It should be noted that NIWA is not the official Meteorological Service of New Zealand. From their FAQs: Is NIWA the Met Service?
No, the MetService is a separate company which can be found at www.metservice.com. NIWA does perform climate prediction and monitoring services, however, but these are more long term.
… and…NIWA is a Crown Research Institute, established in 1992. It operates as a stand-alone company with its own Board of Directors and Executive.
– Anthony
Crisis in New Zealand climatology
by Barry Brill
May 15, 2010
The warming that wasn’t
The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.
The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.
For nearly 15 years, the 20th-century warming trend of 0.92°C derived from the NSS has been at the centre of NIWA official advice to all tiers of New Zealand Government – Central, Regional and Local. It informs the NIWA climate model. It is used in sworn expert testimony in Environment Court hearings. Its dramatic graph graces the front page of NIWA’s printed brochures and its website.
Internationally, the NSS 0.92°C trend is a foundation stone for the Australia-New Zealand Chapter in the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1994, it was submitted to HadleyCRUT, so as to influence the vast expanses of the South Pacific in the calculation of globally-averaged temperatures.
The Minister of Research Science and Technology, the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, has finally become alarmed at the murky provenance of the NSS. The Government has directed and funded a 6-month project to produce a new national temperature record, with published data and transparent processes. The replacement record is to be the subject of a scientific paper, which is to be peer-reviewed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Hon Rodney Hide, a climate sceptic who is a Minister in the current Government and leader of the junior coalition partner, the ACT Party, has called upon his ministerial colleagues to formally repudiate the NSS and to withdraw all publications and formal papers which are based on the spurious warming trend of 0.92°C. The Government has not yet responded to this challenge.
New Zealand is a small country, with a strong tradition of open Government, and is not an easy place to keep secrets. The acceptance of the NSS for so long offers evidence of the dictum: “you can fool all of the people some of the time..” But if that can happen in New Zealand, how much greater is the probability that similar shenanigans could be happening in larger, more complex, jurisdictions?
BACKGROUND
The New Zealand Meteorological Service, with its forebears, has been measuring and recording our weather since 1861. In 1992, it published a booklet containing a detailed history of all its weather stations, along with 140 years of climate data. In that year, NIWA came into being and has now published most of the Met Service data online.
In 2007, the then Prime Minister announced her party’s intention that New Zealand should lead the world in fighting climate change, and aim to be the world’s first carbon-neutral country by 2025.
Earlier in 2007, NIWA produced a web page, followed by a printed brochure, with a graph showing that New Zealand had already warmed by an amount far in excess of global averages. The web page claimed a temperature increase of 1.1C during the 144 years of Met Service records, and a 0.92°C trend during the 20th century.
These are remarkable claims. They came out of the blue and do not accord with any written histories, or the personal impressions of our older generations. They don’t square with “hottest day” records held in provinces and city archives. They were not accompanied by big changes in rainfall or winds or sea levels. In these claims, NIWA is a very lonely orphan.
Read the entire substantial essay here at Quadrant Online
h/t to WUWT reader A C Osborn
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Wren: May 15, 2010 at 12:18 pm
“The claim there has been no warming trend probably is based on a faulty analysis.”
I challenge you or NIWA or anyone else to get the raw data from NIWA and plot a graph of 9am temperature for the sites that NIWA themselves specified, without any manipulation of the data:
http://i40.tinypic.com/353dra9.jpg
This graph is very important. Anthony can we please put this graph in line for this thread?
Robert of Ottawa says:
I know that the Kiwis are an advanced lot, inventing atomic physics ‘n all, but Auckland Airport in 1880?
Little known fact, that’s where the Merino Brothers, Rambouillet and Cheviot, began their Pacific Clipper service, shearing days off the travel time between Auckland and Wellington. Check out google Earth. Both cities are right there.
“Wren says:
May 15, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Seems to be 6 to 1;
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/05/crisis-in-new-zealand-climatology
New Zealand is famous for man-made temperature “warming”. This is nothing new. Neither are “melting glaciers” any indication of AGW–earth has gone through many cycles of glaciation/warming (100 % without the actions of man).
PaulH says:
May 15, 2010 at 10:58 am
“In 1992, it published a booklet containing a detailed history of all its weather stations, along with 140 years of climate data.
It sounds like the Kiwis could use a Surface Stations project right about now.”
Good point Paul, with only 11 stations it could be done in a couple of days. Seriously, though, it would be good to encourage a surfacestations project everywhere.
There is a strong ‘greeny’ and ecology movement in NZ. Our Resource Management Act in the early 1990’s was rushed through parliament by a dedicated Labour PM before a looming Electoral defeat. Essentially, it now allowed an activist living in a Commine in the Far North of the North Island to make a legal challenge to a proposed mining operation in the deep of the South Island, a 1000 km away. This meant a lot of do gooders sprang out of the woodwork and allowed activists to become prominent and supported by a MSM that believed in AGW. Heck, my local paper just regurgitates AGW articles from the UK Independent and has the merest mention of opposition to Copenhagen and is dismissive of hysteria about Climategate – skeptics ? – we are out to destroy the world by our ignorance. The recently defeated Labour Government made Climate Change a minor God. Electoral Inertia carried over and now we have a ETS of our very own as the Opposition had seen the ETS as unopposable as an election issue.
Salinger has apparently travelled to the ‘dark side ‘ in his belief that AGW has to be shoved down our throats by selection of the worst cases – the raw data is clear, but the adjustments sprang out of thin air. In Wellington, one adjustment is because the 1920’s station was moved up a hill to Kelburn and the altitude adjustment was mde. Wellington sprawls across the narrow harbour strip and surrounding hills and Kelburn is essentially surrounded by built up areas. The Airport likewise. The key thing here is that Salinger has not, will not reveal his adjustments. Oh yes, he was fired for preaching his AGW beliefs in an official capacity without authority.
“DirkH says:
May 15, 2010 at 10:22 am
Seems i made a job title mistake, sorry, activist ACTRESS Lucy Lawless, not activist singer Lucy Lawless”.
Unfortunately some of those very individual scientists who work for NIWA and have been ‘fiddling’ the data.
Are also prominent CO2 AGW/CC Advocates. Jim Salinger for one has been in Greenpeace campaigns along side Lucy Lawless!
So the amount of integrity and impartiality in their work appears to be highly questionable?
From NIWA:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/101834/7-Station_Temperature-Series.pdf
“An example from 11 pristine sites with
no significant site changes or environmental changes since the 1930s is shown here:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/nz-temperature-rise-clear/
temperature-trends-from-raw-data. ”
While the 7 adjusted sites are readily available the “pristine” data is not … it needs a password … surprise, surprise. Perhaps this is another FOI for the experts to pursue ?
DirkH says:
May 15, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“…….
So the UNadjusted 11 station series looks nearly exactly like the adjusted 7 station series… how bizarre.”
Not at all bizarre if you follow the links. You’ll find that the 9 station series and the 11 station series were also prepared by Jim Salinger when he still worked for them.
@D. King “The CRU uses raw homogenized data, which
is like raw data, …only homogenized. : )”
But is it Pasteurized? Perhaps Parmalat got their hands on it too.
This is probably slightly OT…
I followed some links above and got to stuff about the Franz Josef glacier.
That reminded me that we went to Franz Josef in (SH) spring 2007. Wow!
If you ever get the chance, go see a glacier up close. I accept that they are (mostly) all melting – I’m not a geologist but I don’t worry too much because I assume that’s sort of implied by “interglacial”.
For me, the wonder is not what they are but more the impression they leave on the landscape. “Awesome” is too small a word and to see the “terminal moraine” (probably the wrong term, happy to be corrected) up close is a very humbling experience. Go walk through the boulder field at the edge of a glacier, Franz Josef is probably fairly “tourist friendly” in that regard but it’s still an incredible walk (certainly for a fat mathematician who spends too long sat in front of his computer).
I love glaciers, but I’ll take a few degrees of warming to not see one moving down my street any time soon.
Dave
As John in NZ says above – Salinger was at CRU/UEA in the 80’s.
Also it should be mentioned that when NIWA was finally questioned on the methodology used for their records they could only point to Salingers thesis, held at the Victoria Uni library.
The thesis was written in the early 80’s and was not available unless you physically went to the library. Thats it. Thats all they had for documenting their methodology – a thirty year old thesis that was held in a remote library.
The tactics will be familar to anyone who’s been following the climatewars in the last couple of years. No documentation, no review of methodology, dodgy ‘raw’ data, politicalisation of scientists and lately a backdown – we’ll redo the record.
NZ’s Emissions Trading Scheme begins on Jul 1st. We’re world leaders apparently. Unfortunately our politicians don’t seem to have realised that they’ll only be leading the world in looking like complete dicks.
HADCET UK-Mean 1659 -2009 shows an increase of only 1.4C in 350 years. So I guess we know what an approximately 2C increase in temp has done to the earth.
The accuracy of early temperature measurements is quite a farce, considering the basis for huge adjustments of 3 deg F being statements from 1930, such as this:
“The maximum thermometer was apparently (sic) reading about (sic) 3 degrees too high”
http://www.niwa.co.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/101835/Hokitika-Adjustments.pdf
I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. John Key, the NZ Prime Minister is a former bankster (thank you Karl Denninger for that term) and keen on carbon trading so he and his mates can make money.
Using the Australian BoM for peer review gives it away. No doubt they’ll get David Jones or Neville Nicholls(former BoM) to do the review. LOL!
Peer reviewed by the BOM is ridiculous.
They have a position to defend thats not too different what the disputed NZ figures were protraying in the first place.
Can’t these poeple do anything right?
“The replacement record is to be the subject of a scientific paper, which is to be peer-reviewed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.”
Well I guess BOM knows all there is to know about temperature homogenization and adjustment not to mention UHI impacts – talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house!
Hmm, but who will peer review the BOM’s peer review?
I must second that comment about the peer review by the Aussie BoM… the latter is very much influenced by the AGW dogma. One just has to look through their climate summary for 2009 to see the reporting bias:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20100105.shtml
I have a major beef with the way they report the rainfall section with a misleading title and obfuscating the fact that rainfall is increasing in Australia over the 110 period of the data.
Salinger was sacked for making repeated and unauthorised press comments. He lost his unfair dismissal appeal earlier this year. NIWA are as green as green can be, but the change in government here may be their undoing. Despite public appearances, the National lot are more sceptical than their labour predecssors.
D King at 11:15 I kinda lost faith in the idea of “raw data” when I read the “Get Jim to check this, then hide it” exchange discussed in Case Study 12 in D’Aleo and Watts. Seems there are degrees of rawness. I guess I’m just a natural sceptic.
I’m wondering when some smart law firm is going to think “class action?” I’m betting NZ power bill have increased on top of this trend line.
JimB at 9:53 Airport at Auckland? Almost possible see Richard Pearse, first powered flight, 1902 http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html
Have the Australian BoM referee?
here’s an example from BoM.
The BoM homogenised all our data in 1996 – Simon Torok and Nev Nicholls did all the work. Torok was employed and trained at the Hadley Centre at UEA so used similar homogenisation techniques. Here’s an example of their work and it’s impact on the Australian temperature record.
The HQ data is the new “Australian high-quality climate site networks” from which the annual temperature analyses is produced.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/hqsites/
BoM is the Australian weather station data
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml
put them together and this is what you get.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Deniliquin_Post.png
here’s another example from the Bathurst Agriculture Station.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/bathurst_ag_station.png
All of the new HQ Data sites run from 1910 thus eliminating previous data. The above- Bathurst runs fron 1910 but the Torok and Bom data actually start earlier – you can see why they decided to go from 1910 in this chart.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/bathurst_ag_station_long.png
About the author:
“The Hon Barry Brill OBE is a New Zealand barrister and solicitor. He is a former Minister of Science & Technology, and Minister of Energy, and is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.”
It is worth reading the entire article. It’s worse than we thought.
Just checked Auckland’s w/s on GISS NASA. Where’s the warming?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=507931190002&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
and Invercargill
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=507938440004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
New Zealand – north to south.
Seems to be warmer in the 50s and 60s.