Before One Has Data

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Anthony Watts has posted up an interesting article on the temperature at Laverton Airport (Laverton Aero), Australia. Unfortunately, he was moving too fast, plus he’s on the other side of the world, with his head pointed downwards and his luggage lost in Limbo (which in Australia is probably called something like Limbooloolarat), and as a result he posted up a Google Earth view of a different Australian Laverton. So let’s fix that for a start.

Figure 1. Laverton Aero. As you can see, it is in a developed area, on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.

Anthony discussed an interesting letter about the Laverton Aero temperature, so I thought I’d take a closer look at the data itself. As always, there are lots of interesting issues.

To begin with, GISS lists no less than five separate records for Laverton Aero. Four of the records are very similar. One is different from the others in the early years but then agrees with the other four after that. Here are the five records:

Figure 2. All raw records from the GISS database. Photo is of downtown Melbourne from Laverton Station.

This situation of multiple records is quite common. As always, the next part of the puzzle is how to combine the five different records to get one single “combined” record. In this case, for the latter part of the record it seems simple. Either a straight linear offset onto the longest record, or a first difference average of the records, will give a reasonable answer for the post-1965 part of the record. Heck, even a straight average would not be a problem, the five records are quite close.

For the early part of the record, given the good agreement between all records except record Raw2, I’d be tempted to throw out the early part of the Raw2 record entirely. Alternately, one could consider the early and late parts of Raw2 as different records, and then use one of the two methods to average it back in.

GISS, however, has done none of those. Figure 3 shows the five raw records, plus the GISS “Combined” record:

Figure 3. Five GISS raw records, plus GISS record entitled “after combining sources at the same location”. Raw records are shown in shades of blue, with the Combined record in red. Photo is of Laverton Aero (bottom of picture) looking towards Melbourne.

Now, I have to admit that I don’t understand this “combined record” at all. It seems to me that no matter how one might choose to combine a group of records, the final combined temperature has to end up in between the temperatures of the individual records. It can’t be warmer or colder than all of the records.

But in this case, the “combined” record is often colder than any of the individual records … how can that be?

Well, lets set that question aside. The next thing that GISS does is to adjust the data. This adjustment is supposed to correct for inhomogeneities in the data, as well as adjust for the Urban Heat Island effect. Figure 4 shows the GISS Raw, Combined, and Adjusted data, along with the amount of the adjustment:

Figure 4. Raw, combined, and adjusted Laverton Aero records. Amount of the adjustment after combining the records is shown in yellow (right scale).

I didn’t understand the “combined” data in Fig. 3, but I really don’t understand this one. The adjustment increases the trend from 1944 to 1997, by which time the adjustment is half a degree. Then, from 1997 to 2009, the adjustment decreases the trend at a staggering rate, half a degree in 12 years. This is (theoretically) to adjust for things like the urban heat island effect … but it has increased the trend for most of the record.

But as they say on TV, “wait, there’s more”. We also have the Australian record. Now theoretically the GISS data is based on the Australian data. However, the Aussies have put their own twist on the record. Figure 5 shows the GISS combined and Adjusted data, along with the Australian data (station number 087031).

Figure 5. GISS Combined and Adjusted, plus Australian data.

Once again, perplexity roolz … why do the Australians have data in the 1999-2003 gap, while GISS has none? How come the Aussies say that 2007 was half a degree warmer than what GISS says? What’s up with the cold Australian data for 1949?

Now, I’m not saying that anything you see here is the result of deliberate alteration of the data. What it looks like to me is that GISS has applied some kind of “combining” algorithm that ends up with the combination being out-of-bounds. And it has applied an “adjustment” algorithm that has done curious things to the trend. What I don’t see is any indication that after running the computer program, anyone looked at the results and said “Is this reasonable?”

Does it make sense that after combining the data, the “combined” result is often colder than any of the five individual datasets?

Is it reasonable that when there is only one raw dataset for a period, like 1944–1948 and 1995–2009, the “combined” result is different from that single raw dataset?

Is it logical that the trend should be artificially increased from 1944 to 1997, then decreased from that point onwards?

Do we really believe that the observations from 1997 to 2009 showed an incorrect warming of half a degree in just over a decade?

That’s the huge missing link for me in all of the groups who are working with the temperature data, whether they are Australian, US, English, or whatever. They don’t seem to do any quality control, even the most simple “does this result seem right” kind of tests.

Finally, the letter in Anthony’s post says:

BOM [Australian Bureau of Meteorology] currently regards Laverton as a “High Quality” site and uses it as part of its climate monitoring network. BOM currently does not adjust station records at Laverton for UHI.

That being the case … why is the Australian data so different from the GISS data (whether raw, combined, or adjusted)? And how can a station at an airport near concrete and railroads and highways and surrounded by houses and businesses be “High Quality”?

It is astonishing to me that at this point in the study of the climate, we still do not have a single agreed upon set of temperature data to work from. In addition, we still do not have an agreed upon way to combine station records at a single location into a “combined” record. And finally, we still do not have an agreed upon way to turn a group of stations into an area average.

And folks claim that there is a “consensus” about the science? Man, we don’t have “consensus” about the data itself, much less what it means. And as Sherlock Holmes said:

I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia