GISS adjustments in Australia

So whats to believe anymore? It becomes more and more apparent that the entire temperature record worldwide will need a major rework. I would not trust those agencies to do it either.

What is shocking to me is the unmitigated gall that must be in place to assume that no one would actually look at their “adjustments”. I learned as a child that when you tell a lie you have to tell ten lies to cover up that one lie, and so on. Did it not occur to GISS that people might eventually look at these “adjustments” and start piecing together what was done? I would not want my children and grandchildren to be faced with what “daddy” did to the data, as time would eventually reveal the fabrication. What a legacy to leave behind.

Sadly, if an expected result requires that data be “massaged” so that the “correct” conclusion can be reached, it is hard not to “search” for the means to represent the “truth”.
As we are seeing, a lot of “truth” was being found with ever-greater certainty.
Fortunately, reality intruded just in time.

Great post.
GISS now has to realize that the blogosphere is going eventually look at virtually all of their data treatments for temperature sensing locations . . . . . . the bias in their treatments is being revealed. It is hard not to conclude, as we get more and more of these posts, that they manipulated the data to show it is warmer. At the same time they advocate in support of an AGW agenda. tic, toc, tic, toc . . . . blog post by blog post . . .showing the biased GISS data treatment.
John

Great piece of work Ken which shows GISS messing with the data again. Seems every time someone makes the effort to see what’s happening in their area, upwards adjustments are found.
The CAGW is being hit hard by the high impact Climategate and IPCC revelations of fraud – now it’s suffering the death of a thousand cuts from concerned people across the world.

I was interested to note this post as I too have been puzzled by GISS population estimates for the sites used in its data set. I know Warwick Hughes (http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/) has done some excellent work in this area.
I have only examined the population estimates of a few GISS sites but some were only half the recent census population estimates for the same areas.
Suspicions aroused I tried to see if the same applied to CRU data. I corresponded with Phil Jones who was both polite and prompt in his response. He referred me to the Brohan et al (2006) paper. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT3_accepted.pdf
Populations were not included in CRU data for reasons explained in that 2001 paper. Rather, Jones (and his CRU colleagues) appears to accept the Folland et al (2001) assumption of a 0.0055C/decade global temperature increase due to urbanisation. In our email exchange Jones confirmed this corresponded to an increase in global 20th temperatures increase of 0.055C: I would suggest of statistically no importance.
My interpretation of this is simple: CRU data dismisses urbanisation as having any influence on 20th century global temperatures. This premise stands or falls on the Folland et al (2001) paper. Am I correct in saying that if new research concludes that urbanisation had a positive 0.055C/decade effect on global temperatures, equating to 0.55C for the 20th century, then the idea of 20th century global warming virtually collapses?
As it stands, the theory of 20th global warming rests on the validity of the Folland et al (2001) paper. Is this a correct deduction or am I missing something?

Errata:
Apologies for a typo in the post above. It should read:
“Populations were not included in CRU data for reasons explained in that 2006 paper.”
Apologies for the confusion.

I read the guest blog post at this site, where professor Ravetz made a razor sharp analysis of why it could go so wrong. Link here. He described the extended peer communityas the driving force from the blogosphere as the only force that could correct science that had been so corrupted as the current climate science. (It is very much worth reading if you haven’t.)
It is just amazing to see how this extended peer community works. The example in this post is another of noone knows how many errors that are exposed that otherwise had gone unnoticed. Good work!

OT.
Is anybody familiar with this? http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate

Do they also extrapolate the McKay temps to the south island of New Zealand? OK just being flipant now 😉
There is a New Zealand connection here somewhere.
The name of the station (Te Kowai) is very obviously from New Zealand Maori, Te Kowhai, which means “yellow.” Kowhai is a New Zealand tree with yellow flowers.
Someone up Mackay way must have been in New Zealand when that locale was named.

David Ball (01:23:01) :
What is shocking to me is the unmitigated gall that must be in place to assume that no one would actually look at their “adjustments”.
Well I was kind of thinking that if I had done it and I had been getting away with something for twenty years, and if it seemed like I was on a good thing … why would I change?
Mr. Ball, Perhaps you just can’t help letting your integrity get in the way….. not your fault at all…. I’m guessing you were either born or brought up that way.
And more credit to you.

Did it not occur to GISS that people might eventually look at these “adjustments” and start piecing together what was done?
No, David, it didn’t. Because when they started doing these things nobody was faintly interested in what they were doing. A very arcane subject was “climatology” in those days and if you had asked the man in the street he would have said it was something to do with weather forecasting (and he would have been right, up to a point).
Whether (and if so when) they started “improving” the figures we don’t know but the end result is that they have been able to present climate change to us as a fully-fledged philosophy and we have had to play catch-up because we all know that scientists are trustworthy, don’t we? And anyway who would have the time or the inclination to go hunting out the sites and even if they did and found something amiss they didn’t have a way of bringing it to public notice, did they?
It is absolutely true that the internet has made sure that science (along with a lot of other things) will never be the same again.
A little O/T – Richard North has a worthwhile piece today (“A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing) at
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/
I especially like his description of Hulme and Parry as “expert in climate change impacts”. Since I’m not aware that there have as yet been any impacts for them to be expert in it makes one wonder what they are doing and how we have let them get away with it all these years!

OT – Many IPCC scientists say it’s impressive that so far only four errors have been found in 986 pages of the second report, with the overwhelming majority of the findings correct and well-supported.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_report_woes
Only 4 errors and they want to totally revamp the system. That’s another big lie. These guys can’t stop lying.

btw I was just scrolling down the page and notice white precip on one of the weather maps. Is that another snow storm in Texas?? The jet stream has moved really really far south this year.

NASA GISS
Home of James Hansen? Manipulating data? He wouldn’t do it unless it needed manipulation.
What a group of thugs.

Somewhat O/T, but the UEA have just announced a “New scientific assessment of climatic research publications” in a further attempt “to win back the hearts and minds of the public on the issue of climate change”
The local papers story:
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/eveningnews24/norwich-news/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=xNews&itemid=NOED11%20Feb%202010%2012%3A01%3A16%3A370
And the UEA’s own announcement:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/New+scientific+assessment+of+climatic+research+publications+announced

It’s still not clear to me why adjustments are made. Oh, I’ve read the specifics, unfortunately with less than a full understanding, but it seems to make sense at the time.
Unfortunately, it is like Car Salesman Double-talk: sounds great at the time, but when you think about it later it just does not make sense.
I believe the ‘adjustments’ and ‘filler temperatures’ are useful to get a broad picture of localized weather for use by, say, airports, farmers and the general populace who need to know if it’s going to be below zero of a scorcher. This gives those users an indication of how the localized weather will affect their specific application.
From my experience, based on the two temperature readings in my local area (an airport reading and a coastal reading) my actual temperature where I live can be independently higher or lower than either, depending on the temperature, time of year and wind patterns (Cold front? Warm front? Occluded front?).
In addition temperatures can vary over a 60 degree temperature variation in a single 24 hour cycle (More in some areas, less in others, also depending on time of year).
I won’t get back into my ‘pet peeve’ of calibration certificates, but suffice to say, these data points represent temperatures where sensors don’t necessarily exist, which aren’t calibrated, which have a dubious measurement technique, with a suspect siting, yet can produce accurate temperatures over the long term with an accuracy to the tenth of a degree.
It’s not surprising that any adjustment is called into question when the adjustment produces a trend which mates quite nicely with a political agenda (which AGW is).

Followed this link, and then another at that site by Warwich Hughes, to an email exchange with Hansen in 2001. Hansen basically says this kind of exercise is cherry picking, and you need a larger area before the overall impact of these adjustments becomes rational.
To me, this implies there must be other sites where “cooling” is introduced by these adjustments. . . but I can’t recall those being held up by the skeptic community. So, has any effort been made to test Hansen’s claims, if not globally, at least in a large enough area to satisfy Hansen’s “large area” parameter, and was there significant cooling introduced in other sites vs the ones where warming was introduced?

As a note to my previous post, I’m an engineer: If I want to know how fast my car is going on the interstate, I measure it. I don’t use the speeds of all the cars around me to ‘guess’ if I’m going over the speed limit.
While it’d be true I’d be going about 70mph (or whatever), it won’t hold water in court for that 72mph speeding ticket.
When even a few hun’red bucks are at stake, the rules and regulations about even a simple measurement are very well defined. The temperature measurements will amount to billions/trillions of dollars of money being spent.
Summarily, my question to any scientist (er, statistician) using these temperature readings to ‘prove a point’ is: How do you know these temperature readings are accurate?

I need help replying to this author (Unity)
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/02/09/quote-mining-is-never-a-good-idea/
He states:
“This is Hansen’s recent review of the 2009 global temperature record, which you’ll note not only discusses the differences between his methods and those used by HADCRUT but also includes references to the FIVE published papers in which Hansen documents his methods.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100127_TemperatureFinal.pdf
From memory, there are AT LEAST FOUR separate review papers that set out the methodology used by NOAA to homogenise the station data used in the US surface temperature record, all of which can downloaded from NOAA’s website.
Try reading the literature instead of Anthony Watts’ website, you might actually learn something of value for a change.”
What is the best link to post there in response?

The adjustment algorithm is really simple. They call Rudd and ask him what he wants it to be, and they make it so.

The chief executive of the U.S. approves of the actions of GISS. He currently wants to expand their efforts to measuring the rising seas. The fact that the data is manipulated to show global warming is a requirement of the job. The AGW agenda continues from the top down and has not changed even with all of the current discoveries of falsified data because politics is in charge not science. Has anyone noticed the huge deficits, has anyone ever wondered where the money is going while there is around 10% of the population still unemployed. Have these numbers been adjusted as well?

Dave Ward:- They can announce what they like but if the premise is flawed as it seems to be then it means less than nothing. Can they provide proof of what they are postulating besides the projections of computer models?
I will answer that myself and that is no. The theory of global warming via CO2 is just that and remains unproved and untestable.

Dr. Gerhard Loebert (06:44:37) said:
“o There is no direct connection between CO2 emission and climate warming. This is shown by the fact that these two physical quantities have displayed an entirely different time behaviour in the past 150 years. Whereas the mean global temperature varied in a quasi-periodic manner (mean period = 70 years), with temperature maxima in 1870, 1940 and 2006, (see Fig. 2.1 of http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e03.htm) the CO2 concentration – after having essentially remained constant for centuries – increased exponentially with the onset of massive hydrocarbon burning in the1950’s.”
I can’t say much about his post, not having studied that subject, but I keep wondering if the increase in CO2 is exclusively due to the increase in hydrocarbon burning – or if this is a coincidence which has been accepted because it fits the ‘A’-bit of perceived GW.
How do we know if this doesn’t show the CO2 increase following the MWP, lagging the then temperature rise by ca 800 years, which has been observed in ice core data of previous ice age/interglacial periods?
I find this really puzzling – any explanations gratefully received!

Further to my (and other) posts re the UEA’s independent review, Bishop Hill has more:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/11/russell-review-under-way.html

Viv Evans, in the early days of Climate “science” when they augured the Camp Century ice, they thought they found a periodicity (I think it was 80 and 150 years).
Using that periodicity, we got the first prediction: GLOBAL COOLING, and that was seriously being considered in the early 1970s. And although it was the “orthodoxy” as global warming is now, it was behind all the cooling scares and e.g. the setting up of climatic research institutions.
But …. it didn’t cool, so some enterprising researchers in the 1970s decided to explain the FAILURE of the camp century cycle predictions by ADDING to this effect the CO2 warming. (see first paper on “global warming” Broecker published a paper entitled: “Climate Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” or http://www.climatemice.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Comment.GlobalWarmingInventedByGlobalCoolers)
And, coincidentally, for the next two decades it warmed, and those who had dreamt up the idea gained a lot of credibility for their marvellous ability to predict two decades.
But, in reality, everything we see in the climate signal can be explained as pure and simple noise. The fact is that the climate has long term variation that is much bigger than short term variations, so it has long term upward/downward “thrusts” (trends) which are pure noise but which will appear to many people to be a some kind of “thing” happening. If you get a series of natural ups interspersed with downs the result is that the signal will look as if there is some kind of cycle, but follow it back or wait for it to recur and it will disappear into the noise it is.

dave ward (05:31:17) :
Somewhat O/T, but the UEA have just announced a “New scientific assessment of climatic research publications” in a further attempt “to win back the hearts and minds of the public on the issue of climate change”
It’s big news but I’m not so cynical. They can’t do anything without including the bloggers.
“Scandal university climate science to be probed,”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7023520.ece

Anthony, this is way off topic, but given your interest in solar power, etc. I thought you’d like to see this. And I don’t know of any other way to contact you. This sounds like a game changer for small installations on homes etc., where solar is a reasonable alternative.
From:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10451641-54.html
IBM researchers are developing a solar cell with an eye towards what’s in the ground.
Researchers on Wednesday published a technical paper in the journal Advanced Materials that describes a solar cell made of abundant materials with relatively high efficiency. The cell can convert 9.6 percent of solar energy into electrical energy, a 40 percent boost over current methods.
That level of efficiency is already far exceeded in commercial silicon-based cells and even beat by thin-film solar cells, which are cheaper to make than silicon cells but are less efficient. But IBM researchers set out to make a cell that uses materials that are relatively abundant elements–copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur, or selenium (CZTS). The availability of materials for existing solar technologies limits their long-term potential, according to IBM.

Fascinating comment Dr. Loebert
Here’s a link to a study done in 2003 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations titled Climate change and long-term fluctuations of commercial catches — The possibility of forecasting; ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
Conclusions are in the y2787e10.pdf but an interesting chart appears on page 50 ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf which shows a 55 year oscillation of the atmospheric circulation index and temperature range. Page 51 indicates the global temperature anomaly related to “Global Warming” concerns.

Thank you dearly whoever it was above that led me to this site and its follow ups http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate
It sounds good to me – but is it? If I can believe it then I can forget about climate change and go back to trying to educate so called bankers as to what they have done wrong that assured a banking collapse and which they have not yet grasped and changed. The author of the original paper has been around for some years. Why haven’t I heard of his theory till now?

Ken Harvey, does a Crookes radiometer rotate with white or black surface forward? The theory says that black emits, so … or is it that black absorbs … or is it that black gets hotter so the few molecules bounce off with more energy.
The only thing I can remember is that when I tried to predict the direction using what seemed an “obvioius” theory, it proved to be wrong and after a bit of thought I realised that there were other possible explanations.
That’s why in real science, you make predictions, and then you validate the science against those predicitions. Like e.g. if you predict in the dodgy dossier of 2001 that the world will warm by 1.4-5.8C/century and you know that long term noise is greater than short term (i.e. short term easier to predict), if the world doesn’t heat up at all but cools, at a rate of -0.8C/century
… you shut up, go away and think where you got the science wrong!
That’s the marvellous thing about science – it is based on what happens, on the evidence not on wild speculation of the dodgy dossier nor opinion polls of scientists.

On a related issue, is the global CO2 ever going to change from 388.09 ppm ?
It seems to have been stuck on that number for a long time; I would think even the natural unman induced increase, would have raised it by now.
Maybe the gizmo need to be tapped on the dial to unstick the needle.

Ken Harvey – you asked about the link. It is authentic. I corresponded with the author a month ago.
What country do you live in?

Looking at the monthly data from BOM it is evident that there is much more variability in the earlier data.
The end of the 1930 hump in 1932 is evidenced by a measurement change of 4 deg C in 1 month (not impossible but other april may periods show now similar change.
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/5994/tekowai.png
The beginning of the hump is less pronounced with many gradual changes.
Surely it is correct for GISS to correct this?
On another matter the copyright notice for the data is:
The copyright for any data is held in the Commonwealth of Australia and the purchaser
shall give acknowledgement of the source in reference to the data. Apart from dealings
under the copyright Act, 1968, the purchaser shall not reproduce, modify or supply
(by sale or otherwise) these data without written permission
i.e. although I paid nothing for the data I have no right to pass it on – just like CRU!

Bob (Sceptical Redcoat) (13:22:43) :
The energy input of the body is food but the energy out is useful power and heat accompanied by CO2; the energy input of a power station is coal, or gas, or oil and the output is useful power and heat accompanied by CO2, etc (I’m ignoring waste products for simplicity). I picked the human example as the easiest given that the figure for heat output is generally accepted and pretty consistent. I suspect that other human activities generate greater quantities of heat per capita, certainly in colder latitudes.
The point I was trying to make though, is that all the processes that generate CO2 also generate heat. I lack the skills to do the physics, but it seems to me that there is a possibility that at least part of the temperature rise attributed to man-made CO2 might actually have arisen from the heat produced at the same time that the CO2 is produced. If this is the case then that would make CO2 even less potent.

Please, please send this out to a list of climate scientists in the US and Australia and ask them what they think is going on and whether they continue to be willing to use GISS data from before 1979 despite example after example of raw data that looks to be “tweaked” to suit the AGW hypothesis.
In fact, Anthony, it would be great if someone could compile a list of, what, a few hundred climate scientists who would get a short email and a link everytime this site serves up data that questions whether climate science is on sound footing with its dependent variable. After all, these analyses do not show up in the “peer reviewed” literature, so are likely to be overlooked by “respectable” climate scientists.
Oh, by the way, isn’t it interesting that the upward adjustments stop at about 1979, when satellite temp data starts becoming available such that it would have become obvious if there had been GISS temp fudging after that date?

Please people let’s get some perspective here, consider the nature of the actual “raw” data; per nosa

PRELIMINARY LOCAL CLIMATOLOGICAL DATA (WS FORM: F-6) definitions,
Maximum temperature. This is the highest temperature (°F) recorded for the calendar day.
Minimum temperature. This is the lowest temperature (°F) recorded for the calendar day.
Average temperature. The sum of the previous two columns, divided by 2, and rounded, gives the value for this column.

therefore it’s completely synthetic, made-up, has no basis in reality so it doesn’t matter how it’s adjusted or homogenized, ground-station thermometers have no scientific validity in climatology and were never intended to be used for that purpose. At least if they consistently used TMax or Tmin, we would have a number that was actually measured in the real world.

Re; GISS adjustment …
“Why …even Father Lonegan had a mother!”
“What did you expect?”

NASA applies an urban correction of its GISS temperature index in the wrong direction in 45% of the adjustments. Instead of eliminating the urbanization effects, these wrong way corrections makes the urban warming trends steeper. My article discusses Steve McIntyre’s audit of the GISS corrections at:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/CorrectCorrections.pdf

Re: Jim Masterson (Feb 12 02:34),
Hi Jim. Wasn’t a new weather station added to death valley? I’m checking now at the late John L Daly web site.
Yes HERE it is. Badwater was set up to try and obtain the world all time highest temp record. The original station was at Furnace Creek. Fascinating read. Daly actually traveled to there and took photos.
Seems NASA isn’t new to “tricking” temp data.

An interesting document from BOM:
http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/single-publications/qld-past-present/qld-past-present-1896-1996-ch02-sec-02.pdf
Note this table:
This shows no heatwaves corresponding to the 1915 to 1932 hump. I would have expected high monthly average temperatures to have been caused by heat! but the table has an absence of anything outstanding during this period.
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/6208/queenslandheatwavesa.png

All,
You must write to your local member to stop the madness on so called global warming. This will not end until Rudd is out of office and there is no climate minister. Penny Wong is getting a wage on a false pretence and must be stripped from that title and office. Then and only then the debate is over. Legal action must then be taken to recover monies spent on a false premise, and people need to go to jail or be fined who propagated the deceit.