Note: See update below, new graph added.
There’s a new paper out by Dr. Edward Long that does some interesting comparisons to NCDC’s raw data (prior to adjustments) that compares rural and urban station data, both raw and adjusted in the CONUS.
The paper is titled Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets. In it, Dr. Edward Long states:
“The problem would seem to be the methodologies engendered in treatment for a mix of urban and rural locations; that the ‘adjustment’ protocol appears to accent to a warming effect rather than eliminate it. This, if correct, leaves serious doubt for whether the rate of increase in temperature found from the adjusted data is due to natural warming trends or warming because of another reason, such as erroneous consideration of the effects of urban warming.”
Here is the comparison of raw rural and urban data:
And here is the comparison of adjusted rural and urban data:
Note that even adjusted urban data has as much as a 0.2 offset from adjusted rural data.
Dr. Long suggests that NCDC’s adjustments eradicated the difference between rural and urban environments, thus hiding urban heating. The consequence:
“…is a five-fold increase in the rural temperature rate of increase and a slight decrease in the rate of increase of the urban temperature.”
The analysis concludes that NCDC “…has taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values”.
Thus the adjusted rural values are a systematic increase from the raw values, more and more back into time and a decrease for the more current years. At the same time the urban temperatures were little, or not, adjusted from their raw values. The results is an implication of warming that has not occurred in nature, but indeed has occurred in urban surroundings as people gathered more into cities and cities grew in size and became more industrial in nature. So, in recognizing this aspect, one has to say there has been warming due to man, but it is an urban warming. The temperatures due to nature itself, at least within the Contiguous U. S., have increased at a non-significant rate and do not appear to have any correspondence to the presence or lack of presence of carbon dioxide.
The paper’s summary reads:
Both raw and adjusted data from the NCDC has been examined for a selected Contiguous U. S. set of rural and urban stations, 48 each or one per State. The raw data provides 0.13 and 0.79 oC/century temperature increase for the rural and urban environments. The adjusted data provides 0.64 and 0.77 oC/century respectively. The rates for the raw data appear to correspond to the historical change of rural and urban U. S. populations and indicate warming is due to urban warming. Comparison of the adjusted data for the rural set to that of the raw data shows a systematic treatment that causes the rural adjusted set’s temperature rate of increase to be 5-fold more than that of the raw data. The adjusted urban data set’s and raw urban data set’s rates of temperature increase are the same. This suggests the consequence of the NCDC’s protocol for adjusting the data is to cause historical data to take on the time-line characteristics of urban data. The consequence intended or not, is to report a false rate of temperature increase for the Contiguous U. S.
The full paper may be found here: Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets (PDF) and is freely available for viewing and distribution.
Dr. Long also recently wrote a column for The American Thinker titled: A Pending American Temperaturegate
As he points out in that column, Joe D’Aleo and I raised similar concerns in: Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? (PDF)
UPDATE: A reader asked why divergence started in 1960. Urban growth could be one factor, but given that the paper is about NCDC adjustments, this graph from NOAA is likely germane:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
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http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/26/climate-scientists-january-hottest/
Climate Scientists: January Was ‘Hottest’ Ever
Reuters
Despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards, the pace of global warming continues unabated, climate scientists claimed Thursday.
“January, according to satellite (data), was the hottest January we’ve ever seen,” said Nicholls of Monash University’s School of Geography and Environmental Science in Melbourne.
Which is the kind of lunacy that makes millions want to spit nails. It did NOT happen, this amazing hottest ever, in the real world. Perhaps it truly exists in the mind seized with fever.
To a non expert such as myself the raw unajusted urban data looks to coincide with the increase and economical availablity and popularity of inexpensive residential and apartment size air conditioning units. Not?
“NUSA DUA, Feb 26 (AFP) – The United Nations will review its Nobel prize-winning climate panel, whose credibility has been tarnished by errors in a key report on global warming, a spokesman said on Friday.
…
UN Environment Programme spokesman Nick Nuttall said at an international environmental meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that an independent body would be set up to “review and strengthen” the IPCC.”
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/35629
Ahhh, The Divergence Problem and very neatly outlined. A very nice correlation, but I am uneasy about only one station set per state. 48 does not seem very many for the continental US, and perhaps using the WUWT surveyed set, a second paper could be written. I fear that the AGW team will shout about – “Cherry Picking”.
” The fact that the adjusted rural data gives almost the same value as the urban is surprising. I think this may be another way of stating, as I have sometimes seen, that the UHI correction overcorrects for urbanization.”
The trick is that their “correction” isn’t reducing the UHI.. it’s applying the UHI EVERYWHERE! Look at the absolute temp of the recent data of the adjusted graphs.
Yes, this homoginizes the readings so you can compare them, and eliminates the UHI… when comparing Urban vs Rural… but what it does NOT allow you to do is compare past rural readings (less UHI) to later rural readings (more UHI.)
Think about it this way… for a rural station they’re pretending that:
RTEMP1950 + UHI = RTEMP1990 + UHI
That is to say that if no warming was happening, 1950 and 1990 would be the same because UHI cancels out.
What they’re neglecting is that UHI has dramatically different values in 1950 and 1990. It’s not a constant, so they don’t balance out the equation. For all intents and purposes, UHI adjustment in1950 was 0, but the UHI adjustment in 1990 was around .5 degrees C in the adjusted data.
RTEMP1950 + 0 = RTEMP1990 +.5
This causes the equality comparison to no longer be remotely true.
RTEMP1950
Very important work. One thing puzzles me. Look at Figure 11showing the difference between raw and adjusted rural temperatures. It says the raw temperatures were moved downwards by about 2 degrees in the beginning of the period, and upwards by 0,5 degrees at the end. This agrees with the previous figures as far as the late period is concerned, but hardly the early part.
You cannot be too suspicious these days. I hope I am wrong.
Irrespective of the obvious pollution of the urban data by UHI, note also that both the raw data shows that the 1930s and 1940s were warmer than the 1990s.
Robinson (02:03:16) :
Robinson – the BBC new website also carried this news but, amazingly did not spin it with any reference to AGW.
What they did day however, was the fact that the cooling effect of the ‘berg, blocking super-cold bottom water flow and hence heat conveyor belt sea currents may cause several harsh winters ahead of us. This primes the current cooling argument to be parried by the “global warming caused the calving and now the world is cooling”
Heads we win, Tails you lose.
“Also Dr Long will be open to attack on the same grounds as Mann, in that he is using a very selective data set.”
There’s one difference… the goal of Dr. Long’s analysis was to disprove a thesis. By showing that the algorithm generates incorrect results in one case, you prove that it isn’t trustworthy and can not be relied upon for any cases.
John Hooper (02:08:19) :
“In case you assumed he might be a partisan observer.”
b.poli (02:54:07) :
“The argument against this paper will be a political one:”
Partisan? Political?
How about “Witness for the Prosecution”.
—
Edward R. Long is a physicist who retired from NASA where he led NASA’s Advanced Materials Program[…] He also provides technical consultant support to members of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s legislative bodies.
—
Commonwealth of Virginia v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Petition for Reconsideration of Endangerment & Cause (U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia)
—
Make no mistake, this will likely be to most “peer-reviewed” climate paper of all time.
Warning: People using default excel colours usually have little skill in data processing.
CodeTech (00:55:46) :
This can’t be true. They can’t be that stupid. Doesn’t fig.11 show they actually adjusted rural down for most of the period? Why??
I had better start putting my house in Norwich… 1 mile from UEA on sale. Hope Phil Jones and Keith Briffa have already got theirs on the market!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7041857.ece
This is a shell game, folks.
Step 1: adjust the rural raw data up to match the UHI.
Step 2: carefully word the illusion that rural data matches urban data.
Step 3: apply a uniform adjustment to urban data to give the impression that there’s something wrong with all instruments.
Step 4: drop the rural stations
Step 5: smile for the camera
No one will ever know.
I’ve seen a slicker version called 3 card Molly. To the uninitiated, it looks easy to find the red card that has a corner eared. Study the game long enough and you will see multiple layers of illusion.
As I have said before on previous Temperature Analysis posts, whenever someone independent of NCDC, NASA, CRU, Hadley, UK Met Office, IPCC, WWF carries out the analysis of temperature history they find these kinds of Errors.
Those involved in keeping and presenting “official” records can no longer be trusted and I am sorry to say that I include Dr Spencer and the Satallite results in that group as well. When “Calculated” temperatures do not appear to reflect our reallity something must be wrong. When the NH is seeing record breaking Cold spells and Satellites are saying it is record breaking high temperatures it does not make sense.
I understand that the higher atmosphere may differ to the Land temperature, but not the Satellite Surface temperature, they do not even agree with Sea temperatures measured by other means.
Interesting. This appears to replicate thee methodology of that Father and Son team featured on WUWT.
Also illuminating.
I now understand AGW.
It is evident that urban areas reflect the true state of climate change and that rural temperature data is subject to a natural heat sink effect (due to insufficient people?).
Hence the rural data has been rightly and legitimately adjusted for RHS (Rural Heat Sink) which would otherwise skew the data and suggest that what we are seeeing is natural climate vaiation.
As with global chilling, we must conclude that RHS is concealing the true and full extent of AGW.
(By the way, how much of this RHS effect is due to rural areas having insufficient A/C units? – or people?)
Denis Hopkins (03:55:02) :
I am ashamed to be British when they can peddle such cr*p in our name.
I was just looking at the GISS Station Data page and I noticed something that I had not noticed before… You can download the raw data. It defaults to the “homogenized” data. Is that a new feature? Or did I just miss it the dozen or so previous times I’ve downloaded GISS data?
BBk It is possible, though unlikely, that a cherry-picked selection of records might give the above picture without foul play in the GISS adjustments. I don’t believe this to be the case for a moment, but I think Dr Long has to go a little further to bury them once and for all. It is pretty important, as it kicks away the second leg of the AGW stool, after the death of dendro, and leaves the GCMs swinging in the wind.
Denis
Did you notice that in the paper version an imaginative sub-editor placed the article opposite a picture of snowbound motorists?
If the first graph correctly shows the UHI effects in urban vs rural stations, why does it begin in around 1965?
Just puzzled why it wasn’t showing up earlier or why it happens all at once.
This paper by Dr. Long is a good example of how distorted the mindset of the Warmers can be when they call it a “social phenomenon”. My cell-mate at work believes that reality is a reflection of each person’s own life experiences. Based on that, there is no absolute truth since no two lives are the same.
Steveta_uk’s comment “The primary fact to remember is that “global warming” is a social phenomenon, so the impacts in the lives of individual people is what really counts.” shows the same mindset which really isn’t science at all–it’s each individual’s opinion on climate, the weather, and temperature.
Temperature should never be a function of the observer’s mindset or adjusted by some frivolous fudge factor to support some social/political agenda. The relative warming we can measure in urban areas is simply a localized human artifact.
The crime comes when trusted repositories yield to the bogus social agenda of “Global Warming” and make unwarranted adjustments. (It really wasn’t due to CO2 after all, was it–you just thought since your city was a bit warmer it HAD to be warmer everywhere else, right?)
The term “Global Warming” should be changed to “City Warming”. And of that, folks, there is no doubt. But “Global Warming” isn’t a valid scientific term and Steveta_uk just told us why.
Smack!
The paper is perfect! It doesnt claim to measure global temperatures.It measureas and proves the fraudulent AlGor(E)itms in the homgenisation calculation of temperatures. Its like finding the bloody knive in the pocket of the suspect standing only a block away from the victem, and he left traces “carbon foootprints” behind to where he was confronted.
A number sseem concerned about the alleged “cherry picking” and why not all rural data.
As I understand it, infl;uenced by the father and son experiment, the purpose was to investigate or highlight the UHI effect.
That meant picking sizeable urban communities, the bigger the fewere, and paring them with a nearby rural area such that both could be said to be subject to the same ecternal natural climate influence.
Adding addittional rural areas does not help if they cannot be said to share the same natural climate.
Kilted made me laugh (I assume Kilter was being intentionally humerous):
QUOTE:
No smoking gun. Nothing definitive. Not global. Small study. Have to do better.
UNQUOTE
Re: Steveta_uk (00:38:35)
This is not a worry about what we feel when we go outside. It’s about the prospect of killing millions of poor folk by spending resources on a daft quest, rather than dealing with issues we really know about, like poverty, lack of clean water, deforeststion etc etc. And destroying Western economies by an unecessary rush away from fossil fuel energy (yes, we should evolve away, but not destroy ourselves in the process).
Greenies may not care, but decline and fall of USA and Europe is something I’d rather avoid, thankyou.
Please GET REAL.