I’ve been watching with interest and concern some of Steve Goddard’s postings on Envisat on the abrupt changes in their recent sea level data. To me, something didn’t seem quite right, and I expressed concerns privately along those lines that I didn’t know the causes of what appear to be recent unexplained “adjustments” in the recent data. It seems ENVISAT has given up the ghost. So, it is possible it has been sending faulty data and they have not noticed. Here, he shows this graph which seems quite problematic:
This is like what has happened with the AQUA AMSRE failure and the failure that we had to point out to NSIDC (where Dr. Walt Meier famously exclaimed it “wasn’t worth blogging about” only to have to later issue corrections themselves) that the DMSP satellite they were using had issues. Whether this is permanent or not remains to be seen. After 10 years of service, Envisat has stopped sending data to Earth. ESA’s mission control is working to re-establish contact with the satellite.
Via our friend Ecotretas :
I read in the news today that connections have been lost with the Envisat satellite. ESA has already confirmed it too, but reading the latest Mission Operations News, it seems it would be predicted for a satellite that had only been planned for a five year mission.
So I ran to see how the sea level graphs had finished, and to my biggest surprise, the graph from AVISO had changed dramatically! I recall seeing it about a week ago, with totally different values! From an historical perspective, several older graphs can be seen in a post 9 months ago (in Portuguese), or compared with other satellite measurements in this WUWT post. Please compare the graph 9 months ago on the left, and the more recent one on the right (click to zoom):
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Notice that the slope has gone up from 0.76 mm/year to 2.33 mm/year! This manipulation, which has no other name, has been justified by Aviso with the following notes:
- Envisat time series extended before 2004 starting from May 2002.
- Envisat V2.1 GDR reprocessed data used. The new standards are also detailed in the table “Processing and corrections”.
- Instrumental correction sign corrected (impact of around +2mm/year). The error detection and impact on data is detailed in:
- Envisat 2011 yearly report, A. Ollivier & M. Guibbaud, soon on the Aviso website
- Envisat Reprocessing impact on ocean data, A.Ollivier & M. Guibbaud, soon on the Aviso website
- A.Ollivier et al. 2012, Envisat ocean altimeter becoming relevant for mean sea level long term studies? (submitted in Marine Geodesy)
- new NetCDF CF format in the products and images selection interface
Now, this looks like a small part of the Envisat mystery. Please check that the older graph starts in 2004, but the newer graph starts in mid 2002! Notice that in the newer graph, the 2002 and 2003 values were much higher that those of 2004, and that the highest values of 2003 were not surprassed till late 2008. Now imagine why they were not there in the older graphs, and how being there would create a trend probably very near to ZERO!
The last image, the above one on the right, that’s on the AVISO site is dated “Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:14:03 GMT”, so clearly has been put there after the satellite failed, which occurred last Sunday. No doubt that the hiding the decline was already planned, but probably was executed swiftly after the fail. Strangely, the last color image taken by the satellite was above Portugal, which is obviously a coincidence. But it looks like it’s mysteries have only started…
LazyTeenager says:
April 12, 2012 at 4:59 pm
This manipulation, which has no other name,
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It does have another name. It’s called a correction.
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LT, you’re a bright guy….. tell me, what are the odds that the “corrections” always seem to run in one direction? GISS, HadCrut, Sea Levels….. if the corrections are indeed unbiased fixes for problematic data, wouldn’t the direction of the corrections be more evenly distributed?
LT, it isn’t about the climate. It is about people willing to accept history revisionism. We can debate climate and its considerations and meanings. But, when we, as a society accept that what was, wasn’t, and what is may not be, we’ve all lost. And we’ve all lost everything. If observations are not the observations when we observe them then we can know nothing.
Try and understand the deeper meaning to these things. All science is invalidated by a fluid and dynamic historical observations. Not just skeptical science, not just climate science….. all science.
Go here to see only some of the consistant “corrections” http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/this-isnt-about-the-climate/
“This manipulation, which has no other name,
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It does have another name. It’s called a correction.”
NO! A “correction” is a change to reported data to account for secondary data measured, justified, and reported. “correction” is NOT another name for “manipulation”,
Manipulation is another name for “doctoring the data”, “cooking the books”, or “lying” in an attemot to induce a reader to believe the false is true, or to iduce the reader to take actions that no sane, informed person would take.
[Aside: I too have been angry in the conviction that my pearls of wisdom are being surpressed. In every case, I think, I have run afoul of the fact that the moderators are unpaid volunteers whose humanity is displayed by needs to be elswhere sometimes, doing other things sometimes. I wish it was not so, because what I have to say is usually so inprtant the any delay is to be avoided, I am now comfortable in the belief that they will never deliberately and silently drop a comment to the floor. They would not miss the opportyunity to show me the error of my ways.]
I get tired of this fraud. Is that the warmistas strategy – to just lie and cheat until critics give up?
Why don’t they just put the raw data out there and let people do what they want with it? OK, I’m not being realistic.
Kevin in UK says
but the bottom line is that he who controls the satellite and data processing, surely controls the ‘findings’.
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So does that theory explain the UAH satellite output? I’m sure Roy and John would like that satellite temperature trend to go down. But it’s not.
LazyTeenager says:
April 12, 2012 at 4:59 pm
“It does have another name. It’s called a correction.”
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How about mission failure, with regression to the mean ?
LazyTeenager says:
April 12, 2012 at 4:59 pm
It does have another name. It’s called a correction.
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roaring laughing………….
These satellites fall out of orbit….that means measurements degrade in the opposite direction of their “adjustments”……………
Like adding temp increases to account for UHI…………
I still favor using GPS satellites and data from CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) per Woppelmann, et al. The vertical measurements are the least accurate but GPS satellites and CORS stations aren’t controlled by climatologists. It’s replicable and irrefutable data.
The 2 graphs provided by Ecotretas differ in so many respects that it is hard to believe they came from the same data set! This was not a ‘correction’…a simple fix to a couple of typos or a uniform adjustment to accomodate ‘sensor drift’. If it was, the underlying trends would still be recognizable. Without explicit definition of the adjusting algorythm(s) or a one-to-one mapping of the ‘adjustments’ made to each data point with comments why the ‘adjustments’ were necessary, the possibility of willful fraud is strongly recommended!
MtK
Louis Hooffstetter says:
April 12, 2012 at 5:37 pm
I still favor using GPS satellites and data from CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) per Woppelmann, et al. The vertical measurements are the least accurate but GPS satellites and CORS stations aren’t controlled by climatologists. It’s replicable and irrefutable data.
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Absolutely, with a time-stamp and datum.
James Sexton says:
LT (Lazy Teenager), you’re a bright guy….
I hope so, but I’m not sure. Lazy Teenager appears to be a wannabe climatologist cut from the same cloth as William M. Connolly: long on snark and sarcasm, but woefully short on logical, defensible science.
Lazy T: we don’t mind you posting here, but you have to back up your sarcastic potshots with reproducible empirical data.
Well, let’s see … we’ve “fixed” the US land temperature record and now the sea level record. What next? Oh! I know, we need to draw in some spots on the Sun now. Coming soon to a web page near you!
This fraud is getting ridiculous. Isn’t there supposed to be a body that watches out for this sort of thing? The FBI or your National Security mob? Over here in Australia, ASIO is keeping an eye on the greens. That’s good (it’s a start). They MUST know what’s going on. I sure hope these agencies don’t just sit back and take notes while our countries go down the drain.
How do we appeal for a wide and thorough investigation? The warmists are hiding behind a massive mountain of paper, believing no doubt that enough of it will convince the world that they must be right. Do we have to wait for elections to stop this? This is criminal, right here and right now. There must be someone other than the President or Prime Minister able to call for an inquiry into the broad scope of this nonsense.
Louis Hooffstetter says:
April 12, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Lazy T: we don’t mind you posting here, but you have to back up your sarcastic potshots with reproducible empirical data.
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You are wrong-minded.
” lazy t” draws out the best of WUWT.
And is a glutton for punishment, don’t deprive us./
MalwareBytes keeps flagging on the a malicious call and I am not seeing the image http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PaintImage4527.jpg Cross-site scripting at Real-Science? A port call gets made at 49933 to site 173.245.60.41. Real Science’s IP is 67.15.8.53
AVISO’s explanation is that the “slight degradation … is due to the shift of passes compared to the theoretical passes.”
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/documents/OSTST/2011/oral/02_Thursday/Splinter%204%20CV/02%20Pres_REVISED%20OSTST2011_CrossCal_Envisat_AOllivier.pdf
This suggests that some of the time the satellite was over land they thought it was over water and vice versa. Since the sea level calculations only look at the data from when they think the satellite is over water and measuring sea height, and because land is always higher than sea,
the sea-level estimate that results from this confusion would be systematically biased towards higher-than-actual sea levels. So if this is really the mistake they made, the adjustment should have LOWERED sea-level estimates, not jacked them up.
The last slope, 2.33 millimeters/year, is very nearly correct. The value that Chao, Yu, and Li obtained in 2008 (Science, April 11th, 2008) was 2.46 millimeters/year. They examined all the available data on sea level rise and corrected it for water held in storage by dams built since the year 1900. After correction the sea level curve became linear for at least 80 years. In my judgement something that has been linear that long is not likely to change anytime soon. It looks like the sea level rise is still on course as determined by Chao, Yu, and Li. It amounts to a little under ten inches per century.
g3ellis says:
April 12, 2012 at 6:34 pm
MalwareBytes keeps flagging on the a malicious call and I am not seeing the image http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PaintImage4527.jpg Cross-site scripting at Real-Science? A port call gets made at 49933 to site 173.245.60.41. Real Science’s IP is 67.15.8.53
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Just go here…. http://www.real-science.com/was-envisat-hit-by-an-asteroid
Prolly one of his adverts…..
James Sexton says:
April 12, 2012 at 5:12 pm
….. if the corrections are indeed unbiased fixes for problematic data, wouldn’t the direction of the
corrections be more evenly distributed?
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or why would they go back and “adjust” past tide gauge measurements? in fits and spurts…
…for one thing, if it’s justified, it would be an even adjustment all the way up to the present
it’s not, it’s a very convenient adjustment to show sea levels rising, when they weren’t before
Why could possibly be their reason for adjusting historical old tide gauge readings….but only bits and pieces of them…
….I haven’t been able to find anything
It is interesting and probably a technological breakthrough that satellites can now create matter. This might be useful if they could create energy as well. The amount of water just created is a cube about 16.8km on a side. Enough to fill the grand canyon more than once, or the Superdome 1.3 million times. Considering that it was done in just a few clock cycles of a computer, it rivals only the theory of the self propagating inflationary universe in terms of speed. The shock wave must have been something to behold. Now that’s what a space agency is for. Damn impressive ESA.
8th April. The bbc report the follow on satellite to ENVISAT, called SENTINEL 1a, might be mothballed because of EAS funding doubts in cash-strapped EU.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17050547
12th April. The BBC report ESA have communication glitch with ENVISAT.
Not that I’m saying these are connected, ESA is having a bad April.
Missing link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17692027
“tell me, what are the odds that the “corrections” always seem to run in one direction?”
Well, so far, 100%.
Look, it’s become clear that the reason the errors are running in one direction only has to do with dishonest data, pure and simple. If the measured raw data wasn’t being wrongfully altered at some point, we wouldn’t need all of these corrections. We don’t like to make these corrections any more than you like to see them.
But now, finally, we’ve discovered what’s been going on. We’ve found the source of spurious data. And the blame for what has been happening rests squarely on the shoulders of you Deniers, whose irrational screaming repetition of anti-science lies has had its ultimate intended effect. Your screaming incoherence has paid off for you. You’ve acheived the ultimate corruption.
Gaia has become a Denier.
The Earth itself has fallen for the lies put out by the Watts of the world. She now answers our queries with false, spurious, near-hostile data. We go to measure the temperature of water, and the water cools before we can finish. We examine sea levels, and the levels drop just as we reach the dock. We view the extent of Antarctic ice, and the solid frozen edge forms and spreads before we can focus our cameras. At times, we can almost hear her laugh at us.
You’ve taken our innocent, pristine, virginal Earth and corrupted her – turned her into a lying harlot hanging around street corners with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her heavily lipsticked mouth, available to any and all takers with a few oil-bucks and a smooth “you don’t look so hot to me” line.
I just hope you’re happy with yourselves.
That is an IP owned by cloudflare. It is a service that improves performance of web sites by caching often retreived pages. It also filters out spammers and such from ever even getting to the target web page, It is not a malicious operation.
Larry
Not so much “hide the decline” as it is “raise the incline”…
Isn’t it interesting that every time some relevant time series is adjusted, for whatever purpose, the trend change always supports warming. How many times in a row does one see “heads” on a coin toss before realizing a two-headed coin is in play?