By Steve Goddard
h/t to reader “Phil.” who lead me to this discovery.
In a previous article, I discussed how UAH, RSS and HadCrut show 1998 to be the hottest year, while GISS shows 2010 and 2005 to be hotter.
But it wasn’t always like that. GISS used to show 1998 as 0.64 anomaly, which is higher than their current 2005 record of 0.61.
You can see this in Hansen’s graph below, which is dated August 25, 1999
But something “interesting” has happened to 1998 since then. It was given a demotion by GISS from 0.64 to 0.57.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
The video below shows the changes.
Note that not only was 1998 demoted, but also many other years since 1975 – the start of Tamino’s “modern warming period.” By demoting 1998, they are now able to show a continuous warming trend from 1975 to the present – which RSS, UAH and Had Crut do not show.
Now, here is the real kicker. The graph below appends the post 2000 portion of the current GISS graph to the August 25, 1999 GISS graph. Warming ended in 1998, just as UAH, RSS and Had Crut show.
‘
The image below superimposes Had Crut on the image above. Note that without the post-1999 gymnastics, GISS and Had Crut match quite closely, with warming ending in 1998.
Conclusion : GISS recently modified their pre-2000 historical data, and is now inconsistent with other temperature sets. GISS data now shows a steady warming from 1975-2010, which other data sets do not show. Had GISS not modified their historic data, they would still be consistent with other data sets and would not show warming post-1998. I’ll leave it to the readers to interpret further.
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BTW – I know that you can download some of the GISS code and data, and somebody checked it out and said that they couldn’t find any problems with it. No need to post that again.
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From Gunther Cherrytree’s blog:
The 2010 melt season keeps stumbling forward. Days of 20-30K decreases (August 23rd, 25th and 26th) are alternating with decent daily decreases of 50K (24th and 28th) and a very decent daily decrease of 78,437 square km (on the 27th).
No agenda there then.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
How did you find a comment from 2008???
There are volumes and volumes of documentation proving that the Earth is the center of the Universe ,that earth is 6,000 years old, that Continental Drift is impossible, and that sea level will rise 1-6 metres during the next century.
Is science measured by the weight of the paper it is printed on?
Steven again demonstrates that he is either unable to comprehend the criticisms leveled against him or is attempting to use sophistry to deflect criticism.
Here he seizes on the word documentation and runs off on an unrelated tangent implying that my use the word is somehow an appeal to authority. It is clear from my comments and my wording that I am saying that criticism of Gistemp should be done with an understanding of method and documentation that exists to facilitate this analysis. Steven does none of the real analysis while others have and do.
I am critical of Steven’s hand waving accusations that lack substance. This is not an appeal to authority. This comment of Steven either shows complete lack of reading comprehension or is a deliberate ruse to avoid criticism.
His next response will likely be that he was not talking about my comment.
Anu says:
August 29, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Hansens is also the name of a very good natural soda.
That doesn’t mean that Jim Hansen’s GISS is palatable or natural.
Correlation of names is not similarity of content.
The climate will change with time and historical records of climate will change with time…
Steven Mosher,
You misunderstand me. I am praising Hansen for proving that Had Crut, UAH and RSS are all dead wrong.
DMI showed July as coldest on record north of 80N, while Hansen showed that region well above normal. I am praising Hansen for proving that DMI’s egregious fault..
The noble Hansen
Hath told you big oil was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath big oil answered it.
But Hansen says big coal was ambitious,
And Hansen is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Copenhagen,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in big CO2 seem ambitious?
Yet Hansen says big CO2 was ambitious,
And Hansen is an honorable man.
[REPLY – So they are all, all honorable men. ~ Evan]
In the June 2010 GISTemp report at,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
… 72 of the 168 monthly temperature records between 1880 and 1894 were changed.
Only 43% of the records were changed (almost all lower) in that period. That is in just one month – now give them 12 chances a year over 20 years and you can make a big change in the temperature trend.
Only 28 of the 130 years did not have a changed record.
If GISS only takes the data from GHCN, then why is the NCDC changing the temperature records every month?
From: Anu on August 29, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Ah, so your in-depth research has concluded he is using the unicode smiley (ctrl-shift-u together then 263a then enter for my Debian Linux setup) versus the ANSI smiley (alt with the 1 on the numeric keypad for a Windoze box)? How did you determine the difference?
☺
John Goetz,
Thanks for the link to the post at CA.
rbateman says:
August 29, 2010 at 2:40 pm
On the other hand, it is Hansen who got Congress’ ear….
I think they wanted him to get their ear. And here was manipulation of temperature there too!
I know several well educated professionals who voted for Obama, which proves that he must be a good president.
Here is the next one.
Now Steven seizes on the single word “professionals” in Mosh’s comment. This may be the worst rhetorical argument I have ever seen Steven make.
First, Mosh notes that those professionals have criticized or corrected gistemp errors, not praised or endorsed it. So this is another example of a complete lack of reading comprehension or deliberate misdirection on Steven’s part.
Second, Steven, are the professionals that you know who voted for Obama employed as professional presidential competency evaluators or related fields? Because if not, you’re example makes no sense.
And third, of course throwing in the blatant political judgment as a flourish, in order to illicit sympathetic ears.
From: jeez on August 29, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Houston, we have confirmation.
Reference image.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
Substance on this issue pointed out already.
It is Steven who initiates the process of dodging and weaving in tangential non sequitors.
Pointing them out is the only way to address his evasiveness and lack of rigor.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 29, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I think they wanted him to get their ear. And here was manipulation of temperature there too!
You mean, Hansen had inside help? No! That would be a real Agenda at work.
Oh, darn that HADcrut3gl and Phil Jones ‘no warming the past 10-15 years’.
From what I get out of Phil Jones CRU 91/94/99 sets, the Pacific NW is a bellweather for global means to follow. Takes a couple of years to germinate.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) said:
Sure sounds to me like John Goetz is saying GISS is changing the historical record.
Not really. GISS’s algorithm changes the conclusion details they make regarding the historical record, but the record itself (the raw data) does not change as a result of GISS.
I guess, looking at it another way, GISS’s estimate (or assumption) as to the value used to represent missing data does change over time. So maybe that is one way to claim they change the historical record?
jeez said on August 29, 2010 at 4:36 pm:
The issue has been put forth succinctly.
You have not been addressing the substance of the issue.
But you have been quite vociferous about Steve not directly addressing what you were saying while you were not directly addressing the issue.
So, do you have anything to say about the issue, or shall you continue to talk about what you are trying to forcibly elevate to the status of “issue”?
kadaka,
I’ll quote myself in my first comment in this thread.
From: John Goetz on August 29, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Let’s look at it this way.
The common perception of how GISS operates: historical records go in, results come out.
If you obtained from GISS the data they crank through to obtain such wonderful products as their global average whatever, would you be looking at original unaltered data from GHCN, USHCN, and SCAR, or something adjusted?
What is “GLB.Ts.txt” anyway?
John Goetz says:
August 29, 2010 at 4:50 pm
So is counterfeiting changing the conclusion of the bearer on demand that his note is the real deal.
Upon examination, the promise to pay falls apart.
Substitute temperature for currency, and GISS is passing off the conclusion that the past 100 years of climate is a steady upslope, with no real peaks or downturns, as representing the true nature of the data. That is exactly what has transpired, the alteration of the raw data to represent something it does not, and how GISS representations have been marketed to support conclusions that are not true, to the unwary.
And, to this day, they (GISS) are still at it.
The GISS temperature set and adjustments have many thousands of degrees of freedom, which no doubt lend themselves to casual analysis proving that they are correct.
“Mikey likes it.”
Another of Steven’s reactions to something no one wrote, now focusing on the single word “analysis” which was used above.
I’m sorry. What are we arguing or disagreeing about?
GISS does not produce records. They process and summarize them.
When records are missing, they estimate values for the missing data points, when possible. (Ooops, I guess they do produce estimated records).
Do the algorithms GISS uses to do the estimation cause the results to change each time they are run? Yes they sure do.
Do the algorithms GISS uses to do the estimation enhance the global warming trend? I do not know, but given that one is trying to fit a missing data point into a trend, I would not doubt that the algorithm creates data that supports the underlying trend. In other words, if the trend appears to be up, GISS will create data that supports this.
Is this algorithm a nefarious attempt by Hansen and Reudy to create a trend where none exists? I believe that unlikely. Support a trend, maybe, but create … no.
Why does hadley show that 1998 is the warmest? well simply because they have been underestimating the warmth of the 2000s as confirmed by the the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMRWF).
Don’t believe me? Check here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091218b.html
Explain that one?
[REPLY – Well, it looks as if the UAH and RSS have been fooled along with HadCRU. NASA is the Brave New Cheese who stands alone. ~ Evan]
GISS shows steadily increasing temperatures since 1998, which HadCrut, UAH and RSS don’t.
Now cut the endless, monotonous BS and accusations, and explain the discrepancy.
This has been explained over and over again. You’ve cherry-picked a short time period where the discrepancy between indexes appears exaggerated. You have a hand waving explanation that this period is chosen because of some magical el nino peak to peak alignment.
Do el nino’s always begin on January 1st of a given year?
The discrepancy breaks down one year downstream 1999 or ten years upstream, 1988
Your “point” is nothing but an artifact of cherry-picking periods. And the funny thing is you accuse others who systematically dismantle your non sequitors, snarks, and misstatements as cherry-pickers. You even made a post about it. Again, pot, kettle. Now you bob and weave again. This post was not about GISS and its trend compared to other indexes, this post was about GISS modification of historical records. Please read John Goetz’s posts and comments on the subject and you might learn something about the subject you write so much about.
This is my last comment on this thread. When you post your rebuttal animations make sure to include all four indexes this time around and don’t conveniently leave out the ones that don’t support your narrative as you have previously.
Anu says:
“I’m glad to see you’ve picked up the HTML strike tag and unicode smiley face in the many months since I’ve first seen your Comments.
Great journeys start with the smallest of steps – I’m sure you’ll learn plenty about climatology in the next 30 or 40 years.”
*snort* Is that the best you’ve got?? Weak, very weak. You must be gettin’ old. ☹
Yes, I recently started using that smiley/frown because I prefer it to the more garish ones. But I’ve been using HTML & BBCode for years before WUWT went on-line. So much for your guess.
By claiming that I’m so ignorant of the subject, you’re implying that you’re knowledgeable. So speaking of guesses, give us your expert opinion: GISStimate your prediction for, oh, I don’t know… how about the lowest N.H. ice extent in 2011? What’ll it be? And don’t pull a Hansen by using the Sharpshooter’s Fallacy; be specific. This dummy wants to see a renowned expert’s prediction. Got cojones?☺☺
The graph with the 0.64 1998 anomaly comes from the webpage http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
Another 1999 webpage is http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1999/Hansen_etal.html this appears to be a paper, listed as “Hansen et al. 1999
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835”. It references a 15.5 megabyte PDF file http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf
A webpage from 2002 http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2001/ titled “Global Temperature Trends: 2001 Summation” shows 1998 to have been around 0.59. Note… “This webpage was previously published as a letter to Science (Hansen et al. 2002).”
Found it, thanks to Google.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
The MAM (March, April, May) block is interesting. Seems the coldest was 1884 at -0.67 Celsius anomaly degrees. The hottest is (surprise) 2010 with an unprecedented +0.94 Celsius anomaly degrees. It’s the only +0.9’s number in that column!
Wow. Straight math, for MAM that’s a +1.61°C increase over 126 years, 1884 to 2010, for a whopping +0.13°C/decade rate of change between the two points. We’re all going to fry!
😉
It was Case study 12 from Watts and D’Aleo, 2010 (show this to Jim then hide it) that turned me into a sceptic. The emails seemed to imply that it was common practice to change “raw” data without documentation or notification – and delete the “original” “raw” data. It seems that it is still standard practice. What possible confidence could anyone have in their data set if they can ( and do) keep massaging it with out documentation?