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.
Hansen’s claim of a record temperature in 2010 depends on the adjustments and divergences.
You can whine and complain and make up straw man arguments all you want, but you can’t get away from the facts.
[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]
NASA doesn’t stand alone? NOAA stands with it too. And so do the multitude of other reconstructions done by independent bloggers, many of which find years warmer than 1998. Also lets look at the satellite records now. How can we have very much faith in the satellite records when a huge mistake went “un-noticed” by the two climate change skeptics who run UAH for so long? Either it says their quality checks weren’t up to par or that they were happy enough to let skeptics run out and say how satellites show no warming. Too bad when people checked their work they found this mistake. At the moment. Yeah maybe RSS is good but I still cannot see much validity to 1998 being the warmest on record when most land surface records don’t find it that way.
Reply: Evan you are expressing opinions (whether factual or not), which are not really appropriate for a moderator’s inline comments. ~ ctm
OK, removed. – Evan
jeez says:
August 29, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Steven again demonstrates that he is either unable to comprehend the criticisms leveled against him or is attempting to use sophistry to deflect criticism.
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The same could be said about you, bud.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
NASA “raw” data is NOAA adjusted data. NASA “unadjusts” then “readjusts” it. So they are in no way independent. As for satellite data, all of it was open to the public. The drift error was uncovered by independent review and has been corrected. (An arcane and forgotten procedure once known as “Scientific Method”.)
Errors are entirely forgivable. Refusing to release full methods, however, is entirely unforgivable.
NASA refused to release its algorithm for years and only did so under heavy pressure. And even now, it can’t be recreated from scratch because, while NOAA just loves longwinded explanations of how it adjusts its data, it has yet to release anything which would allow its adjustments to be “replicated” (another long forgotten word in the world of climate science.
jeez says:
August 29, 2010 at 6:06 pm
This is my last comment on this thread.
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Not a minute too soon!
Changing the data after the event is surely an admission that they got it wrong. By changing it again and again they are making admissions that they were wrong again and again. In other words, they are wrong all the time. Basically they are making it up as they go along. They must think we are as stupid as they are. The RC sheep/lemmings fall for it but we don’t.
Found in: Robert on August 29, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Not only are the posts on WUWT quickly peer-reviewed, but the moderation is also peer-reviewed. Imagine if the journals had peer-reviewed peer-review, where anyone doing peer-review at the journal can critique any other peer-reviewer, and the peer-reviewing is openly displayed.
Once again, the future of the advancement of science is found on WUWT.
☺
John Goetz says:
August 29, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Support a trend, maybe, but create … no.
The support may be supporting different things, depending on what your paradigm is….. I reckon.
[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]
Maybe certain global warming folks (I’ll leave them unnamed to avoid a flame war anew) are hoping Americans will never hear of UAH, RSS, and HadCRU and just believe GISTemp because it comes from “N-A-S-A”. And if they aren’t Americans, well, then, of course they’ll believe NASA.
Somebody gave the thumbs up to GISS, which proves that they didn’t really demote 1998 from #1. The fact that their graphs show that they did is irrelevant.
Up is down and down is up. Now run off and tell the Red Queen.
Walter Dnes,
Maybe the Hansen “et al” means “such as other Hansen papers”. 😉
Robert says:
August 29, 2010 at 6:49 pm
NASA doesn’t stand alone? NOAA stands with it too.
Thanks for bringing up NOAA
Robert says:
August 29, 2010 at 6:49 pm
NOAA stands with it too.
a bit more on NOAA in here:
evanmjones says:
August 29, 2010 at 7:15 pm
(An arcane and forgotten procedure once known as “Scientific Method”.)
Nice.
jeez,
If I were more intelligent, I would be able to understand why it is OK to change data in a way which (purely coincidentally) suits someone’s political agenda.
NASA ans NOAA are joined at the hip. NASA does not use raw data. Its kicks off with NOAA adjusted data. GISStemp is bound inextricably to NOAA adjusted data.
As for NOAA, they decided between now and last year that +0.6 warming wasn’t good enough for the US for the last century and increased it by 20% to +0.72. (But more on that later . . . )
P.S., Steve, IWTWT.
This whole GISS situation is starting to remind me a little of the standard business accounting problem — namely, how do you tell whether a company is correctly recording and analyzing its financial data when it obviously has a strong motive to say that it’s making rather than losing money. You can suspend your judgement on the quality of the company’s accounting practices until employee paychecks start bouncing, or you can try right now to get a handle on what’s really going on by hiring an outside auditor. From what I read here, it seems that the GISS team audits itself (note that putting all your data and computer code on line — presumably after checking to see that it matches the official “narrative” — is **not** the same thing as being audited). Some comments also suggest that the GISS team is led by Hansen, an extreme climate alarmist. If the GISS team wants their work to be believable they got to do better than that, starting with cutting all their ties to Hansen (as well as colleagues who owe him professional favors) and following up by the scientific equivalent of an outside audit.
you are comparing the meteorological station only 1999 graph with the station+sst current graph, the station only current graph is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
And 1998 is now WARMER (0.70°C) not colder.
So if I’m getting this right, 1998 loses warmth in GISS because it’s smoothed out in the algorithm? Ok….but why isn’t it lowered in other data set algorithms? I’m kinda having trouble justifying such an algorithm, or believing that the certain folks using the algorithm just coincidentally have it.
I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a couple of commenters who are doing everything they can to bend over backwards as far as they can just to show how much they can bend over backwards before they’ll say James Hansen’s activism could be effecting his work? And if they are doing it as an unspoken competition with global warming proponents to show they are bigger people?
just wonderin……..
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
“If the present refuses to get warmer, the past must become cooler.”
Funny stuff, you guys sure stirred up a hornets nest today!
To the whack jobs who seem hell bent on defending GISS: Where in the heck have you been? GISS arbitrarily changes historical temps all the time. It is well documented. You should screen shot the temp data and watch it change. I really don’t care what computer code was used or how. It is called history revision. Older years have always been revised downward to lend the appearance of warming. This really hasn’t been a secret. The only thing new about this is the rolling time periods. Apparently, GISS starts revising downwards after a decade.
To the derisive people that insist on blathering about the Arctic ice in their attempt to put the statement ‘no global warming since 1998′, you forgot the other half of the equation. I would list the names of the either disingenuous or ignorant people, but you girls know who you are. Go to WUWT’s ice page and check the Antarctic, then come back and blather about ice.
A note: WTF is it about computer coding that makes people think it negates malfeasance? Does it matter if we look at the code or not? Do the rationalizations matter? I really hope GISS tries to claim hottest year evuh. They probably won’t now, but that’s just ’cause their watching, now. Maybe some of you aren’t old enough to remember the start of the alarmism. I am. Are we to believe they found an error in the way they calculated the temps back then, only to find it really wasn’t that bad then but, now its really bad, and now GISS really knows what its doing? Because if this is correct then all the BS hyperventilation about the OMG!!! hottest ever 1998 was total tripe. Why are you people wasting your time believing they have a clue about today, especially when the other 3 don’t agree? Remember, Hansen is an admitted activist. In other words, he’s lost the ability to be detached. He gets half a point for a least being honest in that regard, his other cohorts are not even that honest. Let’s not kid ourselves, they are activists, only most of them are smart enough not to get arrested.
Hang in there, Steve. One day people will wake up and realize they’ve been lied to. I think it is difficult for people to admit they were that easily misled.
ZZZ says:
August 29, 2010 at 10:13 pm
“…….If the GISS team wants their work to be believable they got to do better than that, starting with cutting all their ties to Hansen (as well as colleagues who owe him professional favors) and following up by the scientific equivalent of an outside audit.”
Well stated and rational. Sadly, rational thought isn’t deemed productive by the alarmist crowd.
John Goetz says:
August 29, 2010 at 5:36 pm
“…….. 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……….
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.”
They have an algorithm that changes historical data each time its ran? What good is it? If you don’t like the word create, how about over-exaggerate. Well, only for present time. Apparently the algorithm reverses course as it goes back in history. Nice. What I believe is unlikely, is that this is anything but intentional. I wonder how often they run this “algorithm”? Every time data gets 10 years older? How is it possible to determine an anomaly for global temps if the historic temps continually change?
Tamino says 1975 is the start of “modern warming period.”
According to the Climate Research Unit data, the modern warming period started in 1970 as shown in the following graph.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/compress:60/detrend:0.775/offset:0.518/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/detrend:0.775/offset:0.518
DirkH says:
August 29, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Mikael Pihlström says:
August 29, 2010 at 9:53 am
“[…]In twenty years time I think the world will thank “the jailbird” and
curse the Heartland and other disinformation teams.”
Wait. So you think that stuff that Hansen produces there is “information”? In other words, you BELIEVE that 1998 was slightly colder than 1934 when Hansen says so, and later, when Hansen makes it a little colder than 1998, you believe him again? And now, you believe that 1998 got colder than it really was?
Look, Mikael, the past doesn’t really work that way. Once something has happened, it has happened. It doesn’t change after the fact. Simple concept really once you get used to it.
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I have no deep knowledge of GISS, but I find what Steve Mosher and
John Goetz say above convincing. It seems to be an algorhitm that is
adjusting itself continuously and that is openly stated.