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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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.