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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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To graham g at 7.22p.m.
Both Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers on the west coast of the South Island in New Zealand have been advancing considerably from their maximum retreat in the early 1980’s. I first visited these galaciers in 1984, close to the time of the maximum retreats in the modern era. In 1989 I made it back to FJ and was pleasantly surprised by the sudden advance over the five years since my first visit.
In 2001 (my last visit to the glacier areas) I was staggered by the amount of ice and the advance of the terminal faces of both glaciers. I plan to be in that area again at the beginning of June this year to update my photo collection showing the changes of the past 9 years. According to official sources the two glaciers have advanced(mostly) and retreated (a little) since the mid 1980’s.
NIWA places the blame on the advance of these two glaciers at the feet of the predominance of El Ninos over this period. El Ninos increase the strength of the westerly, moisture laden flows over southern New Zealand during the southern spring/summer period (Sep-March). The increased rainfall drops at the top of the iceflows, the neve’s, and this results in an advance of the terminal face about 5 years later.
NIWA, thanks mostly to the likes of Jim Salinger, have promoted the decrease of the multitude of the glaciers on the eastern side of the Southern Alps as being due to CAGW. The nature of the eastern glaciers is quite different from the deep and steep gorge-like structure of the western pair. The eastern glaciers are often in broad valleys and had lost most of their bulk before the supposed influence of increased carbon emitted by man (this also applies to FJ & Fox).
I am only a lay person but it seems reasonable to me that if NIWA are right about El Nino advancing the western glaciers then shouldn’t the loss of moisture to the neve’s of the east also lie with the increased number/intensity of El Nino’s stopping the supply of new material. If so then where do we fit into that picture, other than being observers.
Coops.
Robert of Ottawa and others,
The Auckland temperature record has not primarily been taken from Auckland Airport. The primary long-term record is from Albert Park. Temperature measurement commenced at Albert Park in 1853 and ceased in 1989 (data from the NZ National Climate Database.). The data from this station are a little patchy at the start and at the end but are very good from 1857 to 1983. The full record from Auckland contains one or more splices, probably including the temp data from Owairaka after about 1983.
By the way, many Kiwis believe that Richard Pearce (from South Canterbury in the South Island) was the first person to achieve powered flight. Earlier that the Wright Bros by a year or so. So perhaps the airfield dates are not so surprising.
To give NIWA a little credit they do maintain an excellent publically available climate database that can be accessed right from the NIWA website. It is called the “cliflo database”. You need to register to obtain a password and username but it is free. Available data includes but is not limited to:
01 Wet days (> 1mm rain) (month and year)
02 Mean Air Temp (month and year)
03 Mean Daily Max Air Temp (month and year)
04 Mean Daily Min Air Temp (month and year)
05 Mean Daily Grass Min Temp (month and year)
06 Extreme Max Air Temp (Hottest measurement of the month/yr)
07 Extreme Min Air Temp (Coldest measurement of the month/yr)
08 Extreme Grass Min Temp (Often the coldest frost of the month)
09 Total Sunshine (month and year) (month and year)
10 Mean 5cm Earth (Soil) Temp (month and year)
11 Mean 10 cm Earth Temp (month and year)
12 Mean 20 cm Earth Temp (month and year)
13 Mean 30 cm Earth Temp (month and year)
14 Mean 100 cm Earth Temp (month and year)
42 Mean cloud amount (month and year)
43 Lowest Max Air Temp (month and year)
44 Highest Max Air Temp (month and year)
47 Mean 50 cm Earth Temp
61 Std deviation of mean air temp
62 Lowest Daily Min Temp (month and year)
63 Highest Daily Min Temp (month and year)
65 Mean of 9am Temp (month and year)
Other data that are available include stats on air pressure, precipitation, run-off, wind, humidity, evaporation, soil moisture, heating degree-days, ozone etc.
Naturally the full range of data is not available for every station, but some have close to full coverage year after year for many decades.
“Former prime minister Helen Clark, head of the United Nation’s development agency, has called for climate change to be put at the centre of international development strategies.” Talk about Wacko.. You see M-loo we have been conned, National and Labour are cut from the same cloth, MONEY is their God, Its good to see John Key visiting his relations in Israel after a whistle stop to dance in the heroin fields of Afghanistan. This ETS Tax is a scam based on fraudulent science and its a world wide phenomenon that should ring alarm bells and it points to the IMF and the Con Artists in the UN.
LightRain: May 16, 2010 at 12:15 am
“Are you saying Auckland had an airport in 1880?”
GISS identifies their data as “Auckland Airp (37.0S 174.8E)” which is imprecise but is approximately at Auckland Airport.
Planes first used that site in about 1937 and jet planes in the 1970s. The early data was probably from elsewhere in Auckland.
I am at the mercy of the organisations holding the data. The number of sites at GISS for NZ is woefully inadequate. The data may have been adjusted.
However let us not lose sight of the fact that the graph shows no warming in the major city in NZ, even though the airport site in not ideal and there is a large body of water nearby.
The graph using GISS data is here:
http://i43.tinypic.com/643tba.jpg
As an interested Kiwi resident I have attempted to re-create the graph using their own data, carefully allowing for station shifts etc… even though I essentially get a flat trend line (trend is not statistically significant). I have no idea how NIWA get the results they do. Using the data from NASA GISS also doesnt yeild the result. Many others have also tried with no avail. At last people might learn how the claims of warming in NZ are false. Note Paleo temperature records ALL show a warm period some 700 – 1000 years ago and cooling since, and a cooling trend through the entire interglacial period (that comes from a govt doc – but pre-2000) so NZ was much warmer in the past.
NIWA must be desperate for climate funding, if theres no warming, we dont really have much need for them! There quaterly climate outlooks are normally as accurate as the UK met offices!
NIWA’s temperature data is available free on their CliFlo website.
Rob R – thanks for that information – I registered with CliFo – it’s, as you say , a good data base and very accessible.
I selected a standard inland city, Hamilton with a data base back to 1906 – BTW I was born in Auckland and used to travel to Hamilton as a child to spend time on my uncle’s dairy farm in the 50s. 🙂 It sure has grown.
Here’s the chart for Hamilton and it looks like a typical Australian chart – the maximum mean is dropping slightly and the minimum mean is rising creating a general slight rise in the all over mean.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Hamilton_chart.png
The rising min mean is typical of UHI IMO as added development increases the heat sinks in the city which keep night time temps rising. The location of the station would have become less rural as Hamilton grew. Just look at the new housing development adjacent to it.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Hamilton_station.jpg
Hi janama
thanks for posting your graphs for Deniliquin (074128)
link: http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Deniliquin_Post.png
The Bureau of Meterology data at
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=074128
appears to be the same as your graph, but is shifted 6-7 degrees upward; i.e. your graph has 18 degrees as 1914 mean temperature, while link above has 24.9 degrees.
Can you give url for data you used?
I am having hard time navigating through B 0f M site’s raw and ‘corrected’ data.
thanks
Dixon
janama
I have done similar charts for most of the longer NZ temp series, particularly those from the Sth Island. What you have found for Hamilton is repeated in almost every case where it can be established that UHI is not substantial, and also at many sites where some UHI would be expected.
Sites that have a fairly clear UHI induced trend include Christchurch Gardens, Nelson Airport, Wellington Airport, Auckland Airport, and Lake Grasmere (industrial site/saltworks).
Peer review by the BOM? Here’s something I came across while checking Lismore (Centre St) data.
In 1915 the raw data shows Lismore had a average max yearly temp of 27.4C.
Then I checked the BOM’s trend temp graph on the Australian high-quality climate site data and found that the 1915 temp had been reduced to about 26.7C. I found heaps of anomalies between the two records (but they seem to be consistent from around the 1980s to 2003/4.
Raw data at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=058037
Trend graph at:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=nsw&station=058037&period=annual
I also found earlier this year that the homogenised data for Lismore on the GISS NASA site has now been changed to reflect the ‘rawer’ data and does not show the same amount of warming as the homogenised data.
See
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=501945860000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
I think Australia needs a thorough inquiry as well.
There’s been a bomb scare in the office of David Carter, New Zealand’s agricultural minister who also holds the position for biosecurity.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/bomb-scare-empties-newzealand-parliament/story-fn3dxity-1225867539914
dixonstalbert says:
May 16, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Dixon – your source is correct but you have the Mean Maximum temperature whereas the data I posted was the max and min added together and averaged – i.e. the Mean temperature. The other values (green) are from GISS which is also mean temp.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml – select min or max temp.
Rob R – yes it seems consistent – I did Te Aroha only a few km s away and it was exactly the same.
Ian – yes there is clear differences between the general weather data at BoM and the High Quality data records.
It appears they have been adjusted twice – once by Torok and once again for the HQ site.
Another interesting factor is why use Lismore Centre Street which is clearly urban for the national record when there is a consistent reliable record at Casino Airport from 1908 which is rural.
They state that they only use rural stations for the national analyses yet I’ve found some weird corruption of that.
For example – they list Bourke Airport as an HQ Rural site but if you check BoM data Bourke Airport only has 10 years of data whereas the HQ site has data from 1910. I found that they had taken the data directly from Brewarrina Hospital 100km away and added it to the Bourke 10 years and called it rural when Brewarrina Hospital is clearly urban.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Brewarrina_Bourke.png
The Lismore Centre St was at the end of that street in a park. They relocated the w/s to Lismore airport in 2004. Why they do not use Casino is beyond me.
Maybe it’s because there are 2 w/s at Casino airport (one is a manual and the other an AWS) and they are within 300m of each other. The manual is surrounded by houses and is only metres from a tarred road, whereas the AWS is on a grassed oval with no houses within 60m or so.
The AWS reads around 0.7C BELOW the manual data for max temps (and can be over a degree on some days). UH effect in action.
” boballab says:
May 15, 2010 at 7:34 a
There are 2 rural neighbors within 500 km and a third one within 1000km. The overlap of the combination of those 3 records and the Aucklandrecord was 19 years, just 1 year short of the 20-year limit that ourprocedure requires. Non-rural stations whose trend cannot be adjusted to match their ruralneighbors are dropped. ”
Do they have any idea of NZ geography? 500km puts them in either Wellington, or past Cape Reinga. You can’t go 500km sideways in NZ, it’s a straight line North South to all intents and purposes.
As for the 1000km neighbour? Where is that? Invercargill? Subtropical in Auckland, (well almost) to bloody Antartic in Invercargill
Neighbours? They may as well use Melbourne or Sydney, even Brisbane would come into their area with that sort of thinking.
Thought you might be interested in a few Climategate email extracts involving Jim Salinger of NZ, who was quite prominent in the IPCC/CRU/Mann efforts to promote a particular view of science and dissuade others, even after his sacking. His words below might come back to bite him on the butt. It’s a bit long, but revealing of an attitude of collusion to distort. There are more along similar lines.
…………………………………………………………
1051202354.txt
4/23/2003 -0600, Tom Wigley wrote:
Jim Salinger raises the more personal issue of deFreitas. He is clearly
giving good science a bad name, but I do not think a barrage of ad
hominem attacks or letters is the best way to counter this.
If Jim wishes to write a letter with multiple authors, I may be willing
to sign it, but I would not write such a letter myself.
In this case, deFreitas is such a poor scientist that he may simply
disappear. I saw some work from his PhD, and it was awful (Pat Michaels’
PhD is at the same level).
Best wishes to all,
Tom.
……………………………………………………………………..
1051230500.txt
(To 32 recipients, including some top BoM Australians)
I can understand the weariness which the ongoing sceptics’
onslaught would induce in anyone, scientist or not. But that’s no
excuse for ignoring bad science. It won’t go away, and the more
we ignore it the more traction it will gain in the minds of the general
public, and the UNFCCC negotiators. If science doesn’t uphold the
purity of science, who will?
We Australasians (including Tom as an ex pat) have suggested
some courses of action. Over to you now in the north to assess
the success of your initiatives, the various discussions and
suggestions and arrive on a path ahead. I am happy to be part of it.
Warm wishes to all
Jim (Salinger)
…………………………………………………………………….
1060002347.txt 8/4/2003
Dear Mike et al
I also share Neville’s thanks to you all for the reasoned and evaluated responses over
the last few months. They have been good, and separated out ‘academic standards’
from ‘academic freedom’, which we have to be careful not to abuse.
I also note the following, come through over the weekend from the Wall Street Journal
(below) and would also compliment those of you who, with Hans Von Storch resigned
your editorships when information that should be published was clearly supressed.
If you have further information that you feel free to share on last week’s events then
we in New Zealand would appreciate hearing it, as we have been extremely concerned
about academic standards in the reviewing of articles from New Zealand sources.
Again thanks to all on your stands.
Best regards
Jim (Salinger)
……………………………………………………
1242136391.txt
Tue, 2009-05-12
From P D JONES to Peter Thorne
I’ll have to find a new contact in NZ now
Jim Salinger has
been sacked – but it’s only a small country. Iran is pretty good.
The US is the large bit of work. The US already has better station density than
almost anywhere else, so the effort won’t make much difference. But it is probably
worth doing, as it would reduce errors – even if no-one understands them. Glad you got the poor paper to review!
Soon we will be adding data for the Greater Alpine Region (32 sites) which
go back to 1760. These data all have adjustments for screen issues prior to
about 1880. This makes summers cooler by about 0.4 deg C and winters about
the same. Similarly, we will also add a load of stations for Spain
(again with Screen biases in).
………………………………………………………….
1248785856.txt
July 23,2009
kia orana from Rarotonga
How the h… did this get accepted!!
Jim
Dominion today {24/7/09]
Nature blamed over warming – describing recently published paper
in JGR by Chris de Freitas, Bob Carter and J McLean, and including
comment by J Salinger “little new”
McLean J. D., C. R. de Freitas, R. M. Carter (2009), Influence
of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, J. Geophys.
Res., 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.
paper at [76]http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml
—
Associate Professor Jim Salinger
School of Geography and Environmental Science
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92 019
Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: + 64 9 373 7599 ext 88473
…………………………………………
I have yet to see graphs of raw-vs-adjusted data for any station that identifies WHEN any siting changes took place. Nor ones which show WHEN TOB changes were made.
I’ve seen – here, in particular – some graphs that showed steps in the adjustments, but I have missed any that also showed those steps vs WHEN changes took place.
If anyone could point toward some of those, it would be much appreciated. The more, the merrier.
My reason is that I’d really like to see if the step changes match the siting/TOB changes. If they do not match, WTF? There is NO reaason for a siting/TOB change to do anything but ONE step change per siting/TOB change. In between changes raw-vs-adjusted should be EXACTLY – or all but exactly – parallel. Any intermediary steps should be, by definition, arbitrary and unwarranted – and hard to characterize as anything but fudging of the data.
Am I wrong on this?
I am kind of surprised I find myself asking this at this late date. Surprised that this hasn’t been already covered. If it has, GREAT. But if so I haven’t seen it. This is a very simple method of looking at what the adjustments really are. They certainly can claim some validity to adjustments for before and after of any siting/TOB changes. Those are simple and arguable, in basic terms, as in, “Was that adjustment the correct amount?”
I’d love to see them argue for any steps that do not coincide with siting/TOB changes.
In addition, as we have seen, virtually ALL such adjustments since about 1990 have been in the positive direction, while pre-1990 adjustments are virtually ALL in the negative direction. And yet, where are the justifications for these period-slaved unilateral adjustments? Where are the pre-1990 positive adjustments? And where are the post-1990 negative adjustments?
None of this is complex. It is all extremely basic thought processes and simple questions.
It’s great to see this thread keep going with support from Aussies and Kiwis.
I’m not a scientist – I’m an old record producer who these day designs recording studios.
http://www.johnlsayers.com
If there are any scientists who would like to offer their time to help sort this out I’d be grateful for the input.
the data is here: ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/home/bmrc/perm/climate/temperature/annual/
would a dedicated scientist sort this out please because I have two important plans to draw up for studios in Perth and Mumbai and I’m tied into constructions in Taiwan, Perth and Auckland.
Please contact me at john@johnlsayers.com and I’ll be happy to pass on the info I have.
cheers
John
BTW – I know the outcome of this will be I get contacted by dads who want my advice on how to soundproof their teenage kids band reahearsal room from the neighbours 🙂
Oh Yes, the latest from NIWA – powerful predictions 90 years into the future.
“High concentrations of harmful ozone will be circulating over New Zealand by 2100, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) scientists say.
Niwa modelling showed that ozone in the lower atmosphere could become a problem for New Zealand and for much of the southern hemisphere.
Surface ozone is already a problem in northern hemisphere where prolonged exposure to it is considered detrimental to human health and plants.
“Surface ozone is an air pollutant, in contrast to stratospheric ozone which shields us from harmful UV radiation,” Niwa scientist Guang Zeng said. “High levels of surface ozone affect human health causing respiratory diseases, and cause damage to plants and crops.”
Ms Zeng and her colleague Olaf Morgenstern have found that changes in atmospheric circulation due to climate change are contributing to the increase. There was less ozone created by industrial pollution in the southern hemisphere compared to the north. However, increasing ozone in the stratosphere, combined with climate change, would negatively affect New Zealand’s air quality, Ms Zeng said. “The projections suggest that we could have dangerous levels of ozone concentration during the winter months, risking health issues and lower agricultural crop productivity.
“Increased surface ozone will also contribute to global warming, as ozone is a powerful greenhouse gas,” she said.”
The data stated to be from Auckland Airport beginning in 1880 is weird – the first alleged flight in NZ was made by one Riochard Pearse in the South Island, just prior to the Wright brothers’ flight and one of many madfe by diverse inventors around the world to precede Wilbur and Orville’s effort. The first flights in the Auckland area were made by the Walsh Brothers in the disctrict of Papakura in their biplane named ‘Manuwrewa’ (an adjacent district to Papakura) in about 1910. They formed the New Zealand Flying Club which trained over 1000 pilots who few for the RFC during WWI.
But Auckland airport from 1880?
Love to see that raw data – the actual thermometer readings from 140 odd years ago. As far as I have seen the Mercury thermometers used can only be read to 0.5Celsius anyway, so quoting a temperature increase correct to 2 decimal places is spurious in any case, and purely an artifact of the long-division necessary to calculate averages.
@David Davidovics
That’s okay, many people mistake Animal Farm for fiction.
janama, NoAstronomer:
I’m going to put up a post any day now about “All thermometers are equal, but some thermometers are more equal than others”. in relation to BOM’s high quality (sic) data set. I’ve checked Queensland: http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
and many sites are not pretty- eg Roma gets an extra 0.9C warming to help it along. I’m almost ready to put up Northern Territory which is truly frightening!
We stand on the shoulders of giants- in my case, janama. Keep it up John!
Ken
Alexander,
As I noted above (about 30 comments up) the Auckland temperature data from 1853 to 1983 (130 years) are derived from Albert Park (in Auckland), not from Auckland Airport.
As an employee of the Australian BoM, I can attest to its bias towards AGW. Of course this isn’t helped by the fact that such bias is instilled (subtly and not-so-subtly) into new recruits, whether it be via its meteorologist or observer training programs. And then of course there’s the fact that it’s a government agency, and so it must do exactly what the government says. It’s all rather sad as I respect the organisation for its provision of non-climate products.
Thanks for clearing that up, Rob R. Place-name anomolies can be a real mystery!