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
Search the phrase ‘goat ate my homework’ for more fun at NIWA’s expense.
I suppose it is logical: if you don’t want people to find your unsustainable assumptions behind your temperature series adjustments you either ‘lose’ the calculations (NIWA) or ‘lose’ the original data (CRU).
Yes our small country is a breeding ground for Population control and indoctrination experiments, Our previous Deviant Prime-minister espoused anti-family sentiments along with her bent on the joys of Socialism She now enjoys a job at the UN advising other countries on how similar indoctrination and social engineering policies. Not to be out done our Present PM from a Merill-Lynch “Money speculating multimillionaire” background is continuing the SAME policies with and an ETS plan “scam” covering all things here in NZ, from food production to energy to LIFE.
We have been through the “PRIVATIZE at any Expense” selling all our Infrastructure to BIG FOREIGN business , now all our incomes go abroad and now we only have Primary produce as our main export so Taxing that out of existence makes great sense for the sake of Global Warming, Of course we have our %100 green image, we could try eating that, Oh thats right the GOVT has decided to let FOREIGN mining companies slice up NZ for all our mineral wealth, no-matter that its in the Tourist attracting parks and forests . I say the time for saying NO is long past?.
Ian George, 5:23 PM, thank you Ian. Your comment is very helpfull.
A few comments from a NZ perspective:
1. On the fact that one person can have such an influence, please remember that NZ is a country of 4 million. Many of our institutions are a on a much smaller scale than other (larger) countries. (For instance, the Treasury has a total of around 340 FTE staff). It is inevitable when numbers are small that one person will have a high influence particularly if they are seen as skilled and competent.
2. NIWA is (as noted above) a Crown Research Institute — in other words it is a crown entity that is required to compete for research money (largely though not totally from the public purse. Having a “crisis” issue makes it more likely that they would get funding compared to the other CRIs. NIWA would be seen as the scientific agency with the most to offer policy makers on an issue like global warming though it would not be the policy advisor. NIWA has 726 FTE staff (Ministry for the Environment has this role – with 330 staff, but obviously has a large number of other roles, including some other significant policy areas.)
3. Metservice is a “state owned enterprise” ie a state owned company. Its job is to forecast the weather and make money on it. It does this very well — as shown by the fact that it was in the running with the BBC recently. But its research role is like that of any other scientifically based company – ie to improve its profitability by producing better weather forecasts. It would not be a natural place policy makers would look to for advice on long term trends – just what the weather will be tomorrow, next week or perhaps next season. (They seem to be rather better at this last function than the English — an important consideration for a country that has a large agricultural sector.) It has 201 staff.
Everyone that reads these posts should reread slowly JANAMA’s post at 3.58pm above. I have to confirm the comments based on my observations.
Also ICANTLETYOUPOSTTHATDAVE AT 2.31pm comments about the Franz Josef glacier is interesting. I was there a few years ago, and also about 20 years earlier.
On the last trip,I was told the moraine had expanded since my previous visit.
Anyone care to confirm that important detail.
The ETS tax comment above is probably one significant reason why so many New Zealanders have come to Australia permentaly in the last few years. They made a good choice, as we have dumped the ETS project in Australia.
The Australians are to be commended for standing up and loudly opposing their ETS, it is no thanks to the government and Prime Minister KRudd that it failed to become law. Now if only we could get rid of ours in NZ..
The Deniliquin site is also interesting if you go back pre 1910 for your data.
Here’s the BoM and the GISS data for Deniliquin from 1881 – 1992.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Deniliquin_Post_GISS%26BoM.png
Yet Australia’s High Quality Temperature data set says Deniliquin has been warming since 1910.
ShrNfr says:
May 15, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Perhaps Parmalat got their hands on it too.
I don’t trust that stuff either!
AC of Adelaide says:
May 15, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I kinda lost faith in the idea of “raw data”…
Yep, it’s kind of a “data tartare” now.
Australia
book from 1913 about weather:
http://www.archive.org/stream/climateweatherof00huntrich#page/n7/mode/2up
AC of Adelaide says:
May 15, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I kinda lost faith in the idea of “raw data”…
the raw data for Australia is available. It’s available at this site
ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/home/bmrc/perm/climate/temperature/annual/
All of Torok’s work in 1996 is stored there including all the data and all the methodology he used to adjust it. It would be a mammoth task to re-adjust it all back.
An engineer friend did the readjustment for Sydney Observatory.
Here is the re-adjusted Max Mean and Min Mean for Sydney Observatory hill which sits right in the centre of Sydney above the western end of the Cahill expressway.
The adjustments are along the top referenced to the right hand scale.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Sydney_re-adjusted.png
Here is how the adjustments were made
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/adjustments.png
here’s Observatory Hill – do you think there may be a bit of UHI going on and where was it moved from??
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Observatory_Hill.png
Graham G,
Fox Glacier is advancing at the rate of a metre per week, and last year two tourists were killed when they got too close to the face which is continually collapsing,
Franz Josef is likewise advancing.. from Wikipedia “Having retreated several kilometres between the 1940s and 1980s, the glacier entered an advancing phase in 1984 and at times has advanced at the phenomenal (by glacial standards) rate of 70 cm a day. The flow rate is about 10 times that of typical glaciers. Over the longer term, the glacier has retreated since the last ice age, and it is believed that it extended into the sea some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.”
However, the smaller glaciers on the Eastern side of the South Island are retreating.
Whats it mean? Well, nothing really, except that NZ glaciers are dynamic, they advance and retreat rapidly, and the native vegetation is likewise dynamic and changes rapidly between and during ice ages. Interestingly, an official publication pre AGW (1959) showed a warming period about 800 years ago, but also say we have been cooling irregularly since peak interglacial warmth about 5000 years ago.
JC
I’ve been looking for temperature change indicators in New Zealand and realised we have a temperature sensitive native tree – the New Zealand mangrove – so I’ve done a bit of cursory research on it. Naturally propagated mangroves are not found below 38° South latitude. On the East coast its southernmost extent for at least 50 years (and probably much longer) has been at Ohiwa.
There is a large body of evidence testifying to the mangrove’s temperature sensitivity – http://www.marinenz.org.nz/documents/Alfaro_2006_Mangroves_research_and_bibliography.pdf.
A twentieth century warming trend of 0.92°C in NZ should have had a significant effect on the mangrove’s distribution below 38° South – it should have started growing in estuaries about 100-200km south , but I can find no evidence of such a growth in extent.
I think mangrove extent is a good indicator of NZ temperature trends over the last century and better research than what I’ve managed so far could confirm it.
Ibrahim says:
May 15, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Australia
book from 1913 about weather:
Thanks Mate – great find!!
“The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady ”
What instrumental raw data is this? Please be specific. What sites? What years? Where is the data? What type of temperature is being measured? I wish to check it myself.
And here is Christchurch Graph.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=507937800000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
NIWA. Oh dear NIWA. I have had dealings with NIWA in the past, and I’ve implied before, it’s a shonky outfit. Anything that comes out of NIWA should be disregarded.
I recall, in times past, in Helengrad (Wellington) under Labour sometime in about 2001 an article appeared on stuff.co.nz by a weatherman I think. He stated that temperatures were no higher or lower than they were in 1941. The article didn’t survive long online.
Well….
Thats what you get under a Communist/Fascist/Corporatist Government. We had nine years of a Socialist/Green/Lunatic Fringe/Lunatics with Fringes/Green-Fringe and Fringe-Fringe coalition that Instituted/Mandated/Man Dated Man/Statutorialised/Memoralised and Policided Aldus Huxley’s brave New World meets-Weekend at Bernies-meets-Police academy six into a fine rendition of an Economy/Society/Sovereign Nation mimicking a poo power diving into a turbo prop.
Lucky for us, it was replaced by a Tory-meets-Thatcher on Crack-meets-George Soros(not his real name)-meets-Hegelian Dialectic-meets-an overweight diabetic-meets-Enron inspired goverment, rushing to Sell Off, Dig Up, Burn, Pimp and other wise [SNIP] [SNIP] [SNIP] in the [SNIP] while ramming a [SNIP] firmly in the [SNIP] with an ETS.
So if you have time, pop down to Gondwana Land’s orphan, and enjoy the entirely unremarkble temperate climate, periodically fluctuating accordng to natural variability.
Just don’t step in AGW poo when you get off the plane.
jaymam says:
May 15, 2010 at 7:26 am
Here are GISS temperatures for Auckland Airport from 1880 to 1990. There is an insignificant trend. http://i43.tinypic.com/643tba.jpg
=======================================
Are you saying Auckland had an airport in 1880?
The temperatures are fudged, but the EPA could care less about the temperatures — it’s the CO2 they want to protect us from. They didn’t think we’d by it as a pollutant so they invented the temperature scam.
PaulsNZ says:
May 15, 2010 at 6:20 pm
[snip rant] … Our previous Deviant Prime-minister espoused anti-family sentiments along with her bent on the joys of Socialism […snip more rant…]
We have been through the “PRIVATIZE at any Expense” selling all our Infrastructure to BIG FOREIGN business […yet more rant]
So in your completely off topic (for this blog) spiel you manage to bag our recent governments for being both Socialist and not Socialist. Get a grip man!
She now enjoys a job at the UN advising other countries on how similar indoctrination and social engineering policies.
Wacko alert! Dear old Helen is a social liberal, no doubt of that. But she’s in charge of the United Nations Development Programme, which has no social policies. It’s so not-liberal that it used to be run by a Turk (the Turks not noted for social liberalism), and Iran (bastion of liberalism, hardly) is a current board member.
Oh for a , so the raw data, adjustments etc were all separate temperature records for the one station/time intersection….
Such a farce that, in times when in-memory data cubes sit in behind some of the truly gigantic financial models (e.g. World Bank), and would be more than capable of handling all temperature data points for all stations for all recorded measurements ever, our doughty climatista are still using Amateur Hour techniques.
PaulsNZ said on May 15, 2010 at 6:20 pm
And as Dr Richard North at EUReferendum is fond of asking, “Can we shoot them all now, please?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_Jozef_Glacier_NZ_fig13.gif
Patrick Davis said, on May 15, 2010 at 11:30 pm
NIWA now has a “relatively” new CEO – John Morgan – I don’t know what his plans are for NIWA, but I did know him at his previous role as head of AgriQuality. He is nobody’s fool, and I suspect that his appointment to NIWA is part of the process of sorting this whole mess out.
As others have pointed out, New Zealand is a very small country, so any “rogue operators”, have a significant effect at first. But equally, they get seriously clobbered by the rest of us once they have been outed.