GHCN Temperature Adjustments Affect 40% Of The Arctic
By Paul Homewood
Before After
There has been much discussion recently about temperature adjustments made by GHCN in Iceland and Greenland, which have had the effect of reducing historic temperature levels, thereby creating an artificial warming trend. These can easily be checked at the GISS website, where both the old and new datasets can be viewed as graph and table data, here and here.
It has now been identified that similar adjustments have been made at nearly every station close to the Arctic Circle, between Greenland and, going East,via Norway to Siberia, i.e 56 Degrees West to 86 Degrees East, about 40% of the circumference.
So it is perhaps time to recap where we are now.
Background
The NCDC has produced the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), a dataset of monthly mean temperatures, since the 1990’s. Version 2 was introduced in 1997 and included “Methods for removing inhomogeneities from the data record associated with non-climatic influences such as changes in instrumentation, station environment, and observing practices that occur over time “. The GHCN datasets are used by both GISS and HADCRUT for calculation of global temperatures, as well as NCDC themselves.
In May 2011, NCDC brought out Version 3, which “enhanced the overall quality of the dataset”, but made little difference in overall terms. However, only two months later in July, a Google Summer Student, a graduate called Daniel Rothenberg, was brought in to convert some of the GHCN software and make modifications to “correct software coding errors”. The result was Version 3.1, which went live in November 2011. (The full technical report is here).
It is this latest version that has thrown up the Arctic adjustments we are now seeing.
Until December, GISS used Version 2 unadjusted temperatures. Since then, they have changed to using Version 3.1 adjusted temperatures.
Basis of Homogeneity Adjustments
It is worth taking time to be clear why temperature adjustments are made (or should be). As far as GHCN are concerned, they explain their logic thus :-
Surface weather stations are frequently subject to minor relocations throughout their history of operation. Observing stations may also undergo changes in instrumentation as measurement technology evolves. Furthermore, observing practices may vary through time, and the land use/land cover in the vicinity of an observing site can be altered by either natural or man-made causes. Any such modifications to the circumstances behind temperature measurements have the potential to alter a thermometer’s microclimate exposure characteristics or otherwise change the bias of measurements relative to those taken under previous circumstances. The manifestation of such changes is often an abrupt shift in the mean level of temperature readings that is unrelated to true climate variations and trends. Ultimately, these artifacts (also known as inhomogeneities) confound attempts to quantify climate variability and change because the magnitude of the artifact can be as large as or larger than the true background climate signal. The process of removing the impact of non-climatic changes in climate series is called homogenization, an essential but sometimes overlooked component of climate analysis.
It is quite clear. Their algorithms should look for abrupt changes that are not reflected at nearby stations. It has nothing to do with “averaging out regional temperatures” as is sometimes claimed.
GISS also make homogeneity adjustments, but for totally different reasons. In their case, it is to make an allowance for the Urban Heat Island Effect (which is not spotted by GHCN because it is a slow change).
Effect of The Adjustments
Appendix A lists every current GHCN station with records back to 1940,that lie between Greenland, at a latitude of 56 W, around to a point about midway across Siberia at 86 E and which are situated close to the Arctic Circle. The table shows the adjustment made by GHCN for 1940 data. Out of 26 stations, the adjustment has reduced actual temperatures in 23 cases, many substantially. In contrast, 2 remain unchanged and only one has a positive adjustment (and this is insignificant). As a crude average, the adjustment works out at a reduction of 0.70 C.
These adjustments typically extend back to the beginning of the station records (though Reykjavik is an exception) and most continue at the same level till about 1970. ( Some of the Russian stations last longer – e.g. Ostrov Dikson’s disappears in 2009).
By 2011, however, the adjustments disappear at ALL of these sites. In other words, an artificial warming trend has been manufactured.
It is worth spelling out two points :-
1) Within this arc of longitude, there are no other stations within the Arctic Circle.
2) With the exception of Lerwick and Vestmanneyja, I can find no stations, in the region, below a latitude of 64 North with similar adjustments. Why is 64 North significant? GISS produce zonal temperature data, and their “Arctic” zone goes from 64 North to the Pole. Coincidence?
Is there any justification for adjusting?
Trausti Jonsson, a senior climatologist at the Iceland Met Office, has already confirmed that he sees no reason for the adjustments in Iceland and that they themselves have already made any adjustments necessary due to station moves etc before sending the data onto GHCN.
Clearly the fact that nearly every station in the region has been adjusted disproves the idea that these sites are outliers, which give biased results not supported by nearby stations.
GHCN were asked in January to investigate this issue and so far have failed to come up with any explanation. Unless they can do this, the assumption must be that the adjustments have been created by faulty software.
Discussion
In global terms, these few stations make no tangible difference to overall temperatures. However, they do make a significant difference to temperatures in the Arctic, which are derived from a small number of stations such as these and then projected over hundreds of miles.
Across much of the Arctic, temperatures were as high in the years around 1940 as they are now. History should not be revised at the whims of an algorithm.
What should happen next? In my view, GHCN should immediately revert to Version 3.0 until the matter is properly investigated and any issues resolved. They maybe just need to put Version 3.1 down as a bad experience and start from scratch again. I believe they also need to seriously review their Quality Control procedures and question how these anomalies were allowed to arise without being flagged up.
It should not be up to independent observers to have to do this.
References
1) GISS still archive the Version 2.0 data here. (Also GISS, following requests by me and others, have included a link to Version 2.0 on their main site).
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v2/
2) And can be compared with Version 3.1 here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
3) The adjustments can also be seen in graph format at GHCN here. (The station numbers can be obtained at GISS)
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/products/stnplots/
Footnote
I originally set this table up yesterday, 9th March. Today I noticed a few had changed slightly, presumably at the monthly update, so have amended them. It appears GHCN are still fiddling with their algorithms as the same thing occurred last month.
12 March: The Australian: Graham Lloyd: Climate outpost of Cape Grim a breath of fresh air in carbon debate
The public interest is a far cry from the days in the early 1970s when a team of young CSIRO scientists towed a caravan to Cape Grim, a windy outpost on a hill straddling Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean in Tasmania, to establish what has arguably become the world’s most important weather station…
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO will release their updated climate summary based on a review of the latest climate change data from stations including Cape Grim…
It ensures the weather station receives the purest air possible after it has spent a week circulating and blending over the great Southern Ocean sink. Cape Grim’s readings provide the benchmark for measuring the level of carbon dioxide in the southern hemisphere’s atmosphere. A similar station in Hawaii does the same for the northern hemisphere but Cape Grim, Cleland says, can lay claim to the cleanest air in the world.
CSIRO chief research scientist Paul Fraser was one of the Cape Grim pioneers who would spend a week at a time in extreme conditions to take samples of the air. He says Australia’s involvement came about because of a spur-of-the-moment decision by the Australian delegation at the 1972 Stockholm Convention.
“Australia put its hand up and said it would build one and later tried to get out of it,” Fraser said…
Air from the top of the tower is fed into a series of instruments, including an unassuming electronic box in the centre of the main Cape Grim laboratory. The box has a screen, measuring about 23cm across, with a real-time read-out of the atmosphere’s CO2 reading.
This week it was 387.19 parts per million.
According to Cleland, the standard base line is 388ppm, which is up from 330ppm when the Cape Grim station was first opened, and 275 that had remained constant for 2000 years until the start of the industrial revolution…
And it is today helping to answer one of the great mysteries of climate change science: what makes clouds form.
Melita Keywood, senior research scientist, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, says clouds are one of the hardest things to simulate in climate models.
“There has always been a big discussion about how important aerosols are,” she says. “But only in the past four or five years have the aerosol teams and the cloud teams been working together to try to understand cloud-aerosol interactions, which is one of the biggest uncertainties.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-outpost-of-cape-grim-a-breath-of-fresh-air-in-carbon-debate/story-e6frg6xf-1226296512907
They have been changing the adjustment every month. With every passing month than make older temperatures colder. It’s often just a tiny amount each month but it adds up. This graph shows the total CHANGE in NCDC database temperatures since May 2008. You can see that older temperatures have been adjusted colder, modern temperatures adjusted warmer.
http://climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20MaturityDiagramSince20080517.gif
Another interesting graph from climate4you that shows adjustments for one recent (Jan 2000) and one older (Jan 1915) date. Notice how those two dates diverge in temperature over time.
http://climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20Jan1915%20and%20Jan2000.gif
How can people who perpetrate such manipulations to data get away with this form of scientific fraud? It’s criminal fraud once they have received any monies based upon these fraudulent fabricated manipulated data. I’d say a full prosecution is in order with little bared rooms for Hansen et al. and anyone else involved.
The staff at GISS should be glad they chose science instead of business.
In the accounting world, restatements to income are rare, but when they do happen they are accompanied by very detailed explanations of exactly what changed and why.
“Yes, the accounting department installed some new accounting software to make the depreciation expenses for accurate. Yes, I suppose it doubled net income reported for the last 50 years. Why do you ask?”
steven mosher says:
March 11, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Focusing on GISS is a waste of time.
In the graphs below, there are 4 slopes from December 1978 when the satellites started. Without looking, do you care to guess which one is GISS?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978.9/trend/offset:0.31/plot/rss/from:1978.9/trend/offset:0.22/plot/gistemp/from:1978.9/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1978.9/trend/offset:0.08
Barry Brill says
Relocations, and changes in instrumentation, land use, or observing practices are totally random events, especially when spread over several countries and decades
———-
This would represent a pretty major assumption of dubious value unless proven.
Hypothetically lets say a meteorologist publishes a paper describing a new more accurate measurement practice. For example every site is issued with more accurate thermometer and observers are now required to record the value with proper rounding instead of truncating down to the nearest degree.
This is noticed around the world in a month and used to update station practices over 2 years. The result is an instant world wide discontinuity in temperatures.
Conclusion: it’s not hard to imagine scenarios where biases are added or removed over large areas on short timescales.
It’s the same chicanery, just a different day, from the Mann Made global Warming Team….
I can’t say exactly why, but these repeated diversions from the truth and the repeated evasions of any responsibility for the same remind me of Charles Durning’s unrivaled charicature of the same kind of double talk and deceit!
‘Dance A Little Side Step’ – Best Little Whore House In Texas 1982
http://youtu.be/NJG75FJkjr8
steven mosher says:
March 11, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Finally, GISS is old hat. The better methods do no ad hoc adjusting. And their answer comes out the same.
I’ve used unadjusted GHCN and adjusted GHCN. v2, v3, v3.1
The warming doesnt disappear. It CANNOT. if it disappeared, then UHA would be wrong as well.
————————————————–
The warming since 1979 is not really of interest.
However, it is interesting to know, if the Arctic has been warming since the last cyclical high in the 1940s, as this is the only of 3 climate model hotspots purported to have shown some warming since then.
Without warming, sea ice would be a non issue as well and I really don’t know whatever data would then be left to scare school children and politicians.
I would not be surprised to learn that their algorithm has a tendency to remove variations around the trend. It would explain why it seems to remove the colder period of the 1970s and the warmer period of the 1940s.
Paul Homewood says:
“GHCN were asked in January to investigate this issue and have so far failed to come up with any explanation. Unless they can do this, the assumtion must be made that the adjustments have been created by faulty software.”
“Faulty software”???
With the best of intent human affairs are rent by imperfect knowledge, random mistakes and unconcious individual biases born of our common frailties, These things can invariably be recognised because of their random and countervailing nature as innocent products of the human condition.
However when one is confronted with results which can only be founded upon the joint imput of numerous individuals making the same mutually supporting mistakes, the same absence or ommissions of data and the same ommissions to communicate with the primary sources of data, then one knows that the lack of randomness, the consistency is a fabrcation of deliberate intent.
Even legal precedents of criminal conspiracies recognise that simple reality.
Nice for a first pick comparison here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=501945780000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=501945780000&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Though in reality the nearby Southport adjustment actually moved early temperatures slightly up in version 3.1 the adjustment of the site above would be hard to justify to that level. Another long term trend in Amberley Aero was massively adjusted with at least 15 years data suddenly ‘injected’ into the graph from version 2.0 to 3.1? I’m gathering this is predicted adjustments from other nearby sites… though those sites are probably coastal compared to this inland site looking at the disconuity dates of the sites really close to this one (also harder to compare since scale is 21.5oC in ver 2.0 and 21.0 in ver 3.1).
To me adjustments look to a warming trend overall regardless of whether the sites are in or near the arctic or not.
I’ve used unadjusted GHCN and adjusted GHCN. v2, v3, v3.1
The warming doesnt disappear.
But the aim of these is not to remove the warming, is it? It is to get rid of the unfortunate bump around 1940 that spoils the case for CO2 induced warming.
You know this is the real problem, yet you insist on red herrings such as “warming doesn’t disappear”.
CO2-AGW doesn’t need recent warming to be shown. It needs previously warming to be erased. That’s what the hockey stick did, and that is what this is doing.
We know it’s warming. We also know that it has warmed in the past. Except that is being removed, as we watch.
Mr. Mosher says at 5:53, we should ignore the biased shenanegans of the so called scientists because there is better data available. I believe that to ignore deception is to allow it to continue. I believe that to accept or condone deception is to be tainted by it. I don’t believe the scientists of yesteryear were less capable or less knowledgeable than those of today, in fact I conclude the opposite. I believe the practice of adjusting the temperatures of the past to be criminal malfeasence. I have been observing these processes for three years now and have reached the point where I don’t believe anything a CAGW proponent says. Mr. Mosher, These comments are not to be interpreted as a reflection on you in any way what so ever. I make it a point to read your comments. It is simply your remark about ignoring these people of low character brought about my indignant reflection. Please consider I realize the very real possibility of a warming earth. I don’t accept that it is catastrophic or overtly anthropogenic. I have come to believe cyclic. I remain open to understanding but will only accept being lied to once, Those who would decieve me are no longer worth listening to. I would like it to be a couple of degrees warmer as I think it would make farming a little easier, I’d like that.
I’ve used unadjusted GHCN and adjusted GHCN. v2, v3, v3.1 The warming doesn’t disappear.
——————————————————————————————————————————
The issue is the extent of the warming. Human attribution depends critically on the slope exceeding natural variability by a significant margin.
AGW theory suggests warming increases with latitude. If there was no material warming in the Arctic during 1940-2011, that must cast doubt on the global record.
The man-made warming from v3.1 adjustments (0.7°C) is much larger than the original climate signal in the historical data. The adjustments might well play a role in the human attribution chapter of AR5, and the policies that follow. They are important.
Appendix A sets out the results of the v3.1 algorithm. How different are these figures than the adjustment efforts in v2 and v3? Do they address the same alleged inhomogeneities?
The separation of inhomogeneity-spotters from algorithm-writers doesn’t offer much comfort. If this algorithm delivers 95% downward adjustments and 2% upward adjustments, it is prima facie skewed.
Once again either a clear attempt to deceive, i.e. fraud or simple ignorance, i.e. they have no clue what they are doing. If it’s fraud, who is the right authority to investigate and deal with these kind of issues?
Note the step change in Archangel temps at the start of Soviet Union around 1920, likely related to the introduction of heavy industry and high density housing for workers.
After then there doesn’t look to be any warming trend at all.
IMO this is a general problem with all Soviet era data. Ie, the temperature record affected by industrialization, and then post 1991 de-industrializtion.
‘every current GHCN station with records back to 1940’. The essence is in the word ‘current’. Suppose, you did a medical experiment and 80 percent of the subjects dropped out. You may check of whether adjustments can be found in the records of the remaining 20 percent, I would check the records of the dropped stations. Has anybody noticed that many dropped stations had time series out-of-phase with the remaining stations? That this effect becomes stronger the higher the latitude? Just some suggestions for research.
Steven Mosher says … various things.
The CAGW debate is a fascinating social science study in that smart people like Mr. Mosher can drop common sense in favour of intellectual justifications. We know that others’ stories of struggle and achievement show then in better light over time. We understand the bias that benefits. All those working in technical fields know that our projects will provide better results with lower risks the longer we push them.
It is human nature to drop outliers that discourage and retain outliers that support. But those at the top, those making decisions, are supposed to watch for this, discount it where simple, and send the boys back to their pencils and paper where it becomes extreme.
The consistent warming bias of (especially) GISS used to be denied. But it is unavoidably clear. Each revision increases it. The only way it can be real is if temperature measurements in the past were fundamentally misrepresenting the actual temperature. It is not a question of this bit or that bit. It is that fundamentally scientists miscalled temperatures all over the world. They were all wrong, but more wrong the longer ago it was.
Does this make sense? All those people, in all those places, didn’t do it right and the ones ten years before them did it even worse than they did? And always in a way that was warmer than it really was?
Each variable can be out 5% and nobody will complain. But when each variable is out by 5% in the same direction, the errors AS A GROUP are unacceptable. I’m in private industry and see each day how five groups each give themselves the benefit of the doubt – because they “believe” in the rightness of the end result. When the group project comes together, it is always magnificent, always a low-cost, low-risk, high-reward venture. Otherwise, why bother? And why be involved in it if there is no excitement, nothing stimulating you to get up in the morning?
Common sense says that when you talk about something long enough it gets more definite. Common sense says that those who are involved drink their own whiskey. Common sense says that those who are asked to buy the whiskey understand these things and require some reality to be re-injected. Mr. Mosher, all skeptics are saying is, does the pattern make sense as a whole? It doesn’t, and your mother could tell you that.
Either the good schools of Iceland produce bad meteorologists, or then there is a (political?) problem that stops Mr. Jonsson from explaining to us what the temperatures in Reykjavik around 1940 really were, and what they are now. I am sure he knows.
The state of Iceland went broke recently. Maybe they want a carbon tax to get their finances into order?
“steven mosher says:
March 11, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Finally, GISS is old hat. The better methods do no ad hoc adjusting. And their answer comes out the same.”
So what was the real mean temperature in Reykjavik in 1940 according to the “better methods”: 5°C or 3°C?
Are you sure the first two graphs above markers “before” and “after” are not identical?
Stecve Mosher:
Yous say, “Finally, GISS is old hat. The better methods do no ad hoc adjusting. And their answer comes out the same”. Which seems believable. There are regular complaints about the readjustments of GISS and its credibility must be damaged.
However, GISS is important for two reasons.
Firstly, computer models of the climate are tuned to fit the past observations; not well tuned but still they try. GISS may be old hat but it damages the climate models.
Secondly, the other methods are tuned (calibrated, adjusted in advance) in accordance with the espected reality. And from point one we seem to have some circular reasoning.
GISS is not independant.
One unwarranted temperature adjustment is fraud. A million unwarranted temperature adjustments is Science®.
Thanks Anthony, great information and very nicely worded.
It is much more powerful for just pointing out the facts without bellowing ‘fraud’, ‘conspiracy’ etc.
(Yep, you knew we’d do enough of that in the comments section, right?)
Good points by Doug Proctor : March 11, 2012 at 10:29 pm:
… re the psychology of it all. I think the marketers and propagandists must have done a mighty job to get so many people “emotionally committed” to AGW as “the biggest problem ever faced by the human race”. Most of these people, as smart as many of them appear to be, remain dedicated to their beliefs, in spite of evidence which should at least give pause to think. It has become almost religious in its intensity.
And as is also pointed out by Doug – that fact that almost every adjustment heads the data in the one direction is absolutely unbelievable. There cannot possibly be any real evidence as to the accuracy of records written down on paper (and I emphasize that point) decades ago. I can understand adjusting or deleting the odd ‘completely off the scale probable error’, but really, such series should be treated with the same level of respect shown relics on an archaeological dig- and be preserved as precisely as they were recorded.