GISS Swiss Cheese

Further, RPS has done considerable work in this area.
From his weblog in January:
NASA GISS Inaccurate Press Release On The Surface Temperature Trend Data

My comments below remain unchanged. Readers will note that Jim Hansen does not cite or comment on any of the substantive unresolved uncertainties and systematic warm bias that we report on in our papers. They only report on their research papers. This is a clear example of ignoring peer reviewed studies which conflict with one’s conclusions.

Have GISS apologists address the issues outlined by Pielke et al. If so, where? Certainly not in this thread.

I forgot to add, please for the love of every thing holy, take that to your high school algebra teacher or your high school science teacher and have them explain why I’m wrong. I’m wrong on several levels, but when it is explained how I’m wrong, you should come to an understanding as to why GISS is wrong………..on several levels…….sophomoric math and science. How much bastardization of the (once) hard sciences can we stomach? Are we going to continually lower the standards in public education just so we pass this BS off as science? DAMMIT my grandchildren go to public schools!! What’s wrong with you people?

Doubting Thomas,
Sorry, have just read your post. You’re right – global surface temperature will not tell the whole story. To look at energy in the system you have to consider sensible and latent heat in the full depth of the atmosphere (not just the near surface layer) and also the ocean heat content.
Here’s an interesting link looking at the moist enthalpy near the surface:
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/05/07/using-surface-heat-content-to-assess-global-warming/
it doesn’t change the overall signal though…

Doubting Thomas says:
July 27, 2010 at 7:53 pm
“I give up……”
The reason why no one commented is because it is a fairly nuanced perspective. I can’t argue with the logic. Sure, humidity(read water) carries heat/energy. There is another that posts here that affirms the energy is mostly carried in the oceans instead of the air. Similar, but not exactly the same perspective. I think there is much to be made of the water/energy vs the air/energy topic. You guys should get together and write a paper.
Most won’t comment on it because it would change the dynamics of the argument. (I don’t because I can neither add nor subtract from the assertion.) Most aren’t prepared to discuss the issue with either of you. Most acknowledge that temperature is a measurement of heat. Heat is an expression of energy. Water holds heat, so water holds energy. I’m reading Ohm’s law right now, but I can’t find a reference to water!?!? Dang, I’m talking about electricity when we’re talking about energy, or heat which electricity is. See where I’m taking this? You’re point, likely, sent many people to the books, but, in general, most alarmists and skeptics alike, simply aren’t prepared or equipped to discuss this perspective.
When it leaves water, where does it go? In what form? How is it measured? How long is the heat in water? Does the density of the water determine how much energy it holds? Is this really relative to global warming or is it a constant which holds a certain amount of energy? Does ice or snow hold the energy?
Beyond doubt, water, in vapor form or full liquid holds energy and is an important factor of our climate. But, I’d rather talk about temps anomalies that exists when temps don’t.
Just because we don’t comment on it, doesn’t mean people haven’t read it, we just don’t know jack about it……I’d stay with it though…….seems valid.

For those who haven’t sen this video yet, this is Joseph D’Aleo talking about the dropped stations:

stevengoddard says: “Are you trying to make an argument that GISS 250 km maps are incorrect? They clearly show large regions of ‘no data.'”
No. I’m not saying the GISS maps with 250km radius smoothing are incorrect. But they are not the dataset that have the trends applied to them. It’s the maps with the 1200km radius smoothing that have the trends.

Bob Tisdale,
You might want to think about these statements from Hansen. You are completely missing the point.

the 12-month running mean global temperature in the GISS analysis has reached a new record in 2010…. GISS analysis yields 2005 as the warmest calendar year, while the HadCRUT analysis has 1998 as the warmest year. The main factor is our inclusion of estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.

I’ll be blunt. I’ve said it here before and I will say it again. I dislike the use of anomalies to describe a temperature record. Anomalies can be used in two ways: As “snapshots of real data” (good but unnecessary), and as “Fudge Factors” (Bad). Yes, we like to see TRENDS. But real data will show you trends just as well as anomalies when both are based on real data.
As far back as Kepler, who as best I can tell was the first to use the term anomaly in science (as in “mean anomaly”) when describing planetary motion, it has been used as a “fudge factor”; Hence my dislike for the term and its usage. Kepler was wrong by the way, although not by much, but he had to fudge it to make it work, fascinating to read how he did it. He actually built a model, yes a model – (what a novel idea!), and had to fudge that too by the way, and yes, it was also wrong.
So why are we using anomalies to express global temperatures? Both NASA and NOAA go through great lengths to justify the use of anomalies instead of temperatures. I’ll get to those in a second.
First, I have another question. Why would Hansen go through such great lengths back in 1987 to justify the validity of anomalies over ~1000km grids? Regardless of the answer, in this particular application, anomalies are obviously being used as “Fudge Factors” – to hide the absence of real data.
And why did they pick the mean to be from 1951 to 1980? This is the mean now used by GISS and NCDC. Well, in the 1987 paper they mention that: “The zero point of the temperature scale is arbitrary.”
Arbitrary – From Webster:
1 : depending on individual discretion (as of a judge) and not fixed by law
Why would they do that? I don’t have an answer, but I will say that where there is individual discretion, there is prejudice (not in the pejorative sense) – by definition.
And that’s the whole problem with anomalies, in this case the zero point is a 22-year period in the life of a 4-billion year old planet that just happens to coincide with one of the largest upticks in temperature in the last 100 or so years, not that 100-years means squat in the big planetary time-scale, picture, whatever. And, they are creating data where it doesn’t exist.
So why do that? What’s the urgent need for this fudging? I can only speculate and suggest that they needed these uniformly spread out global anomalies for one thing: Model Feed.
Now let’s look at the justifications for anomalies made by NASA and NOAA. First from the NCDC:
“Absolute estimates of global average surface temperature are difficult to compile for several reasons. Some regions have few temperature measurement stations (e.g., the Sahara Desert) and interpolation must be made over large, data-sparse regions. In mountainous areas, most observations come from the inhabited valleys, so the effect of elevation on a region’s average temperature must be considered as well. For example, a summer month over an area may be cooler than average, both at a mountain top and in a nearby valley, but the absolute temperatures will be quite different at the two locations. The use of anomalies in this case will show that temperatures for both locations were below average.”
So, in the first part they say “we need to fudge”. The second part, the last two sentences, is bogus because with real data sets for both locations there is no need for anomalies to calculate “below average” TRENDS.
And from GISS:
“Anomalies and Absolute Temperatures
Our analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperature. Temperature anomalies are computed relative to the base period 1951-1980. The reason to work with anomalies, rather than absolute temperature is that absolute temperature varies markedly in short distances, while monthly or annual temperature anomalies are representative of a much larger region. Indeed, we have shown (Hansen and Lebedeff, 1987) that temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of the order of 1000 km. For a more detailed discussion, see The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature.”
So I went and read “The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature” and read this:
“Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created?
A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a ‘climatology’) hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.”
Ahhh, models…. Remember Kepler? Love the word “hopefully” in there too…. Notice, that in contrast to the NCDC, they do not mention the lack of data directly, instead they refer to the Hansen paper saying they can correlate temperatures out to ~1000km. They jump from the premise of big variations in “short distances” to concluding that anomalies are better for “monthly or annual” and “much larger regions” It still means the same thing, they don’t have the data and are fudging it. The really interesting thing is how they go through great lengths to say that SATs are worthless. But they still have to use them as their base data!
I speculate that what might have possibly started as Model Feed at the beginning has now been evolved into another global depiction tool all on its own.

Bob Tisdale;
Is then the divergence of GISS from the rest of the global temperature products solely based on their Arctic interpolation/extrapolation (which is it)?