Readers may recall my story from April 6th where I asked:
What’s delaying UC sea level data from being updated?
As you can see in the graph above, the data has not been updated since mid 2010. I wrote then:
I sent a query from their web page asking why, and hope to hear back soon.
Actually I sent two email queries, one from the web page form, and one to this scientist, listed on the UC sealevel contact page
Dr. R. Steven Nerem
phone: 303.492.6721
fax: 303.492.2825
Over a week passed, hearing nothing. I decided to make a phone call today to Dr. Nerem. Here is what I learned.
First, I give the man points for answering his own phone, a true rarity these days in our voicemailed world.
I explained who I was, why I was calling, and that I had sent emails that had gone unanswered, and asked for an update.
His response was:
“We are updating our web page to a new design, and that is the reason for the delay.”
I replied with: “OK I understand, but the SL data hasn’t been updated since mid 2010, and people are asking questions about it.”
“Well we only update a couple times per year anyway. Sea level changes pretty slowly you know.”
I said: “Yes, but in looking at your previous release schedules, you would have been due for an update in February 2011, and that hasn’t happened. ”
To which he replied:
“This new website design won’t work with our current format, so if you can just be patient and wait a couple of weeks we’ll have it online.”
I thanked him for his time and ended the call.
So there you have it, the reason for a lack of update? Form before function.
Somehow, I don’t think anybody gives rat’s ass about how “prettied up” the web presentation of sea level data is. Just show us the data. I’ll take a table, CSV file, hell even a fax.
So in “couple of weeks” we’ll see if the wait for the new prettier web page was worth it. Somehow, I think it is going to end up looking a lot like this one with more web bling than substance:
Which ironically, has an even longer delayed update of sea level data:
I shall revisit this story in two weeks time, or upon a web page update of http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ whichever comes first.
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I’ll bet they’re getting shaken down by climate scare apparatchiks in DC telling them to either stop releasing raw scientific data that doesn’t support our hoax agenda or risk losing some grant money.
Thanks for keeping up the pressure Anthony. I quite like that graph and what it represents and am very curious to see what the most recent data looks like.
“… and am very curious to see what the most recent data looks like.”
So why not go and look at it?
The other reason things have gone quiet maybe an unprecedented swing in the Jason 2 calibration curve.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/calibration.php
I don’t know if they have published any findings on why it jumped by 10 mm at the end of 2009 but if it has skipped again maybe they are frantically trying to tidy things up before publishing data.
Nullius in Verba:
Excellent suggestion. I did exactly that.
First, I went to the Aviso web site and found the place where one can generate sea level graphs. I generated the “Reference” version (“Reference” products are computed with the T/P-Jason-1-Jason-2 serie for the time series and with merged datasets for the maps) with the options: inverted barometer, seasonal removed and without isostatic adjustment. I got a graph with some points and a line drawn through it (which I have also saved at this location.
Below the graph, it said
Since it appeared that the “data” was rather sparse and since I enjoy playing with numbers, I chose to download the data. I assume that you didn’t try this, because to my surprise, I got the message:
Must be a glitch, I thought! After a period of time with the same type of message appearing EVERY time that I tried to download data for a variety of variables, I got the idea that perhaps (as you suggested in an earlier comment) “somebody forgot to update it, or has been busy with other things, or the person who originally did it has left and nobody else was interested” at Aviso as well. must be a lot of that going around in the climate science community, right? 😉
Anyway, not to be defeated so easily, I managed to actually locate some updated results (into January 2011) at NOAA in NetCDF format. I drew what was purportedly the same graph from that data and got something that was quite different.
Let me explain it to you. What you saw in the graph at Aviso was “smoothed results from the data”, not the actual data itself. Furthermore, despite the fact that they obviously shared their data in the past (because they put links into their page for that purpose), they were not doing so for the past 24 hours that I have been accessing their site – maybe they sent it all out to be “cleaned”.
I have other graphs, but I will just show one more using all of the satellites. This one used real data, not the processed results chosen by Aviso and not even shared by them.
Nullius in Verba seems to be appropriate an appropriate description of your credibility: “don’t believe anything he says” … 😉
RomanM,
Thank you! Just the sort of comment I was after!
As you say, all of these series are processed in various ways – including, I’m sure, the UC data that this post is about. That’s why when I first raised it I noted that it would take an expert to say exactly what it was and what it meant.
You’ll also note that I suggested the Jason-1 plot rather than the merged product, as it looks closer to what we have in the UC graph. (I haven’t checked.)
Actually, I had already attempted to download the data and come across the error – they appear to have messed up their files. However, you can see from the Jason-1 and Jason-2 graphs well enough what the subsequent data does. It seemed that with everyone moaning about not knowing what was being hidden, the graph was sufficient to answer the question.
I am not clear on one point, though. Where you say “What you saw in the graph at Aviso”, which graph at Aviso are you talking about? The one I looked at and recommended? Or the one you plotted and saved?
“Nullius in Verba seems to be appropriate an appropriate description of your credibility”
Credibility about what? What is that all about?
I do, of course, include myself when it comes to my name, and claim no ‘credibility’ about anything. But I got the impression you thought I meant something specific…?
REPLY: This thread has been turned into a full post, see the main page of WUWT – Anthony
Nullius in Verba:
I may have misinterpreted your attitude when reading your comments. If so, I apologize for making the put-down comment.
I found the continuous repetition of the “why don’t you go look at the data” line a bit irritating (when I thought that you should probably be looking at it yourself if you were serious). Also, I understood your statement “It’s not important, anyway, it’s just some web-site filler for the kiddies to put in school projects. Something like that.” as a snide inference on the scientific character of the denizens of this blog.
Again, if I misread you, I’m sorry.
As I said above it was another attempt to hide the decline
Thanks. And that’s OK.
I admit I was getting vaguely irritated by the way everyone carried on as if no data was available long after I’d put the link up. I wouldn’t have minded if someone had said “that’s not the right data”, or “but we still want to see UC fix their graph”, but it was as if the post was invisible or something. Perhaps I was over-sensitive.
The comment about web-site filler for the kiddies was not meant as any sort of slight against the people here. But it is how I suspect some of these organisations see the data on their public web-sites. From their point of view, professionals will have privileged access direct from the source, academic-to-academic, so they can know exactly what’s been done to the data. They’re not likely to extract it from public-outreach web-sites or glossy brochures. (I certainly wouldn’t.) And since they don’t see it as anything very important, their data quality standards, metadata, and update frequency suffer as a result.
Scientific members of the public without those academic contacts don’t have the option, and have to use what’s available publicly. That the climate scientists are so neglectful of these resources is a criticism of them and a serious problem for the public examination of and confidence in the science, but unlike in Climategate, I don’t see evidence here that it is a deliberate attempt to mislead.
If I was going to try to do real science with this, I wouldn’t want any web-generated graphs of data, I’d expect to see far larger amounts of raw data, details of how it was put together, precise details of all the corrections applied, assumptions made, etc. Sea level being so difficult to measure – it has to be heavily processed and is therefore potentially subject to major misinterpretation. We know what happened when we started digging into the paleoproxy graphs – well, I suspect there’s just as much going on behind these charts. But I would no more attempt that sort of thing with the original UC graph/data than with these.
Thanks again for responding.
Expect an increase in the frequency of updates should the rate of sea level rise pick up.
It appears self evident the delay is because they are waiting until the data trends up before publishing. It would be a HUGE embarassment for a number of TOP climate scientists if sea levels were to show any sort of a downward trend. It would also mean a huge drop in their funding and cast LARGE DOUBTS over AGW. So, they will not publish while the trend is downwards. Instead the will redesign their web-site to HIDE THE DECLINE. Just another AGW fraud with scientists willingly participating. Nothing new to see. Move along.
After two decades of questionable obfuscation and presentation (or lack thereof) of negative data I am not willing to give climate scientists the benefit of the doubt or a pass on this delay of updates on what it made available for general public download.
I agree with previous sentiment that ALL raw data be made available along with whatever massaged data is released (and with all data manipulation fully explained and backed by code).
Anything less than full transparency is just more propaganda.
“this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” – Barack Obama June 2008, St. Paul, Minn. You gotta admit he called it.
Nice effort to get a straight answer. However when he stated that Sea level rises are very slow there was a perfect opening to at least put my fears aside and maybe others by stating that with all the alarms and bells and wistles going off in the warmist camp, some of us expected to be wading in salt water in our costal properties by now.