From FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
In order to gain a better knowledge of climate variations, such as those caused by global warming, and be able to tackle them, we need to understand what happened in the recent past. This is the conclusion of a research study led by the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), which shows that the scientific community today is only able to access and analyse 20% of the recorded climate information held. The remaining data are not accessible in digital format.
Some climate data in Europe go back to the 17th Century, but “not even 20% of the information recorded in the past is available to the scientific community”, Manola Brunet, lead author of the study and a researcher at the URV’s Centre for Climate Change, tells SINC.
This situation is even worse in continents such as Africa and South America, where weather observations did not begin until the middle of the 19th Century. These are the results of a study published in Climate Research, which highlights the need to urgently recover all the information recorded in perishable formats.
“Failure to decipher the messages in the climate records of the past will result in socioeconomic problems, because we will be unable to deal with the current and future impacts of climate change and a hotter world”, says Brunet.
Spain, along with the USA, Canada, Holland and Norway, is one of a small number of countries which allows partial access to its historic climate data. The rest of the world does not make these data available to the scientific community or the general public, despite recommendations to this effect by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In order to overcome the political and legal hurdles posed by this currently poor access, “governments should adopt a resolution within the United Nations on opening up their historical climate data”, the researcher suggests.
Predicting heat waves
Weather services in all countries are faced with the overwhelming job of converting all their paper-based historical climate information, which is stored in archives, libraries and research centres, into digital format. The wide range of forms in which the information is held makes access harder, as do the purposes for which the meteorological service itself was actually created.
“The main objective is to provide a weather service to public, who want to know what the weather will be like the next day”, explains Brunet. This has led to climate science (which studies the range of atmospheric conditions characterising a region rather than focusing on weather forecasting) becoming the great ‘victim’, receiving fewer funds with which to digitise, develop and standardise data.
However, climate services do play a significant role in some European countries, the United States and Canada. It was these services that were able to explain last summer’s heat wave in Eastern Europe and put it into context, as well as the high temperatures recorded on the Old Continent in 2003.
“If we had access to all the historical data recorded, we would be able to evaluate the frequency with which these phenomena are likely to occur in the future with a higher degree of certainty”, the expert explains.
This kind of information is of scientific, social and economic interest, with insurance companies setting their premiums according to expected climate changes, for example. City councils and governments also “want to understand climate conditions and how these will change in future in order to improve land zoning and prevent urban development from taking place in areas likely to be affected by flooding”, concludes Brunet.
References:
Manola Brunet, Phil Jones. “Data rescue initiatives: bringing historical climate data into the 21st century”, Climate Research 47, 29-40, 2011. DOI: 10.3354/cr00960.
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So, here are the numbers voor Holland: http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/antieke_wrn/index.html . I guess they represent those 20% of world climate data that are ‘disclosed’.
http://clima-virtual-vs-real.blogspot.com/2011/07/ny-times-finds-truth-abusive-for-its.html
Perhaps these data are not available in digital format, but they have persisted for hundreds of years, and they are the original data, and can be verified to be original. What will be the state of data, collected today, 300 years from now? How much will persist? How can it be verified as original and unmodified? We seem to have trouble with that issue already as part of Climategate. Where are the original data?
Really, getting to the core of it aren’t the surface records highly incomplete regardless? Climate is complex and dependency of surface temp records is the first clue it is largely junk science as a form.
We would have trouble today getting close to measuring an “average temperture” and then that being the only measure of “climate” is another stretch. Temps are the first of many narratives that warmists grabbed early on, climate “equilibrium” is another as if it were constant without co2 input. Truely laughable but consider the consequences we have suffered.
The desire to digitize all the records appears biased from the beginning, in that the assumption is being made, based on how I am reading the above post, that it will be anthropogenically warmer and wetter in the future. The desire to digitize world records should be blind to the premise any one entity wishes to demonstrate. However, our current crop of published climate scientists are by and large, not blind at all and seek only to prove their preconceived premise. It is any wonder many countries are so reluctant?
Snip . . OT indeed, but interesting. Please repost to Tips & Notes . . Thanks kb
So is that why the BEST project is taking so long??????
Seems to me some people who’ve done a lot of genealogical work and are looking for a new challenge could do a very useful citizens science project. From scans of the source data sheets to databases of weather data, volunteers could do a better job quicker than waiting for some gov’t funded project.
No, I don’t have time….
“If we had access to all the historical data recorded, we would be able to evaluate the frequency with which these phenomena are likely to occur in the future with a higher degree of certainty”, the expert explains.”
We don’t need hositoric data for that. In fact, we don’t need any data for that. We have models.
/sarc
My understanding was the BEST project would not be ready until Aug or Sept 2011
“governments should adopt a resolution within the United Nations on opening up their historical climate data”
While I have nothing against open access to climate data, the call for action through the United Nations smacks of world government to me. :/
Well, if the 80% are not yet “computer buggered” there is some hope we can recover some un-tainted un-adjusted un-homogenized un-manipulated raw data…
Co-author Phil Jones? Surely that’s not our Phil from UEA? Our Phil wouldn’t be admitting that the historical data is junk, and so we can have no long term view of global temperature, so any assertions that modern times are unduly warm, all because of the beastliness of mankind, are non-sensical, would he? So who is this Phil Jones?
Anyway I think the authors are being optimistic. In the 1850s, how many educated, leisured Columbian gentlemen were able to import expensive and sophisticated equipment, operate it properly, regularly taking readings; and did the civil service exist, to whom, through the world class Columbian Post Office, they could regularly send their data, and did that civil service have the archiving capabilities such that that perfect data is seamlessly preserved to this very day? And as for Africa, well, when since 1960 has the Congo not been at war? How might the records have survived in that environment, and regular updates be made? Oh, OK, we can have a long term global temperature and its perfectly valid without anything much worthwhile from South America and pretty much all Africa; oh and all Soviet Union records 1920-1990 can’t be trusted; nor anything from China since 1949; nor Russia and East Europe post 1990……but we can still make policy, yes?
data such as this should be gathered and collected by an independent group that does no modification of or research with the raw data … then and only then when it is available to anyone who wishes to study it can any real science be done …
this could be the one thing the UN would be best positioned to handle but I would have concerns about their ability to resist fudging …
E.M.Smith says:
July 20, 2011 at 8:46 am
Did you mean ‘buggered’ like this:
Notice: NCDC is working toward restoring access to the full period of record for all IPS documents as quickly as possible. Full access is not expected until mid-summer (July). We apologize for any inconvenience.
Which has been going on for months. They can’t be working hard on it, that would require a tech or two to go get the data from the backup server. Oh, the pain of it all. Oh, bother!
Ric Werme says:
July 20, 2011 at 8:21 am
Seems to me some people who’ve done a lot of genealogical work and are looking for a new challenge could do a very useful citizens science project. From scans of the source data sheets to databases of weather data, volunteers could do a better job quicker than waiting for some gov’t funded project.
The Old Weather project is a start at this, I think: crowdsourced digitisation of Royal Navy WW1 temperature records. Agreed it would be nice if it could be extended more widely, I’m not sure of any other similar initiatives.
http://www.oldweather.org/
“Well, if the 80% are not yet “computer buggered” there is some hope we can recover some un-tainted un-adjusted un-homogenized un-manipulated raw data…”
Agreed, because the other 20% is U.N.-tainted U.N.-adjusted U.N.-homogenized U.N.-manipulated raw data…
A fool’s errand to be sure. If we had all of the data in proper format, one would still not know the quality of the data from hundreds of years ago or even from 50 years ago. So ASSUME it is good data. Then what? Multiple regression analysis? What is the dependent variable? How does one project into the future the independent variables in order to predict the dependent variable? Time series? That assumes everything that happened in the past will repeat itself in a similar fashion.
The climate is chaotic with innumerable unpredictable causal variables which are not predictable even for tomorrow let alone for hundreds of years. Many of these variables are significantly inter-correlated making the task even more ponderous.
As a “climate skeptic” one would be wise to be skeptical of any climate predictions as they are doomed to failure. The climate is always changing and will continue to do so, maybe. The degree of change is what is most unpredictable as well as the timing.
Wonder if the hockey stick came about because mann used the “heat index” for the upward swing and real temps for earlier Values?
I think it is indeed a worthwhile effort to get more of the old weather observations keyed into online databases. There is a project here in the US that is quite interesting, to look at data from US forts and Smithsonian records from the 19th century. Lots of weather and climate information to be had. Of course the difficulty with many of these records is how homogenous and reliable they are in the past. There is quite a lot of information, though, which we must make use of to advance our understanding of weather and climate. One of the preliminary findings of these efforts is that the US experienced more hot and cold extremes and more precipitation extremes at various times in the 19th century than observed in the twentieth, suggesting perhaps that our climate has become milder. If that’s humanity’s “fault” then we should give ourselves a big pat on the back!
My site here
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
contains scores of instrumental temperature records and also diary observations.
tonyb
“Failure to decipher the messages in the climate records of the past will result in socioeconomic problems, because we will be unable to deal with the current and future impacts of climate change and a hotter world”, says Brunet.
Yes, of course! How can our Global Climate Model computers give accurate predictions of the future if we only have access to 20% of past data?
Translation: we need more money. /sarc
In general there is no particular reason older reading are poorer than current readings. You need to look at the meta data – to see who did what where. Given a choice between a hobbiest who mesured in his garden every day for 30 years using simple a max min thermometer or a high tech equipment next to an expanding airport, I would tend to favour the old method. When you see “raw data” online, it is monthly. Temp is not measured monthly. Climate folks just do not seem to get the idea, we want to see the data as it was measured. You can adjust afterwards, but product is only valid if you can trace it back to what you saw first and can justify how you bend it afterwards. So going after written records and putting onlne them under a freeware license outside University or climate scientists “IP ownership”, is highly desirable.
“not even 20% of the information recorded in the past is available to the scientific community”
Good, that way they can’t go back and change the historical data.
Hmm. Its summer in Chicago. and I cannot tell you what the weather will be like next week. I can however tell you that December in Chicago will be colder than July.
“climate” is what we can say about locations over long periods of time. Those predictions are never perfect but they are useful. Climate is predictable. Weather may very well be chaotic. But, you plan for winters in Chicago. Why?