Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
According to an article in the Hindustan Times by someone for whom English is a second language, I find:
Senior scientists at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WITG) has rejected the Global Warming Theory and told that the Himalayas are quite safer zone on earth, where Global Warming has no role in controlling the conditions.
In an exclusive chat with HT, Director WIHG Dr AK Dubey has said that the conditions of Himalayas are controlled by the winter snowfall rather than external factors like much hyped Global Warming. He told that for a concrete result, at least 30 years of continuous research with steady outcome is needed to confirm the actual impact.
“According to a data for over 140 years available with a British weather observatory situated in Mukteswar (2311m) in Almora has actually revealed that temperature in that region witnessed a dip of .4 degrees,” he said.
So, as is my wont, I figured I’d go take a look. To distinguish urban from rural sites, GISS uses a “brightness index” which shows how much light comes from around the site as seen from a satellite. GISS lists Mukteshwar Ku as having a brightness index of zero, so they treat it as a rural station. Here’s the location per the GISS data, at 29.47°N, 79.65°E. It definitely appears to be a rural site.
Figure 1. Aerial View of the Mukteshwar Ku Surface Station locality.
Having seen the problems that occurred in Matanuska due to the application of a computer algorithm without quality control and checking, I next went to look at the record. Here is the GISS record for Mukteshwar Ku, before it has been subjected to the “homogeneity adjustment”:
Figure 2. GISS record of the temperature at Mukteshwar Ku before homogeneity adjustment
There’s a couple of oddities here. First, Dr. Dubey said that there were 140 years of temperature records from the station, but the GISS data covers 1897 to the present, or 113 years including the missing years.
In addition, it is clear that there has been some kind of serious change in the station. It is missing data from about 1993 to 1998, and when it starts up again the temperatures are much warmer than when it left off. (I can’t say exactly what years are missing, because curiously, the GISS server comes up with a “404 Not Found” when I ask it for the actual data.)
Seeing such an obvious problem with the data, I looked at the graph showing the temperature after homogenization to see how they had dealt with the problem … foolish me. I forgot that it was a rural station (brightness = 0), so it wasn’t adjusted at all. Sad to say, that’s the data that they used.
I’m used to not finding the data where I expect it to be, so to continue my analysis I just digitized the GISS graph so I could look at the effect of their leaving the data uncorrected. The gap was as I estimated, 1993-1998. Here’s that result:
Figure 3. Final GISS record of the temperature at Mukteshwar Ku. Note the difference in the trends when the recent data is included. Photo is of Nanda Devi Peak from Mukteshwar Ku.
As I said in my article about Matanuska cited above, the problem is that you can’t just devise a method for computer adjusting temperature data, apply it to all of the world’s stations, and call the job done. You need to look at and consider each and every station, as they are as individual as human beings. This is called “quality control”, and it is sadly lacking in all three of the major global temperature records (GISS, CRU, and GHCN).
Does this invalidate the GISS global temperature record? No. However, it does mean that they are not doing their job. They haven’t removed an obvious inconsistency in this case. How common is this type of problem? I don’t know.
But until they start over and do it right, it does mean that, like the baseball records of players who are known to have used steroids, the GISS global temperature has to be entered in the record books “with an asterisk” to indicate that lingering questions still remain.
So, another WUWT post with no anomaly calculation….
Will you guys ever learn that All Respectable Climascientologists Always Use Anomalies.
There it is on the y-axis; Non-Relative temperatures!!!
QED!!!
How else do you expect to get anomalous results if you don’t follow the recipe???
RR
The Anticlimatic Baby and the Problematic Pup
Were playing in the garden when the Asterisk wandered up.
==================
Willis the Merciless strikes again!
You are absolutely right Willis. In the business world its called due diligence. If I submitted work that took shortcuts, even it the happened to came out close to correct, I could expect to be let go.
“According to a data for over 140 years available with a British weather observatory situated in Mukteswar (2311m) in Almora has actually revealed that temperature in that region witnessed a dip of .4 degrees,” he said.
So you find the climate has cooled off when you Return to Almora?
Has Patchauri been notified?
😉
Willis I got the “raw” combined Mukteshwar Ku data from GISS
See here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/mukteshwar_ku.pdf
Missing part of 1993 Oct-Dec, all 1994 through 1998, and Jan 1999
Ruhroh,
Climate scientologists also don’t ascribe to old outdated notions of reproducability and falsification – I assume that’s ok with you too?
Question, if data quality like this was acceptable for drug development would you still trust it?
Ruhroh (18:37:34) :
(…)
How else do you expect to get anomalous results if you don’t follow the recipe???
RR
————
Reply:
I think the name of that “recipe” is “shake and bake”. Lose some, elevate some, it all comes out as an upside down cake. To Warmists it looks right-side-up, amazingly!
“According to a data for over 140 years available with a British weather observatory situated in Mukteswar (2311m) in Almora has actually revealed that temperature in that region witnessed a dip of .4 degrees,”
Ugh, now every time I hear/read Almora I instantly conjure up these horrific images of geriatric hippie orgies over at Patchy’s place. Somebody please make it stop!
it’s only words…
9 March: Reuters: Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan: Obama pushes climate change in White House meeting
Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Russell Blinch and John O’Callaghan
Lieberman said the meeting showed Obama would make the bill one of his major goals this year and he left open the possibility of a controversial cap-and-trade system for the utility sector — under a new name.
“We don’t use that term any more,” Lieberman told reporters before the meeting, referring to cap-and-trade. “We will have pollution reduction targets.”..
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62833H20100310
Willis:
I had noted the same mysterious gap and discontinuity in the GISS record. It is kind of hard to miss. I wrote to Dr AK Dubey last week and today I received a pleasant but somewhat off target response from another scientist in the form of an article:
Accelerated melting of Himalayan snow and ice triggers pronounced
changes in a valley peatland from northern India
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L15709, doi:10.1029/2006GL026704, 2006
Unfortunately the temperature data they seem to use has the same discontinuity (See Figure 4). I can email it to you or to some third party if you cannot access it.
I have replied to the contact asking if they have access to the original raw data for the Mukteshwar, Kumaon location or if they can explain the discontinuity. I went looking on the internet for a local source of the raw data but could not find anything. Perhaps someone with a familiarity with the Indian Metereological Office can do some digging.
The data certainly makes it look like there was a change in station or equipment. Moreover it is pretty surprising given the subject of the paper that they did not try to extend the temperature and precipitation data series if it was available – both are truncated in 1995 which is where he discontinuity appears.
I will let you know if I hear anything definitive from my contact at Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.
One final note. This article is interesting in itself with respect to the state of the Himalayan Glaciers. Something is odd about the sources they use to support the overall argument that the glaciers are rapidly retreating.
Wow Ruhroh,
LOL – completely read over the climascientologist comment in your post before I responded. They don’t call me the sharpest marble for nuthin 😀
/palm->face
Anthony and Willis:
The caption for Figure 4 in the above mentioned paper reads:
“Figure 4. Seasonal climate anomalies (relative to the 1876
to 1995 monthly climatology mean) from the Mukteshwar
station (29.47N, 79.65E) and Indian Ocean Sea Surface
Temperatures (SSTs) over the last ca. 100 years. A 15-year
running mean was applied to all climate data. (a) A
comparison of Indian Ocean SSTs (1846 to 2001) trends
with summer monsoon (JAS) temperature anomalies. SSTs
anomalies are in hundredths of a degree Celsius. (b) Winter
(NDJF) temperature anomalies. (c) Summer monsoon
precipitation anomalies. (d) Winter precipitation anomalies.”
They seemed to have an additional few months of data at least. However, as I noted before, we should be able to locate the actual raw data for Mukteshwar.
Speaking of Mukteshwar. Here’s a nice study on aerosols based at this location.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011489.shtml
Anthony Watts (19:03:45) : edit
Thanks, Anthony. Dang, that’s a user-unfriendly format though.
Much appreciated,
w.
Willis I have the data is text form too check your email…
WP only allows posting by PDF files
A
…and Willis,
I’ve been giving it some thought and I think Darth Eschenbach has a better ring to it. Just a thought!
NickB. (19:13:25) :
(…)
Question, if data quality like this was acceptable for drug development would you still trust it?
Please don’t go there, I’m starting to have issues with trust in the latest drugs. Have you seen the fine print on the ads?
We don’t know how this works, but we think this is how. It works pretty good for lots of people. With the reasonably low odds of permanent disability or death, we think you should try it as it’ has a good probability of helping with your condition.
Not quite as confident-sounding as the CAGW purveyors, and I’m not even sure if that is a good or a bad thing.
So do we have a way to get the raw data from the country of origin and google a pic of what the station looks like?
It occurs to me that it will be easier to do a better job when you know people are watching the details. It’d be nice if the watchers would also point out when the job is done well (or at least better). I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. Just a thought. Positive reinforcement works.
It seems pretty obvious to me what happened, from october of 1993 until september of 1997 they sent the german climatologist up the hill and asked him what the temperature was but the sensor wasn’t working so he said “Nein” but he was stuttering so badly from the cold they didn’t understand him and asked again.
Outraged, he relpied “NEIN…NEIN,NEIN.
And so it was recorded for the next 48 months.
Obviously he was unavailable for October 1997 but began again in November until his term was up in March of 1998
LOL
Is the data for temperature any good to use with human errors, data errors or malfuncting machines, readings from wrong places or none at the places that need to be?
Not to mention manipilating dta to fit a model?
kadaka,
I think that mistrust might be, unfortunately, well founded. I don’t have the link handy but I posted it to the tips and notes page. There was an article on Ars Technica talking about the over reliance on statistics for medical research, how it could (intentionally or otherwise) be gamed, how observational bias can taint observations, and how many statistical studies couldn’t be replicated in a controlled double blind experiment.
If statisticians were given the various climate variable records without knowing what each data set represented… what do you think the chances are that they would conclude that CO2 is the “control knob for the climate”?
@’There’s a couple of oddities here.’
Huh, considering that green and other leftists choose a fascist to put into a UN climate office? Discrepancies in temperature doesn’t seem so odd no more.
a new low for WaPo:
9 March: WaPo: Stephen Stromberg: Climate-change deniers take a lesson from anti-evolution activists
The similarities between the anti-evolution movement and climate change-denial seem to get more numerous by the day…
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/climate-change_deniers_take_a.html
“There’s a couple of oddities here. First, Dr. Dubey said that there were 140 years of temperature records from the station, but the GISS data covers 1897 to the present, or 113 years including the missing years.”
This condition is not confined to the Himalayan station, not by any means.
I find it almost EVERYWHERE I look.
It’s a real exercise to find station data that hasn’t been subjected to a bombardment.
I even emailed the holders of the raw data to find out about a station, citing thier station record indicating data that they should have. Nothing doing.
Maybe it’s a case of the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand did, but don’t bother propping up ramshackle model predictions with that kind of track record.
I found details on it, the full place name is:
Mukteshwar Kumaon
See Sinan Unur’s page on it, same data gap.
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/207/42147.html
part of GHCN apparently
View of the Himalyas from there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Himalayas_from_the_top_of_Mukteshwar.jpg
An interesting post. It confirms what I have always believed, that the data from each station have to be plotted and obvious anomalies explained. There is a number of techniques which can be used to help identify such anomalies (double-mass plots, cumulative departure from the mean, inter-station comparisons) but untimately it depends on an experienced person looking at the data.
The use of grid references to 0.1 degrees is misleading. The town of Mukteshwar is a tourist centre and houses the Indian Veterinary Institute. Without details of the exact location of the station relative to urban infrastructure it is not possible to decide wheher or not it has been influenced by humans.
Wikipedia reports “There is also a ‘Renewable Park’ developed by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). The renewable park uses solar electricity for most of its electricity needs. Recently, the town has experienced some construction activity and townships have begun to mushroom in and around Mukteshwar. Many people are buying holiday homes here to escape large chaotic cities.” By a strange concidence TERI is run by Dr Pachauri head of the IPCC.
Pamela Gray (19:48:14) :
So do we have a way to get the raw data from the country of origin and google a pic of what the station looks like?
I found some structures near the gps loc. given from the pic, sadly, the zoom from google maps doesn’t allow for a nice close up, of course, I could be in the wrong spot, the lat/lon isn’t exact enough. OT, there seems to be some type of temple in the area.
OT
WWF, NOAA
OK explain this.
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762
They’re everywhere! Ahaaaa Ahaaaaaaaa
“In addition, it is clear that there has been some kind of serious change in the station. It is missing data from about 1993 to 1998, and when it starts up again the temperatures are much warmer than when it left off.”
=====
If I leave out 1936 through 1941, the 1942 temperature is much warmer than when I left off (1935). So what?
Try that. Hope the link works
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tPW92PltLn2tC9x_UPqI4Gw&output=html
Anthony Watts (19:43:35)
You are the man … many thanks.
w.
another attempt. Not so good at google docs! And it’s 5.00am here….
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Al0vgDJwh_0ldHlZWHQxc0phUjBJSWpDdXJSWmlmOXc&hl=en
Another version. Last sheet has all the data in a single column (just the months).
Let me know if I can help more.
From google’s view, I wonder if that white building is new construction and if a treed lot that contained the weather station was cleared during construction? Often times, construction plans change as things go along. It could also be that something was planned for that area next to the building, such as a golf course, another building, etc., so it was cleared in anticipation. That could explain the sudden change.
Who needs real temps anyway. Homogenize!
Frankly this whole AGW thing seems a bit like the USSR and its parades of dummy rockets and science journals filled with make believe mathematics.
Golf course. Where have I heard that before? Have we stumbled across the station Pachy has on his exclusive golf course which used to be a treed lot?
John Mackie:
Thanks for providing the data. If it is as you have put it together, then I think it desperately needs some checking. For example, the Feb 2006 number looks totally bizarre and the January temperatures for the last 11 years (since the gap) have almost no variance compared to the preceding decade. Strange.
Pamela Gray (19:48:14) :
OT, there seems to be some type of temple in the area.
IIRC, it’s a temple to Shiva, the Destroyer.
Kind of appropriate, considering its proximity to TERI…
…appropriate on a couple of levels.
Pamela:
Interesting but I think not. The earlier golf course was in a Delhi suburb. Of course, there may be more than one TERI courses. Who would have the temerity to rule anything out.
Anthony (not for publication)
I am a hydrologist with 40 years experience of working with Met data and the co-author of http://www.climatedata.info .
Would you be interesting in a guest posting on “How to fix the climate data.”?
You can, I assume, access my email from your system even though it is not published.
pat (20:18:59) : “a new low for WaPo: 9 March: WaPo: Stephen Stromberg: Climate-change deniers take a lesson from anti-evolution activists
The similarities between the anti-evolution movement and climate change-denial seem to get more numerous by the day…
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/climate-change_deniers_take_a.html”
Careful not step on WaPo…
kadaka:
Please don’t go there, I’m starting to have issues with trust in the latest drugs. Have you seen the fine print on the ads?
We don’t know how this works, but we think this is how. It works pretty good for lots of people. With the reasonably low odds of permanent disability or death, we think you should try it as it’ has a good probability of helping with your condition.
Overall, these disclaimers are actually true concerning almost any drug you take, and they always have been. It’s just that now the manufacturers are starting to tell people up front in advertisements and patient inserts. Also, there are usually, at the very least, “idiosyncratic” reactions to almost any drug – really statistically odd, unexplained, or even unverified but likely related reactions. Possibly related reactions to drugs are reportable by any practitioner who suspects one, they and are listed in the PDR, or at least they used to be – I haven’t seen a PDR in a while, but if you’ve read one in the past, it looks bad at some level for almost every drug. But on the bright side, the info is really helpful if someone is having some strange symptom or sign and they are on medication.
At the same time, too many medications are prescribed and for the wrong reasons. It’s at least a minor mess. And now the ads get people to demand medications. It’s crazy. But don’t nobody tell me the Gov’t can fix it.
But until they start over and do it right….
I hope no one is waiting for that to actually happen.
OK Willis…I’ve seen some doozies from you over the years but you may have seriously stumbled onto something here… this is the only rural station in the area with data going to 2010, ie: this station will have a great deal of influence over the station adjustments for hundreds… or maybe 1200 km… now ya know I’m gonna be up late looking for stations like this all over the globe.
Ruhroh (18:37:34) :
Funny, I never see headlines saying, ‘highest anomaly ever’…..’decade of highest anomaly ever’…..’climate models predict highest anomalies ever 50 years from now’….
Any chance that the TERI centre folk are now looking after the weather station?
I could not see when their center was established at that location.
kim (18:43:11) :
The Anticlimatic Baby and the Problematic Pup
Were playing in the garden when the Asterisk wandered up.
==================
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
It was an acorn disguised as an asterisk
Daniel H (19:29:33) :
Ugh, now every time I hear/read Almora I instantly conjure up these horrific images of geriatric hippie orgies over at Patchy’s place. Somebody please make it stop!
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww
I feel like I need a shower for now
kadaka (19:00:25) :
I have the book! I’ll check when I have a chance.
A coworker went to India for his nephew’s wedding and I asked him
to try to find the book, and he (well, a relative) did.
It’s pretty easy reading, I haven’t figured out if that’s typical
of English language books meant for Indian consumption.
So far, nothing I can recommend.
Surprise, surprise. Much the same happening in Australia. I’m working my way through Queensland sites and it’s not pretty… but at least we can check with BOM data online. So far 5 out of 8 urban sites have warming trends more than doubled by homogenisation, and most are double or more the trend of nearby rural stations. They lie, they lie. (Shameless plug for latest effort)
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
By the way GISS data can be downlaoded in text from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
Willis,
You speak of QC. What do you think GISS should have done with that dataset?
A friendlier version (full width text file) is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp.207421470003.1.1/station.txt
REPLY: FYI that is only a temporary link, it will expire- A
jorgekafkazar (21:45:36) notes that WaPo is now linking CAGW sceptics to anti-evolutionists. Gosh, the sceptic conspiracy – or should that be heresy? – has tentacles everywhere – nazism (‘denialists’ with its holocaust-suppressing overtones), Big Oil (STILL haven’t paid me), tobacco (I have not now, nor at any other time, used this cursed substance), and now it’s the creationists. I am a practising protestant but not a creationist, and query CAGW solely on empirical grounds. I have churchgoing friends who are creationists but believe in CAGW. WaPo’s shotgun contribution is only proving how unempirical and addicted to demonising of dissenters they themselves are.
Talking about golf courses. Had the privilege of seeing (too much snow to play) Gulmarg Golf Course in Kashmir, claimed to be the highest golf club in the world (although there are other claims):
http://www.travelmasti.com/domestic/jk/gulmarg.html
It is also claimed to be the oldest golf club in the world outside Great Britain with records going back hundreds of years. Would be interesting to view these records as there are many conflicting reports about how the climate is changing and the snow disappearing in Kashmir.
9
03
2010
Ken Stewart (22:30:47) :
Surprise, surprise. Much the same happening in Australia. I’m working my way through Queensland sites and it’s not pretty… but at least we can check with BOM data online. So far 5 out of 8 urban sites have warming trends more than doubled by homogenisation, and most are double or more the trend of nearby rural stations. They lie, they lie. (Shameless plug for latest effort)
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
By the way GISS data can be downlaoded in text from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
======
An alleged lie is not the same as a lie.
I don’t doubt errors in station data exist, but I imagine they are offsetting. If there was a systematic effort to bias surface records in favor of higher temperatures, GISS and UAH trends would diverge over the 1978-2009 period, but they don’t.
Nick Stokes (22:49:23)
Excellent question, Nick.
My vote would be to first get in touch with whoever has the historical station records for the place. I’d have them get photos of the current layout of the station, you know, normal surfacestations.org stuff. I’d get a history of the station so I could find out what happened to the missing data, and find out what Dr. Dubey means by “140 years of data”. I’d get every scrap of info I could get about Mukteshwar Ku.
Then, and only then, would I make a decision.
On the other hand if I had to make a decision today, without any further information about the station, since the new data is so wildly different both in absolute value and variance from the first hundred years of data, I’d junk the new stuff.
But if I were planning to bet a billion dollars on this and other records, I sure wouldn’t just gin up some whiz-bang computer program, turn it loose on the data, and report the results without quality control … in fact, I wouldn’t do that even if I were just doing it for sport. Unfortunately, James Hansen and his team spend time on public relations rather than quality control.
And now that they’ve noticed that people aren’t believing them, their brilliant solution is … more and better public relations …
NickB. (19:56:27) :
and J.Peden (21:46:57) :
Drug research has unfortunate similarities to climate research. Start with “we don’t know how it works, but we think this is it.” Then they move forward as if that mechanism was fact, release the next generation drug with the same disclaimer… They keep adding to the chain, getting more confident that everything before must really be facts, they keep finding stuff that works good enough… Then they find out something basic at the beginning was wrong, and no one wants to invalidate the chain and rework it with the correct info.
It’s been a few years since I read the article about it, I think this was the sequence. The new bone-building drugs were to function by encouraging the building of new bone. Lab work was finally conclusively done, and they discovered the drugs are actually inhibiting the removal of old bone as part of our bodies’ natural skeleton-recycling process.
Then on tonight’s world news, it was reported that people taking Fosamax, including generic form, were getting severe leg fractures. The drug is well recommended for preventing hip fractures, and people were getting femur fractures that suddenly “just happened.” It was reported people had both legs break.
Could interference with the body’s normal bone recycling be at fault? Was there “bad bone” left behind that should have been reformed?
Plus people taking the drugs are to take calcium supplements to make sure there are high enough blood levels of calcium for the drugs to work with, on the theory that more bone than normal (for that age) will be getting built. Well, medical problems can crop up that interfere with getting enough calcium intake. And there are currently drugs with monthly and now yearly dosing. Can they be purged from the body if needed? My mother was on Fosamax with large daily calcium doses. And ended up needing vascular work because an abdominal artery was nearly closed off from calcium buildup.
I really wish they would do all the medical research and actually know what the mechanisms are first, and then be able to know what a drug actually does, rather than push these things with a “This is only a guess, but a good one you can trust!” attitude. However, it could be worse…
What’s the difference between drug makers and climatologists? Capitalism, with competition to defeat and profits that must be earned! The drug makers can’t allow themselves to claim stuff as facts without solid research and a very thorough understanding of the underlying processes, because if they were proven wrong they would be eaten alive. Imagine if climatologists faced that level of scrutiny. How well would the IPCC reports have been received if anything they published had to have a readable unhidden disclaimer, “We don’t know what the processes really are, but this work is based on our best guesses”?
Looking at data link Anthony Watts (19:03:45) supplied, holding mouse pointer on data address allowed me to go to NASA website with data.
Imported data to Excel, cleared 999.9 data items.
Treating the date before and after the 1994-1997 as two separate groups, I averaged the monthly data (also quarterly and annual) data for each group and compared between each group.
JAN 1.956
FEB 1.499
MAR 1.086
APR 1.184
MAY -0.142
JUN 0.277
JUL 0.498
AUG 0.716
SEP 0.660
OCT 1.071
NOV 1.782
DEC 1.546
Looks like after the change of the station, the colder months readings changed more than the hotter months.
Is the data at the giss.nasa.gov site really raw data?
Wren (23:18:18)
GISS trend 1978-2009 = 1.6°C/century
UAH trend 1978-2009 = 1.3°C/century
Difference, GISS – UAH = 0.3°C/century
GISS 20th century warming = 0.55°C/century
Since the difference between them is more than half the last century warming, I would hardly say that GISS and UAH “don’t diverge”.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Mar 9 23:30),
“But if I were planning to bet a billion dollars on this… “
OK, you’ve described a pretty time-consuming procedure for one station. There are over 7000 stations, and over 1200 currently reporting. Would you support funding that activity?
FUN WITH IPCC NUMBERS
OK, sensitivity 2°C to 4.5°C, best estimate 3°C per doubling of CO2 …
They also say that the forcing since 1850 from all sources is likely to be in the range 0.7 W/m2 to 2.5 W/m2 with a best estimate of about 1.7 W/m2. Note that their figure includes aerosols, solar changes, greenhouse gases, and all other known forcings.
OK, forcing change 0.7 W/m2 to 2.5 W/m2, best estimate 1.7 W/m2 …
Next, the forcing for a doubling of CO2 is given by the IPCC as 3.7 W/m2.
Finally, we have the warming in the HadCRUT3 global temperature dataset, which is 0.55°C since 1850.
SO …
If the forcing was at the high end of the IPCC estimates, the climate sensitivity is 0.55 °C divided by 2.5 W/m2 times 3.7 W/m2 per doubling = 2.8°C per doubling.
If the forcing is at the low end, the sensitivity is 0.8°/doubling.
And if it is at the best estimate, the sensitivity is 1.2°/doubling.
So instead of the IPCC estimated range of climate sensitivity of 2°/3°/4.5° per doubling, using IPCC forcing numbers plus observations we get 0.8°/1.2°/2.8° per doubling. I note in this regard their claim that climate sensitivity is “very unlikely” to be less than 1.5°/doubling …
Like the mathematician said … go figure …
Nick Stokes (23:57:21) :
You’re right, it would just cost too much to gather the accurate data. If only someone had it all already!
Of course, given that possession of the station hasn’t changed (that can be determined, anyway), what justification is there for such poor record keeping when it obviously has some effect? Maybe we should just spend trillions on the alternative to the data being wrong?
It sounds like you picked the wrong argument, Mr. Stokes.
Nick Stokes (23:57:21)
Another good and to-the-point question.
People always make this molehill into a mountain. Since each and every one of these stations has an observer in residence at the station, I don’t see that it would cost much to collect the information. We’re only talking a few photos and a few pieces of paper for each station, are you claiming that’s a big job? Even if we had to buy one camera per station, cheap digital cameras are $50, twelve hundred of them is sixty thousand bucks, and the US stations are already photographed …
And if Gavin Schmidt and Grant Foster (“Tamino”) and a few other folks quit blogging during working hours, they could do the examination of the data quite quickly. A dozen people doing only two stations per day could do it in six months. I mean really, this level of effort is undertaken by thousands of businesses every year.
Since folks are using that information to justify huge changes in the economic system that would cost us billions and billions of dollars … would you not support funding that activity? Phil Jones has personally gotten six million dollars in grants over the last decade, and has nothing to show for it, the data is lost, the computer program is a joke … that six million would have funded the whole project with five million to spare.
OK, you’ve described a pretty time-consuming procedure for one station. There are over 7000 stations, and over 1200 currently reporting. Would you support funding that activity?
.
Sure . Especially as we already do . All this climate “research” is done with our money . Taxpayers finance everything .
I’d estimate the budget at 5 – 10 M$ .
But of course as this field is already overfunded , it is out of question to increase the global budget even more .
Now there are more than 20 large (and redundant) teams running very expensive computer models .
Scratch 5 of them (f.ex fire Schmidt and his team , close RC , trash the GIEC workshops and associated travels to exotic places while doing only numerical “experiments” etc) , reallocate the budget to QC and the funding for this much more important work is more than sufficient .
The beauty of it is that this QC work on existing data has only to be done ONCE .
After that only maintenance stays .
It’s amazing that only this particular “research” field keeps neglecting the most fundamental scientific basis – integrity and quality of the data .
Would you support funding that activity?
Like we’re not already funding the job to be done badly? If we are going to do it, at least do it well.
The AGW guys won’t like it though. They really don’t want their pretty data all cleaned up. Then they won’t own it.
So they’ll fight it all the way. And that will show their bias. Because if they were really interested in the full truth they should love nothing better than a totally clean overall.
Willis Eschenbach (23:42:49) :
Wren (23:18:18)
I don’t doubt errors in station data exist, but I imagine they are offsetting. If there was a systematic effort to bias surface records in favor of higher temperatures, GISS and UAH trends would diverge over the 1978-2009 period, but they don’t.
GISS trend 1978-2009 = 1.6°C/century
UAH trend 1978-2009 = 1.3°C/century
Difference, GISS – UAH = 0.3°C/century
GISS 20th century warming = 0.55°C/century
Since the difference between them is more than half the last century warming, I would hardly say that GISS and UAH “don’t diverge”.
=======
Well, I don’t know exactly what you did to come up with those numbers, but regardless, I agree you can make a small difference look bigger if you enlarge it.
I can look at the linked graph and see there is hardly any difference in the 1978-2009 paths for UAH and GiSS, the only period for which both are available. Unfortunately, a century of comparison doesn’t exist.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:360/offset:-0.146/mean:12/plot/uah/last:360/mean:12/plot/rss/last:360/m
“Willis Eschenbach (00:42:03) :
Phil Jones has personally gotten six million dollars in grants over the last decade,..”
It’s more like 13 million pounds sterling, quite a bit more that six million dollars US (And for some strange reason I keep thinking of Steve Austin).
Bang on, Willis. Our small business (45 people) has an internal audit function that reviews more information than this every year, and calls us out if there are errors. They do it on 2 staff, for an overall budget of about £150,000 max. The answer to Nick’s original question (if the data do not miraculously reappear) is that a manual adjustment has to be made based on the nearest station, if the available records correlate strongly enough, or if not, the data junked. Either way it must be meticulously documented.
BTW in our business, blogging for an allegedly unrelated entity in working hours would be called gross misconduct and would result in summary dismissal.
Wren (01:20:39)
What I “did to come up with those numbers” is called mathematics.
I went and got the GISS and the UAH data. Click the links, you can download the data yourself. I calculated the per-century trends in each one. I did not “enlarge” anything as you fatuously claim. You can do the math yourself … or perhaps not, I don’t know.
But that, as Jack Webb used to say, is “Just the facts, ma’am”. The difference in the GISS and UAH trends is about a third of a degree per century. Don’t like it? Sorry … math is either right or wrong, it doesn’t depend on your dislikes. If you can show my math is wrong, go for it. If not, live with it.
w.
Nick Stokes says:
March 9, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Better to spend a fraction of a billion dollars wisely than billions unwisely.
Patrick Davis (01:53:24)
You are correct, he and others have gotten 13 million pounds. Dividing each grant by the number of people for that grant, I calculate that for him personally its about six million bucks.
“Willis Eschenbach (02:26:06) : ”
I still think Steve Austin gave us a bigger bang for our buck even though it was a ficticious (Hummm…ficticious, homogenised, false, made up, sounds familiar somehow) ’70’s TV show.
“Willis Eschenbach (02:26:06) :
You are correct, he and others have gotten 13 million pounds. Dividing each grant by the number of people for that grant, I calculate that for him personally its about six million bucks.”
Sorry, to add, I am sure he paid his tax on that “income”, just like the richest person on Earth, HRH QE2.
Re: Ken Stewart (Mar 9 22:30),
No shame at all. you’re doing a great job. keep it up.
The material about these 1200 stations is needing careful examination . If I were a young man I would probably like others are doing right now with the us figures spend the time and the money to verify the published figures . Being over 60 years of age and still very active in our society the most I am able to do right now is send a donation to anyone willing to do this painstaking work digging into the details of all published information . This problem of cherry-picking digits is pretty common in our society , the pharmaceutical and airline business is full of it . Over 40 years ago i was asked to check the projected figures for the airline – industry where the singsong was that we needed to double the available airports in order to cope with future traffic – requirements . After studying the figures the coming of the b747 lead to a lower amount of aircraft-movements , which is quite logical and there would be no need for extra airports for the first 25 years , so reality sank in . When is reality given the chance to sink in into matters related to our climate ?
Slight OT, but has anybody seen anything by old school mountaineers on the state of the Himalayas present and (recent) past?
Rather OT but geographically connected in part. Apologies if already noted, but something is afoot at the BBC with its new science programme about the solar system, Part 1 of 5, “the powerhouse of the sun”! Ex-rocker Prof Brian Cox was splendid talking about the power of the sun & how it affects our planet in many ways, much we don’t understand, & how its magnetic field extends way past the solar system! However, he highlighted links to solar cycles with river flows in South America, & the monsoons in Asia, in response to sunspot activity, with more water flowing in both areas with higher activity, but an apparent opposite correlation in the Sahara. NOW I did pop out to the kitchen both on Sunday evening & last night during its repeat showing, so I cannot confirm that no mention of AGW was made, but I didn’t notice it elsewhere! The honesty was refreshing. Will watch again on BBC iplayer to see what I missed! Hope you guys get it in the colonies soon.
OT.
Just to say that right now it is snowing in my hometown, in Spain.
Willis et al:
I got a response from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology. The scientist said that after looking at GISS he was
“surprised to note that 1990s Mukteshwar temp data is missing. The raw data, however, is available with Indian Meteorology Department Pune. For more details you can visit the website http://www.imdpune.gov.in .”
Dr. Dubey was copied on the correspondence. Unfortunately that site is pretty confusing and I have yet to find where the data is. I have followed up and asked for a more specific link. You or others may want to check the Indian Meteorology Department site. I will keep looking.
Anthony Watts (20:26:16) :
I found details on it, the full place name is:
Mukteshwar Kumaon
See Sinan Unur’s page on it, same data gap.
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/207/42147.html
Anthony, is it my imagination or is the Step Up in that Graph after the data loss a lot less than the GISS one?
“Willis Eschenbach (02:26:06) :
You are correct, he and others have gotten 13 million pounds. Dividing each grant by the number of people for that grant, I calculate that for him personally its about six million bucks.”
Willis, I suspect he is salaried. So making statements like that is inflammatory for no purpose whatsoever.
Re: TomVonk (Mar 10 00:57),
Especially as we already do .
Tom, I didn’t realise that you are a US taxpayer? Nor, of course am I. But this is the answer to the billions of dollars issue. Yes, of course it’s worth spending money to do this to every reasonable person’s satisfaction. Write your congressman!
No use complaining about how Phil or Gavin aren’t doing it. It’s not their job, however worthless you think their job may be. Make sure it is somebody’s job, and that they are funded adequately to do it.
I do understand about UHI, but surely it makes a difference if the temp. sensor in a truly rural location is sited next to a heat source. As the Surface Station project shows, each and every station has to be looked at individually, as well as sensor calibration, for any meaningful data.
Some posts on other blogs suggest that ‘anomalies’ deal with this problem if there are large amounts of data. But if a majority of sensors are biased to start with and the developmental history and siting is unknown, I don’t see how this can be so.
Another issue with this temperature data, is that being rural it is probably used to homogenize local urban temperatures. If it has a false positive slope it is going to result in false (more positive) slopes for a lot of other climate stations in the region that are more urban.
There are so many errors,
and so much sloppy data collection,
and so many inappropriate adjustments,
and so much cherry picking,
and so much misuse of statistics,
and so much hidden computer code,
and so much lying,
and so much political maneuvering,
how could anybody continue to believe anything about global warming claims?
“Wren (20:46:16) :
If I leave out 1936 through 1941, the 1942 temperature is much warmer than when I left off (1935). So what?”
The new temps exhibit this characteristic… the new lows are equivilent to the older highs, and the new highs are unprecedented. Something happened to the sensor, and they didn’t correct the temperature to be inline with the older set.
Background:
According to the latest Indian Census (2009) Mukteshwar has 358 households and a populatyion of 1,168 http://censusindia.gov.in/Population_Finder/View_Village_Population.aspx?pcaid=862845&category=VILLAGE
This seems odd given the apparent popularity of the village.
Tom, I didn’t realise that you are a US taxpayer?
No I am not . But who was talking about US ? Unfortunately this waste of money being global , my tax money is also funding it wherever I am . And be sure that I also act to limit climate “science” financing to a reasonable minimum at my place too .
No use complaining about how Phil or Gavin aren’t doing it. It’s not their job, however worthless you think their job may be. Make sure it is somebody’s job, and that they are funded adequately to do it.
It’s not a complaint , it’s a suggestion . A necessary work must be done while useless work is done ? A logical solution is to trash the useless and transfer to necessary . Schmidt , IPCC workshops in exotic places , redundant model teams and RC are obvious choices but not the only ones .
And it has a use because if nobody suggests stopping useless things , they will go on as such is human nature .
I find alot of name calling on this post-plus-comments. I have identified some of the culprits and have added some evidence of my own.
3/9/10
NickB. (18:45:40) : “Willis the Merciless”
NickB.(19:39:12): “Darth Eschenbach”
WE (20:53:33): “Anthony, You Are the Man”
WE on the Dynamic Duo: (3/10-2:14:30): “Just the Facts, Ma’am”
Bernie (19:31:22): Keeper of the Holy Grail of Honesty
Bryan (19:52:20): The Stutter Studier
rbateman (20:25:2): The Bombadier Blaster
D.King (20:44:7): It’s the Rats Who are Sinking the Ship!
Ron: (20:29:25): The Pachuri Puncher
Pamela Gray (21:11:58): Straightest Shooter
Bill Tuttle (21:20:27): Sights on Shiva the Destroyer
3/10/10
Tom Vonk (00:57:29): Quality Control Management — It’s Easy, You Dopes!
David (02:02:26): Modeler of Models
climategatesstuff (03:55:04): What’s in a salary?
Great stuff. Great fun. Great fraud. Time to Lock and Load. Time for Trials.
NickB. (19:13:25) :
“Ruhroh,
Climate scientologists also don’t ascribe to old outdated notions of reproducability and falsification – I assume that’s ok with you too?
Question, if data quality like this was acceptable for drug development would you still trust it?”
Or if this was how you accountant treated your business records would the IRS (or equivalent) slap you with fines and/or jail?
I am afraid that as a QC lab manager in a FDA regulated company i DID see this type of stuff going on. That is one of the reasons I am a skeptic.
Wally,
Depends on which side of the tax bill your on.
Willis:
This is not a great argument because GISS and UAH don’t measure the same physical quantity. GISTEMP measures in the ABL and UAH measures above it. This isn’t a talking point, it’s physics.
All data sets show trends from 1.3°C/century to 1.6°C/century 1980-current, so worst case, that just brackets the measurement error.
As to comparing a 30-year trend from one physical measure to the 100-year trend from another, too much wine?
oops
to
r.
I have explored the Indian Meteorological Site and it looks like one has to pay for the data for Mukteshwar. See for example, http://www.imdpune.gov.in/E_%20Products%20of%20NCC.pdf and http://www.imdpune.gov.in/research/ndc/ndc_index.html
I will try making contact directly with the IMD.
climategatestuff (03:55:04) : It makes no difference to me whether Jones has kept the money himself or p*ssed it away on whatever he has done instead of producing an accurate verifiable climate record. He has had the money, it is gone, and there is precious little reliable work product.
climategatestuff,
I have about 60 people that work for me, most salaried. They pull in a helluva lot more than we pay them, and a helluva lot more than their fully loaded rate (pay, benefits, management overhead costs)… but if the revenue dries up they are out the door (not by my choice, by our uppers) so to put this in perspective for Dr. Jones and the UEA of Doom – even if it’s not going in his pocket it does help justify his position, his salary, his bonus plan (if such a thing exists in academia I don’t know), and his esteem among his uppers and his peers.
Salaried does not mean immune to the effects of funding, over-funding, or a lack of funding… but I see your point and agree. I don’t think he’s running around in a Lambo, swimming in pools of money
Nick Stokes (23:57:21) :
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Mar 9 23:30),
“But if I were planning to bet a billion dollars on this… “
OK, you’ve described a pretty time-consuming procedure for one station. There are over 7000 stations, and over 1200 currently reporting. Would you support funding that activity?
REPLY:
It looks to me like the activity is getting done by a corp of volunteers here at WUWT.
Given the number of universities around the world and the number of students taking environmental courses I do not think “FUNDING” is needed for this excersise just the will to get it done.
r I believe you have arrived at the crux of the matter.
Climategatestuff,
“Willis, I suspect he is salaried. So making statements like that is inflammatory for no purpose whatsoever.”
The question of funding is entirely appropriate. It is standard practice in any business to check labour and material costs against output to identify profitability. In this case it is appropriate to ask, if costs per man are this high, how productive are they. What’s inflammatory about that?
climategatestuff (03:55:04) :
“Willis Eschenbach (02:26:06) :
You are correct, he and others have gotten 13 million pounds. Dividing each grant by the number of people for that grant, I calculate that for him personally its about six million bucks.”
Willis, I suspect he is salaried. So making statements like that is inflammatory for no purpose whatsoever.
REPLY:
You are probably correct, however the 13 billion DOES translate into honor and prestige at the Uni…followed by increases in salary. The old publish or perish in spades.
Didn’t the head of the MET just get a major increase to a fantastic salary???
There is no accountability within Science nor within the sciences. Everyone is off doing their own “thing”. ‘Publishing’ whatever they want to; and today it is so easy to ‘publish’ because the media isn’t after truth either -their only concern is hype and sensationalism. If you don’t have something believeably ‘sensational’ there’s always the Web to turn to.
(‘Science’ and ‘Nature’ may be difficult for some to ‘publish’ in, but not if you’re one of their ‘right thinking’ psyentists.)
Life’s a beach, always changing, always the same.
(that’s true of people too)
The opiate of the masses today is science and psyence:-(
******************
climategatestuff (03:55:04) :
“Willis Eschenbach (02:26:06) :
You are correct, he and others have gotten 13 million pounds. Dividing each grant by the number of people for that grant, I calculate that for him personally its about six million bucks.”
Willis, I suspect he is salaried. So making statements like that is inflammatory for no purpose whatsoever.
*********************
I love it when people pretend bringing in grant money isn’t good for the researcher who attracted it. That person will be very well treated if (s)he brings in millions of dollars in grant money, even if that money does not go directly to his or her salary. It can figure into raises, promotions, and perks. This kind of statement identifies the person as biased.
Asterisk?
Every station should have a rather large question mark next to it.
You need to look at and consider each and every station, as they are as individual as human beings. This is called “quality control”, and it is sadly lacking in all three of the major global temperature records (GISS, CRU, and GHCN).
As C.G.Jung said: “Statistics is that science which shows you that the average weight of a pebble in a pebbles’ beach is 152 grams, but you can search all your life for such a pebble and you will not find it”
Modern man, and more precisely US anthopopithecus species ☺, have considered statistics results as “truths”, and their “books and bibles”=MSM and now the internet, tell the world DAILY about those TRUTHS of theirs.
Fortunately, human beings from a different origin, mostly from old cultures, which are named by them as “underdeveloped or third, even fourth world countries” do not believe in these, for them so dear and cherished ‘truths”, indians among them and, as a result, they try to make their best effort not to die from laughing, and, instead they “opine” about them through turning around and fart at them.
About that brightness index:
Tuscon, AZ doesn’t have any street lights. How does GISS rate Tuscon’s urbanization?
“If I leave out 1936 through 1941, the 1942 temperature is much warmer than when I left off (1935). So what?”
Well because the change in the mean temps in the data before 1993 is 1.5Celsius cooler than the change in the mean temps after 1998. furthermore, the gradient before 1993 suggests cooling, but after beween 1993 and 1998 there is clearly a pronounced jump upward in temperature. This could mean that [a] there was a significant change in the local climate of the area that resulted in a virtually stepwise upward increase in average temperatures over a relatively short period of time or [b] that station suffered some direct change to its circumstances, such as a site change or updating of equipment to remote control. Given the data is missing in the interim, the most likely cause of the upward change is related to [b], but since the homogenisation process does not take this into account the final “corrected” data actually indicates an upward trend in temperature in the area that simply didn’t happen in practice.
It is quite reasonable to suggest that the discontinuity before 1942 suggests a sudden change of some sort – but so what? Measurements sites can easily have changed two times over a 120 year history. What really matters is the gradient of the raw data between obvious sudden discontinuities, because CO2 caused warming will result in gradual increases in average temperature, not sudden discontinuities. So if you blocked out all the areas where there might be a discontinuity and measured the gradient between these discontinuities will you see a gradual warming, as would be expected from CO2, e.g. between 1942 and 1993? I don’t think so – looks like a strong cooling trend to me.
Ryan Stephenson,
You say, “What really matters is the gradient of the raw data between obvious sudden discontinuities, because CO2 caused warming will result in gradual increases in average temperature, not sudden discontinuities.”
What about the famous tipping points and run away cliamte catastrophes we have been promised?
Over at Lucia’s, Zeke has been on a mission to extol the virtues of the surface station network and make the case UHI (and land use change etc.) has little effect on the outcome.
Although I commend him (and Lucia) for performing such hard work, I still fail to see where they have in any way addressed the underlying issue of the data itself on a station by station basis and how homogenization masks these biases. It looks to me all they’ve done is replicated an error by arguing anomalies “fix” the problem.
Willis, have you delved into the discussions at Lucia’s blog?
From Wiki –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukteshwar
“New development
Recently, the town has experienced some construction activity and townships have begun to mushroom in and around Mukteshwar. Many people are buying holiday homes here to escape large chaotic cities”
Townships ‘mushrooming’ in and around Mukteshwar…no UHI there…nothing to see…move along..
US Navy fleet sonarman around the world, collect ocean temperature data for “immediate” use. We “collect” the data by dropping a bathythermograph probe. We “calibrate” the receiving electronic devices to ensure an accurate plot of the temperature data. We “interpret” the results and forward the raw data to others for “historical” use. A retired 30 year sonarman, I have dropped literally thousands of probes.
In all those US Navy collections….errors are made. I know, because we find most of them before ever a report is made. Reports with mistakes are caught by the Fleet Numerical Weather Center…and there are repercussions.
In my career, I would discover periodic incompetence, but never, ever found “adjustments”, “cherry picking”, or other malfeasance with the data. I could reason that it was because we were more ethical or better technically …
But, the real reason was our lives depended on the accuracy of the results. One thing about war, even a cold one…..it focuses everyone’s mind on what’s important…
I think the scientific community needs a bit of adult supervision…..
……as in war, there needs to be repercussions for mistakes.
From the Mukteshwar site:
“There may be multiple (potentially overlapping) series for each station in the data set. In such cases, I averaged the temperatures from multiple series by month to come up with a single series for each WMO station identifier.”
This means that the “raw” data has been averaged and that there may be more than one site contributing to this series. Perhaps the shift represents the dropout of one of the stations. There may only be long-term data from the area and not from any one particular site.
For those based in the UK there is a superb petition to sign demanding that the Prime Minister stops making an arse of himself by referring to those who are properly scientifically sceptical of climate forecasting “science”
“Deniers”.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Deniers/
1600 signatures so far – Well done!
I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I’m sorry…
AVERAGE TEMPERATURES…
Complete, utter, stupid FICTION!
I have X amount of atmosperic energy.
I have Y amount of WATER.
In one area the temperature is 100 Degrees F, the humidity is 15%.
In another area, the temperature is 80 F., the humidity is 80%.
Which area is “hotter”? If we talk ATMOSPHERIC ENERGY…it is the area at 80 F !!!!
Taking temperatures from disparate places around the globe and “averaging them” is MEANINGLESS.
It is a stupid exercise.
THE ONLY THING THAT CAN BE DONE IS TO TAKE TEMPERATURE RECORDS FROM THE SAME PLACE, TAKEN UNDER “AS CLOSE TO IDENTICAL” CONDITIONS OVER TIME AS POSSIBLE.
Then a trend, upward or downward can be established for THAT PLACE.
THEN those trends for the PLACES could perhaps be compared.
BUT this is a mathematic exercise WHICH NO ONE HAS UNDERTAKEN!
Signed: Frustrated Max
Excellent investigative analysis, Willis and Anthony. Thanks.
One comment on the mentions of the ‘money tricks’ – citing total grant monies allocated to Jones, et. al.
It IS somewhat unfair to imply that this money went directly into Dr. Jones’ pocket. While it is quite likely that a portion of the funds either supplied or contributed to the sum which was his drawn salary for his position, the money (hopefully the bulk of it) was to be used to finance the overall efforts that Jones & Co. were in charge of overseeing/running. Things much more mundane than Masseratis, to be sure – office supplies, IT infrastructure, the bills to keep the lights on (and if it’s like many other government activities I’ve seen, the probably is a charade going on of various entities and sub entities sending ‘bills’ to each other to collectively cover overall costs from various ‘pots’ of money), salaries and wages for assistants, clerical support, even the janitor.
The overall point that they received the formidable sum of X amount of taxpayer dollars, and only managed to produce propaganda backed up by the sloppy dreck they’ve offered up as a work product is quite valid and rather outrageous.
That makes them incompetent bumbling buffoons, not thieves.
And a follow-up thought to the buffoons not thieves comment –
While there’s no really glaring reason to believe that Jones, et al have brazenly skimmed of any money for personal gain, given the shoddiness of their other activities with numbers and accountability, an independent third-party audit of their financial books might be a very illuminating and potentially very embarrassing exercise. . .with the results being a lot more useful than speculation and inference.
I agree with Max.
What are the individual stations records indicating, UHI, climate change or not?
We may call that “rural” but if you zoom in on 29.47°N, 79.65°E with Google Maps you can see that the nearby mountains have been extensively terraced. We don’t know when that was done. There should be microclimate differences between scrub plants on steep slopes and water-retaining terraced crops.
Re: kadaka (23:38:03)
@ NickB. (19:56:27) and J.Peden (21:46:57) :
The report was on ABC (US, not Aus.). Just now I Googled a new article from them. First four paragraphs:
To summarize, as I have heard things, hormone replacement is not that good, calcium supplements don’t work (beyond minimum metabolic requirements that you can get with diet), and now the bone building drugs are not working all that great.
What does work is weight-bearing exercise, which convinces your body of the need for strong bones. With bone and muscle mass, even brains and cardio-pulmonary fitness, “use it or lose it” is the rule, and the body likes to fight back against attempts to tell it otherwise.
(Note: Although I have included the original links, I have no idea why ABC felt the need to link to a 2003 NYT piece for “bone fractures.”)
Max Hugoson (08:48:10)
What we really should be analyzing is energy. Temperature is just a proxy for this and AFAIK there has been no serious research into how good of a proxy it is for Atmospheric Heat/Energy Content.
I’ve been quite amazed at all the physicists talking about climate this and that, that have never even mentioned it. Every mechanical engineer I know (and most HVAC repairmen for that matter) know how important that is.
AnonyMoose (09:12:05) :
I’d say still rural. It’s not an airport.
John Galt (06:28:40) :
About that brightness index:
Tuscon, AZ doesn’t have any street lights. How does GISS rate Tuscon’s urbanization?
Speaking of, does North Korea have temperature stations?
If people are interested, Zeke and others have started to look at other metadata for rural stations.
As I watch everybody natter around about the UHI issue I don’t see much
in the way of systematic investigation. There are these following Issues.
1. The metadata
2. The data
3. The method
Some headway is being made on #3. Up until recently we only had closed
methods. Now, that’s changing. GISSTEMP ( flawed as it is) can be used.
Zeke has his approach. Grant Foster his. And I suspect JeffId and Roman will
come out with something that has the statistical rigor that will make folks ( like me) who inhabit ClimateAudit happy.
#2. The data. Most of the argument about the data swirls around the issue
of adjustments vs raw. Much of this debate is woefully uninformed. It’s uninformed because no one has done a proper data flow diagram. Where does the data come from. what processes were performed on this data.
I see papers and descriptions, no code ( except menne). because this
hasn’t been done reading debates about raw versus adjusted are just annoying. ok, sometimes they are fun
#1. The metadata. We have a list of stations. we have locations.
Its time to start a community effort to assemble and audit the available
metadata.
Willis, you model of a self regulating earth makes a lot of sense, but it needs to allow for variations due to forcing. The temperature regulating mechanism is in the tropics, but the CO2 driver is in the northern latitudes. This should cause a temporary increase of temperature until the CO2 equilibrates. With a constant CO2 input, the equilibration won’t happen, and you will see a temperature offset related to the rate that CO2 is generated.
This is exactly what is seen when you look at the rate of increase of CO2 and the temperature anomaly. See http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf, or my simpler analysis at http://www.2bc3.com/warming.html.
One would expect a higher temperature anomaly when economic activity is robust, and a lower anomaly when the world economies slow down. It is definitely not necessary to show that there is no temperature anomaly at all.
Willis Eschenbach (00:42:03) :
Willis.
Perhaps it’s time to start a meta data audit project. Already at hand we
have various nightlights products, population products, ISA, vegatative
index, photos.
I get kinda tired of having to hunt around for a station index file
and then read a readme if I can find it to figure out what bright = 15
means.
********
Willis Eschenbach (23:42:49) :
Wren (23:18:18)
I don’t doubt errors in station data exist, but I imagine they are offsetting. If there was a systematic effort to bias surface records in favor of higher temperatures, GISS and UAH trends would diverge over the 1978-2009 period, but they don’t.
GISS trend 1978-2009 = 1.6°C/century
UAH trend 1978-2009 = 1.3°C/century
Difference, GISS – UAH = 0.3°C/century
GISS 20th century warming = 0.55°C/century
Since the difference between them is more than half the last century warming, I would hardly say that GISS and UAH “don’t diverge”.
*******
There’s more to it than even that — by standard GHG theory, mid-tropospheric sat temp trends should be greater than surface trends. Nearly twice as much.
Wren (01:20:39)
…
Well, I don’t know exactly what you did to come up with those numbers, but regardless, I agree you can make a small difference look bigger if you enlarge it.
What I “did to come up with those numbers” is called mathematics.
I went and got the GISS and the UAH data. Click the links, you can download the data yourself. I calculated the per-century trends in each one. I did not “enlarge” anything as you fatuously claim. You can do the math yourself … or perhaps not, I don’t know.
But that, as Jack Webb used to say, is “Just the facts, ma’am”. The difference in the GISS and UAH trends is about a third of a degree per century. Don’t like it? Sorry … math is either right or wrong, it doesn’t depend on your dislikes. If you can show my math is wrong, go for it. If not, live with it.
w.
========
You enlarged the difference between temperature data for UAH and GISS by calculating a per century trend. A century of actual comparability for the two does not exist. Comparable data only go back to Dec. 1978, which is when UAH began. You simply do not know what UAH data would show if it were available for a century.
Besides, your results would be different if you compared the most recent month with the beginning month. Here are the numbers from the tables you cited, with UAH in the first column and GISS in the second :
Dec. 1978 -0.20 -4
Jan. 2010 .63 71
The January 2010 UAH number is a recent revision, but I do not know whether the December 1978 number has also been revised, so the difference may be greater than -0.20 to 0.63.
climategatestuff (03:55:04)
My apologies for the lack of clarity. What I meant was that he personally has that amount to spend on his projects, not that he is putting it in his pocket. However, I have also read that there’s only 3 salaried folks at CRU, so a good chuck of grant monies is going into salaries.
Nick,
The business model you describe is very similar to the one I work under. Our company is an engineering services company. Our output is our labor. We get paid to solve problems. Now, if one of our salaried people brings in large amounts of money to the organization then the company will inflate the salary of the “triple threat” because the cost of the increase can be spread out over the entire project. If one keeps making the big kill, then one is rewarded accordingly.
Willis,
In the U.S. the NCDC made an algorithm to identify step-change inhomogeneities like the one identified here and automatically correct. The application of this method to USHCN v2 actually increased temp adjustments a fair bit vis-a-vis USHCN v1.
Now that a serious effort to produce GHCN v3 is underway, its my understanding that they plan on producing a v3_adjusted version of the data that has a step-change inhomogeneity correction applied. It should be interesting to see how it turns out.
Also, I’m sure the NCDC folks would agree with your wholeheartedly that GHCN station metadata could be much improved, and that more folks should be funded to work on it.
REPLY: Much improved? There’s hardly any GHCN metadata beyond a sometimes truncated place name and coarse lat/lon. NCDC didn’t even start adding international stations to the MMS database until late 2007. – A
beng (10:16:45)
Actually, the situation is quite complex. See my analysis of the subject here on WUWT.
Wren (01:20:39)
So your claim is that a trend of one degree per century is larger than a trend of one tenth of a degree per decade …
Wren, you are free to say that a trend of .13°C/decade (UAH) and .16°C/decade (GISS) don’t diverge.
I say that they diverge by 0.03°C per decade, or 0.003°C per year, or 8.3E-5°C per day, or 0.3°C per century.
None of those is different from the others. None is “enlarged”. None of them depend on how long the dataset is.
Wren (10:18:53)
Wren, comparing the first and last months of a dataset to determine the trend is generally considered A Bad Thing™ by mathematicians. This is because it is too sensitive to the endpoints. Suppose, for example, that a trendless (no warming or cooling) fifty year temperature dataset starts in December and ends in July. If we compare the first and last months, we’d think that there was a huge trend, because July is much warmer than December.
My 2 cts about Mukhteshwar – its position:
A Thai site shows other location, which looks quite acceptable:
http://thai.wunderground.com/global/stations/42147.html?MR=1
Gladstone Family web does not consider the database coordinates correct:
http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/42147
OT but this seriously sucks . . .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7414334/Large-Hadron-Collider-to-close-for-a-year-for-refit-and-repairs.html
Willis,
Dont trust the metadata, yet
http://rhinohide.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/ghcn-metadata-horseshoes-and-hand-grenades/#comment-101
@ thethinkingman (11:52:04) :
Not unexpected for the LHC, given its problems (see here). It is an immense highly complex device with many parts that have to precisely work together in a synchronized fashion for it to work at all, with an operating limit as designed that was really pushing the upper limits of the components to begin with. It will be a miraculous event if it ever functions as powerfully as it was promoted to be.
Speaking of such, how is the NIF ICF project coming along? 😉
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/207/42147-zoomed.png
Here’s the non-annual graph, in which it appears the “warming” is nothing more than slightly milder winters, but no increase in summer temps. One should look at local population changes and factor in Spencers UHI correction…
Note: The locals are already adjusting the data, note the black and red lines nearly overlapping in the graph, which they admit to on their website:
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/207/42147.html
Now, look at the raw monthly data for the period in question:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.207421470003.0.1/station.txt
THE MET-ANN data shows COOLING, NOT WARMING. The GISS adjusted data is seriously manipulated.
As it is grant, not salary, there is no tax other than when it is spent (as in sales, VAT and other taxes). However, it is HIS to spend as he sees fit. In other words, what he has been paying out of pocket for in the past (meals, transportation, over night stays) can now be charged against the grant. It makes for some mighty fine dining!
When I was traveling for work, I was given a meal allowance that was very generous. Needless to say, I did eat better than when I was dining at home.
steven mosher (12:01:30)
Interesting, Mosh. I was particularly intrigued by the statement that the change to brightness affected a quarter of the stations. I hadn’t considered the effect that the mislocation of the stations would have on the brightness. I have seen before that the coordinates sometimes end the station up in the ocean (brightness = 0, presumably), so this is not a trivial problem.
Again, it highlights the idiocy of not doing station-by-station quality control. They seem to just grab an unchecked database, apply an unverified computer program, and report the results without any QC. No checking at any of the three stages of the process.
It’s the old story of GIGO made new … now it stands for “Garbage In, Grants Out” …
Willis Eschenbach (11:05:40) :
Wren (01:20:39)
You enlarged the difference between temperature data for UAH and GISS by calculating a per century trend. A century of actual comparability for the two does not exist. Comparable data only go back to Dec. 1978, which is when UAH began. You simply do not know what UAH data would show if it were available for a century
So your claim is that a trend of one degree per century is larger than a trend of one tenth of a degree per decade …
Wren, you are free to say that a trend of .13°C/decade (UAH) and .16°C/decade (GISS) don’t diverge.
I say that they diverge by 0.03°C per decade, or 0.003°C per year, or 8.3E-5°C per day, or 0.3°C per century.
None of those is different from the others. None is “enlarged”. None of them depend on how long the dataset is.
—
My claim is exactly what I said. You simply do not know what UAH data would show if it were available for a century.
mikelorrey (13:27:28)
Good find, Mike. What do the Indians give as the reason for the adjustment?
(As an aside, the GISS link is a temporary link. You can get the data by going here. Make sure you select the type of dataset first, individual, combined, or homogenized.)
I’m not sure what you are calling the “GISS adjusted data”. There are four overlapping records covering 1897-1993. Here are their trends, using the MetAnn (meteorological year, which is December to November).
Record 1: 1897-1991, 0.016°/decade
Record 2: 1949-1990, -0.16°/decade
Record 3: 1971-1980, 0.014°/decade
Record 4: 1987-2010, (missing 1993-1998)
When I combine records I use the “first differences” method. My combination of the records gives the same trend as the GISS combined data.
Here’s the strange part, though. In the first part of the time period, where there is only one record (1897-1948), the GISS combined record agrees completely with the GISS record 1. That would be expected. All of the numbers agree perfectly, the monthly numbers, the numbers for the four seasons … all except the numbers for the MetAnn average. Of the 53 years, fifrteen of them differ between the two records.
The differences are small, one or two hundredths … but I’m among other things an accountant. Stuff like that makes me nervous, again it indicates that they haven’t checked their results. It also makes the trend very slightly warmer. Of the 15 results, 13 are warming, 2 are cooling.
Finally, as you can probably guess, none of these trends are statistically different from zero.
Wren (10:18:53)
Besides, your results would be different if you compared the most recent month with the beginning month. Here are the numbers from the tables you cited, with UAH in the first column and GISS in the second :
Dec. 1978 -0.20 -4
Jan. 2010 .63 71
Wren, comparing the first and last months of a dataset to determine the trend is generally considered A Bad Thing™ by mathematicians. This is because it is too sensitive to the endpoints. Suppose, for example, that a trendless (no warming or cooling) fifty year temperature dataset starts in December and ends in July. If we compare the first and last months, we’d think that there was a huge trend, because July is much warmer than December.
=====
Oh, I know comparing end points isn’t necessarily the best way to discern a trend. But neither is your way.
Your example is isn’t a good one, since the comparison I made started in December and ended in January.
The Indian plate colliding with the Asian plate means the himalayas are constantly being uplifted even as weathering occurs. The homogeneity adjustment has probably been applied as the weather station rises.
/sarcasm
The CRU, NOAA and GISS were formed to measure global warming. If there is no global warming then they cease to have a purpose, their functions could be absorbed elsewhere. Unless they keep on finding global warming they are out of a job.
Necessity is the mother of ‘invention’!
REPLY: CRU and GISS (in their current mission) fit that description, NOAA does not. -A
Graph of monthly GHCN data (as of 2007) for Mukteshwar Ku:
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/207/42147.html
Willis,
I was using the fourth period, the most recent data, which included the gap period. The post-gap MetAnn data doesn’t match whats charted, its actually cooler than the pre-gap data…. NM I was looking at it upside down…
Sinan,
I found your site earlier, thank you for providing this. Can you explain the gap in data in the early 90’s and if there is any change in the station siting?
This station is NOT rural. Here’s the google maps location, zoom in:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=29.47N+79.65+E&sll=29.462318,70.65033&sspn=0.408328,0.856934&g=29.47N+70.65+E&ie=UTF8&ll=29.47,79.65&spn=0.00319,0.006695&t=h&z=18&output=embed&w=425&h=350
The population in the local area is significant and esp in recent decades should exhibit significant UHI here.
Willis:
My contact at the Wadia Institute for Himalayan Geology indicates that (a) they had to buy their data; (b) they could not share it; and, (c) metadata for sites was never available freely on the (IMD) website. I have not yet heard back from IMD.
mikelorrey:
I am trying to locate the missing data via the Indian Meteorology Department. You can check my earlier emails on this Post.
As to actual site, I found this information on the Indian Census site and reported it above:
“Background:
According to the latest Indian Census (2009) Mukteshwar has 358 households and a populatyion of 1,168 http://censusindia.gov.in/Population_Finder/View_Village_Population.aspx?pcaid=862845&category=VILLAGE
This seems odd given the apparent popularity of the village.”
It seems like it is somewhat of a tourist destination site. This means that the actual population may be 3 or 4 times larger during the hot humid season and that the ratio of asphalt (m2) per person may be significantly higher than the population would suggest to accomodate cars etc. There is no nearby rail link or airport.
I have asked for the metadata from IMD.
Bernie, three and a half persons per household? Isn’t that a bit, like, LOW for India? For that particular region of India, household size averages between 4.5-5.0.
http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/person-per-household.html
Its in the brown area just to the west of NW Nepal.
Mike:
I think we are in agreement. If it is a tourist location it is likely upscale with concommitant changes in demographics and make of families, etc. We need a local correspondent preferably with a camera to chat with whoever runs the weather station.
My Indian friends are from Mumbai so I can offer little help on that front. I have not heard back from the IMD.
OK, what’s going on here in this data is “Mod Flag Games”. What I’ve run into so far shows that every time you get a warming hockey stick in a country (so far…) you get a discontinuity right at the point where the mod flag changes (modulo the ‘feathering’ effect from overlap).
Further examples at:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/lets-talk-turkey/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/bermuda-bahama-come-on-pretty-mama/
and a non-warming example:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/germany-not-warming/
As near as I can tell, SOMETHING changed all over the planet that resulted in a new Mod Flag at about 1990 and THAT is what’s causing “Global Warming”.
It’s all about Climatologists playing with their Instruments…
Modification History Flags tell you that something significant changed at the site such that you need to change the processing done to the record to keep it in sync with the past. Could be equipment change, or just change of procedures. The following snippets of the GHCN 28Dec09 vintage data set have the format: StationID for 11, Mod Flag 1, Year 4, then 12 temps in 1/10 C as integers.
So for Mukteshwar, Mod Flag “0” runs up until 1991 when it ends:
So that is your long stable set of real history.
Then Mod Flag 1 runs from 1949 to 1990:
Probably still a pretty good chunk of real history. Maybe a different thermometer or maybe just someone reading it at a different time of day (like, oh, the Sunrise vs. Sunset watch).
Mod Flag 2 picks up in 1971 and runs to 1980. I’ve seen this pattern a lot in the data. like someone running decade long test cases on experimental equipment or something.
But the really interesting bit comes up now. Mod Flag 3 shows up. It runs from 1987 to date. And that’s all there is after those 0,1, and 2 mod flags die off. So you get 3 years of overlap / averaging, then it’s “All 3 All the Time”. And that is your warm spike segment. There is a hard drop out from 1994-1996 while 1997 is there, but with only Oct and Dec data.
So what’s happening here is something I’ve been finding all over the planet at about that same “Great Dying of Thermometers” date of 1990 (ish). A new, and hotter, Mod Flag shows up and makes a hockey stick.
Chiefio, my understanding was that the “Mod” flag just distinguished between different records at a given location. They start at 0 and go up from there, in order of record length.
Is that not the case?
w.
Chiefo/Willis
1990 was the first year after the collapse of the USSR, and the precipitous closing of many USSR stations. Might have been seen as an opportune time to “adjust” the record for “purposes” without anyone cottoning onto it.
It is well know global warming started at this time, if memory serves me, and then the preferred explanation was removal of cooler rural stations in the USSR caused that warming.
Another game seems in play, I think.