Jo Nova has more from Frank Lansner on what older records, this time from weather balloons, tell us about recent adjustments to the temperature record. WUWT readers may recall Rewriting the decline where the graph from National Geographic below raises some questions about temperature graphs today.
Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976
Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing “decline” in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original “hide the decline” statement comes from the ClimateGate emails and refers to “hiding” the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It’s known as the “divergence problem” because tree rings diverge from the measured temperatures. But Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs and that measured temperature did decline from 1960 onwards, sharply. But in the GISS version of that time-period, temperatures from the cold 1970’s period were repeatedly “adjusted” years after the event, and progressively got warmer.
The most mysterious period is from 1958 to 1978, when a steep 0.3C decline that was initially recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Years later that was reduced so far it became a mild warming, against the detailed corroborating evidence from rabocore data.
Raobcore measurements are balloon measures. They started in 1958, twenty years before satellites. But when satellites began, the two different methods tie together very neatly–telling us that both of them are accurate, reliable tools.
You can see how similar the data from both methods is:
So what do the raobcores tell us about the period before satellites started recording temperatures? They make it clear that temperatures fell quickly from 1960-1970.
The decline in the original graph in National Geographic in 1976 is apparently backed up by highly accurate balloon data, and was based on peer reviewed data: Budyko 1969 and Angell and Korshover (1975). These two sets overlap from 1958 to 1960, and correlate well, so stitching them together is reasonable thing to do and it doesn’t make much difference which year is chosen from the overlap period (indeed any other choice makes the decline slightly steeper).
What’s thought provoking is that the raobcore data above is for 30N-30S, covering all the tropics on both sides of the equator, and yet still shows the decline. That begs the question of whether the Southern Hemisphere data has been adjusted too. It would be good to see the raobcore sets further up towards the arctic. It would also be good to look at the Southern Hemisphere. Where are the data sets and peer reviewed papers on temperature from 1965 to 1980? I’d like to follow that up.
Three decades of adjustments
When did the “funny business” begin? By 1980 Hansen and GISS had already produced graphs which were starting to neutralize the decline. His graphs of 1987 and then 2007 further reduced the decline, until the cooling from 1960 to 1975 was completely lost.
(Click to see a larger image).
Watch how the cooling trend of the 1960’s to 1970’s is steadily adjusted up so that 0.3 degrees cooler gradually becomes 0.03 rising (notice the red and blue horizontal lines in the graphs above).
Mathews Graph 1976: 1955 – 1965 was around 0.3C warmer than 1970’s
Hansen/GISS 1980: 1955 – 1965 was around 0.1C warmer than 1970’s
Hansen/GISS 1987: 1955 – 1965 was around 0.05C warmer than 1970’s
Hansen/GISS 2007: 1955 – 1965 was around 0.03C cooler than 1970’s
And in 1974, there was the fore-runner of the “It’s worse than we thought” message.
…
Frank has more information and details on his blog Hide the decline.
If 1958 temperatures were similar to the 1990’s, it rewrites the entire claim of all the unprecedented warming of late. Lansner also remind us of the photos taken in the arctic by submarines that surfaced around the north pole.
ClimateAudit a few years ago showed that this process modifies older temperatures with each update of the database. What is shown here is the same with snap shots in 1980, 1987 and 2007.
As I recall, Hansen takes NCDC data and modifies it in a manner that supposedly accounts for UHI. Not sure how that can be justified when the end product is to cool older temps while raising new ones, but that’s the claim. It could be though that the NCDC homogenization is what is at work.
With Tom Karl now in charge of all climate “science”, I somehow doubt we’ll see any government funding being dedicated to an investigation of this issue.
An even better “subs at the pole” picture;
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/NP1987.jpg
Dr. Joseph Fletcher
ICOADS: International Comprehensive (Consolidated) Ocean and Atmosphere Data Sets
Global Climate MAESTRO
source: http://sharpgary.org/FletcherForecast.html
Dr. Sharp’s site also includes a timeline and source references to ENSO events for this period and earlier if its of any help.
Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study
Organized for you by: Gary D. Sharp, Ph.D.
source: http://sharpgary.org/1896-1929.html
1896 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1899-1900 ENSO Warm Event
1900 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1901-02 ENSO Warm Event
1904-05 ENSO Warm Event
1907 ENSO Warm Event
1910-11 ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
1911-12 ENSO Warm Event
1913-14 ENSO Cool Event ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
1914-15 ENSO Warm Event
1917 ENSO Cool Event
1918-1920 ENSO Warm Event
1919 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1923 ENSO Warm Event
1924 ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
1925-26 ENSO Warm Event
1925-34 General warming trend begins (North Atlantic)
1928 ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
1929-31 ENSO Warm Event
1930-31 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1932 ENSO Warm Event
1938 ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
1939-1941 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1943-44 ENSO Warm Event
1946 end warm period
1951-53 ENSO Warm Event
1955 ENSO ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1957-58 ENSO Warm Event (Pacific-wide)
1961 ENSO Cool Event (Eastern Tropical Pacific)
Most NCDC statewide temperature records show this decline. Here is one from Alabama.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=02&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=001-00
Makes you see things in a new light doesn’t it
This is actually fairly stunning. I knew that blaming CO2 for any warming observed was foolish. But seeing the historical results from a publicly funded scientist progressively alter to demonstrate a warming the further into the future we get… well that I didn’t expect.
Honestly, is there any possible justification for what Hansen has apparently done here? It seems that each successive report changes the number for a year that was measured decades ago. Is Hansen spending all his time going over his old notes of how those numbers were taken and making corrections? Even that boggles the mind.
We must remember that there were sent Clima-Gate emails to many countries all over the world, so there was a widespread “cooperation” to “Hide the decline”.
I wrote to my own country “contact”, which appeared as recepient of some emails. the same day climate-gate happened and he didn’t answer me. In every country, as it has been shown here at WUWT weather stations were cherry picked and all those which recorded lower temperatures just disappeared.
Re: the three GISS plots all in the same image
This is a very compelling comparison.
Are these three plots copied from journal articles? Could you plese cite the references?
Best Regards,
Tom Moriarty
ClimateSanity
The Three Decades of Adjustments Graph pretty much says it all.
OT:
How NASA spends US taxpayers money in fostering AGW propaganda using AGW propagandists:
From Scott Mandia’s blog. Mandia is a vocal advocate of AGW, physics professor in some community college, graduated with a MSc. degree from Penn State University, the home of Michael Mann…
“I am currently listed as a co-investigator (co-I) on a NASA grant proposal that is to be submitted this month. The principal investigator (PI) is a colleague of mine who I will call Prof. X and the grant budget is requesting $437,232.67 over a three year period. Funding from the proposal will be used to create a learning institute to educate secondary education teachers about climate change. These teachers will be trained to use climate data from NASA in order to incorporate the latest climate change science and data into their curricula. Essentially, NASA will be using some of its funds so that our children will become more informed.”
Nicely said hey? That’s simply brainwashing teachers at taxpayers’ expense.
Read this http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/taking-the-money-for-granted-%e2%80%93-part-i/
Hatshepsut was the 1st pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. The subsequent pharaoh, Thutmose III, attempted to erase Hatshepsut from history. Many of her likenesses were destroyed or were defaced. Archeologists have struggled to understand the social environment that led to the attempts to erase Hatshepsut from history.
I wonder if archeologist a thousand years from now will struggle to understand why our culture tried to erase the MWP from history.
It deserves repeating, again: Maybe the reason the plurality of maximum US state records were set in the decade of the 1930s was because it was warm then. Canada was warm that decade as well.
http://www.icecap.us/images/uploads/More_Critique_Of_Ncar_Cherry_Picking_Tempeature_Record_Study.pdf
As Steve Milesworthy found, that old graph is based on US and some European stations. And the current GISS US record shows exactly that “missing decline”. It’s not missing at all. Your taking a US measure and claiming discrepancies based on global temps. They are just different.
One see’s here of course the benefit of archiving and SHARING the data supporting any publication. It’s not enough to “point” to a source in a paper as that source may change over time or be lost. Maybe Hansen kept his old data set. Asking him might be an interesting experience.
Carbon market update;
“EUROPE’S emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over “recycled” carbon permits.
Two carbon exchanges were forced to suspend trading as panic hit investors fearful that they had bought invalid permits.
BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.
Concern that used and worthless permits were circulating caused the spot price of the certificates to collapse, from €12 ($17.87) a tonne of carbon to less than €1.”
European emission trading rocked by scandal over recycled carbon permits
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/news/european-emission-trading-rocked-by-scandal-over-recycled-carbon-permits/story-e6frg90o-1225842148852
In the referenced PDF, I adjusted the 3 decades of adjustment for scale. The change is still dramatic.
Juraj V. (09:57:47) : , what I like about your (and other) real long term records is the cyclic nature of values, similar up and down trends are clear to see, not the almost straight line the IPCC like to show for pre 1970.
The 1710, 1810 and 1920 upward trends look very similar.
Juraj V. (10:05:41) : Looks like detrended 20th century NH record would fit those old charts quite well:
Yes it does look like it.
Steve Goddard (10:49:13) :
You will have the AGW croud jumping on you for cherry picking LOL.
Still can’t get Tips & Notes to work so have to post this link here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article7066030.ece
It is about the risk of indoctrination of kids which is making it ever more difficult to break the AGW hold on public.
I wish there would be more commentary about those subs. It seems to me, if they were near the north pole when they surfaced (and I know they were), then the melting/flooding argument of the alarmists is invalidated. Given the recent historical precedence, most, if not all alarmist hysteria becomes moot. They could cry about melting caps as much as they want and world could say, “who cares?”
As far as “adjustment” to historical data, we’ve known they’ve done this for years. Though it is fun to see how often and with casual disregard to our memory that they’ve rewritten history. I wonder, 100 years from now, what information will be available to the people? Will it be the true temp readings allowing the reader to make their own adjustments, or will it be the “homogenized” and “washed” temp readings? Will the skeptics even be a footnote in a history book?
As with my previous posting about mass graves in the Siberian permafrost, this comment is offered as anecdotal and second/third hand. Personally I trust my sources more than any “official” government handouts.
A friend who sailed on the Northern Sea Route (SevMorPut) had many conversations with experienced Arctic mariners and ice pilots. According to them this seaway along the north coast of Russia and Siberia has shown significant change over the years in sea ice cover during the brief summer shipping seasons. Sea ice in any particular place, of course, is subject to various atmospheric and oceanic influences. When it was officially opened in the 1930s and through the World War II and immediate post-war period the traverse was relatively open. Indeed, some even credit the unobstructed shipping lanes with helping save Russia from the Nazi invasion. Then travel conditions deteriorated (greater ice extent and thickness) during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Recently there has been a partial return to the more open pack of the past. This has become a major public issue in Russia today.
One of my pet “projects”.
Search AMS Website for “Radiation Heat Transfer”
As this:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=search-simple&searchtype=simple&previous_hit=10&lname_boolean=ALL&lname=&fname_boolean=ALL&fname=&affiliation_boolean=ALL&affiliation=&issn=All&anywhere_boolean=ALL&anywhere=Radiation+Heat+from+the+Atmosphere&title_boolean=ALL&title=&abstract_boolean=ALL&abstract=&biblist_boolean=ALL&biblist=&keyword_boolean=ALL&keyword=&year_start=&month_start=&year_end=&month_end=&volume_start=&issue_start=&volume_end=&issue_end=&hits_per_page=10&sort=relevance#results
Then, after finding the 10,000 hits..try to find the papers on actual measurements.
THEN put together an index of measurements and see if “overlapping areas” and conditions can be found.
Trace the radiation heat losses (at night particularily) and their changes (if any) down to location and time.
See if there is a significant change over the last…oh, say 100 years people have done such measurements with various radiometers.
Hard work.
Probably NULL result. But significant! (Similar to the Ballon Temp. measurements of this article.)
Max
I have recently done temperature reconstructions for Canada using data from the Environment Canada climate site. I did this for two separate regions – south of 60N and north of 60N. I used major reporting stations which were generally at airports. The data I was able to obtain was went back to 1945 in the south and 1948 in the north.
My graphs show a very similar pattern to the Raobcore graph from 1960 onwards. Canada data shows a noticeable declining trend from 1960 to about 1975 similar to the Raobcore. It then levels off to about 1980 and then has an upward trend to about 2000 before leveling off again. All in all, very similar to the Raobcore data. Maybe our Canadian data is still pure as our driven snow.
Anthony, a bit OT. the following url was posted in comments on Spencer’s last contribution, and deserves attention.
Gene Zeien (09:31:41) : WUWT http://justdata.wordpress.com/
My observations:
Where has all the warming gone? Start ca 1880 and end ca 2000 and we have warming. Start ca 1975 and end 2006 and we have warming. Start and end fairly mid range (LT average), – no warming. Start ca 1936 and end 2009 – clear cooling. Note 1990s peak lower than 1930s peak.