By Steve Goddard
GISS appears to be working hard to make 2010 the hottest year ever. As you can see in the graph above, they show 2010 with much more area above the 1998 line than below. I did a numerical integration of the graph above, and found that they have 2.8 times as much area with 2010 warmer than they do with 2010 cooler.
How does this compare with other data sources? HadCrut has been adjusting their data upwards, but even using their upwards adjusted numbers, their ratio of above to below area is only 0.04. Seventy times lower than GISS.
UAH has 0.12 times as much area above as they have below. Twenty-five times lower than GISS.
RSS has 0.07 times as much area above as below. Forty times lower than GISS.
The chart below shows how much of an outlier GISS is.
GISS is the only one of the four which shows 2010 as #1. The others aren’t even close. It must be their almost non-existent better Arctic coverage.
Conclusion: Dr. Hansen thinks that warming has continued unabated since 1998, while HadCrut, RSS and UAH think it has stopped or slowed to a crawl.
GISS
Had Crut
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> GISS … have 2.8 times as much area with 2010 warmer than they do with 2010 cooler.
> HadCrut … ratio of above to below area is only 0.04. Seventy times lower than GISS.
2.8 – (70 * 2.8) = -69 * 2.8 = -196 .
96% less I’d agree with, 4% the area I’d agree with, 1/70th the area I’d
agree with. GISS has 70X the area of HADCRUT I’d agree with.
While I understand the idiom, I point out its flaw anywhere there area people who understand math. One of our performance measuring guys at work last week was talking about a performance (in files/second) of our file system on different architectures and had a PPT slide that reported 3X lower performance on one. I pointed out that if I were bicycling at 10 mph for a while and then at 3X less, I’d be going backwards at 20 mph.
I think he would have fixed the slide anyway,
Bob from the UK
A quoted Google Search for “”2010 hottest year ever”” turns up over 16,000 hits.
NASA: 2010 hottest year ever
NASA: 2010 the hottest year in history
2010: Warmest year on record? – National Climatic Data News and …
Copenhagen climate conference: Met Office predict 2010 will be warmest on record
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6780685/Copenhagen-climate-conference-Met-Office-predict-2010-will-be-warmest-on-record.html
0.04 is seventy times smaller than 2.8
2.8 /70 = 0.04
Please do not distract the discussion with meaningless semantics.
Why are we so concerned about GISS?? UAH, looking at the “near surface” temp at AMSU, shows 2010 above 98 and 99 throughtout. In fact, it looks like 2010 is just going to make a straight line right off the graph. It’s been practically flat for 2 months, at a level above every other year.
WhatsUpWithThat??????
Bob Tisdale says:
August 20, 2010 at 2:04 am
Steven: Isn’t 2005 the current record high year for GISTEMP?
—————————-
Not anymore! Even if we go into an Ice Age, Hansen will work hard to make sure it’s the warmest ever recorded…
I still laugh out loud every time I see a graph purporting to show the average global temperature to within a 1/10th of a degree for 1850. 1850! Probably 99% of the world wasn’t within 100 miles of a thermometer, but they know to within 1/10th of a degree!
wws says:
August 20, 2010 at 4:35 am
They’re too late – and I think even they know it.
The name of the game was to try and get the US Congress to pass a bill …
The Energy Bill is dead, and those who supported it are about to be dumped in a wave election in 75 days…..
Like I said, it’s too late – the game is over. They’ve run out of time.
________________________________________________________________–
Actually it is not too late because of the lame duck session from the November elections to the January seating of the new Congress. The propaganda has to be kept in place to protect the facade of “we are doing this for the good of humanity” Democrats, the peoples party, is often used to pass especially bad laws under that banner. (The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is a very good example.) I am afraid we will see some really nasty bills passed into law during that time period. Former congresscritters will be scrambling to please their new masters and get a seat on the other gravy train as lobbyists or corporate advisers.
The Revolving Door between Government and Wall Street
http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/
http://seekingalpha.com/article/208403-wall-street-and-government-revolving-door-spins-at-dizzying-pace
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Government-industry_revolving_door
How do we “feel” the solar minimum we are in?, easy!. Where I live, in the SH, the average minimum temperature in august is 16°C, and now we are having an average of 14°, then 2 degrees less; and that´s a lot for an average.
That is what Dr.David Archibal predicted.
If you think this isn’t real, then why are Ontario Electricity bills going to rise 30% next year?
…. hey, you try saying that with your tongue in your cheek!
Bob Tisdale
HadCrut, RSS and UAH do not think this is the hottest year ever.
Other GISS errors from different years are a different topic.
This is more about political science than about climate or weather. A set of data that is so weak and manipulated should not form the basis of statements about the real climate (pun intended). US-Election time, not more than that. There was so much said
on this web-site about the poor construction of the GISS-records that one can only wonder that a serious, non-ideologic publicly financed authority still dares to use it.
Regards from Chile – like neighboring Argentina, Boliva, Peru this winter a damned cold place. But that ceratinly is weather (I would agree), while Moscow and “heat waved” do certainly experience a shifting climate. Would the people freezing in Bolivia,
Peru smile if they only knew that GISS extrapolated a significant warming there. Probably. It’s so easy to make people happy – you dont even need reality or temperature records.
Anthony – great web-site, you and your co-authors keep up the great work,
Matt
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6780685/Copenhagen-climate-conference-Met-Office-predict-2010-will-be-warmest-on-record.html
Deanster
Did you actually read this article? UAH does not show 2010 warmer than 1998.
(sarc)
There is a Peasant’s (aka ‘Young Turks’) Revolt ongoing at GISS, they are out to put AGW Guru Hansen behind the ‘8 Ball’ and force his immediate retirement and get one of their own appointed in his stead. Similar sabotage and mayhem against NASA department heads are also occurring, or planned to happen in the next two weeks. This has long been anticipated.
(sarc off)
stevengoddard says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:16 am
Günther Kirschbaum
The scales are identical in all graphs. The Y-axis is degrees C, and the X-axis is years. The baseline makes no difference, because each measurement is comparing only one anomaly vs itself.
No they’re not because used your usual trick of distorting the axis in an attempt to fool your readers. Your first graph of the post (GISS), has an ordinate range of 0.6 whereas all the others have a range of 0.8 or 1.0, in a blatant attempt to deceive. Just like you do with your histograms where you usually choose an ordinate scale to minimize the quantity you disfavor wrt the others.
BillD: No, I was referring to the discontinuation of the use of data from some surface stations, many of which were in areas which were cooler, thus leading to a suspected bias towards stations in warmer areas. And, just a small point, I’m DaveF, not Dave F – he’s somebody else. Best wishes, Dave.
Conclusion: Dr. Hansen thinks that warming has continued unabated since 1998, while HadCrut, RSS and UAH think it has stopped or slowed to a crawl.
That is quite the cherry you picked eh Steve? Bringing back the ole canard ‘It has stopped warming since 1998’ AND saying the HadCrut, RSS and UAH think that global warming has stopped. Impressive that you can get four false claims into one statement and not a single sycophantic reader will call you on it.
Let me ask: did you check with those organizations to see if they agree with you? Of course you didn’t because they don’t. They would laugh at you for making ridiculous statements like that. As do the rest of the reality based community.
Don’t get carried away now; remember Anthony’s admonition on subjects off topic like this …
.
I have been following articles on Climate Realist where they claim that the satellite temperature recording system isn’t reliable (http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6164).
I have been waiting to see if WUWT would pick up on this “news”. I may have missed it though.
If these reports are accurate, then it leaves me wondering if there is ANY reliable record of global temperatures. Certainly surface recording systems can’t be reliable for a long list of reasons, the greatest of which is no stationary recording systems in the 70% of the earth covered by water.
So that means we really know nothing about what has been happening to global temperatures in the past 100 years or more.
stevengoddard says:
August 20, 2010 at 5:43 am
Bob Tisdale
HadCrut, RSS and UAH do not think this is the hottest year ever.
According to Roy Spencer:
“As of Julian Day 212 (end of July), the race for warmest year in the 32-year satellite period of record is still too close to call with 1998 continuing its lead by only 0.07 C:
YEAR GL NH SH TRPCS
1998 +0.62 +0.73 +0.51 +0.90
2010 +0.55 +0.74 +0.36 +0.63″
My emphasis.
How does satellitegate
(http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6164)
affect the comparison of 1998 to 2010?
Phil. says:
August 20, 2010 at 4:43 am
While doing so remember that the satellite data is also showing very warm conditions for the year, as I recall UAH and RSS show a close race between 2010 and 1998. The daily data that Roy Spencer shows was at record levels all year until it was adjusted downwards recently (although it’s again testing record territory now).
These are all measures of temperature not of heat content.
Whereas measures of ocean temperature are almost equivalent to heat content, measures of atmospheric temperature are extremely inaccurate metrics for heat content. Drier air can have high temperatures and very low heat content.
All this excitement about temperature and it is the wrong metric. Saturated air can contain nearly 80 times more heat than dry air – are the temperature stations that GISS is using in low humidity regions? If so they will have higher temperatures for less heat energy.
The greenhouse effect is supposed to be trapping HEAT so that is what should be measured. All this mathematical and statistical arguing over decimal places in atmospheric TEMPERATURE is completely misguided!
Sigh, given that Gistemp code has been open and online since 2007 with documentation and the methods have not materially changed in recent years as far as I know, this is another of Steven’s Posts which are equivalent to ascribing motives to water running downhill. Oh I’m sorry, you didn’t ascribe motives?
How are they working hard? By letting the code run as it has for years? Numerology and pixel counting (excusing me, measuring the areas of graphs) are no substitute for looking at the code and methods and analyzing the results on that basis.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7w64fbqYQY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
jeez
There are two basic concepts in computers – code and data. If either one is flawed, the output is flawed.
Besides their regular upwards adjustments, GISS has bumped historical temperatures up repeatedly. I admire their hard work.
Steven,
I think you mean that GISS has bumped historical records downward. I am familiar with this, having assisted in locating some of the older files. I know this process still continues. It is part of the Gistemp code. None of that changes my point. This train has been on the tracks for years. Unless you can point to a recent change in the codebase that accomplishes the goals you ascribe you are behaving irrationally, ascribing an evolving intent to computer code.
That’s all from me today.
Mark S
Either 2010 is the hottest year, or it isn’t.
Tamino’s “cherry picking” zombie troupe is on the march.