This is an old argument, adjusted data versus non adjusted data, and why does the adjusted data show a trend and the unadjusted data does not? We’ve battled this here on WUWT many times with GISS and NCDC, now the battle is spreading down under to New Zealand. And surprise, they cite NCDC’s own adjustment techniques. And it’s the same thing NCDC and GISS does, cool the past and essentially ignore UHI and land use change factors.
The Seven Station Set (7SS) Above from NIWA: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2009 inclusive, based on long-term station records from between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908 onwards) locations. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2009 (0.91°C/100 years).
Oddly, there seems to be some serious distancing afoot by NIWA, they say essentially “it’s not ours”. I suppose I would too, when you find that you can simply download the raw “unadjusted” data, plot it yourself, and find there there is essentially no trend.
Above graph was noted in this report where they write:
Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Jo Nova sums this up pretty well. So well in fact I think I’ll let her (bold mine):
There’s a litany of excuses. The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) claims NZ has been warming at 0.92°C per 100 years. But when some independent minded chaps in New Zealand graphed the raw NZ data they found the thermometers show NZ has only warmed by a statistically non-significant 0.06°C. They asked for answer and got nowhere until they managed to get the light of legal pressure onto NIWA to force it to reply honestly. Reading between the lines, it’s obvious NIWA can’t explain nor defend the adjustments.
Richard Treadgold was one of that team and files this report on the Climate Conversation Group Website as shown below. Apparently there’s a legal case ongoing. I’ll have another post on this later. – Anthony
===================================
What’s left of the NIWA case?
Richard Treadgold
We hope justice will be done in the case against NIWA. Separate question: what of justice for the NZ temperature record?
The status of the NZ temperature record
For the last ten years, visitors to NIWA’s official website have been greeted by a graph of the “seven-station series” (7SS), under the bold heading “New Zealand Temperature Record”. The graph covers the period from 1853 to the present, and is adorned by a prominent trend-line sloping sharply upwards. Accompanying text informs the world that “New Zealand has experienced a warming trend of approximately 0.9°C over the past 100 years.”
The 7SS has been updated and used in every monthly issue of NIWA’s “Climate Digest” since January 1993. Its 0.9°C (sometimes 1.0°C) of warming has appeared in the Australia/NZ Chapter of the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 Assessment Reports. It has been offered as sworn evidence in countless tribunals and judicial enquiries, and provides the historical base for all of NIWA’s reports to both Central and Local Governments on climate science issues and future projections.
NIWA has a printed promotional brochure describing its climate activities, which commences with the iconic 7SS graph. No piece of climate lore is more familiar to the public, and it is better known than NIWA’s logo.
But now, para 7(a) of NIWA’s Statement of Defence states that “there is no ‘official’ or formal New Zealand Temperature Record”.
In para 8(b) it says the NZTR is not a public record for the purposes of the Public Records Act, using the exemption of “special collections” defined (in para 4(b)) as non-public records used for “research purposes”.
In para 4, NIWA denies it has any obligation to use the best available data or best scientific techniques, while conceding that it has statutory duties to pursue excellence and to perform its functions efficiently and effectively.
The juxtaposition of these conflicting stances leaves NIWA looking decidedly awkward. Should it go all out to defend its most famous product, or throw the NZTR under a bus?
The 7SS adjustments
The 7SS posed as a genuine historical archive, until the NZCSC disclosed, in its 2009 paper Are We Feeling Warmer Yet, that the warming trend was merely an artefact of NIWA’s in-house ‘corrections’. After a lengthy saga (described in Brill, B.E., 2010a. ‘Crisis in New Zealand climatology’, Quadrant Magazine (May) and Brill, B.E., 2010b. ‘New Zealand climate crisis gets worse’, Quadrant Magazine (June)), it emerged that NIWA had adopted some 34 non-replicable adjustments proposed in 1980 by Salinger, whose calculations had been lost.
The NZCSC filed judicial review proceedings against NIWA, requesting the Court to:
• Declare the 7SS invalid
• Direct NIWA to prepare a valid replacement NZTR
In its Statement of Defence, NIWA announces that it has now completed a full internal examination of the Salinger adjustments in the 7SS, and has forwarded its “review papers” to its Australian counterpart, the Bureaux of Meteorologists (BOM) for peer review.
From ministerial answers to Parliamentary Questions, we know that this “review” has involved five or six scientists working for about six months, and has received a special grant of about $70,000. It comprises a replacement Schedule of Adjustments for the 7SS with de novo documentation and detailed justification for each adjustment.
The Hokitika example at http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data (scroll down to Documentation of the adjustment process) has been repeated for all seven weather stations.
The replacement 7SS doesn’t repeat the Salinger adjustments but it is to include any adjustments agreed between NIWA and BOM, both of whom will supposedly apply state-of-the-art homogenisation technology.
So the old 7SS has already been repudiated. A replacement NZTR is being prepared by NIWA – presumably the best effort they are capable of producing. NZCSC is about to receive what it asked for. On the face of it, there’s nothing much left for the Court to adjudicate.
What will happen in the court case?
The proceedings are not yet affected by these developments. If the replacement NZTR is as deeply flawed as its predecessor (which seems inherently unlikely) NZCSC will doubtless press on to trial – although some amendments to the pleadings would probably be required. If the new document seems respectable, the parties may well be able to resolve their remaining differences. Watch this space!
In New Zealand, NIWA is often known as “No Idea What’s Ahead”!
This is slightly off topic (but really goes towards motivation) but there’s an extraordinary one hour interview with Dr. Tim Ball by Michael Coren of CTS in Canada (who also did an excellent interview with Lord Monckton recently) here –
http://australianconservative.com/2010/10/michael-coren-with-dr-tim-ball/
It explains a great deal from someone who is not only eminently qualified to speak on the subject of climate but has felt first hand the punishment inflicted on those who dare to question the orthodoxy. Its split into 5 parts and each is more interesting than the last. I was really sorry when it ended, as was Michael Coren.
I wonder if anybody gloating here about the NIWA temp data has actually made the effort to visit their website and see the data, find the references to the calculation methods of adjustments, peer reviewed papers and all, and did the math?
Here you go: http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record
If you do not like the adjustments due to stations being moved or instruments changed in the distant past then just ignore data before say 1960. What do you see?
Ah! A 0.9 deg/century increase linear trend. Wonder why?
To the data in the distant past, these were often less reliable than today, used different instruments and crucially some stations were abandoned and others moved, sometimes with significant elevation changes.
Those who plot a simple graph like Mr. Watts up here that takes none of these changes into account will end up with a totally meaningless picture. While it might be suitable to foster the illusion that the world is not warming to do, its rubbish indeed.
Niwa also posted a series from the most consistent 11 stations in the country on their website and its here:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/?a=99837:v1$
This also confirms the trend of about 1 Deg / Century warming in NZ.
While this is less than that in some more effected countries due to NZ’s maritime location it is still significant.
Your post here is a rather crude and unscientific misrepresentation of the facts.
Perhaps it should be noted that Dr Salinger no longer works for NIWA having been dismissed for disobeying instructions to stop talking to the News media about global warming. Dr Salinger originated what became the NZ temperature record as part of his thesis, which is where the now unobtainable adjustments were originally made.
Samoht @ur momisugly October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I wonder why the NIWA distanced itself from the NZTR if, being as you claim, to be a true and accurate record of NZ’s temperature..
Then again, some people will believe anything.
Just keep dishing out for your ETS !!
The thesis is available through your local university library. It is a published and extensively vetted (PHD Process) paper.
Dr. Salingers sacking was politically motivated to gag a climate scientist. Nothing new, happens all the time, especially during the Bush era in the USA.
SHAP methodology was applied to a US data set. Why do you imagine it would have been applied (equally?) to NIWA NZ adjustments?
“Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm”
The accuracy of thermometers hasn’t changed in a long while. And where are these 11 stations situated?
Owen says:
October 9, 2010 at 7:52 pm
“NIWA have a new 11 station series PROVING the warming – but it’s 77 years long starting in 1930 – which was the bottom of a cooling trend. They have carefully selected a series to maximize the upward trend. I am ashamed (as a New Zealander) that NIWA could stoop so low with such a shallow “trick””
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2009/nz-temp-record/temperature-trends-from-raw-data
Have a look at the stations. They are supposed to be “stations with long-term records where no significant site changes have occurred.”
Who are they trying to fool. Hamilton Ruakura, Tauranga Aero, and Palmerston North have had massive urban growth over this period. I know these sites and they all used to be rural. They are now urban.
Also why have they included Campbell Island? It is hundreds of kilometres south of NZ in the Southern Ocean.
Argument? Whether the tilting record is naked fraud or abject incompetence?
Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
One of the many points of the post is that NIWA, subsequent to a judicial review of adjusted temp data they have been touting for years as proof of global warming, is really just informal data for internal use only.
“Ah! A 0.9 deg/century increase linear trend. Wonder why?”
I totally give up. Why?
Samoht says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“I wonder if anybody gloating here about the NIWA temp data has actually made the effort to visit their website and see the data, find the references to the calculation methods of adjustments, peer reviewed papers and all, and did the math?”
“Niwa also posted a series from the most consistent 11 stations in the country”
I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived. As I said in an earlier post, Hamilton Ruakura, Tauranga Aero, and Palmerston North have had massive urban growth over this period. I know these sites and they all used to be rural. They are now urban.
The stations may not have moved, but the cities have grown to encompass the sites. I live close to the Ruakura site. It was rural until the 60s. It now has suburbs on three sides. As a child in the 60s I used to visit an elderly relative on the Tauranga Aerodrome Road. I remember it as a dusty gravel road out in the countryside. The Airport is now surrounded by industrial developments. I went to University in Palmerston North. In the 70’s the airport was out of town. Now it is on the edge of town. I would be surprised if these sites do not have a couple degrees C of UHI warming. These are not “consistent” sites. I do not know the other sites well enough to comment but I would not be surprised it some of them also have a warming bias.
Perhaps the NZ Climate Science Coalition could do a surfacestation.org type survey of these sites.
It is of benefit to see the raw trend, greatly reduced from the adjusted. I would love to see a realistic UHI adjustment to the raw trend.
Samoht says: October 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“Those who plot a simple graph like Mr. Watts up here that takes none of these changes into account will end up with a totally meaningless picture”
Why is it meaningless, assuming it is correct? The fact they use multiple stations from the 7 sites automatically makes it more than 7 shorter temperature records. You can’t actually adjust different stations at a site accurately, just treat them independently.
And for example barry says: October 9, 2010 at 10:10 pm “No one here would argue that some adjustment must be made for UHI, for example” I would argue against a UHI adjustment as again there is no way to do it accurately. The best you could do is use very rural stations very close to the UHI, and adjust based on them as a best guess. But why not just throw away the record with what you think is contaminated data and just use the rural stations, they must have measured pretty much the same weather.
John in NZ: “I am sorry Samoht but you are being deceived.”
As a New Zealander, I take exception to claims that New Zealand scientists are in the business of deceiving their countrymen. New Zealanders are among the most honest and upright people on the planet, and their institutions are regarded as the least corrupt in the world.
I think it’s shameful to bad-mouth and defame honest and hard-working scientists in international forums where they are unable to defend their reputations. By all means question the science, but leave off the accusations of fraud and deceit.
There is more confusion.
By private email of March 28, 2006, Phil Jones of CRU emailed to me about discrepancies in historic Australian land temperatures –
“I would suggest you look at NZ temperatures. … What is clear over this region is that the SSTs around islands (be they NZ or more of the atoll type) is that the air temps over decadal timescales should agree with SSTs. This agreement between SSTs and air temperatures also works for Britain and Ireland. Australia is larger, but most of the longer records are around the coasts.
So, NZ or Australian air temperatures before about 1910 can’t both be right. As the two (countries – GHS) are quite close, one must be wrong. As NZ used the Stevenson screens from their development about 1870, I would believe NZ. NZ temps agree well with the SSTs and circulation influences.”
If any avid reader has a later statement explaining how these differences were reconciled, I’d be delighted to hear it. You know, settled science and all that.
This is also a heads up for the Australian BOM cross checking, because the probability exists that the BOM will argue points about Stevenson screens and early cooling adjustments.
“Geoff Sherrington says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:51 am
As the two (countries – GHS) are quite close, one must be wrong.”
This is a joke, yeah? Approx 3500kms, Aus east coast to NZ west coast, close?
Hmm.
Chart two is not exactly a hockey-stick, is it. Golf club, perhaps – a one-iron (or whatever their smallest stick is called).
” Richard Treadgold says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Wow! That was fast, Anthony — you seemed to echo our posting almost immediately. Thank you.”
Anthony, I do not share Richard’s belief that you were fast on this one. When you commented on Richard’s web site I was comparing paragraph by paragraph the two legal papers. Not that I might not have done the work myself but before I did I checked to see what you and Bishop Montford had to say about this event. You had nothing but the commenters at Bishop Hill were hashing this out fairly well. It blows my mind that NIWA invokes this strategy. As pointed out the new datasets might be just as distorted but if BoM rubberstamps it this might be good enough. Will the Met office do this also with their new data release? Regardless it is apparent to me that the only recourse to buddy-review journal publication is litigation.
Raw data is what scientists endeavour to get as accurate as possible by careful design of the measuring equipment and careful placement. So why is adjustment necessary? unless it is to prove a point of political correctness.
IANAL, but isn’t deliberately manipulating data so important to public policy decisions a starting point for a fraud charge?
Say this was coupled with personal financial interest in industries that stand to benefit from the deliberate error – such as owning shares in industries such as ‘alternative energy’?
What would they need to prove to make this stick?
Looks like temps now are the same they were in 2002. October 2010 so far – normal and going below LOL
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
The real danger of the Hockey Stick is that it gave people working on or around climate the idea that no claim is too extravagant, no impudence too great, provided it confirms AGW.
AGW is not underpinned by fraud, but by emotion. It is emotion of the blackest kind, that strips the most logical and mathematical mind of all basic judgement while leaving the computational ability intact.
As to the source of such misanthropy and self-loathing, I suspect that long after we have solved the fantastic complexities and vagaries of climate, the human heart will still be terra incognita.
As a New Zealander, I am proud that my country has been measured recently as currently the least corrupt nation. Sadly, that cannot be translated as ‘the nation that suffers nil corruption’.
The very senior and eminent American physicist that very recently resigned so publicly from his American professional association due to the corruption of climate science and the deathly silence from professional scientific associations world-wide speaks volumes about that corruption .
New Zealand has a large number of research institutions dedicated to various types of farming and forestry out in the rural hinterland, many of which have been there since the early and mid twentieth century. I find it difficult to believe that only seven accurate thermometers not suffering the depredations of UHI and with an acceptable unbroken length of service can be found by NIWA.