Over on Climate Audit, Jean S points out a curious anomaly in the March GISS Temperature data for Finland.
Maybe that’s where all of Trenberth’s “missing heat” went. Note the deep red anomaly is in a sea of blue that surrounds it.
Jean writes of the data:
GISS station values are even more spectacular, the warmest March on record is set in every Finnish station GISS is following. For instance, according to GISS, the mean March temperature in Sodankylä (61402836000) was a remarkable +1.5 °C beating the old record (-2.2 °C) from 1920 by 3.7 °C!
Well, according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, March 2010 was colder than usual all over Finland, especially in the northern part. For instance, the mean temperature in Sodankylä was -10.3 °C, which is almost three degrees below the base period 1971-2000 average (-7.5 °C). So the GISS March value for Sodankylä is off by amazing 11.8 °C!
Even more curious, when you look at the NASA data from another division. NASA’s Earth Observations (NEO) The GISS Finlandic Temperature anomaly disappears!
Here are the satellite derived daytime and nighttime temperature anomalies for the world. Just like what the Finnish Meteorological Institute says, Finland was well below normal.
Here’s the daytime temperature anomaly:
Here’s the nighttime temperature anomaly:
The whole of Finland remains a cool blue in both images. So we have NASA NEO saying Finland is “below normal” and we have the Finnish Meteorological Institute saying below normal, but GISS shows a hotspot.
Gosh, who to believe?
I have a working theory as to why this happened, look for an update to this post if I’m able to confirm it – Anthony
UPDATE: GISS has posted a correction on their website which reads –
2010-04-15: The data shown between 4/13 and 4/15 were based on data downloaded on 4/12 and included some station reports from Finland in which the minus sign may have been dropped. NOAA updated GHCN on 4/13 by removing those data and we updated our displays today. The March 2010 global mean temperature was affected by about 2/100 of a degree Celsius, well below the margin of error (about 15/100 of a degree for monthly global means).
Back in January, I was working on a minus sign issue in data, and GISS making mention of this confirms it to be a real problem. I’ll have more later today. -A
UPDATE2: A commenter calls this “fraud” – folks please don’t go there. See below and wait for my next post. – A
Hockeystickler
even if Giss accidentally dropped the minus sign, -1.5 (C) would still be 8.8 degrees warmer than the -10.3 figure from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. there is only one word for this – fraud.
REPLY: Actually, it’s not fraud, but common human error. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll demonstrate how this happens. GISS is a consumer of GHCN data, compiled by NOAA, and while their quality control may be nonexistent or slipshod, it’s not fraud that they plotted this erroneously transmitted data. – Anthony
Anthony, I respect your opinion, but all of these “errors” from the AGW crowd are to the upside. (seemingly) all of them. 2350 “accidentally” becomes 2035, Sept temps in Siberia “accidentally” get reported as October, various decimal place shifts in IPCC summaries as outlined by Monckton, Airports are rural, UHI adjustments are somehow upward, Elevation and Latitude adjustments as noted by E.M. clearly biased to the upside, etc., etc. When they’re called on it, first they deny, then we get the blank stare, and an unapologetic “oops” . Individually, any one of these could be a mistake. Collectively, not likely.
It’s just weird that March would be so hot right at the time the Global Warming Hoax bill is introduced in the Senate.
Just random, nothing to see here.
Hasn’t WUWT remarked before that the big maroon anomalies always occur in regions were thermometers are scarce – like the band of it in Canada.
REPLY: And there’s more than that involved, there’s polar numeric amplification too. See upcoming post. -A
Have a look at the GISS map. All the red “blobs” are adjacent to grey areas (no thermometers).
Is all or much of this alleged warming in reality an artifact of the rather extreme version of interpolation techniques used by GISS (1200km interpolation if I remember correctly) or some other faulty method or software bug?
Has anybody looked into this possibility before?
[snip] First, you print a retraction on your home page. ~dbs.
I wouldn’t call this fraud but I am confident that if a cold spot of similar magnitude had been plotted that NASA would have held up publication while investigating the anomaly.
Anthony,
I see by your recent comment that we shouldn’t jump to the suspicion of fraud when these mistakes happen and that you are perhaps working on a post to this effect.
I know my problem in this regard is that I am just not aware of their mistakes to the downside.
Perhaps you can address for us whether you think that these errors are random. Seems to me if they are anywhere close to random, we’d have ample examples of errors on the cold side of things.
Perhaps a side by side list of errors to the upside and their approximate magnitudes and then errors to the downside and their magnitudes to demonstrate how they balance out?
Thanks for all you do,
Dave
It is interesting, though that the air temperatures WERE higher in Finland on at least two days in April when the “thickness” [528] line plunged south over Ireland and the UK – THEN MARCHED TOWARDS ITALY AND THEN DOUBLED BACK OVER NORTHERN SCOTLAND and swept north, to put Northern Scandinavia south of the line, and ***therefore, theoretically warmer than South West Ireland and Bristol and the M4 corridor towards London and the South East!*** I wrote to the British Met Office and they confirmed it was ‘unusual’. I HAVE THE SURFACE MAP FOR EARLY APRIL IF ANYONE WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT!
radiospu@gmail.com.
That Earth-cooling ash cloud from Iceland may continues for awhile — the 1821 previous eruption continued for more than a year. We will need all the global warming we can get.
The explanation of the thickness line is here for those of you who require an explanation. The “528” line for instance was well south of us [British Isles] for the very cold days of January and February 3010.
http://weatherfaqs.org.uk/node/152.
Any chance some of the big mis-GISS-steps could be another oops, we got the pressure data mixed up with the temperature data?
After a bit of Wikipedia-ing, I found that with the Berber calendar the first of April-equivalent occurred on our (Gregorian) April 14, and since that was posted on April 17 there is still a three day difference.
Anyone know of any other calendars currently used that match up better?
On the subject of fraud an important point to note legally is the type of misrepresentation. If an untrained layman made this error it would be ‘innocent mirepresentation’. The GISS guys went one worse and committed ‘negligent misrepresentation’. They would have to be knowingly cooking the books to commit ‘fraudulent misrepresentation’. However even negligent misrepresentation is pretty serious when so much is at stake.
cheers David
I posted this on the “NOAA says” thread;
Ulric Lyons (04:11:43) :
March 2010 image from NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=MOD_LSTAD_M# (select March 2010)
shows a lot more blue areas than the NOAA map:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=global&file=map-blended-mntp&year=2010&month=3&ext=gif
There are massive differences in temperatures between the NASA and NOAA maps,
west Africa, around -3 on NASA, +2 to +4 on NOAA. Ethiopia region, arond -8 on NASA, +1 to +2 on NOAA. More large differences in South Africa, East Australia,
South West. U.S.A., Central Europe. Also note the completely different scales, the NOAA map is -5 to +5 deg C. while the NASA map is -12 to +12 deg C.
“Stuff happens” – great catch.
Note: there have been 2 geomagnetic storms in April and they tend to turn satellite data into comic weatherviens. Oddly, one of the events occurred just prior to the Iceland eruption; likely just a coincidence.
DirkH (10:40:53) :
One of the few things I like about GISS is that they use Python. If GISS deals with air pressure reports (they may not), they’d likely use int(), which is decimal only.
Anthony,
I commend you for clamping down on overreaction. I remember, when climategate hit, wondering how come UEA confirmed that the emails were legit. Anyone with political savvy would have held their cards closer. To me, that said that Phil Jones & Co. are true believers — not scam artists.
Some here have suggested that the believers will double check any result that contradicts their beliefs but will let error they “favor” pass. Any honest scientist will tell you they fear this in their own work. Subconscious bias is ubiquitous.
I firmly believe that some day, textbooks will study AGW as one of the greatest goofs in the history of science. But I think they will describe it in term of psychological forces that blinded the believers — not intentional fraud.
Anthony, you’re a class act.
Just as were running to the barn for pitchforks and pitch-dipped torches,
you rein us back in.
Thank you. (Can I just throw a couple tomatoes or two, though? They’re ripe and I’ve got to toss them anyway . . .;-D
I doubt GISS is intentionally fudging the data at this point, but their bias toward an expectation of warming may prevent them from seeing what may stick out to others like Jean. People make honest mistakes, and we also tend to see what we expect to see. It’s when we don’t see what we expect and stop to figure out why that discoveries are made.
May not be fraud. But do this error over and over again and poof, we have global warming. Remember temps do not vary much in the warm months, they vary the most in winter months. Winter months have the minus signs that are accidentally being left off. And since the controllers of the data want global warming they don’t notice they are making mistakes.
Go check out the data for Charlotte, NC. GISS is missing a recent month. Go get the actual temps for Charlotte for that month. You’ll notice that GISS formula to fill in for that month is horrible. They drastically over estimated how warm it was in Charlotte that month. Wonder how often that ‘accidental’ mistake is made too?
I’m sorry but anyone looking at the two different maps can see such an enormous divergence that the only conclusion would be…….. something hinky in Finland,Iran,Iraq,Afganistan,Algeria,Sudan,California,Brazil.Chile,Argentina,northern Quebec,South Africa,Baffin island in Canada.I mean giss looks hot except for half of Russia and the other maps look coolish except for half of Canada.
Yes. Goldman Sachs accidentally dropped some minus signs too. Just simple human error. Oops!
On the other hand, just looking at the map generated by this ‘error’, who would not double check such a conspicuous anomaly before using it???
So, if it wasn’t intentional it was incredibly incompetent. So reassuring.
Kathy
“Thank you. (Can I just throw a couple tomatoes or two, though? They’re ripe and I’ve got to toss them anyway . . .;-D”
Ripe tomatoes? At this time of the year? You must live in one of those anomalous hot spots beloved by the warmists!
Must stop this post now as I upset Charles with incontinent and inappropriate talk of tomatoes in an earlier thread…….
I’m a bit confused here. I though Arctic ice was supposed to be expanding in March? Is there a link between rising temperatures and expanding ice caps that I have missed?
So why does this “common human error” occur in only one direction?
Why is it corrected, without the fanfare of the original findings, on the quiet?
Corrected only when they are caught in the lie, it seems.