Readers may recall some months ago that the Met Office planned to “do over” the surface temperature data sets:
Met office pushes a surface temperature data “do over”
The effort has started, and a website has been setup at http://www.surfacetemperatures.org
They write:
Surface temperature datasets for the 21st Century
To meet 21st Century requirements it is necessary to reconsider our analyses of historical land surface temperature changes. This is about much more than simply re-engineering existing datasets. These datasets were adequate for assessing whether climate was changing at the global scale. This current exercise should not be interpreted as a fundamental questioning of these previous efforts. But these pre-existing datasets cannot answer all the questions that society is now quite rightly asking. They do not constitute a sufficiently large sample to truly understand our uncertainty at regional scales. At monthly resolution they are also of limited utility in characterising extremes in climate and their changes.
Regardless of the causes, climate is not and never has been stable. Changes in climate impact all of society. But it is not changes in the monthly mean at scales of hundreds of Km that impact us all. It is changes at much more local scales and that last a few hours or days that have a major impact upon society. Whilst the long-term changes characterised by the current datasets can ameliorate or exacerbate the effects these datasets are fundamentally ill-suited to meet most of our needs as a global society.
The challenge set out in the proposal from the Met Office to the Commission for Climatology (CCl, see background link) is to produce a new suite of datasets capable of answering these questions. This requires more than the work of a single institution to do at all. It certainly requires very many partners to do properly. Following the positive outcome of the CCl deliberations an organising committee has been convened and the Met Office will be hosting a workshop in September in Exeter, UK. The organising committee, with substantial international representation, includes a broad range of expertise and perspectives and is undertaking planning activities. As yet planning is at too early a stage to publish details. More specific information will be posted by mid-June. However, the expected outcome of this meeting will be an in-depth plan with multi-institution sign on as to how to proceed. Broad aspects to be covered will be:
- Data recovery, digitisation and provision;
- data homogenisation and homogenisation system performance benchmarking;
- and communication, engagement and auditability
The plan is to solicit white papers on the range of topics to be discussed in advance of the meeting and post these on a (moderated) blog for broad input so that non-participants in the meeting can still have some meaningful input. The invitee list includes representatives from a number of relevant disciplines including a number that need to be engaged if the project is to be a success: climatologists; metrologists (measurement scientists); and statisticians amongst others. To be effective the meeting will have to be relatively small but, as stated above, stringent efforts will be made to entrain input from non-attendees in advance. And, of course, participation in the work will not be limited to attendees of this initial planning meeting only – to be successful it needs lots of participants, many more than will be at the meeting.
Update: 7/26 A revised version of the agenda is now available with only minor changes from the original. The white papers have begun to be posted at http://sites.google.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/whitepapers (all hopefully to be posted within a week) and a moderated blog for public comments is available from http://surfacetemperatures.blogspot.com/ until August 23rd.
Update: 8/20 New version of agenda and comment period will remain open until September 1st.
==============================================
Here’s my take on it:
1) The effort, while noble, is a reaction to a series of data transparency blunders rather than a proactive approach to open replication. In the original Fox News article I cited on Feb 23rd, 2010 they write:
At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists, representatives of Britain’s weather office quietly proposed that the world’s climatologists start all over again to produce a new trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and “rigorous” peer review.
After the firestorm of criticism called Climate-gate, the British government’s official Meteorological Office apparently has decided to wave a white flag and surrender.
While this effort is a step forward, it is unfortunate that it took Climategate to break free the idea of open and transparent data, and of surface data that has gone through rigorous quality control procedures. As we’ve seen recently, Canada’s own surface weather data is in such a mess that Environment Canada squelched their own embarrassing internal report and it took a freedom of information request to pry it loose. They called the state of the network “disturbing’.
2) This statement from the white paper 3, item 8 discussed here says:
A parallel effort as an integral part of establishing the databank is required to create an adjunct metadata databank that as comprehensively as feasible describes known changes in instrumentation, observing practices and siting at each site over time. This may include photographic evidence, digital images and archive materials but the essential elements should be in machine-readable form.
Is essentially a stamp of approval of my surfacestations.org project. Without knowing the changes in measurement conditions surrounding the century long experiment in climate monitoring, it is impossible to know the true quality of the data. I see this as a positive step forward.
3) Making this effort known to the climate community has apparently not been a strong suite of the Met Office, for example, I only found out about it a couple of days ago via a reporter asking questions about my views on it.
The Met office needs to be far more proactive in communications.
I encourage readers to make submissions before the Sept 1 deadline, as only a few days remain.
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http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html
Might this inconvenient truth have precipitated the Met Office’s decision. Temperatures in Merrie Olde England are plunging.
I apologise for being Mr Picky yet again! Why do they get some half-wit to write this verbose crap? It’s full of wish-washy overly wordy phrases that it takes most people, well me anyhow, ages to try & work out what they are actually saying in plain English (an unwelcome return of Sir Humphry Appleby?). Surely the starting of two sentences with the word “But” is appalling English, followed by “from a number of relevant disciplines including a number that need to be engaged…..” Could they not have used the words, ” some”, “several”, “many”, or ” a few”, or “those”? I know my niece could have done a far superior job of written English than the numpty/muppet who wrote this stuff when she was about 12 years old! My English teacher would be turning in his grave. When I was emlpoyed at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the Council Works Unit, (many moons ago) we had a limited budget for building & engineering works. However, every letter/paper/report was checked & double-checked for grammar & spelling so that nothing ever left the building without being correct on that score. It was a matter of pride, you see. Today it seems, having a $235M budget & 1800 employees, & a £30M X-Box360 means don’t bother about the English! Huh!
Do any of the current collections of temp records give both the raw data and the code they used to adjust it, in a reproducible format? Or do they all include unexplained manual adjustments?
I think one of the important parts of these temp records is that scans of the original paper documents, where used, should be attached to the data files. Checking every temp in every paper document might be impractical, but we could check a random sample to evaluate accuracy of transcription and original sourcing. It is also important that all data from stations that are not used also be included to see if selection is biasing the results.
Ah the vaunted Met Office who if I recall correctly forecast a BBQ summer for 2010. Well, credit where credit is due, May and June were pretty good, but over the latter half of July and into August it has been less than brilliant. Not their fault of course, the weather does its own thing, but what it does suggest is that our highly paid folk in the Met Office have much work to do to regain even a semblance of credibility. Perhaps this is a start, one would hope so, though they will have discard that willingness to act as political poodles, not easy in intensely politicised Britain.
@Christopher: The MET office climate change graph you link to is accompanied by:
“The stations used to compile CET are chosen from the UK surface station network to be consistent as possible with those used historically. The data are then adjusted to ensure consistency with the historical series.”
Uh-huh… adjusted. Riiiight…..
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
August 25, 2010 at 1:10 am
21st century temperatures in relation to what? Little Ice Age? Historic reconstructions which aren’t reliable either? Smog covered cities of the 19th century?
It’s a waste of taxpayer’s money. Tell me next week’s weather and that’s all.
Yep. That’ll do for me too.
Huth
As far as I am aware, this Met Office website is breaking UK law. Since 2007 all UK-based websites must provide:
■Name of the company providing the service (any difference from the trading name must be explained)
■Geographic Address – Not just a P.O. Box number. If the business is a company then include the registered office.
■Email Address
The penalty for not displaying the above is a fine.
Rupert Matthews said:
Just for your info, our summer holiday in Wales was a washout. Only one day of sunny weather to take the children to the beach.
(sorry, can’t do italics on iPad)
Huth says: Standard. Scotland likewise. West coast UK, bang in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Can’t ‘expect’ anything else, whether you call it weather or climate. Rain is only a problem here if you don’t like rain. Guess why Britian and Ireland are so green all summer.
something no one seems to be asking.
ok so they are scrapping? ALL the prior data.
now, is’nt that such a handy way to be able to NOT ever provide the real figures from the last X Years they supposedly used to “prove” the Gorewarm period.
It enables the offenders and the way they did it to remain ever hidden.
Get out of Jail ,Free card indeed.
the admission that they are complete duds at anything mre than a local weather for the day reporting..
Why? do they suddenly need such sharing with overseas to track and note and colate some TRUE temps for such a tiny country?
when for some reason Aus and NZ were previously sending OUR temps there to be screwed round with .
To me it smacks of a real “cold collation” of AGW specialists,
who will be planning to use their so called international collaboration of many and varied etc etc to make a concerted effort to silence any dissent now and forever after…
and the result, while we freeze our bu**s off, will be its still getting hotter meltier whatever suits their Carbon Cash whimsy!
the Moderated comments. yeah well apart from bad language I wonder will “bad questions?” also be removed, like what ARE the exact temps in my country, BEFORE any tweaking? for EVERY station. and what WERE they for the last century.
simple stuff really.
Why are we wasting our tax money in doing this at all?
So they want a mean value for the world temperature, and then they can say, “Oh the temperature was up 0.01 degreeC this year” – So bloody what!
In 1947, The River Thames flooded really badly, it cost a fortune in damaged property, and was caused by a long winter with heavy snowfall, suddenly melting after the arrival of a warm storm from from the Atlantic. The runoff was catastrophic.
For the last 60 years the Thames has had few floods, and none as costly as 1947, and that is because many schemes have been in place all along the river, for flood alieviation and prevention, in some areas, simple weirs have been constructed, and in others open canals with sluices.
My point is, that this is real environmental work which protects peoples lives and property, and is how we should be spending our taxes, not fiddling about with homogenising data measure in 1860, in the forlorn hope that it will confess.
I am sure that if you ask them, the current citizens of Pakistan, will assure you that they have no desire or need to know the current mean temperature of the planet, but they might have an interest in doing something on the lines of the Thames above.
We need to get our priorities right, and stop chasing a will o’ the whisp.
Well if it is pre-existing data then…
They do not constitute a sufficiently large sample to truly understand our uncertainty at regional scales. At monthly resolution they are also of limited utility in characterising extremes in climate and their changes.
Surely this quote means that they are going to “find” some data to help draw better conclusions about what we know we saw. Well surely we will have seen it when they are finished…!
Is the Ministry of Truth driving this improvement? There is an awful lot of History to “fix”. Do we have the money to rewrite all those reports and history books? Did Lord Monckton really call for the records to show an additional two degrees of additional warming so as to correctly state the 2009 values? Did Stephen McIntryre really validate the Hockey Stick? Well only Future History will demonstrate these new truths…
Yours in Truth!
The problem :
But it is not changes in the monthly mean at scales of hundreds of Km that impact us all. It is changes at much more local scales and that last a few hours or days that have a major impact upon society.
The cure :
* data homogenisation and homogenisation system performance benchmarking;
It takes a sophisticated mind to appreciate true genius.
Lucy Skywalker’s post bears repeating:
“There are still two huge things missing that I want to see before I can believe them
(1) Sorry.
(2) Thank you Anthony for your Surface Stations work that brought all these problems to our notice.
It is shameful that professionals should need to be brought to heel by amateurs. And what I don’t understand is the reticence in apologizing. The disciplines of Counselling and Life Coaching both show that saying Sorry (and Thank You) are of health and wealth benefit, and most of all to the person who says Sorry.”
It’s obvious what is behind this. The world recent temperature trend is about to be exposed as steady or declining, and they know they can’t stop this. So they are starting a new tactic, that is, the frequency of extreme weather is the new climate change.
Last November or December they forecast that 2010 would be the warmest year ever. I am not aware that they have even backtracked on that yet, let alone apologised for it. Is this the organisation to be trusted to set up a new system?
There can be no doubt that a new system is needed but if it is to be worth anything it must have planned continuity at its heart (to say nothing of meeting ordinary statistical sampling criteria). By the time the record is long enough to be greatly useful my current great grandchildren will have grandchildren of their own.
What, as a first step: Reading, DegF/DegG, Date&Time, Coordinates, Instrument type etc. Where the reading is the one taken by the bloke/actual instrument output? All assembled into a searchable database & published online?
I don’t think so – quote “Broad aspects to be covered will be:
* Data recovery, digitisation and provision;
* data homogenisation and homogenisation system performance benchmarking;
* and communication, engagement and auditability” unquote
Anthropogenic fingerprints erased!
“But it is not changes in the monthly mean at scales of hundreds of Km that impact us all. It is changes at much more local scales and that last a few hours or days that have a major impact upon society”
Why not just watch the evening weather reports?
The most surprising it would be that they really believe it; a psychological phenomenon related to mutual caressing, as found in apes´clans (See: D.Morris: The Naked Ape)
Re the HadCET figures, as per Christopher’s link..
The ‘Central England’ area identified on the map is almost one giant suburb now – do we know whether any (or most) of the measuring stations are now in ‘warmer’ spots..?
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley takes the met office to task for not providing certain legally required information. However, most of this can be found under ‘contact us’
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/contact/contact.html
Not only did the Uk local authorities fail to be wise virgins and stock up on grit before the “never-again” snowfalls here, thanks to the Met Office’s uselessness but it turns out that the Met office is also clearly responsible for many unwise and non-virginal citizens’ abject failure to supply themselves with adequate contraception:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/baby-boom-blamed-on-cold-winter-2061676.html
“If you can not get out of your house, you’ve got to find some way to keep yourself occupied.”
The CET area now has many many millions more houses built on it in the last fifty years or so , each house being heated to sixty or seventy degrees for at least six months of every year . No matter which way the wind blows this warm plume of waste heat must have been be effecting thermometer readings , or is the increasing density of our populations and their extra winter heating requirements taken into account and the extra artificial heating discounted ???
I too thought the piece was filled with benevolent governmental puffed up phrasing, and cringingly overt present day jargon. I also thought that Brits willing to pay for this group to do anything other than pick up their pink slips is the best definition of insanity I have ever read. It left my brain reeling with pithy little ditties: Head, meet brick wall; fool me once shame on me; and all that rot.
Anthony
I sent the following to their press office.
Dear Sirs
Please forward to the above team.
What is the purpose of this project?. Strategic objectives etc. Is it to continue the lies and manipulations of the past but in a different guise or is it at last to produce a worldwide, high quality database of raw weather data for public and private analysis (specifically independent of world government interference) or is it yet another attempt to convince the idiotic, unknowledgeable public like me (BSc MSc Physics) of the reality of CO² anthro- global warming (not). Your reputation worldwide among the greater scientific community is totally in ruins. Your warmist exaggerations both recent and in the past have demonstrated a willingness to lie at all cost in order to promote your agenda of global warming (for it is global warming and not climate change that you promote). You have one more chance to put together a group of respected mathematicians and scientist of unbiased and unsullied reputation (not to be confused with the 3 recent enquiries into CRU-EAU which were none of those things). You have not started well with the inclusion of Stott and Thorne. Hopefully you will not continue in this vein for if you do all will be lost.
I wish the team all possible success in their endeavour to produce a clean, unmolested, unadjusted database. We do not want or need “value-added data”, please. We will all be watching and waiting with baited breath.
Yours Sincerely
Stephen Richards. A distraught Physicist.