The Met Office link-buries the CET

I heard Moe, Larry and Curly took over at the Met Office.

nope, this is too important and central to their argument/agenda….
….someone had to have asked
and the answer they got was to move it

What a surprise. Same as the ARGO data. we paid for this buoy system, and are entitled to have access, and now it is showing cooling oceans it is difficult or impossible to access. They still state that oceans are warming.
REPLY: The ARGO data is easily available, and they have created a downloadable analysis tool for it. I’ll do a post on this in the future to dispel such rumors. – Anthony

Hmm this one has also disappeared
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcrut3.html
It was a priceless page, where the inconvenient post-2002 decline in the HadCRUT3 series was covered by a sidebar.

A I reading the post wrong as the following link now points to David Parker
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/david-parker
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/

This one appears not to have been updated since end Dec 2010 either.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html

Trying to find the data for the entire UK as opposed to just Central England is just as difficult as I found out in writing this article posted on notrickszone web page
http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/29/should-britons-buy-bermuda-shorts-or-long-johns/

CET is linked from David Parkers page, with slightly ominous wording:

David has helped develop and improve the 350-year Central England Temperature (CET) dataset

(my bold).

No. Hell, no.
You may not, at this point, after all that they have done, ascribe to stupidity what should be ascribed to malice and deceit.
It is wrong to give them the benefit of any doubt. Stupidity would include some element of chance that the ‘errors’ they make would not support the alarmist position, and that is clearly not the case. They lie, and you know they lie, and they know you know they are lying.

vukcevic says:
CET January temperature of 1.2C, although 2C higher than for Jan 2010 (-0.9C) , is still fractionally below the average (1.27C) for the 1878-2011 period.
Those numbers are the minimum (Monthly_HadCET_min.txt) as the January CET mean was 1.4 deg C for 2010 and 3.7 for 2011 (Monthly_HadCET_mean.txt)

Have noticed that NOAA records in many categories has been clipped off after 2000.
With all the snow this year in New England, I tried to find total snowfall by year in Boston (and other prominent places) to see how we fit in. But the data just drops off after around 2000 dependent on location.
If anyone has a link I’d be grateful. Be happy to be wrong on this.

I must concur with tonyb, the link I use (and so does tonyb) is still up:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
REPLY: I don’t think either of you read this story carefully. Look at the last sentence, I attribute this to blunder. Nowhere in the story was “conspiracy” mentioned. Tony B was the first to use that word in his comments. Also, please note that this isn’t about bookmarked links, but about public links on Met Office web page changing. – Anthony

*(in the past 7-10 years)

Having worked for government institutions in the UK I would suspect cock-ups and not conspiracies in most cases, including this one. I was warned by a friendly Saffer when I began working here that English civil servants don’t fix problems – they write reports outlining the problem, send the report of to a superior, then sit back, proud of themselves and secure in the knowledge that they did their duty, while the problem continues unabated. Most of us Colonials have a lifelong habit of fixing problems as we stumble into them; that behavioural trait seems to have become a genetic difference between our UK cousins and us.

December was a cold month in the UK, but 2010 was the 12th coldest year since 1910. This doesn’t exactly fit well with the general CAGW theme of the web site, thus I can understand why they would not want the information to be too accessible. It was not easy to find it:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/cold-dec

I have had the same link for CET for many years now and it still works, hasn’t changed.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat

“David has helped develop and improve the 350-year Central England Temperature (CET) dataset”
Philip Eden’s site describes the development and improvement, otherwise known as surreptitious falsification of the CET record, on the two pages of his website that I have linked below, q.v.
http://www.climate-uk.com/page5.html
http://www.climate-uk.com/CETcheck.htm
He produces his own continuation CET record, post Manley, from sites that are more representative of those used by the late Pr.Manley up to 1971.
http://www.climate-uk.com/index.html
In all that I have read by him he appears to be an even handed follower of the scientific method, and never given to fits of climactic climate change hyperbole.

350 years of CET data = invaluable.
First (1659) and last (2010) dates identical = PRICELESS!!

It is an example of many web pages that are changed without a lot of weight put on what the end user might really be looking for.
Aviation uses a check list that is tested for content, accuracy, and relevance. True the web site content lacking something as treasured as long term temperature data is not a serious safety issue, but it shows the lack of producing any sort of check and balance to the content deemed important. For all we know, it was just redone to produce some work for bureaucratic self generated importance. There is no liability in not posting a specific link, so therefore a redirect of what was important at the time of reconstruction.
Personal opinion: A strange way appear professional and a good way to attract criticism.

This is why WUWT is so important to me. I am no climate scientist or meteorologist but my work for 40 years and life is very close to the earth and it’s weather. I was also raised to understand the scientific method and see it as very important. Many projects I do entail Environmental Impact Studies and the project hinges on the outcome of those studies. I find it facinating to observe the collection of data and the assesement process. It seems to me the observer changes the observed. Dishonesty, no, conspiracy, no but something happens with the assimilation process and human nature. I’ve followed this website since it started and it seems to be a common thread throughout and the many website which have sprung from the debate. A scientist or study group introduces a hypothesis and then everyone jumps on that hypothesis and criticizes the collection of the data. But the real problem, I think, may lie in the unspoken, unconscious ability to tweek the outcome of the effort. This temperature record is one of the most important ones of it’s kind because of it’s simple factuality. I try and pick up these simple illustrative pieces from this website and communicate them to politicians who may see value. These politicians are inundated with “studies” and tweeked information from all sides. Simple accurate information is what they need from us. Thank you again.

Central England is but the oldest of about two dozen single site thermometer records that mainstream climatologists would rather did not exist. All but a couple if these show any sign whatsoever of recent warming that bucks the natural trend, and yet are classic old cities that show no uptick even in the unadjusted raw data. Here are the ones that have name recognition, in a single glance: http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
The Brits are just now making CET graphs as obscurely hard to run into as the Yanks have made their own old site records. And of course when you do finally find a chart they cut off the oldest data and use deceiving chartsmanship (akin to how the NOAA presents its version of the global average, as I have pointed out here: http://oi49.tinypic.com/2mpg0tz.jpg ).
It is a rhetorical question whether alarmists would plaster these records all over their report covers if they formed nice little hockey sticks. These records are to climatology what hand axes being found amongst dinosaur bones would be to evolutionary theory.

Thanks for the reply Anthony, but the Met Office’s data has always been hard to find, and I’m usually willing to believe in underhand things the MO does, but the fact that the data is still there for all to see (rather than mysteriously disappearing) leads me to think this is just the MO being the MO. Stephen Richards echoes mine and tonyb’s posts.

Phil-M says:
February 14, 2011 at 7:33 am
Am I right in understanding that one of the weather stations used to compile the CET is Manchester Airport which, from being a grassy field some 50 years ago, is now ine of the busiest airports in Europe?
Yes, same applies to Glasgow too though its expansion has been less, in fact for Scotland there is not single high level weather station used for Hadcrut, most are airport based which is strange considering the records started before mans first flight.

WHAT? Who’s hiding Data? Oh.. the MET Office you say! What’s new?
If someone like me, who’s qualifications are not in Meteorology or climate sciences, if I were to look at the CET from 1659-2010 and realize that it was the second coldest year within the entire temperature record of 352 years, then I would begin to ask questions like!
(Q.1) As the “second coldest December within CET record of 352 years” sounds significant and important information; why had the public not been clearly informed in the Uk’s media that it was the second coldest December within this record of 352 years?
(Q.2) If the MET Office is publicly funded and charged with monitoring, maintaining and interpreting these temperature records for the public, then why was the public not clearly informed in the run up to the second coldest December within this record of 352 years?
(Q.3) In the run up to the second coldest December within this record of 352 years,
why was the publicly funded MET Office informing the public that they would have warmer, milder winters despite having Data to the contrary.
(Q.4) After the fact; How can the publicly funded MET Office defend informing the public of their global temperature estimates and trends in regard to the headline in December of “2010 warmest year on record”
While Uk temperatures were at their second coldest December within the CET record of 352 years?
(Q.5) If the MET Office suggestions to the public that global temperature rises will effect the UK changing the UK’s climate in to a much warmer climate (which I’m fine with) then how is it that, according to the CET from 1659-2010, December was the second coldest year within the entire temperature record of 352 years?
Okay.. these maybe unqualified questions but I’d like to see a clear answer giving to them.

There is no doubt, its virtually impossible to get the graph anymore. try typing”Central England Temperature (CET)” in the serach box and see what you get. Its outrageous.

David Larsen says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:12 am
David I am confused, are you referring to hide the decline?

If true is this a question of burying good news or bad news?
The following link is to Professor Manley you need to scrolldown to his paper and look for the graphs to 1974. No hockey stick until our Phil and his boys get their hands on the data then a miracle it is a hockey stick.
[no link?]

“why had the public not been clearly informed in the Uk’s media that it was the second coldest December within this record of 352 years?”
Curiously enough, the answer to your question appears in today’s Daily Telegraph, in the form of a half page collaboratory advert sponsored and paid for by – The Carbon Trust!
When David Cameron promised a “bonfire of the Quangos” he did so with his fingers crossed behind his back for this one. He and Clegg have close family members seriously invested in the many lucrative manifestations of the carbon scam, as have many parliamentarians of differing hues, and they have no intention of allowing this nice little earner to be discontinued through the application of fact, truth or reality. Oh, and by the way, it also is a tax raiser.

Stephan says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:50 am
It will take about another 3 years before it is proven that the deniers were right and none will lose jobs etc they will simply fade away….
They’re probably hoping to hang on long enough to claim credit for the cooling. Ever heard the joke about the white lines and the elephants? No? It goes like this:-
A workman is painting white lines in the middle of the road and a guy comes up and says ‘What are those white lines for?’ Well, this isn’t really a dumb question – white lines are there for all sorts of reasons. But the workman is having a bad day, so he says ‘They’re to keep the elephants away.’ The other guy, not wanting to appear stupid, says ‘But there aren’t any elephants around here.’ To which the workman, quick as a flash, replies, ‘That shows how well they work, then, doesn’t it?’
Analysing a joke is thankless, but in this case it’s worth pointing out that obviously the humour relies on the ascribing of a major effect (the absence of elephants) to a trivial cause (white lines), when there are clearly many other far more important factors at work. So, to re-phrase the joke:-
Joe:- ‘Why am I paying so much for my petrol and electricity?’
Warmist:- ‘That’s to counteract Global Warming.’
Joe:- ‘But it’s getting colder!’
Warmist:- ‘That shows how well the measures are working, then, doesn’t it?’
Like I said, the warmists will try to hang on as long as they can and then it’ll be ‘Look at how clever we’ve been – we’ve fixed the Earth! Now if you just keep on subsidising those windmills and funding our research…..’

Maybe they’ve hired the folks from over at the BBC, specifically, the ones that gave us this:
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A387029:
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
Daft as a hairbrush, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is arguably the most insanely idiotically dense creature in existence. It believes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Therefore, if you are faced by the horrid (yes, horrid, in spite of its intelleigence, or lack of) Beast you should wrap your towel around your head (you do have one, don’t you!?) to TEMPORARILY ward off the Beast’s voracious apetite and furious… fury… sorry. Yes, temporarily. The Beast WILL eventually realise its mistake and find you. Also, for further confusion on the Beast’s part, you may scratch your name somewhere. To that we will come. In vanity or for poor memory’s sake, each Beast keeps a record of its killings and eatings. This list is usually in an ante-room from the main chamber, and therefore easily accessible. This list is easily accessible and defacable, to which we are, by degrees, coming. It is easily defacable by the many rocks strewn about the lair floor invariably favoured by Beasts of Traal. Which is terribly convenient, Traal being a very rocky planet. Whilst being concealed with in your towel, grab a handy rock and scratch your name into the list. The Beast will now think it has already eaten you, giving you more time to escape. Note that no one has actually PROVED this first-hand, and neither the Guide nor any of its researchers (especially myself) take any responsibility for any personal injury sustained during the execution of the above tactics, and be warned you take this advice at your own risk.
Hey, if you can’t see it’s getting colder, it must be getting warmer…

Jorge, I worked at GE for a while until the division I was at was sold when Neutron Jack came on board. We used the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) calibration standards for all instrumentation. It was done in a lab and we controlled the environment enough to get a high standard and low tolerance variance in the instuments. What analog thermomaters were calibrated. What was the benchmark. What if the lines on the thermomaters were wider in one area and not in the other. Were all the thermomaters calibrated to the bottle of cognac or what? You have no concept of what the scientific method is let alone replication to verify if it is indeed a fact or hypothesis. Confidence intervals in minipulated data groups don’t mean anything either because there was no standard then. Let alone 10 or 50 thousand years ago.

tonyb says:
February 14, 2011 at 9:17 am
Once again I must stress I do not subscribe to any conspiracy theory. The Met office data sets are in exactly the same place as I have always found them
What is interesting is to see the extremely gentle rise in temperatures which can be seen here from 1659
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
I think your valcualted trend and regression line is misleading. For example, the 1800-1900 LS trend is ~0.03 deg per century, i.e. virtually flat. Whereas the 1900-2000 LS trend is ~0.65 deg per century. There is more going on here than a gentle montonic rise from 1659. The rise accelerated considerably over the course of the 20th century.

I don’t know if it is politically intentioned – but I would say that the Met office website has certainly changed over the last few months…….IMHO. Perhaps this could be verified by web archiving sites (I don’t know about these things, but understand they exist?)

I clicked on the Met Office link above: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2010
I entered CET into search box and got 8 results, the first said:
Central England Temperature (CET)
Central England Temperature is representative of a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom, enclosed by Bristol, Lancashire and London. The monthly series begins in 1659, and is the longest available instrumental record of temperature in the world.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html
But not as live link, the live link is in the title.
Comes up:
Page not found
The page you requested does not exist. Here are some options to help you find where you want to go:
The first three options: Get your bearings on the Met Office homepage, Use our site map, Refer to our frequently asked questions, did not have any obvious path to CET and several links followed in dead ends for it, gave up.
The fourth option, Search for the page you’re looking for: I again put CET into box, got the same eight links as before, clicked on the first and came back to Page not found.
Fifth option is to: Email the service desk details of this broken link. If it is from somewhere else on our site, we can fix it.
I moved on to the sixth option: The page you requested may be available in the UK Goverment Web Archive. Check for the page you requested in the Web Archive.
Check for page etc., live link which took me to: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcet.html
Live link at the bottom of the page: >Further information and data for HadCET
– takes to new window: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
I haven’t tried all of the further 7 links from the search. David Parker and Tim Legg links both have a CET live link to above hadobs.metoffice, but the Layout 1 pdf, teachers downloads CC science poster – even after great magnification I couldn’t find any mention of CET.
No mention that Arrhenius wrote further, or that Mauna Loa is a volcano, or .. etc. What this needs is a real teacher’s correction on all the points made in it – quite useful for that, could be in an Advent calendar form, open the flap and get the real gen. Not as easy as that sounds, succinct rebuts to fit the space.
(As there’s a post on IR on WUWT front page) I notice that the Sun doesn’t send any to us.
Anyway, looks like it’s off the main Met Office site.

they should all be locked up but the gov’t has no money to do it so they are all very lucky

A google search for “central england temperature record” gives the correct page as the second result on the list.
Google these days is so good at finding things, and academic research institutions are generally so awful at writing functional web pages, that it is usually much quicker to find academic stuff via google than by going to a main page and trying to navigate links.

Chris in Hervey Bay wrote:
“As abhorrent as it sounds, we must take the fight up to the criminals now, both barrels, using their tactics.”
I disagree. I think that one can recognize the full extent of corruption one is up against, without yielding to similar corruption oneself. Steve McIntyre’s patient work provides a good model. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.

Surprise surprise. This is exactly what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) did a few months ago. A “revamp” of the website, and all of a sudden easy access to the map-clickable 100-year and 150-year temperature station series was buried under 4 layers of obscure directions. Of course the data is still there (they wouldnt dare destroy data would they???) but it is now difficult to find and difficult to analyse.
Combined with the revelations that some of the original temperature records in New Zealand were “lost” by NIWA, it makes you wonder when three closely connected government bodies, each charged with the collection, safe keeping and distribution of climate data, all do similar things at the same time?

I checked the CET links I used for my January 2011 postings. Indeed, both postings were based on the data found at http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat, which was the same Met link used for the 2010 postings at C3 that other commenters have mentioned.
2011 postings on CET are here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/01/are-modern-temp-changes-unprecedented-2010cet.html and http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/01/worlds-oldest-temperature-record-no-significant-warming-since-1995-cooling-instead.html
BTW, if any WUWT reader ever has need for a C3 graph/chart without the yellow text box or chart title just send me an email request (see banner at top of C3 home page for email address).
Jim @ C3

Ken Smith says:
February 14, 2011 at 4:58 pm
I disagree. I think that one can recognize the full extent of corruption one is up against, without yielding to similar corruption oneself. Steve McIntyre’s patient work provides a good model. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.
———————————————————————————————————–
Ken, it’s OK to disagree, though I’ll just point out a couple of things.
I do admire Steve McIntyre’s patient work and his gentle ways, I read all his posts and have done so for years. He does wonderful work but it is not well recognised outside the blogosphere. All his great work has not been recognised by the public at large. At the moment, he is just chipping away at a very, very large block.
As I said above the criminals, (and that’s what they are, are stealing, not only our money but eventually our life style) have got control of the media.
When the MSM have headlines that show, Steve McIntyre proves beyond doubt climate change is not man made, and news stating scientists are being arrested for fraud, and charged and locked up, I, then will believe that the sceptics have had an effective campaign against this fraud.
The way I see it, Steve makes terrific bullets but we have no one to fire them. The only thing we have is the blogosphere, and after 30 years it is shown to be no way as effective as the MSM.
How many times have you heard any politician say “Steve McIntyre said……” ?
Yes, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.
Also consider, they had the support of a large proportion of the population and support of some of the media outlets. They could afford to sit back and let others do the work where the rubber hits the road. By saying that, it should take no credibility away from their leadership.
We don’t even have a popular leader !
We have the troops, at least here in Australia we do. A recent news poll showed 89% to 11% against a “Carbon Tax”.
My point is still, unless we get organised, as those in Egypt did, the sceptics will succumb to this green, socialist cancer.

Tony says:
February 14, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Chris in Hervey Bay says:
The only thing we have is the blogosphere, and after 30 years it is shown to be no way as effective as the MSM.
I’m pretty sure the “blogosphere” hasn’t been around for 30 years
———————————————————————————————————
Quite right Tony, the blogosphere hasn’t been around 30 years.
While we “nit pick” our own writings, the whole climate change scam marches on.
In Australia, I can not see where the blogosphere has had any effect in countering the MSM or the thoughts of our politicians.
Every day on our TV news, we are bombarded with rubbish like the drought, the floods, the hot, the cold, dead coral, dead fish, the Barrier reef will be gone, sea side homes flooded by sea rise, the list goes on and on. So where did the blogosphere counter that ?
The government still carries along its merry way, we will have a carbon tax this year and the alternative government has said bugger all about it. So where did the blogosphere counter that ?
Tony, my whole point is, we are not organized.

HOMER: Gee, Lisa, looks like tomorrow, I’ll be shoveling 10 feet of global warming.
LISA: Global warming can cause weather at both extremes, hot and cold.
HOMER: I see. So you’re saying warming makes it colder. Well, aren’t you the queen of crazy land! Everything’s the opposite of everything

Transalted into Australian, the saying
“Never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple stupidity”
reads
“If there’s a cloice between a conspiracy and a cock-up, choose teh cock-up every time.”

To Chris in Hervey Bay .
Hi Chris, you have some true points. I myself have tried to make some little difference in the debate http://www.hidethedecline.eu but the impact of sinlge persons sometimes seems tiny, and thus not really motivating to keep up the effort.
Some kind of further organization perhaps is the answer. However, we do have a handful of effective webvoices like Watts, Joanne Nova etc. but its true: Medias are slow to follow sceptic views.
Its tricky to point out some kind of “leader” since this is science and a such would need scientific skills as well as a good politically clever person. However, perhaps this strategy of some kind of spokesman was succesful for alarmists using Al Gore. Like it or not but he really reached a lot of people.
Heartlans inst, SPPI we have some rather good basis though.
K.R. Frank

You guys are all a bunch of flat earthers with no knowledge of how the climate works. If you don’t understand it please don’t post.
REPLY: Gosh, he said “please”, well that make it OK then /sarc – Anthony

Speaking of tricks…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/data-corruption-at-giss/

From the Met Office site for the CET record, “Both series are now kept up to date by the Climate Data Monitoring section of the Hadley Centre, Met Office. Since 1974 the data have been adjusted to allow for urban warming.”
Adjustment, adjustment, my thermometer for an adjustment…
Thus is Man-made global warming explained in the later 3 decades of the 20th Century: and we know who that man is and where he works.

Not that this is related to the MET bury the long term CET. Yet, it seems Britains meteorological services has history of getting the forecast wrong.
New Scientist, June 3, 1971, “Curbing the Cost of Bad Weather”, has a write up on some of the big errors of the 50’s and 60’s.
Regards!