for it to be challenged because it is the ‘consensus’. There is nothing to see here, so we must move on! Nonsense!
I’ve read John N-G thread and IMO he hasn’t proven anything. Where is his spreadsheet that contains his ‘little bit of Excel programming’? Even if it does show a simplified calculation involving the relative trends of Station A versus Station B and how they combined trends are affected when they are combined or Station B is ‘dropped out’, this is just a theoretical simplied calculation. It does not involve the full NOAA/GISS datasets. I’m sorry but he hasn’t proved anything until such time as he’s done the full calculation with the full dataset. Then and only then can he make his claim that
“However, their technique is as effective as the anomaly technique that NCDC and CRU use, and in all three cases, removing stations from cold locations would not, by itself, introduce a bias in the global temperature record”
I’m going to second Hunter’s comment concerning Dr. N-G and taking him seriously. Skeptics question the methodologies and data used by the AGW crowd, you should not attack a scientist questioning skeptic papers. This is how errors are corrected and science moves forward which should be what we all want.
Dr. N-G, you posted on your website a response to part of the Watts’ and Alio paper (http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/atmosphere.html?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621Post%3a316fd156-fbba-46b0-b3ec-a6748f70d579)
but you only listed the program comments in pronouncing that the program did what its authors said it did. Did you actually check the code? Just because the comments say the program is supposed to do something, doesn’t mean it works properly.
There is just too much water under the dam from the activist Hanson to take his word on anything.
KevinUK (10:00:40) :
“I’ve read John N-G thread and IMO he hasn’t proven anything.”
I agree. But I didn’t say he had, only that he had provided evidence that station selection does not necessarily affect the global trend, and that his critique was not “nit-picking.”
Some more work is needed here. Might be productive for Anthony, Chiefio, Joe D’Aleo, and John N-G to work together on a more intensive analysis of GISS’s methods.
excellent work Mr. Watts and company. please keep it up. worthy of a nobel prize! (I hear you have to actually apply to win one!) if only climate “scientists” exhibit the ethics you and others like Steve McIntyre exude, we could be spending money to explore space or feed the hungry instead of studying a non-problem.
reality check – as an observation, there is so much effort spent on the finer details of temperature record manipulation of national record databases, that actually the the basic argument is: how does co2, which is .035% of the atmosphere, cause such an alarming rate of global warming? …and glacier melts, and amazon forest reduction, and polar bear extinction.
The AGW IPCC argument is based on man-made CO2 causing doom. Looking at my local rural temperature records for the past 100 years (and not the databases of NOAA, GISS, etc), there is no hockey-stick effect. where exactly is the global warming? Is global warming only in certain parts of the world? Do I need a phd or two to find it?
This morning (feb 4th) the most populair and largest Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf opens on his front page with: Hoezo Opwarming? (“Global warming? What Global warming!). In the frontpage article are Antony Watts and Joe D’Aleo metioned by name and the journalist refers to your Compendium paper about temperature records. See also: http://www.ortogonaal.nl/2010/02/global-warming-watt-global-warming/.
Apperantly the newspapers are discovering your website! Now most of the Dutch people will discover your opinion and your report will we discussed in the Dutch Governement.
The full text of the Dutch Telegraaf article about your report see:
http://www.ortogonaal.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/2010feb04-De-Telegraaf-Hoe-Zo-opwarming.pdf
As Dick H. Ahles mentioned above, the Dutch msm finally start to pick up on all the problems in paradise regarding AGW.
You can find the article here:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/5951864/__Hoezo_opwarming___.html
Keep up the good work!
Another Dutch press-article about your Compendium Paper;
http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Wetenschap/257433/Onderzoekers-Opwarming-van-de-aarde-is-meetfout.htm?utm_source=Nieuwsbrief_dag&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nieuwsbrief
I tested your allegations about the sharply declining numbers of weather stations by downloading the NOAA/GHCN (version 2) records. As each data file consisted of almost 250,000 lines of records (each with 12 months of temperature averages) my copy of Excel choked. I solved this problem by deleting all records except for Canada (country code 403).
I discovered that the number of Canadian weather stations in the GHCN record peaked around 1970 and then declined sharply, just as shown in D’Aleo & Watts (2009).
When I shared this revelation with the Alarmists on the Guardian blog, “dconvoluter” led me to a paper by Peterson & Vose (1997) that had maps and graphs almost identical with yours. How do you answer the criticism that your paper is just an update of this earlier paper rather than something new?
gallopingcamel (21:59:28):
“When I shared this revelation with the Alarmists on the Guardian blog, “dconvoluter” led me to a paper by Peterson & Vose (1997) that had maps and graphs almost identical with yours. How do you answer the criticism that your paper is just an update of this earlier paper rather than something new?”
gallopingcamel
I don’t think D’Aleo & Watts (2009 are claiming that they have discovered something new when showing the station ‘drop out’ problem. They, like many climate skeptics like my self and many others are well aware of the Peterson and Vose (1997) paper.
What is important is that the vast majority of people are unaware of this issue and the effect these post 1990 station drop outs have on the validity of deriving a so called mean global surface temperature (MGST) anomaly post 1990.
NOAA/GISS and CRU would have us believe that its OK to base climate change policy and advocate spending trillions of dollars in combating climate change, when in fact the majority of data that underpins their claims of ‘unprecendented’ and accelerating global warming in the latter part of the 20th century is based on such a sparse set of data.
If you want to see how sparse the data gets post 1990 and not just for Canada but for many other countries as well then please read the ‘Station drop out problem’ on ‘digginintheclay’ by clciking on th elink below
The ‘Station drop out’ problem
Note this is for the NOAA GHCN V2 raw/adjusted dataset. I’m in the process of produing a similar thread but for the GISS raw/adjusted dataset (GISS is just as bad!). And after you’ve seen the charts remember that its the adjusted (homogenised) data that is used to produce all those ‘red all over the Arctic and Antarctic’ scary colour contour anomaly maps that are shown on the GISS web site.
KevinUK,
Many thanks for a great explanation. The “Deniers” and “Alarmists” can’t both be right so I am still trying to sort out the snake oil salesmen from the real scientists.
My (naive?) idea was that someone would be collecting every available temperature record in the same way that the Mormon church collects genealogical records into the IGI database that is available on line free of charge; comprehensive raw data, unedited so that researchers can start from the bedrock and decide for themselves what is good, bad or ugly.
Now it seems that NOAA GHCN was building up its data base, just like the IGI and then around 1970 started to prune the data drastically. This strikes me as a terrible disservice to the climate research community. Is there a more comprehensive source of unedited raw data? If not, why not?
If NASA, NOAA or the UEA/CRU claims “lack of resources” for their failure to publish every scrap of available data, it is only fair to point out that the IGI database is already several orders of magnitude greater than all the climate records that have ever existed.
gallopingcamel (19:12:40) :
Thanks for you reply. Yes. It really is quite shocking to find out that climate chnage policy is based on such a poorly managed dataset. In case you don’t already know. All three of the key mean global temperature anomaly indices rely on this same NOAA GHCN dataset, so that NOAA, GISS and HadCRUT. All three organisations use this dataset as the primary input to their calculation of mean global surface temperaure anomaly and so they can hardly be claimed to be independent of one another. Each organisation in turn then subject sthe ‘raw’ or ‘unadjusted’ data to a series of ‘adjustments’/’homogenisations’ supposed to allow for station movements, instrument/equipment changes and in some cases Urban Heat Island (UHI) correction.
It very important to understand that the size of these adjustments/homogenisations is huge (in many cases several degrees centigrade) and often results in what was a cooling trend in the raw data being converted into a warming trend post-adjusted/post-homogenisation (and vice versa i.e the adjustments are physically unjustifable), yet NOAA/GISS/CRU then claim to be able to detect a man-caused increase in the mean global surface temperature anomaly of approx. 0.7 degC/century (over the 20th century) after these adjustments/homogenisations have been made. In other words its pretty much impossible to tell whether this claimed ‘man-caused global warming’ is actually real or could perhaps be largely an artefact of the adjustments made to the raw data.
In fact, based on my own analysis of the raw data, I believe that the global warming trend over the 20th century is most likely real but is largely as a consequence of recovering from the Little Ice Age. Super-imposed on this centenial warming trend is (a clear wholely due to natural climate variability) multidecadal (approx 30 year periods) cycle of cooling trend followed by warming trend followed by cooling trend followed by warming trend cycle.
Have a look a look at this thread on ‘digginintheclay’ for further details.
Mapping global warming
In particular contrast the warming trends during the 1910 to 1939 period with the cooling trends during the 1940 to 1969 period, followed by the warming trends during 1970 to 2010 period.
KevinUK
While I am a scientist, my knowledge of climate science is minimal. Usually when I ask questions on blogs all I get is abuse! Finally, I am getting replies that make sense! It is clear that you have “..kept your head when all around were losing theirs…”.
It is the highly public controversy that attracted me to the AGW issue. Remember Fred Hoyle and how skillfully he used the BBC to promote his theory of “Continuous Creation”?
As a physicist, I was skeptical about “Cold Fusion” yet at the same time I was hoping that Fleishman & Pons were right!
What worries me about the gatekeepers of climate science is that they are acting like a priesthood in a panic over a list of questions nailed to their front door.
The data you showed me has a warming of ~0.7 degrees Celsius since 1880 but is there any justification for the IPCC’s (Copenhagen Diagnosis) prediction of a 2-7 degree Celsius rise by 2100, other than studies that use tree ring proxies?
gallopingcamel (08:22:16):
I think you’ll find as most skeptics (like my self) have that you’ll get a much better level of balanced discussion on so called ‘skeptic’ blogs than you will on so called ‘warmist’ (i.e. pro-AGW) blogs/forums. It’s fair to say that I am very grateful to those (like Wills E, Bender, RomanM and obviously Steve Mc and Anthony Watts etc) who have taken the time to educate me on the evidence (mostly lack of) for man’s effect on our climate. As a fellow physicist I’m happy to do the same for you.
As a fellow physicist though you’ll know that the education doesn’t just stop there. Hopefully you’ll agree with me that as scientists we in effect took the equivalent of the Hypocratic oath and declared that we must ALWAYS continue to question all established science through the application of the scientific method? There is and never will be any ‘settled science’, but rather only increments in our knowledge and understanding of phenomena like the earth’s climate. I personally think it is the height of arrogance (as Bob Watson did) to declare that the ‘science is settled’. Only a non-scientist (indeed IMO an anti-scientist) would make such a statement. If you want to see an anti-scientist trying to defend the indefensible watch this video on YouTube
Prof Watson on Climate Science
“The data you showed me has a warming of ~0.7 degrees Celsius since 1880 but is there any justification for the IPCC’s (Copenhagen Diagnosis) prediction of a 2-7 degree Celsius rise by 2100, other than studies that use tree ring proxies”
Have another look at the legend for those map images. The dark red dots are >+5 deg.C/century and the dark blue dots are >-5 deg.C/century. That’s right greater than +/- FIVE (not just 0.7) deg.C/century and this ‘unprecedented warming/cooling’ is occurring in warming/cooling cyles of approx 30 years, so that warming between 1910 to 1939 of >+5 deg.C/century for some stations followed by >-5 deg.C/century cooling between 1940 to 1969 followed by >+5 for some stations from 1970 to 2010! How can anyone think that these warming and cooling trends are caused by CO2 emissions when CO2 emissions didn’t become significant until the post WWII industrialisation era? Have another look atthe 1910 to 1939 versus the 1970 to 2010 trends. For the US stations it is arguable that teh warming trends during the 1910 to 1939 period exceed those for the 1970 to 2010 period. The late 20th century warming period is therefor eclearly not ‘unprecendented’ even within the last 100 years let alone 100 years as Michael Mann’s (and Keith Briffa’s) cherry picking of proxies and use of ‘novel statistical methods’ like de-centred PCA would have us all believe.