Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
According to the latest from NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies), 2010 is shaping up to be “the warmest of 131 years”, based on global data from January through November. They compare it to 2005 “2nd warmest of 131 years” and 1998 “5th warmest of 131 years”.
We won’t know until the December data is in. Even then, given the level of noise in the base data and the wiggle room in the analysis, each of which is about the same magnitude as the Global Warming they are trying to quantify, we may not know for several years. If ever. GISS seems to analyze the data for decades, if necessary, to get the right answer.
A case in point is the still ongoing race between 1934 and 1998 to be the hottest for US annual mean temperature, the subject of one of the emails released in January of this year by NASA GISS in response to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. The 2007 message from Dr. Makiko Sato to Dr. James Hansen traces the fascinating story of that hot competition. See the January WUWT and my contemporary graphic that was picked up by several websites at that time.
[My new graphic, shown here, reproduces Sato’s email text, including all seven data sets, some or all of which were posted to her website. Click image for a larger version.]
The Great Hot 1934 vs 1998 Race
1) Sato’s first report, dated July 1999, shows 1934 with an impressive lead of over half a degree (0.541ºC to be exact) above 1998.
Keep in mind that this is US-only data, gathered and analyzed by Americans. Therefore, there is no possibility of fudging by the CRU (Climategate Research Unit) at East Anglia, England, or bogus data from Russia, China, or some third-world country. (If there is any error, it was due to home-grown error-ists :^)
Also note that total Global Warming, over the past 131 years, has been, according to the IPCC, GISS and CRU, in the range of 0.7ºC to 0.8ºC. So, if 1934 was more than 0.5ºC warmer than 1998, that is quite a significant percentage of the total.
At the time of this analysis, July 1999, the 1998 data had been in hand for more than half a year. Nearly all of it was from the same reporting stations as previous years, so any adjustments for relocated stations or those impacted by nearby development would be minor. The 1934 data had been in hand for, well, 65 years (eligible to collect Social Security :^) so it had, presumably, been fully analyzed.
Based on this July 1999 analysis, if I was a betting man, I would have put my money on 1934 as a sure thing. However, that was not to be, as Sato’s email recounts.
Why? Well, given steadily rising CO2 levels, and the high warming sensitivity of virtually all climate models to CO2, it would have been, let us say inconvenient, for 1998 to have been bested by a hot golden oldie from over 60 years previous! Kind of like your great grandpa beating you in a foot race.
2) The year 2000 was a bad one for 1934. November 2000 analysis seems to have put it on a downhill ski slope that cooled it by nearly a fifth of a degree (-0.186ºC to be precise). On the other hand, it was a very good year for 1998, which, seemingly put on a ski lift, managed to warm up by nearly a quarter of a degree (+0.233ºC). That confirms the Theory of Conservation of Mass and Energy. In other words, if someone in your neighborhood goes on a diet and loses weight, someone else is bound to gain it.
OK, now the hot race is getting interesting, with 1998 only about an eighth of a degree (0.122ºC) behind 1934. I’m still rooting for 1934. How about you?
3) Further analysis in January 2001 confirmed the downward trend for 1934 (lost an additional 26th of a degree) and the upward movement of 1998 (gained an additional 21th of a degree), tightening the hot race to a 28th of a degree (0.036ºC).
Good news! 1934 is still in the lead, but not by much!
4) Sato’s analysis and reporting on the great 1934 vs 1998 race seems to have taken a hiatus between 2001 and 2006. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, and 1998 did exactly that. The January 2006 analysis has 1998 unexpectedly tumbling, losing over a quarter of a degree (-0.269ºC), and restoring 1934‘s lead to nearly a third of a degree (0.305ºC). Sato notes in her email “This is questionable, I may have kept some data which I was checking.” Absolutely, let us question the data! Question, question, question … until we get the right answer.
5) Time for another ski lift! January 2007 analysis boosts 1998 by nearly a third of a degree (+0.312ºC) and drops 1934 a tiny bit (-0.008ºC), putting 1998 in the lead by a bit (0.015ºC). Sato comments “This is only time we had 1998 warmer than 1934, but one [on?] web for 7 months.”
6) and 7) March and August 2007 analysis shows tiny adjustments. However, in what seems to be a photo finish, 1934 sneaks ahead of 1998, being warmer by a tiny amount (0.023ºC). So, hooray! 1934 wins and 1998 is second.
OOPS, the hot race continued after the FOIA email! I checked the tabular data at GISS Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (C) today and, guess what? Since the Sato FOIA email discussed above, GISS has continued their taxpayer-funded work on both 1998 and 1934. The Annual Mean for 1998 has increased to 1.32ºC, a gain of a bit over an 11th of a degree (+0.094ºC), while poor old 1934 has been beaten down to 1.2ºC., a loss of about a 20th of a degree (-0.049ºC). So, sad to say, 1934 has lost the hot race by about an eighth of a degree (0.12ºC). Tough loss for the old-timer.
Analysis of the Analysis
What does this all mean? Is this evidence of wrongdoing? Incompetence? Not necessarily. During my long career as a system engineer I dealt with several brilliant analysts, all absolutely honest and far more competent than me in statistical processes. Yet, they sometimes produced troubling estimates, often due to poor assumptions.
In one case, prior to the availability of GPS, I needed a performance estimate for a Doppler-Inertial navigation system. They computed a number about 20% to 30% worse than I expected. In those days, I was a bit of a hot head, so I stormed over and shouted at them. A day later I had a revised estimate, 20% to 30% better than I had expected. My conclusion? It was my fault entirely. I had shouted too loudly! So, I went back and sweetly asked them to try again. This time they came in near my expectations and that was the value we promised to our customer.
Why had they been off? Well, as you may know, an inertial system is very stable, but it drifts back and forth on an 84 minute cycle (the period of a pendulum the length of the radius of the Earth). A Doppler radar does not drift, but it is noisy and may give erroneous results over smooth surfaces such as water and grass. The analysts had designed a Kalman filter that modeled the error characteristics to achieve a net result that was considerably better than either the inertial or the Doppler alone. To estimate performance they needed to assume the operating conditions, including how well the inertial system had been initialized prior to take off, and the terrain conditions for the Doppler. Change assumptions, change the results.
Conclusions
Is 2010 going to be declared warmest global annual by GISS after the December data comes in? I would not bet against that. As we have seen, they keep questioning and analyzing the data until they get the right answers. But, whatever they declare, should we believe it? What do you think?
Figuring out the warmest US annual is a lot simpler. Although I (and probably you) think 1934 was warmer than 1998, it seems someone at GISS, who knows how to shout loudly, does not think so. These things happen and, as I revealed above, I myself have been guilty of shouting at analysts. But, I corrected my error, and I was not asking all the governments of the world to wreck their economies on the basis of the results.
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So who is going to make the call that 2010 was the warmest year on record?
There will be howls of derision in news rooms. Come on Hansen and Romm, this is your chance to hammer home another nail into the AGW coffin. Writing in the UK, I am ashamed to admit it will be the Met Office, but their credibility is at an all time low, so they have nothing to lose, apart from their jobs.
GISS may well declare 2010 to be the warmest year in history. Those of us sharing the current northern hemispere winter know better.
The thing that really troubles me is what the Hansen is doing to the reputation of one of America’s all time heroes – Robert Goddard – after whom the institute which Hansen directs is named.
2011 will start cold, partly due to La Nina. I am sure GISS will emphazise this reason ad nauseam and add imaginary tenths of degrees to account for this effect.
However, I haven’t seen any subtraction of the El Nino effect from 2010 to make a fair comparison with other years. This would throw 2010 far behind 2005 and several other years and make 2010 pretty unspectacular.
Do we care if 2010 is the warmest year in history?
With a recent strongish El Nino 2nd to the 1997/98 one, it is expected for global temperatures to be at similiar high levels. With 2010 only just being able to beat it (if it does) just demonstrates how insignifacnt the warming has been over recent decades. I would have expected at least 2010 to be 0.1c higher just to maintain the assumption of CO2 contributing 0.2c per decade. Only just competing or even less than 1998 just demonstrates that it is at least half smaller then this claim. Though when you see below it’s not surprising the GISS will likely be the only one to show this, if it is the warmest.
Then there is the problem of experimental error to add and a data series that has had so many changes it would be almost impossible to replicate it. I don’t see any control with different techniques using various instruments in spliced data glued together. Which ever ocean techniques shows the most warming lets use that one and implement it recently to raise temperatures further. Painting out land temperatures over the oceans and not just where no data exists, just makes the control only scientifically correct for only the years this has been done throughout the data set. (ie not many at all)
I took a quick peek at the GISS website to try and understand how they crank out their numbers, and even a cursory glance was daunting. Has there been a clear presentation of the methodology somewhere? I would think that once you nail down the method, no matter how many times you run the analysis the results should be the same. If the assumptions regarding initial conditions are so fungible as to allow a reversal of the relative values of the anomolies at will, you don’t have a scientific analytical tool, you have a propoganda tool.
So this race between 1934 and 1998 was in the US temperature record, that comprises 2% of the Earth’s surface.
Not the global temperature record where 1998 has always been ahead of 1934.
The US temperature record is rather a side issue, in that regard, but nevertheless if you don’t trust the US temperature record why not verify it yourself by taking the station data from source and seeing what it shows overall?
Surely without doing that all you can say is you don’t know whether 1934 was warmer or not. One idea would be to get hold of the station data for 1934 and the station data for 1998 and compare an area weighting of them, taking into account any time of observation biases.
Also you’ve provided a timeline of changes, but what’s missing is any description of what changed in the GISTEMP analysis. These changes are often documented. For example they did switch to USCHN at some point. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to alongside the 1998 and 1934 changes mention what exactly changed in the GISTEMP analysis at that point?
The method for analyzing temperatures means the records remain fluid Because this is done with a model each time the model is rerun you will get different results for all periods. This is not like a spreadsheet where the records are fixed once the output is complete as they would be following accounting practices. Using three decimal points when they are starting with whole numbers is also cheating. The end result is that we do not know what the temperature has done for the last one hundred and fifty years!
“But, whatever they declare, should we believe it? What do you think?”
Absolutely not. Hansen isn’t a scientist. He’s a political activist masquerading as a scientist.
typo* insignificant
They just want to save the planet, they think they know CO2 is the problem, so they adjust the data until it fits their preconceptions. They should be absolved from their duties to find fulfillment as street fundraisers for GreenPeace.
off topic but important; which is Anthony’s Tip Jar is it:
Shameless Plug
Donations accepted: fling funds
That sounds like him but I’m sure someone can confirm
Probably should be ‘warmest’ in the title – unless NASA are coming clean about their political activism.
More to the point – someone needs to explain how the Vikings buried their farms under the permafrost, and why tree-mometers cannot reproduce current temperatures, before making unscientific declarations about warm, warmer, and warmest years.
Well you see Ira, GISS does expect all the economies of world to follow its “science” into oblivion, so they feel its more than justifiable to SHOUT the correct values to their analysts.
Sorry to write this in 3 comments, you can combine them if you want or stagger them with other comments.
Hansen 2001 titled “2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change” is extremely relevant here. This is the documentation that covers the change made around 2000 that resulted in the US 1934 value going down and 1998 value going up. The abstract reads:
“Changes in the GISS analysis subsequent to the documentation by Hansen et al. [1999] are as follows: (1) incorporation of corrections for time-of-observation bias and station history adjustments in the United States based on Easterling et al. [1996a], (2) reclassification of rural, small-town, and urban stations in the United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico based on satellite measurements of night light intensity [Imhoff et al., 1997], and (3) a more flexible urban adjustment than that employed by Hansen et al. [1999], including reliance on only unlit stations in the United States and rural stations in the rest of the world for determining long-term trends.”
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha02300a
The content of the paper shows that the primary reason 1998 went up relative to 1934 was the correction for time-of-observation bias. The explanation given is:
“However, there have been changes of the time of observation by many of the cooperative weather observers in the United States [Karl et al., 1986]. Furthermore, the change has been systematic with more and more of the measurements by United States cooperative observers being in the morning, rather then the afternoon. This introduces a systematic error in the monthly mean temperature change.”
If that is true it will have added a cooling bias in the data since 1934. So it would seem the GISTEMP adjustment that made 1998 warmer relative to 1934 is valid. At least I see no reason to presume it isn’t. By all means the magnitude could be checked but surely we can only conclude something is wrong after checking?
Of what possible use is this kind of data from GISS or others? I mean other than providing fodder for slow news days, and grist for the political mill? Nobody gives a hoot’n hell about 1/10th degree or even 1 whole degree. Nor does anyone (except possibly their immediate families) care what a bunch of obscure, number crunching, cubicle rats say about the weather/climate a hundred years from now. Bunch of wannabe 007’s is all.
I’m curious as to who has the job of continually, over years and years, going over the temperature records to apply adjustments. How do they do this? Is there a baseline unadjusted data set that they then try a new set of adjustments on, or do they readjust the already adjusted data? How have the adjustments changed over time, and why? Did someone suddenly realise that the last set of adjustments had left out some important factor and it all had to be done again? Surely, there can’t be new 1934 data coming into the data set, so WUWT?
I didn’t spend much time doing it, but I just clicked on all the “Pro AGW views”
that Anthony lists. Only a few had recent threads, of the recent threads I don’t recall any comments saying “Merry Christmas”.
I almost feel sorry for them.
It’s hard to understand how they can justify moving 1934 temperatures around willy nilly.
It’s almost impossible to understand how they can move 1998 temperature around so much. Weren’t we more sure about how to measure temperature by then?
They are claiming that it’s warm, where no people live.
Where people actually live, they are freezing their rears off….
I say go for it….
Time the announcement so it coincides with the lowest temperatures and deepest snow, where people live.
LOL
THANKS ZT – You got my little joke. If the “Warmists” have their way, and 2010 is declared the warmest, then it will be the hottest Warmist year. Right?
It may seem obvious but I have never seen it explicitly stated so I say it here. It seems to me that there are five completely independent ways to become a sceptic.
1/ Science A person can examine the science of AGW theory and become sceptical of the science.
2/ Predictions. A person can take the science purely at face value but become sceptical when the measured global temperatures can be seen to not match those predictions.
3/ Data sets. A person can become a sceptic by simply losing confidence in the global temperature data sets by noticing the uncertainties in the data collection and “corrections”
4/ Dirty Tricks A person could rationally ignore the science and ignore the temperature graphs and become sceptical solely on the basis of the known fraud, dirty tricks and bad faith of some of the main AGW crew. Lost of trust
5/ Money It would be totally rational to be sceptical of a group of scientists funded by (say) the tobacco industry and consider any of the out put possibly lacking independence. Similarly, it would be entirely rational to become sceptical of a group of scientists who are openly competing for grant money from pro-global warming funding bodies. One does not need to understand science to understand conflict of interest.
The science is the most difficult and demanding pathway so I think many people wouldn’t come at it directly from this route – which would explain the AGW frustration that no one is listening to their “science is settled” mantra anymore. There are so many easier routes by which they have lost credibility. (I note it may also explain why less educated people are less impressed by the “science is settled” mantra)
My own personal route to scepticism for example came first through pathway 4, through first doubts after the release of the Climategate emails, to outright scepticism after reading the Case Study 12 from D’Aleo and Watts (2010) “Hide this after Jim checks it” which you allude to. The idea that you can make undocumented changes to “raw” data and still call it “raw” was quite shocking.
I guess due to pathways 3, 4 and 5 this “hottest year ever” nonsense has lost traction.
Onion says:
December 25, 2010 at 4:58 pm
“Also you’ve provided a timeline of changes, but what’s missing is any description of what changed in the GISTEMP analysis. […]”
More than you ever wanted to know about it:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/?s=gistemp
or try this one
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/ncdc-ghcn-issues/
Or one particular change and re-analysis
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/gistemp-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme-chose/
These are productive people and they have all the time and money in the world to go on re-analyzing and re-adjusting the past.
If I had the slightest thought that their data was meaningful a pronouncement that 2010 was the hottest year on record would be worth an “Oh that is interesting”.
Given we know from circumstantial evidence such as the iceman and other markers of much warmer temperatures like evidence of arctic forests where today there is tundra, that their “record” is an eye blink in climate history.
Also given that I trust their data quality and analysis about as much as I trust a used car salesman’s pronouncement on the condition of a used car, I frankly could care less.
They can pronounce anything they like, it is garbage data out, of complex manipulated analysis of input data that is highly questionable in the first place. Their supposed precision is completely ridiculous in view or real world error budgets for the systems that they gather the data from. My response will be exactly the same I would have with a dog that barks all the time, ignore them.
Larry
The surface temperature record is a two-dimension record in a three-dimensional system, which means that, on its’ own, it has limited scientific significance, The fact that this part of the biosphere is where humans happen to live means that this significance is hugely exaggerated.
It is also, on geological timescales, extremely short, covering as it does a mere 1% of th e current inter-glacial climate period. Trying to draw definitive conclusions from this is, in layman’s terms, akin to discerning the entire plot of “24” by watching 15 minutes of 1 episode.
The methodology itself, using point data to extrapolate temperature trends over wide areas, is also extremely dubious IMO.
On top of all that, both the HadCrut and GISTEMP records are overseen by people who are strong proponents of CAGW. They EXPECT their data to show a strong warming signal. If it doesn’t, there must be a problem with the data – hence the adjustments like those outlined above – all made to emphasise the warming trend. This is “confirmation bias” at its’ very finest.
In short, the correct answer to Ira’s question is “no.”