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.
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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.