For example, until surfacestations volunteer Juan Slayton photographed it, there was no metadata to record the fact that this official USHCN station of record is sited over a tombstone.
From Dr. Roger Pielke Senior:
At the meeting in Exeter, UK September 7-9, 2010 ,
Surface temperature datasets for the 21st Century
there were several candid admissions with respect to the robustness of the global and USA surface temperature record that are being used for multidecadal surface temperature trend assessments (such as for the 2007 IPCC report).
These admissions were made despite the failure of the organizers to actually do what they claimed when they organized the meeting. In their announcement prior to the meeting [and this information has been removed in their update after the meeting] they wrote
“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.”
In asking colleagues (such as my co-authors on our 2007 JGR paper)
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229
which has raised serious issues with the USHCN and GHCN analyses, none of us were “entrained” to provide input.
Nonetheless, despite the small number of individuals who were invited to be involved, there still are quite important admissions of shortcomings.
These include those from Tom Peterson
who stated in slide 8
“We need to respond to a wide variety of concerns – Though not necessarily all of them”
[from Introductory remarks – Tom Peterson];
Matt Menne, Claude Williams and Jay Lawrimore who reported that
“[GHCN Monthly]Version 2 released in 1997….but without station histories for stations outside the USA)”
“Undocumented changes [in the USHCN] can be as prevalent as documented changes even when extensive (digitized) metadata are available”
“Collectively station changes [in the USHCN] often have nearly random impacts, but even slight deviations from random matter greatly”
“Outside of the USA ~60% of the GHCN Version 3 average temperature trends are larger following homogenization”
“There is a need to identify gradual as well as abrupt changes in bias (but it is may (sic) be problematic to adjust for abrupt changes only)”
“Automation is the only realistic approach to deal with large datasets”
“More work is required to assess and quantify uncertainties in bias adjustments”
“Critiques of surface temperature data and processing methods are increasingly coming from non traditional scientific sources (non peer reviewed) and the issue raised may be too numerous and too frequent for a small group of traditional scientists to address”
“There is a growing interest in the nature of surface temperature data (reaching up to the highest levels of government)”
and Peter Thorne from Agreed outcomes – Peter Thorne who wrote
“Usage restrictions
Realistically we are not suddenly going to have open unrestricted access to all withheld data. In some areas this is the majority of the data.”
There are very important admissions in these presentations. First, outside of the USA, there is inadequate (or no) publicly available information on station histories, yet these data are still used to create a “homogenized” global average surface temperature trend which reaches up to the “highest level of government”. Even in the USA, there are undocumented issues.
While the organizers of the Exeter meeting are seeking to retain its leadership role in national and international assessments of the observed magnitude of global warming, it is clear that serious problems exist in using this data for this purpose. We will post information on several new papers when ready to introduce readers of this weblog to quantification of additional systematic biases in the use of this data for long-term surface land temperature trend assessments.
There is a need, however, to accept that the primary metric for assessing global warming and cooling should be upper ocean heat content, since from 2004 onward the spatial coverage is clearly adequate for this purpose (e.g. see). While there, of course, is a need for regional land surface temperature measurements including anomalies and long-term trends, for obtaining a global average climate system heat content change the oceans are clearly the more appropriate source of this information.
Anthony,
I agree that they should have invited you and Pielke. However, it might be useful to ask John Christy to do a guest post on his experiences with the conference before dismissing it out of hand.
Questions about the photo:
1. What IS that black tube in the stand on the left?
2. What in the world is with the flower pot tied to the screen support?
Anybody?
If I show my ignorance, no problem here. I just want to know.
REPLY: 1- Rain Gauge 2- Thermometer bling
– Anthony
Anthony (8.50 am) is absolutely right.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
At the surfacetemperatures blog, run by Peter Thorne, various people asked who had been invited to the Exeter meeting. Thorne said he couldnt release that information. I have just looked again now, and can’t find it, so even those questions and answer have been deleted!
Now, there is a new blog entry (“a few perspectives”), linking to various warmist blogs and their comments about the Exeter meeting. There is no mention of Pielke Sr’s comments. I posted a very brief comment mentioning that Pielke had a blog post about it, but it was censored.
And yet this is from a man, Peter Thorne, who wrote in his talk at the Exeter meeting,
“All voices and perspectives are important”
“A key principal is openness and transparency”.
Given the problems with the US, NZ, Australian and Canadian climate databases documented on this site and my personal experience with BC Environment surface water database I have come to the conclusion that “it’s worse than we thought”. Fixing the problem with “highly automated / fool proof” data collection and storage systems only works if the human resources are provided to insure that the required QA/QC is also carried out. Otherwise, you just acquire an automated garbage collection and storeage system.
If is bad in America, what about Africa? 1960s onwards, that continent has had a lot of turmoil. During Congo’s 30 odd years of wars, and Angola’s 25 or so, are we seriously to belileve that good chaps daily trotted down to their Stevenson shelter, took the recordings accurately, posted them off to the national meteorological centre where they’ve been safely stored for 50 years? Don’t make me laugh. And how many other crisis ridden areas has civil government and all its luxuries collapsed for significant periods? So how do we get temp figures for much of Africa, E Europe 1990-2000, for example? Homogenize? Is that a scientiofic term for ‘make up’? If we really don’t know whats going on in significant swathes of the world, because there is no meaningful data, how can we possibly say anything about global temperature?
This is a bizarre post. I can’t see what these new “admissions” are. For example
““Automation is the only realistic approach to deal with large datasets””
Is that an admission?? Or anything but the obvious?
Well, it’s obvious, alright.
Um, you do know they are still operating off mostly handwritten B-91 forms, don’t you?
What a wonderful picture to use on Halloween. All it needs is a couple of jack o’ lanterns. Maybe they could hang a ghost off of that black electronic thingy with the great big heat sink on the side of the Stevenson screen.
Zeke Hausfather says:
September 21, 2010 at 8:45 am
Thanks, Zeke. The Stokes approach does not seem to exclude 2 of the three criteria I listed, especially the stations either changing methodology or siting over time. I realize that in the nineties, some old sites were “modernized” and these sites could be used (alcohol or mercury bulb thermometers only) up to that point where modernization occurred. Perhaps we can only use this method into the 70s or 80s, but it would give some basis to see past measurement. It would be at least an improvement over the very variable proxy methods we see all over the place.
I am thinking that even if only 7 sites fit the criteria, this would be an interesting exercise. Also, we would not look at the absolute measurement, but at the change. For example, at 1850, set all of the temperatures at zero to normalize the subsequent change, then look at the anomaly each decade from the group until 1950 to assess what climate is doing in the NH and then in the SH. It is likely that the sampling may be too small and the variation in change for these stations will swamp the trend, but maybe not.
Anyone could do this. How do we find “old” stations? Is there a dataset? I know there are several in UK, and Germany, and Switzerland, but don’t know how to find them or their records.
Caveat: One could not “cherry-pick” as the warm earthers have done countless times with proxies, and one needs to set up the criteria blind, before the data is crunched. In this way the true variance could be known.
“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.”
Obviously, “entrain” is Newspeak for sweep promptly under the rug.
entrain, v. [Chemistry] To carry (suspended particles, for example) along in a current.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/entrain
Why do climatologists in both warming and sceptic camps insist on using the incorrect metrics? Surely, it cannot be out of ignorance.
Three reasons:
— All news is local: We live on the land, not in the water.
— Land Surface Temperature is more volatile than Sea Surface temps. And everyone loves a headline.
— SST records are completely unreliable prior to the ARGO data (2004).
Nick Stokes says
September 21, 2010 at 1:19 am
September 21, 2010 at 3:57 am
One of the problems of trying to defend the crap work is that in doing so you inadvertantly let the cat out of the bag as to how awful it is. You gave a quote from 1997:
“Such metadata are very difficult if not impossible to acquire on a global basis. Therefore, historical metadata are not available for GHCN.”
If these people had any integrity at all, they would have said:
“Such metadata are very difficult if not impossible to acquire on a global basis.
Therefore, because whatever we do in processing the incomplete data, the output will be useless, consequently we shall not proceed with this project.”
In your second post, well, how pathetic;
“No, the data is what it is. The NOAA weren’t responsible for the measurements; they have to do the best analysis they can with the data we have. Imperfections have been acknowledged all along. What do you think they should do?”
“weren’t responsible for the measurements” – did they not do QA then?
“do the best analysis … Imperfections …” – I think you need help from Lord Oxburgh to look up “best” and ” imperfections” in his little dictionary to select the most agreeable definitions to support your absurd statements.
You seem to be getting a hard time above so , no more.
bubbagryo said
“Anyone could do this. How do we find “old” stations? Is there a dataset? I know there are several in UK, and Germany, and Switzerland, but don’t know how to find them or their records.”
There are numerous pre 1850 station records plus articles on climate history here at my site
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
tonyb
Instead of using zombie data from the NOAA death spiral station network, we could just measure the rings from a single tree in Mongolia. Problem solved!
Anthony and Zeke Hausfather
Zeke said regarding the Exeter Climate Workshops
September 21, 2010 at 9:15 am
“Anthony,
I agree that they should have invited you and Pielke. However, it might be useful to ask John Christy to do a guest post on his experiences with the conference before dismissing it out of hand.”
Zeke, as has been pointed out the criteria of the meeting was;
*’Engendering broad input into the process design from expert communities outside of the traditional Climate Change Community.”
* “All voices and perspectives are important”
* “A key principal is openness and transparency”.
That these principles were not being upheld was the subject of various private emails between myself and Julia Slingo, and myself and Kate Willett who was on the organising committee. It was quite evident from the tone of the replies-friendly but cetainly dismissive- that the top brass at the Met office did not want to engage in any sort of meaningful discussion with those who disagreed with them.
There were a good dozen people who could and should have been invited but ultimately they felt it was too technical for our poor little brains to cope with.
Incidentally I live 15 miles from the Met office, this is my site
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
In addition there is a whole treasure trove of climate material that has never been uploaded to it that people have sent me from all over the world. Just the sort of data the Met office say they are interested in.
I’m afraid that there was never any intention by Julia Slingo or Peter Thorne to engage with anyone who had another point of view. I would judge Kate Willett to be more open minded though.
After the Exeter Climate workshop ended I did a brief overview of the information contained in the slide presentations that I found especially interesting. For what its worth, here it is;
“Very interesting reading as it gives a complete run down on the manner in which many aspects of climate are approached. Well worth reading as there is lots of data, all collected in one place, together with an explanation of techniques. All in all it is a very good run down of the current state of the climate industry. I am particularly interested in the information contained in the first paper I have highlighted below these initial general comments.
http://www.surfacetemperatures.org/exeterworkshop2010
General comments;
1) Highly professional contributors who are specialists in own field but seem to get very caught up in their work and don’t necessarily see wider picture
2) Some data very sparse
3) Much of the information is hugely manufactured/altered
4) They don’t seem to know anywhere near as much as they publicly claim-lots of caveats.
5) What were the latest ‘correct’ procedures one year, fall out of fashion and changes the next. Still has the appearance of a young science feeling its way.
6) Much of the information is hugely technical/theoretical and what started out as simple observations are substantially changed by one process or other to end up with something that bears little relation to the original data;
7) Having read this presentation, the only temperature information I now believe to be original, accurate and not amended for one reason or other are the ones I take from my garden thermometer!
Some highlights; These are taken from the main menu
Interesting to see slides 19, 20, 21, 22.
http://5676430411356704223-a-surfacetemperatures-org-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/exeterworkshop2010/7_1Wed_exeter-menne.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cqdbO35n1iTWjuHeNi0GHr9ArYixYWIb6oDax7aWMpXw8y2JWViG201XpCpvw9dswtZ5SEy4zXmBVIshWzlgOaHqND29hdPW8pC9A4LzqVUtwQJW9BqgRY4Ufr60LzWPnqMuVAgtu6UnwtH6gssy7W-f_XGadZZw2a9JbGqtucQWYPGwL-n66r5sMSyKD2VuvsRxgxuRmboWbVgz3We2SC7fNP1RDIyCYFbcdbUe1x2BVdelzg%3D&attredirects=0
Also interesting to note the ICOADS presentation. Elsewhere it is mentioned there are Approx 2 billion daily observed records (temp, rain, snow etc) As slides 6 and 7 show the number from the ocean are very much smaller and almost non existent at the start date of Hadcrut. (CET has some 750,000 data points)
http://5676430411356704223-a-surfacetemperatures-org-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/exeterworkshop2010/2_1Tues_ICOADS_Lessonsv4.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cpnlEXx7r2OOD_A360nfNmcMpt097ViUHJh-bPyNqm7oPzE7MLwYW7eBgysjIs7ELt7kZzgXHVTQChj7AnSQPp666Dhma-VwkZBapffJr2DGyPVzrXFI33nkzfDLzYQ33Kh4pWhYQmQ8T7pzahPwSLPrvye1p6pLJPJsWNZZTSFRKmgWZganNMUidFgF63DZdt0KWwxxMh_gzqCrRJZcqMs8-nJRdfCWobcxmiem586ghxhyz1yF7Xn3USsRJuARoyb022U&attredirects=0
See slides 5 and 6 position of stations
http://5676430411356704223-a-surfacetemperatures-org-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/exeterworkshop2010/7_2WedHOMOGENISATION_EXETER.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7crU-LzepZTDMzD5Brb7SUqM1bmTO3lGu1AIMoH7LJZb8LSKfII8odI0fuwB-3ZbtODu92er3aWCFidJ5NWOXsQfHRZp08M9k9nq92yTZ3xdEyymHz37xy-SJzuS42S9YKZOwz6YOjCKFXivg5HvkSl3MDk-kltIi1OD7htIGChYMnJTmFXz_wh4ShyQtpdjkT3mRsKx67fQr81gCiR9d7SKL3hm40jGnMWMgOPUrG0D2MOM1efhzdkv62sWQU-KnEj3P379&attredirects=0
See text of slide 21
http://5676430411356704223-a-surfacetemperatures-org-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/exeterworkshop2010/7_4Wed_sst_homog_analysis_JK_NR.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cq14NBnQVP6nSohu7dljsmvPnoYFk5pU9Q1PICqVicdTWGcG7owhgP2ver_B0oXx8YqAQSA-0KuiREGTLJIYtxWZHF8meJRyxrOI9gY7Tm3AXKcALBr4Ce6TuJ7kPDjJwK_5bhhbjZue4m7S9MI3anVH4Sz_Ra3vpcM2eVReZI3OmP6F4Zr0hZBH8W17TrstkGnctM9lG9wSskywYW-fEJkBFvQAuDyCcDD4_wExStWIfeGONWVzDEI1fWYrv9oquwflK-K&attredirects=0
Phil Jones helped draft this white paper
http://5676430411356704223-a-surfacetemperatures-org-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/surfacetemperatures.org/home/exeterworkshop2010/11Wed_interp_v1.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7crk3cVOzi-ktoQyIS08Bj-x4EBgLUe55g33tRgmGdcLSL26MKIhKtqLA6ylWDiUn1zeABUGNOWOCLTXwhyaA82OJCUUoMq2LDxr7Fx_Kaj4YEhqxaFlutpo5RYT2aKEB6_NUtDVMIFXjFFOXUvnC6OcYmP5kLCy6aR3K7xCX0ESf0d5e_BLmS7fussBUyfCdKU_NybxzrsQXWS_TAhFaXuxL8Kb7t7DW5zb26WhQ6QC174JIog%3D&attredirects=0
Overall
Seems to be an admittance in the recommendation papers that the current system is not as robust as claimed and they need to do more to restore trust.
Tonyb
Anthony Watts says:
September 21, 2010 at 8:50 am
“Typical shutout as we’ve seen before in climate science and once again Menne plagiarizes my work and that of surfacestations volunteers without so much as giving attribution”
Anthony, these are demonstrably small-minded people. Its a data collection and storage exercise, not rocket surgery. They are on the track to eff it up again and leaving a well documented trail of their folly: do you really want to be associated with that? IMHO, you stand head and shoulders above them. & bravo!!!!
The ventilation fan attached to the side of the Stevensen screen has just gotta make this site eligible for some prize.
Sited over a tombstone, ahh, The Ghost in the Machine!
Koestler 1967. The human brain has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that these are the “ghost in the machine”. The author’s theory is that these structures can overcome cognitive logic.
So how many sites are affected? Is the info in the metadata?
“Typical shutout as we’ve seen before in climate science and once again Menne plagiarizes my work and that of surfacestations volunteers without so much as giving attribution.”
I’ve never understood this attitude by NOAA, and I’ve been observing this process since 2007 when the original surfacestations project was initiated. My only conclusion is that NOAA was embarrassed by the state of the USHCN and the fact that they were simply too lazy to anything about it. So, like many bureaucratic organizations, they pretended the problems weren’t significant, and anyway they were launching a new climate network so the old one didn’t matter. And they really resented someone who was “not in the club” calling their methods into question. A real shame…
tonyb says:
September 21, 2010 at 10:47 am
Thanks, T.B.!
Yours is a great site – I recommend it.
The old temperature data from 1800 to 1980 at least, is very flat or falling for the stations I looked at in Europe. I will dig into the others.
The old stations’ data would seem to support the contrast between then and recent decades as showing a recent warming trend, since the rules changed in 1980 or thereabouts, with urban stations dominating, and rural stations being dropped.
In the half dozen “old” stations for 1800-1980 I glanced at, I see a cooling trend after 1940 that does not support the “CO2 causing warming” hypothesis for an industrially active period, however.
All of the “warming” of recent decades is explained, as Mr. Watts and others have repeatedly shown, by replacement of old stations with “new improved” methods and subtraction of irksome rural stations. At least from a cursory look for myself.
Of course, all of the records are replete with a so much variance that it makes the AGW hypothesis, as a “settled science” quite absurd and unproveable.
Ian W says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:22 am
Don’t bother Ian. I’ve been trying to convey that message for at least a year now, no-one seems to care.
DaveE.
Someone has confused a weather station with a post-mortem measurement system designed to determine whether or not the occupant is burning in Hell.
Brownedoff says:
‘If these people had any integrity at all, they would have said:
“Such metadata are very difficult if not impossible to acquire on a global basis.
Therefore, because whatever we do in processing the incomplete data, the output will be useless, consequently we shall not proceed with this project.”’
The “project” is the compiling of past temperature readings. These were made by a great variety of authorities, mainly the Met offices of other countries. What you are saying seems to be that they should not be compiled. No-one should look at them, because of imperfections in associated records.
Well, the records will be looked at, and most people do want to know what they say. The NOAA is getting the best information from them that they can.
“weren’t responsible for the measurements” – did they not do QA then?
Yes, thery did – that’s their main added value. But QA can’t create historical metadata.
bubbagyro says:
September 21, 2010 at 8:32 am
One problem with constantly using the same thermometers, Liquid In Glass or LIG is the fact that glass is a supercooled liquid. Over time the glass actually deforms. Look at some really old glass windows & you will be able to actually see the way the glass has started to pool at the bottom.
DaveE.
That little tombstone will help keep the temperature sensors above toasty warm at night.
Why don’t station personnel just get it over with and paint the completely weathered Stevenson Screen black? Then next year, Dr. James “thumbs on the temperature scale” Hansen can truly justify upgrading the historical record without any loss of conscience (assuming he has one).
Bubbagyro
I was interested in the cooling trends evident over 50 years or more and made this study with a colleague that was carried here a few weeks ago
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
tonyb