We’ve seen examples time and again of the cooling of the past via homogenization that goes on with GISS, HadCRUT, and other temperature data sets. By cooling the data from the past, the trend/slope of the temperature for the last 100 years increases.
This time, the realization comes from an unlikely source, Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground via contributor Christopher C. Burt. An excerpt of the story is below:
Inconsistencies in NCDC Historical Temperature Analysis
Jeff Masters and I recently received an interesting email from Ken Towe who has been researching the NCDC historical temperature database and came across what appeared to be some startling inconsistencies. Namely that the average state temperature records used in the current trends analysis by the NCDC (National Climate Data Center) do not reflect the actual published records of such as they appeared in the Monthly Weather Reviews and Climatological Data Summaries of years past. Here is why.
An Example of the Inconsistency
Here is a typical example of what Ken uncovered. Below is a copy of the national weather data summary for February 1934. If we look at, say Arizona, for the month we see that the state average temperature for that month was 52.0°F.
The state-by-state climate summary for the U.S. in February 1934. It may be hard to read, but the average temperature for the state of Arizona is listed as 52.0°F From Monthly Weather Review.
However, if we look at the current NCDC temperature analysis (which runs from 1895-present) we see that for Arizona in February 1934 they have a state average of 48.9°F, not the 52.0°F that was originally published:
Here we see a screen capture of the current NCDC long-term temperature analysis for Arizona during Februaries. Note in the bar at the bottom that for 1934 they use a figure of 48.9°.
Ken looked at entire years of data from the 1920s and 1930s for numerous different states and found that this ‘cooling’ of the old data was fairly consistent across the board. In fact he produced some charts showing such. Here is an example for the entire year of 1934 for Arizona:
The chart above shows how many degrees cooler each monthly average temperature for the entire state of Arizona for each month in 1934 was compared to the current NCDC database (i.e. versus what the actual monthly temperatures were in the original Climatological Data Summaries published in 1934 by the USWB (U.S. Weather Bureau). Note, for instance, how February is 3.1°F cooler in the current database compared to the historical record. Table created by Ken Towe.
Read the entire story here: Inconsistencies in NCDC Historical Temperature Analysis
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The explanation given is that they changed from the ‘Traditional Climate Division Data Set’ (TCDD) to a new ‘Gridded Divisional Dataset’ (GrDD) that takes into account inconsistencies in the TCDD. “.
Yet as we have seen time and time again, with the exception of a -0.05°C cooling applied for UHI (which is woefully under-represented) all “adjustments, improvements, and fiddlings” to data applied by NCDC and other organizations always seem to result in an increased warming trend.
Is this purposeful mendacity, or just another example of confirmation bias at work? Either way, I don’t think private citizen observers of NOAA’s Cooperative Observer Program who gave their time and efforts every day for years really appreciate that their hard work is tossed into a climate data soup then seasoned to create a new reality that is different from the actual observations they made. In the case of Arizona and changing the CLimate Divisions, it would be the equivalent of changing state borders as saying less people lived in Arizona in 1934 because we changed the borders today. That wouldn’t fly, so why should this?
Sure there are all sorts of “justifications” for these things published by NCDC and others, but the bottom line is that they are not representative of true reality, but of a processed reality.
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue.
UPDATE: Here’s a graph showing cumulative adjustments to the USHCN subset of the entire US COOP surface temperature network done by Zeke Hausfather and posted recently on Lucia’s Blackboard:
This is calculated by taking USHCN adjusted temperature data and subtracting USHCN raw temperature data on a yearly basis. The TOBS adjustment is the lion’s share.
Not to worry. Those bogus reductions in earlier year temperatures will soon imply that the Little Ice Age actually did not end until 1950 !
As these reductions in earlier temperatures continue the end date for the Little Ice Age will move from 1680 to 1950.
And people wonder why I have to put additions in the appendices of my works explaining when I obtained the NCDC data sets. At least the precip data do not seem to have been adjusted yet.
The past just isn’t what it used to be.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html#QUAL
“The cumulative effect of all adjustments is approximately a one-half degree Fahrenheit warming in the annual time series over a 50-year period from the 1940’s until the last decade of the century. “
“As Dr. Roy Spencer said about the NOAA-NCDC USHCN record, 1973-2012 (read original post for full context):
2) Virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data, mainly in the 1995-97 timeframe.
…
And I must admit that those adjustments constituting virtually all of the warming signal in the last 40 years is disconcerting. When “global warming” only shows up after the data are adjusted, one can understand why so many people are suspicious of the adjustments.”
The only problem is that Spencer quickly realized that this would put a huge question mark over his own satellite data which show 0.22 C of warming per decade since 1979 over the US 48. So he quietly dropped the bombastic finding you cited, in a half sentence in the next post, and suddenly “discovered” 10 times as much of real warming as he had in the post you cited. In order to salvage his data, he essentially accepted this adjustment as legitimate!!!
OT But Christchurch N.Z had its coldest day on record on the 6 June 2012.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/70….ears-of-records
sorry try this link http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/7055292/Coldest-day-in-130-years-of-records
The State data has definately been “inconsistantly” changed. I noticed this years ago from the oldest paper records of the various State Weather Services…
From Ivan on June 7, 2012 at 6:30 pm:
I checked his blog archive for April 2012, the month the post I referenced appeared in:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/04/
Next post was last post for April, New Evidence Our Record Warm March was Not from Global Warming. It contains nothing of what you claim.
So I checked the next month, found the next next post, U.S. Temperature Update for April, 2012: +1.28 deg. C. I found the one number you gave, +0.22 deg. C/decade, but satellite data wasn’t mentioned, he was updating his new IHS dataset which goes from 1973, not 1979. Here’s the chunk:
He’s saying USHCN is the highest, his ISH dataset without population density adjustment is next highest, ISH with that adjustment is lowest and about 50% of USHCN.
There was no quiet dropping of the “bombastic finding”, nor discovering of “10 times as much of real warming”. Nothing as what you said is there.
So I checked the next next next (next*3) post, UAH Global Temperature Update for April 2012: +0.30°C. Very short. Still nothing, again.
On to the next next next next (next*4) post, Our Response to Recent Criticism of the UAH Satellite Temperatures by Drs. Christy and Spencer. Very long. Still nothing.
Next next next next next (next*5) post, AMSR2 Being Readied for Launch Today. Amazingly enough, still nothing.
Next next next next next next (next*6) post, The AMSR2 Antenna has been Successfully Deployed. Go on, take a guess.
Next next next next next next next (next*7) post, UAH Global Temperature Update for May 2012: +0.29°C. That was on June 4, and is his latest post. You don’t deserve a guess. Still nothing.
Despite your bombastic claim, I can find nothing like what you said Dr. Spencer said, from his next post to his very latest post. Nothing.
Just to show you’re not a complete liar trying to shove words in Dr. Spencer’s mouth he never said, can you supply a link to whatever “next” Dr. Spencer post this was said, and tell where in that post that half-sentence that says so much is actually located?
Christopher C. Burt says:
June 6, 2012 at 11:04 pm
For instance in the example I used of Arizona in 1934: the USWB (U.S. Weather Bureau, Dept. of Agriculture) based their 52.0° state average on data from 78 sites that reported from around the state that particular month of February 1934. Of these 78 sites 3 were in the city of Phoenix (Airport, USWB site, and Indian School), 3 were in Yuma (Citrus Station, USWB, and Valley site), and 2 were in Tucson (Airport and Univ. of Arizona campus)…So 8 (more than 10%) of the 78 sites for the entire state were located in three of the warmest cities in the state.
They are three of the warmest cities *today*.
Phoenix grew from 48,000 in 1930 to 1,445,000 in 2010, Yuma’s population grew from a miniscule 4,900 to 93,000, and Tucson city’s population was less than a tenth of today’s 520,000. Were UHI reductions used in the recalculations, and, if so, were they based on present-day measurements or on those of towns comparable in size and location representative of those cities in the ’30s?
Come on guys, we are playing their game here, as several others have pointed out, temperature alone is not the right metric to measure heat gain, which is what CO2 is supposed to accomplish.
The global warming scam is over, as climate will soon make this apparent. Then there will be the next scare to bring in Global Governance as the technocrats have been endeavouring to do since the 40’s, as suggested by the Club of Rome in the 60’s, climate change, alien invasion or threat by asteroid or biological plague. The EU accomplished rule by unelected technocrats, but the problems with the Euro may not be the end of it but the beginning of the World Currency as nations begin to collapse by overwhelming debt. What do you think the Bildeburg meeting was all about ?
Effective World Government will follow a World Currency, if that happens we have lost the battle.
What the answer is then I don’t know, I won’t be around as I was a youngster in the thirties and know it was a darned sight hotter then than now 😉
Bill Tuttle says:
June 8, 2012 at 1:32 am
They are three of the warmest cities *today*.
Excellent points! I think it is also worth pointing out that the UHI is most evident when the difference in temperature between the desired house temperature and the outside temperature is the greatest. If it is -40 outside, then the heated homes would really add heat to the outside, but at 52 F, relatively little heat gets lost to the outside. As well, how many cars were there to contribute to UHI in 1934?
I wonder how the BEST research handled these issues? My guess? They didn’t dig into and evaluate data issues such as this. If that’s the case, it would mean that their work was negligent and inaccurate.
Well JB, they may believe with every ounce of their soul the world will soon reach the man made disaster tipping point and begin to overheat exponentially. All their data manipulations may conveniently prove or disprove their theory for them, but the march to taxing carbon output across the world has long since left the barn.
There is a kept very quiet Chicago Exchange, Australia was just rumored to have nearly passed, or did pass, a very penalizing nation wide carbon tax, and as we all know, the media has been on board for the money takers and the heat apocalypse since day one a decade plus ago.
Worse yet, no matter how much money they take from everyone, no matter what they try to impose, human carbon emissions are rising, and rising quickly. They have already admitted their targets cannot stop their world ending scenario.
It appears their point is whip up substantial emotional disorders in order to take as much money and power and self satisfaction unto themselves, as is humanly possible. They have a battle, and intend to win even as they lose the larger picture – stopping the tipping point and saving humanity.
So, they are essentially, looting failures. They need a new leadership who can get the job done. Their current top tier, it appears, desires directed human depopulation down to 1-2 billion as the final solution. Strange as it is, they have indeed said so at various times.
A worldwide deadly contagious virus or global thermonuclear war are the only two man produced disasters that appear to fit that bill.
I believe they are destined for failure in that, into the future, as far as humanity can see.
In the mean time, a good chunk of your earnings, and much of your freedom, they are successfully garnishing bit by bit.
This data fiddling is a disgrace and about time action was taken. If anything the more likely cause of warming artificially is urban spread. Temperatures over recent decades should be adjusted down, not up. The errors causing cooling apparantly over recent years show not occur with instruments used over this period. They are reliable enough at least not taking warming bias into account. No wonder the station data (Arctic and most developed global regions) for recent years represents more like the late 1930’s and early 1940’s then the fiddled global data sets.
NCDC have a “toolkit” on their site, to graph the differences between the old and new datasets.
Try looking at Alabama as an example, there is a degree of warming added since the 1930’s.
http://nidis1.ncdc.noaa.gov/GHCNViewer/