Scientific Robustness Of The University Of Alabama At Huntsville MSU Data
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
As a result of the persistent, but incorrect (often derogatory) blog posts and media reports on the robustness of the University of Alabama MSU temperature data, I want to summarize the history of this data analysis below. John Christy and Roy Spencer lead this climate research program.
The ad hominem presentations on this subject include those from the weblog Skeptical Science who have sections titled
Christy Crocks and Spencer Slip Ups
If this weblog intends, as they write, to contribute to
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
they certainly have failed in this effort, with respect to the outstanding research that Christy and Spencer have accomplished.
To summarize specifically the UAH MSU dataset, it has gone through about 9 revisions (A, B, C, D, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 – some listed in CCSP 1.1.) Two of the revisions involved changes Jim Wentz of RSS spotted, but the other seven were ones John Chrsity and Roy Spencer discovered (i.e. major ones like the spurious warming due to a change in the sensor when the satellite went in and out of sunlight).
Such corrections are what happens in the normal course of science when you are the first to build the data set and discover issues as time goes on, especially when a satellite goes through a calibration shift. Their data are publicly available and their methods published in a diverse range of peer-reviewed journals.
A example of their reporting on a correction and acknowledging who found it (in this case Jim Wentz) is written in the article
Christy, J. R. and R. W. Spencer, 2005: Correcting Temperature Data Sets. 11 November 2005: 972. Science. DOI:10.1126/science.310.5750.972
Text from their article includes [highlight added]
“We agree with C. Mears and F. J. Wentz (“The effect of diurnal correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature,” 2 Sept., p. 1548; published online 11 Aug.) that our University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) method of calculating a diurnal correction to our lower tropospheric (LT) temperature data (v5.1) introduced a spurious component. We are grateful that they spotted the error and have made the necessary adjustments. The new UAH LT trend (v5.2, December 1978 to July 2005) is +0.123 K/decade, or +0.035 K/decade warmer than v5.1. This adjustment is within our previously published error margin of ± 0.05 K/decade.”
I also reported on an independent check on the robustness of the UAH MSU analyses in my post
where I reported
In order to further examine the robustness of the Christy and Spencer analyses, in 2006 I asked Professor Ben Herman, who is an internationally well-respect expert in atmospheric remote sensing, to examine the Christy and Spencer UAH MSU and the Wentz and Mears RSS MSU data analyses. He worked with a student to do this and completed the following study
Randall, R. M., and B. M. Herman (2007), Using Limited Time Period Trends as a Means to Determine Attribution of Discrepancies in Microwave Sounding Unit Derived Tropospheric Temperature Time Series, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2007JD008864
which includes the finding that
“Comparison of MSU data with the reduced Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate radiosonde data set indicates that RSS’s method (use of climate model) of determining diurnal effects is likely overestimating the correction in the LT channel. Diurnal correction signatures still exist in the RSS LT time series and are likely affecting the long-term trend with a warm bias.”
The plot of the lower tropospheric temperature analysis, as obtained from the MSU data, for the RSS and UAH groups are shown below. The degree of correspondence between them is another check on the value of both data sets in assessing long-term variations in the global averaged lower tropospheric temperatures.
The bottom line conclusion is that the statements made by Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham, and Peter Gleick in
Opinion: The damaging impact of Roy Spencer’s science
that
Unfortunately this is not the first time the science conducted by Roy Spencer and colleagues has been found lacking. Spencer, a University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist, and his colleagues have a history of making serious technical errors in their effort to cast doubt on the seriousness of climate change. Their errors date to the mid-1990s, when their satellite temperature record reportedly showed the lower atmosphere was cooling. As obvious and serious errors in that analysis were made public, Spencer and Christy were forced to revise their work several times and, not surprisingly, their findings agree better with those of other scientists around the world…
are grossly incorrect and a retraction and a correction by Trenberth, Abraham and Gleick is appropriate. Similarly, weblogs such as Skeptical Science, if they want to move the debate on the climate issues forward, need to move towards a more constructive approach.
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I’d like to add this from Dr. John Christy, from a comment he left on WUWT in this thread. – Anthony
Some clarifications are needed. The orbital decay effect was discovered by Wentz around 1997 which induced a spurious cooling effect on one of our microwave satellite products (lower troposphere) but not the others. However, most people forget that at the same time Roy and I discovered an “instrument body effect” in which the observed Earth-view temperature is affected by the temperature of the instrument itself, leading to spurious warming (Christy et al. 1998, 2000). This effect counteracted about 75 percent of the orbital decay cooling effect – so the net effect of the two together was almost a wash (a point rarely acknowledged.)
In 2005, Wentz and Mears discovered an error in the equation we used for the diurnal correction in one of our products (again, lower troposphere) which we quickly corrected and then published a “thank you” to Wentz and Mears in Science for their cleverness in spotting the error with an update on what the magnitude of the error was. Again, the magnitude of this error was small, being well within our previously published error estimates for the global trend. (Note that we were first to discover the diurnal drift problem back in the 1990s and initiated various corrections for it through the years.)
Roy and I were the first to build climate-type global temperature datasets from satellite microwave sensors, so we learned as we went – and were aided by others who read our papers and checked our methods. My latest papers continue to investigate error issues of our products and of the products of others.
The review of my one publication in Remote Sensing last year was done quite professionally and it was clear to me and my co-authors that the referees chosen to review the paper were specifically knowledgeable of the various satellite, radiosonde and statistical issues, leading to some substantial and useful revisions.
Kevin Trenberth was my MS and PhD graduate adviser at Univ. of Illinois.
Dr Pielke:
Thankyou for your article. It is a required read for all who have been exposed to the attacks (n.b. attacks and not criticisms) on the work of Spencer and Christy.
Richard
John Cook is funded by the Australian Government (through his Uni) to work the site and push the CAGW message that the Govt is trying desperately to push at the moment. All so they can introduce their carbon “tax on everything”.
He even recently won an “award” at the Eureka’s for “promoting the message of man made climate change”. An obvious award created for him, to try to validate his site and him.
He’s not a true scientist as all he does is regurgitate anything that promotes this catastrophic message.
jason says: “I have tried to debate with cook via twitter after he attacked me for a tweet I made. He went quiet when I tried to discuss ENSO.”
There’s a reason for that. They don’t understand ENSO.
M.A.Vukcevic says: “Some data are more robust then others. This graph shows an unusual configuration within one of the top five temperature data sets used by the climate scientists in their calculations, predictions and computer models. I wander do they know of this little curiosity and if they do, what they make of it.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Data.htm”
The website address you provided as the source of the data on your graph…
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/monthly
…does not work. What is it you’re illustrating?
RE Spencer and Christy being pioneers and noted by Tallbloke September 12, 2011 at 3:07 pm, I am reminded of the old story about how you indentify the pioneers. They are the ones with the arrows in their backs. Fortunately,S and C and their colleagues are well armed and are able to fend off the outrageous slings and arrows of SS’s TAG team.
An interesting article in view of Richard Black’s recent distasteful caption …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/aug/25/solar-physicist-religion
Dr.Pielke Sr. wrote (in part, referring to the named scientist’s criticism of Drs Spencer and Christy);
“are grossly incorrect and a retraction and a correction by Trenberth, Abraham and Gleick is appropriate.”
IMHO this is totally correct.
In the engineering field (often dismissed by scientists, at their peril I will add) Dr. Trenberth’s “It’s a travesty that our data does not match our theory” (Paraphrased by this author) is the engineering equivalent of “It’s a travesty that our airplane did not remain airborne, we must re-engineer the plane until it remains airborne as the CONSENSUS MODELS CLEARLY predict it will”.
Cheers, Kevin.
Paul says: September 12, 2011 at 5:27 pm
This has been my experience, as well. But it occurs to me that perhaps this may be the root of the alarmists’ antipathy and their reliance on faulty “revisionist” reconstructions: they suffer from an extreme (if not terminal) case of “communication envy” 😉
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.:
Please promise me, that you will never send me to such a site AGAIN. These are the type of people, whose ideological ends, justify any means. They risk losing important science because it contradicts their invested hypothesis. Worse it can lead innocents down the road of error to greenville, home of the gaia religion, where they will become zombified dupes. You should have at least posted a warning:
An important story implicit in the extreme scrutiny and search for errors directed to the smallest details of the UAH satellite tropospheric temperature measurements, is the glaring lack of any such scrutiny by the same scientists, but directed at the global surface air temperature record. Whatever GISS and CRU publish is widely taken as the equivalent of revealed knowledge and accepted virtually without criticism. But the potential for errors in the surface air temperature record is enormously greater than exists in the satellite record.
The difference with which the two data sets are treated, in a context where only one of them has shown a pronounced warming trend, is all one really needs to understand the credibility of AGW-driven modern climate science.
From Skeptical Science:
Comments Policy
The main purpose of the discussion threads is that we all develop a greater understanding of the science. To that end, the following rules must be followed when posting comments:
No accusations of deception. Any accusations of deception, fraud, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted. This applies to both sides. Stick to the science. You may criticise a person’s methods but not their motives.
No ad hominem attacks. Attacking other users or anyone holding a different opinion to you is common in debates but gets us no closer to understanding the science. For example, comments containing the words ‘religion’ and ‘conspiracy’ tend to get deleted. Comments using labels like ‘alarmist’ and ‘denier’ are usually skating on thin ice.
No politics. Rants about politics, ideology or one world governments will be deleted.
No profanity or inflammatory tone. Again, constructive discussion is difficult when overheated rhetoric or profanity is flying around…
Now two comments from 8 September 2011 which are the very mild end of the spectrum:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/dessler-2011-rebuttal-revisions.html
I suspect that there is a personality type — or perhaps mental aberration? — that succumbs to Dunning-Kruger and it would be interesting for someone with psychiatric qualifications to define exactly what the characteristics are. I suspect it lies behind quite a few people in climate denial who clearly think they understand the science better than the acknowledged experts. >/i>
Moreover:
It would most closely be identified with narcissistic personality, where an individual has an exceedingly inflated self-opinion that cannot be substantiated by the evidence. The person instead seeks to create and perpetuate assorted rationalizations justifying their grandiosity, while minimizing the conclusions one would arrive at with more objective measures
I have commented on a number of occasions on Skeptical Science about its failure to observe its own comments policy only to be told very patiently that after all I need to understand that dealing with denialists (yes, the word frequently appears) is just so frustrating that I should excuse folks’ resort to slightly intemperate language.
I picked these two examples simply because as a psychiatrist, I find attempts at discrediting people you disagree with via faux diagnostic labels offensive in the extreme. I’ve long given up on Skeptical Science and its solipsistic mutual self adulation.
Pat Frank-Indeed. Revisions to the surface temperature record have generally been done more quietly than those of the satellite data, the latter announced proudly by many wishing to claim triumph that they have “fixed” these sinfully “wrong” data. But in fact revisions have been made to the surface temperature record over time, that have also had the net effect of increasing warming (see Michaels’ and Balling’s Climate of Extremes which shows the data) without the fanfare that they had discovered an error in their calculations or what have you. They perhaps wanted to avoid being scrutinized on their continual claims of additional warming they have “found”? I dunno, but I do find it striking that to the extent they do “scrutinize” the surface record, it always seems to be that they “scrutinize” it for some cooling bias. They exercised similar, louder scrutiny, but much tougher on the whole, on the satellite data. What they do with their own, surface data might be less called “scrutiny” and more “confirmation bias”.
After about 2 years of posting at the ‘Skeptical Science’ website, I have just re-inforced my view held from the beginning, that the site is not being fair with the data.
It’s very easy to hear a about different data/opinion/criticism, search around for a paper which says what one wants to say, and then dismiss such criticism, when in specific cases there is ambiguity in making any conclusions. Do this for long enough and one loses touch with the data and reality. One simply believes ones own repressions of ambiguities and uncertainities. The sites’ list of 100+plus arguments supporting strong AGW and refuting criticism is not a real reflection of the data.
On my very first post there, it was obvious that online replies to skeptical posts were not being either rational or fair. This lack of rationalism in science is what is alarming. It also saddens me that the site won a Eureka prize, although the prize guidelines actually state that one has to be ‘doing something about climate change’ to begin with, which somewhat pre-empts the science.
It would be nice to live in a world where all the arguments fall neatly on one side, and the rest is all wrong, but that is an arranged reality, not science.
I must have made it. Skeptical Science has provided a link to my little blog on ‘final nails’ etc and a few came over today to have a look. They would have been disappointed, they were directed to the real science of Lindzen and Choi 2011, S & B 2011, the CERN experiment and a whole lot of others.
chris1958 says:
September 12, 2011 at 8:35 pm
From Skeptical Science:
…
I picked these two examples simply because as a psychiatrist, I find attempts at discrediting people you disagree with via faux diagnostic labels offensive in the extreme. I’ve long given up on Skeptical Science and its solipsistic mutual self adulation.
Thanks for that Chris. I suffered exactly that attack and then censorship when I responded on SkS, as documented here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/cooking-the-books-snip-snip-go-the-censors-scissors/
How many times have Dr Hansen and colleagues issued adjustments to their data? Perhaps Christy and Spencer’s mistake has been their frank use of “corrections” instead of PC-certified “adjustments”.
Brian H says:
September 12, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Gareth;
I was four-square with you, till you used “who’s” instead of “whose”. Where are your intellectual standards, sir?
😉
;p
I stand corrected Sir and am grateful for your grammatical insights. 🙂
Skeptical Science is a double oxymoron. Perry mentioned Galileo the other day: well, some time ago I defined SS as the return of the Aristotelians because of its unbending effort to defend AGW orthodoxy, in a neverending rationalization away from physical reality (like Gleick’s idiotic “data must agree with the models” statement).
SS is a Climate Protection Squadron only good for jokes about Godwin’s Law :)) and attractive mostly to journalists unfamiliar with the scientific process. It looks good to the ignoramuses, like a Milli Vanilli of global warming.
John Whitman says
R. Gates, are you OK with this idea of anti-cloning?>>>
Pain, oh the pain, laughing so hard…. can’t breath… sides hurt…might black ou
Ah THIS Cook ….
See : http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/trf-prediction-came-true-john-cook-won.html
Why should one be surprised that SS uses ad-hominems and is otherwise unpleasant and arrogant ?
Bob Tisdale says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:52 pm
………….
Hi Bob
Re: Some data are more robust then others
The link is truncated. I was comparing two sets of very important temperature data, found strange correlation ( R^2) turnaround in 1936 from ~0.02 to 0.69, within space of couple of years (looking at the monthly numbers). This is highly unusual so I did a test which I often do for a correlation double take, and got the graph:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Data.htm
Looking further into it, I found that one data set was ‘corrected’ with reasons given. Once everything is double checked, and numbers in the NOAA data link confirmed from elsewhere, I will put full info on my website.
One might suspect this thread is engaged in a ‘looking-glass’ war with SS…
If it wasn’t for the total abscence of insults and adhoms from the posters at WUWT!
I am sure that the reputation that Spencer and Christy have for serial errors that favor their ideological preferences, is entierly undeserved….
When you can’t attack a scientist’s science and prove him wrong the only thing left is to attack the integrity and sub-simian origins of the scientist himself. It’s 2011, and “Caveman Rules” still rule. Life’s a beach. Always different. Always the same.
No doubt Al Gore will reveal their secret funding sources. Big Oil, perhaps? The Illuminati, the Freemasons, Scientologists and the Rothschilds are also involved, no doubt.
After all, everyone knows the Team has no ideology and aren’t advocating anything. Gore just wants to the science to get a fair hearing, right? So far, the vast skeptical conspiracy has kept his message from being heard.
BTW: I’m being sarcastic (duh). And for somebody complaining about insults and adhoms, you just tossed a few yourself.
Pat Frank says:
September 12, 2011 at 7:59 pm
An important story implicit in the extreme scrutiny and search for errors directed to the smallest details of the UAH satellite tropospheric temperature measurements, is the glaring lack of any such scrutiny by the same scientists, but directed at the global surface air temperature record. Whatever GISS and CRU publish is widely taken as the equivalent of revealed knowledge and accepted virtually without criticism. But the potential for errors in the surface air temperature record is enormously greater than exists in the satellite record.
The difference with which the two data sets are treated, in a context where only one of them has shown a pronounced warming trend, is all one really needs to understand the credibility of AGW-driven modern climate science.
True dat.