The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they can’t be adjusted. Jo Nova has a great summary of some recent work from occasional WUWT contributor Frank Lansner who runs the blog “Hide the Decline” and what he found in an old National Geographic, which bears repeating here. – Anthony
Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?
Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70’s, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. It’s a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is.
The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5°C.
But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5°C had become just a drop of 0.15°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone.
Maybe they had good reasons for making these adjustments. But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.
Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976
Now compare the 1935-1975 decline for the same area – the entire Northern hemisphere – presented by CRU/Brohan 2006:
Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUGNS_3plots.gif
And when the old and the new are overlaid…hey where’s the decline?
Above: The blue line is the adjusted CRU average from 2006, overlaid on the 1976 Nat Geo graph.
If temperature sets across the northern hemisphere were really showing that 1940 was as hot as 2000, that makes it hard to argue that the global warming that occurred from 1975 to 2000 was almost solely due to carbon, since it wasn’t unusual (at least not for half the globe), and didn’t correlate at all with our carbon emissions, the vast majority of which occurred after 1945.
The US records show that the 1930’s were as hot as the 1990’s. And the divergence problem in tree rings is well known. Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc? Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records?
Esper – Tree ring widths declined from 1940-1975. Records after 1960 are sometimes ignored because they don’t fit the “temperature record”. (All timeseries were normalized over the 1881–1940 period. RCS, regional curve standardization; TRW, tree-ring width.) Thanks to ClimateAudit. (Link below)
Steven McIntyre discusses the Esper data here.
Frank Lansner also discusses the data from Scandinavia, which originally showed that temperatures were roughly level from mid-century to the end of the century, but that the large decline from 1940 to 1975 was…adjusted out of existence. (My post on that here).
Scandinavian Temperatures: 25 data series combined from The Nordklim database (left), compared to the IPCC’s temperature graph for the area.
Frank points out that while the older graph is not peer reviewed, the modern data sets are also not peer reviewed, so even if the papers they are published in are peer reviewed, it’s meaningless to claim this is significant when the underlying data can be adjusted years after its collection without documentation or review.
The CRU has an FAQ on their datasets, and it includes this comment on the accuracy of the hemispheric records:
In the hemispheric files averages are now given to a precision of three decimal places to enable seasonal values to be calculated to ±0.01°C. The extra precision implies no greater accuracy than two decimal places.
Do I read that correctly? After an adjustment that may be in the order of 0.34°C, the accuracy is ±0.01°C?
At the time when there was a Global Ice Age Scare, this graph appeared in Newsweek.
Newsweek: Global Temperatures 1880-1970 (NCAR)
Either 70% of the decline has been hidden in the years since then, or the climate scientists at the time were exaggerating the decline in order to support the Ice Age Scare (surely not!).
Full references available on Frank Lansner’s & Nicolai Skjoldby’s Blog. Stanley is derived from an NAS document. Mathews from National Geographic.
Thanks to Frank for his good work.
Brohan 2006 is linked here, with a pdf.
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Hi all, and thanks for the comments!!
I am presently working as fast as I can on a followup, digging further into the background of this matter. Theres more nice findings, as I see it. (The years 1958-78 appears very essential when we talk about temperature corrections.)
K.R. Frank and thanks for this surpricing publishing of our http://www.hidethedecline.eu writing!!
I worked on Australian temperatures in about 1980. I would take this plot of Matthews with a big grain of salt. In 1975 things were much more primitive. The vast majority of the world’s temperature data was not digitized. It existed on often hand-writted forms and logs. Before it could go anywhere it had to be accurately transcribed and often calibrated for thermometer type. This process was only just beginning.
It was even hard to move data around. Think of a few hundred stations, daily data, and a 300 baud line. Not even floppy discs, only tapes.
I strongly suspect this plot is based on US stations, maybe not very many. There is no way they could have got gridded coverage of Australia. This plot is NH, but I doubt that many countries there were in much better shape. I know people here are unlikely to credit it, but people like Hansen and Phil Jones put a huge and valuable effort into just assembling a proper dataset. Before that, the thermometer readings existed, but were just not assembled.”
You can’t have it both ways Nick. By your premise, then all the temp data that Hansen and Jones have used is just as suspect for the time period given. To not openly and freely share public data exactly how all this was put together and how the data was “managed” casts doubt on what they’ve done.
The X axis of the seond graph above tells us everything: No one can perceive or feel such minuscule temperature changes. Any change is just “noise”. Only with a really crazy extrapolation, a kind of IPCC statistics could change what is shown here: A straight line if we take X axis in one degree increments.
Errata: The Y axis
D. Patterson (02:52:02)
Agree 100% I was a SAWRS observer from 1974 to 1977, (Supplemental
Aviation Weather Reporting Station.) Granted, I used equipment right out
of “Smilin’ Jack,-the Ceilometer was a DC3 landing light rigged for a base
ine measurement, and the usual other equipment… But, I had my hourly
reports out to the Flight Service Stations and into the hands of aviators
within minutes…
Also this was in my commuter airline days, where I HAD to be accurate.
lives depended on it, sometimes…
@richard M
> I’ll try to help.
Thanks, that was great insight. Apparently to be a “skeptic”, one needs to be incredibly condescending, avoid responding to substantive points about a specific claim while waving ones hands and pointing at some vague holistic approach to evidence, and then throw in a few cracks about anyone that disagrees with you being closed-minded or unable to think for themselves.
It seems querying methodology and looking for simple explanations is frowned upon by “skeptics” – clearly a true “skeptic” accepts simplistic analyses such as this one without a second thought.
Who’d have thought.
“The temperature anomaly nowadays is calculated relative to the average temperature over the period 1960-1990. The temperature anomaly in the 1976 National Geographic would be relative to some other period. In order to make the comparison, the latter period data would have to be rebased to the earlier period. That would be worthwhile doing. But until it has been done, we can’t be sure any manipulation has occurred.”
At that time the WMO standard period was 1931-1960. Which was indeed quite a bit warmer that 1961-1990.
The quote above regarding the change in method of calculating global temps…
“The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Prior temperature analyses, most notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90°N latitudes. Our rationale was that the number of Southern Hemisphere stations was sufficient for a meaningful estimate of global temperature change, because temperature anomalies and trends are highly correlated over substantial geographical distances. Our first published results (Hansen et al. 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4°C between the 1880s and 1970s.”
…makes me consider that the spurious warming injected may have been quite unintentional (initially) – an artifact of the new method- which they gained confidence in as they fiddled with the program (and it appears these early stages might have been undocumented and so not reproduceable).
It is the refusal to admit that they got it wrong that is the travesty: I think it may have begun innocently enough and simply got out of hand. After it was hijacked by others, it was too far along to retrack. And now they know they cannot defended their actions because even they don’t know exactly what they did – so they continue to deny.
For that Hansen perhaps bears the responsiblity – for not backpeddling when he should have way back then.
To those who wonder how accurate thermometers could be, made as they were by primitives of a century or more ago, I offer this:
“In 1708, Fahrenheit developed and suggested the wide use of a scale linked to the melting point of ice and the temperature of the human body. After experimenting with different temperature scales, he settled on 32 degrees for freezing water, 96 degrees for human temperature, and 212 degrees for boiling water.
Fahrenheit made further corrections of his scales using the same freezing and boiling points but he adjusted the scale in between so that the normal human temperature was established at 98.6 degrees as it is today.”
So 300 years ago we had established pretty well what we know today of the freezing point of water, boiling point of water and normal human body temperature – imagine Fahrenheit himself ultimately corrected his body temperature figure from 96 degrees to 98.6 degrees. I expect that even the fiddlers three haven’t thought to adjust body temperature upward to jibe with temperature records – although they should.
http://www.getwords.com/words/index/getwords/view_unit/48/?letter=T&spage=1
Anthony, what is the rationale for the reduction in recording stations and adjustment of the raw data?
Surely, someone has written something about why these stations were removed from the data set. there has to be an administrative record someone for this drastic change in policy.
There has to be some written justification for the stepwise manipulation of raw data that has created the artificial uptick in temperature records. We can see that it happened. Where is the record on why it happened.
We need a Climate Daniel Elsburg.
@ur momisugly Frank
If you want to look in the early 20’s there was a global warming scare. Lots of ink spilled on eskimos losing their happy home. The Nat Geo jumps on any half baked, eco preserving theory so there might be something to dig out of that era. Also turn o the century 1900 we had Roosevelt (just don’t call him Teddy) the Progressive as President, and he started the national parks service or something. Doubtlessly the Nat Geo gushed over every movement to establish a park, with grave warning of how the “modern man’s” influence was destroying momma Gaia.
I’d look in the index at home. then take a trip to the local library’s microfish for the hard copy of any promising story.
Dave (03:02:55) :
“So… this ‘analysis’ involves a visual comparison between a 2006 graph from CRU, and a graphic in a 1976 copy of National Geographic? …the author leaps to the conclusions that …CO2 is questionable as an influencer of climate, and that theft of private material is justified. And you accept all of this, while claiming to be ‘skeptics'”
By putting quotation marks around the term skeptics you show disdain for the scientific method. That is not surprising, since the scientific method is almost entirely absent from current mainstream climate science.
You fail to understand that all honest scientists are skeptics, first and foremost. Even scientists putting forth their own pet hypotheses have a duty, an obligation, to try to falsify their hypothesis. When has that been done by the current crop of climate scientists? Cite names and examples, please.
Every scientist involved must try to falsify the CAGW hypothesis, whether they agree with it or not. Whatever part of that hypothesis withstands falsification becomes accepted science, and after sufficient time the parts that remain standing, after all attempts at falsification fail, are elevated to the status of a theory.
But CAGW has been falsified so often [especially by the ultimate authority, the planet itself], that, rather than being promoted to a theory, CAGW has been demoted to being nothing more than a conjecture: an empirically baseless opinion, and its adherents have been forced to resort to pointing to normal weather events, three headed frogs, etc., as their “proof” of CAGW. That is so far removed from true science that it is regarded as cognitive dissonance by those who understand how the scientific method works.
Look at this graph.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
See how the mid-century cooling was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern?
Then read p 1327 of this.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf
It explains how the earliest attempts to get a global record showed that stronger cooling, because they were largely picking up the NH. Add in the SH, and you get the result we’re familiar with.
Nothing to do with adjustments. Just a lack of global data cover.
Didn’t they readjust errors founs in the SST’s readings a few years ago? Didn’t that cause the 60’s and 70’s temp anomalies to jump up a bit? That would explain this quite nicely.
Sonicfrog:
There is that, with SSTs being measured by buckets vs engine intake, and so on. Some big changes in the pre-WWII era. A relevant paper is here
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadsst2/rayner_etal_2005.pdf
But much of those adjustments were made more recently.
___
I now see the above discussion is mostly on the NH, so my last comment is a bit off. But data coverage is still probably the issue; one would have to track down old papers that used the NCAR dataset from those days, to see how things evolved.
Great article Frank! It occurred to me when ‘hiding the decline’ came out in the emails, if the tree rings are true, that coupled with UHI, there could be no actual warming.
As Luke Skywarmer requested above, here is the NG graph overlaid with the tree ring density graph, to the best of my scaling abilities. The separation in the NG image makes up for the binding loss of the X-axis. Also note, the 1980-2000 space on the X-axis is shorter than all other 20 year blocks, making the tree rings appear to be longer than reality, although care was taken to align correctly through 1980.
http://i44.tinypic.com/vzbzag.jpg
@Nick Stokes
Just to set the record straight, I retired from the USAF (and the AWN) in 1971. At that time we were using two Univac 1108’s connected to 77 circuits at various speeds. Further, we had been doing the same sort of thing for at least five years. All observations in the world that we could get our hands on were processed except for what I would call “junk observations,” such as the climate network stuff, that were of little use to the USAF. One of our circuits was to the U.S. Weather Bureau in Suitland, MD. Others were to AFGWC and the Fleet Weather Center. And in fact we drove remote transmitters for the US Fleet at Rota Spain, San Diego, and Guam as I remember.
This data covering the entire world was indirectly sent to NCDC daily on magnetic tape. We averaged less than one minute down time per day.
We were not the primitive operation that you describe.
Mike Haseler (04:40:50) :
…. except it sure does annoy the hell out of the typical scientifically illiterate idiots who believe in global warming who aren’t aware how insignificant it is!
Too true!
” carrot eater (09:13:29) :
Look at this graph.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
See how the mid-century cooling was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern?”
The divergence that Frank shows in the 3rd graph starts about 1978.
In 5 minutes I found the source of the National Geographic plot.
The effect of solar radiation variations on the climate of the earth
princeton.edu
MI Budyko – Tellus, 1969 – aos.princeton.edu
Google “author:budyko temperature” to get the link to the PDF.
The original data is from 1969, though it looks like it has been updated in the NG plot. The data is from “a group of stations in Europe and America with the longest-period series of observations”, whereas HadCRUT is obviously more widespread data.
In the original, temperatures peak at 0.6 and the minimum dip is -0.15C. In the National Geographic, the peak is +0.75 and the dip is -0.25C. So it’s been expanded 33% for “artistic license” perhaps.
D. Patterson,
What a great history – much enjoyed the details of the technology used in data recording and sharing pre-1970. Fisheries scientists in the U.K. were using computers to help with stock assessments by the late 1960s, and of course Hollerith machines back into the 1950s. Perhaps not so facile as current technologies, but by no means unsophisticated – and these technologies were sufficient to enable scientists to do pretty much what they continue to do today, except perhaps for some levels of meta-analysis. And remember, the USA got to the moon using slide rules – technology is no substitute for intelligence or careful science, and does not make up for dishonesty or agenda-driven science.
papertiger (08:55:46) :
Theodore Roosevelt was a fan of the Gospel of Efficiency form of conservation, which means he was in favour of Gordon Pinchot’s vision of setting aside huge swathes of land for nature reserves, that could also be used for harvesting timber, hunting, and even mining – with parks employees replanting the trees and managing the natural resources along scientific lines. Progressive he may have been, but hardly a Gaia worshipper or follower of John Muir (Sierra Club founder), who favoured nature reserves which were not to be used by people for any purposes at all, including recreational activities. I would imagine that the National Geographic from that era followed the most popular version of conservation, the Gospel of Efficiency kind, which shaped scientific thinking in natural resources sciences (forestry science, fisheries science, some schools of ecology) of that era.
Steve Milesworthy (10:58:56) :
“In 5 minutes I found the source of the National Geographic plot.
The effect of solar radiation variations on the climate of the earth
princeton.edu
MI Budyko – Tellus, 1969 – aos.princeton.edu”
Exactly, i have almost finished an illustrated review of the data behind Nat geo 76 – inclussive Bodyko 69.
I will post on hidethedecline.eu within 5 hours i guess 🙂
K,R. Frank Lansner
” DirkH (10:17:35) :
[…]
The divergence that Frank shows in the 3rd graph starts about 1978.”
Sorry i misread the blurry numbers. What i thought was 1980 is in fact the 1960. Forget my comment.
Dumb question. The article mentions getting temperature accuracy down to hundredths of a degree–but does that accuracy actually tell us anything useful? No one would even notice a temperature difference of +/1 .01 degrees or even 0.1 degrees either way, nor would they care.