The first press release announcement thread is getting big and unwieldy, and some commenters can’t finish loading the thread, so I’m providing this one with some updates.
1. Thanks to everyone who has provided widespread review of our draft paper. There have been hundreds of suggestions and corrections, and for that I am very grateful. That’s exactly what we hoped for, and can only make the paper better.
Edits are being made based on many of those suggestions. I’ll post up a revised draft in the next day.
2. Some valid criticisms have been made related to the issue of the TOBS data. This is a preliminary set of data, with corrections added for the “Time of Observation” which can in some cases result in double max-min readings being counted if not corrected for. It makes up a significant portion of adjustments prior to homogenization adjustments as seen below in this older USHCN1 graphic. TOBS is the black dotted line.
TOBS is a controversial adjustment. Proponents of the TOBS adjustment (Created by NCDC director Tom Karl) say that it is a necessary adjustment that fixes a known problem, others suggest that it is an overkill adjustment, that solves small problems but creates an even larger one. For example, from a recent post on Lucia’s by Zeke Hausfather, you can see how much adjustments go into the final product.
The question is: are these valid adjustments? Zeke seems to think so, but others do not. Personally I think TOBS is a sledgehammer used to pound in a tack. This looks like a good time to settle the question once and for all.
Steve McIntyre is working through the TOBS entanglement with the station siting issue, saying “There is a confounding interaction with TOBS that needs to be allowed for…”, which is what Judith Curry might describe as a “wicked problem”. Steve has an older post on it here which can be a primer for learning about it.
The TOBS issue is one that may or may not make a difference in the final outcome of the Watts et al 2012 draft paper and it’s conclusions, but we asked for input, and that was one of the issues that stood out as a valid concern. We have to work through it to find out for sure. Dr. John Christy dealt with TOBS issues in his paper covered on WUWT: Christy on irrigation and regional temperature effects
Irrigation most likely to blame for Central California warming
A two-year study of San Joaquin Valley nights found that summer nighttime low temperatures in six counties of California’s Central Valley climbed about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 3.0 C) between 1910 and 2003. The study’s results will be published in the “Journal of Climate.”
Most interestingly, John Christy tells me that he had quite a time with having to “de-bias” data for his study, requiring looking at original observer reports and hand keying in data.
We have some other ideas. And of course new ideas on the TOBS issue are welcome too.
In other news, Dr. John Christy will be presenting at the Senate EPW hearing tomorrow, for which we hope to provide a live feed. Word is that Dr. Richard Muller will not be presenting.
Again, my thanks to everyone for all the ideas, help, and support!
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UPDATE: elevated from a comment I made on the thread – Anthony
Why I don’t think much of TOBS adjustments
Nick Stoke’s explanation follows the official explanation, but from my travels to COOP stations, I met a lot of volunteers who mentioned that with the advent of MMTS, which has a memory, they tended not to worry much about the reading time as being at the station at a specific time every day was often inconvenient.. With the advent of the successor display to the MMTS unit, the LCD display based Nimbus, which has memory for up to 35 days (see spec sheet here http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/dad/coop/nimbus-spec.pdf) they stopped worrying about daily readings and simply filled them in at the end of the month by stepping through the display.
From the manual http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/dad/coop/nimbusmanual.pdf
Daily maximum and minimum temperatures:
· Memory switch and [Max/Min Recall] button give daily
highs and lows and their times
The Nimbus thermometer remembers the highs and lows for
the last 35 days and also records the times they occurred. This
information is retrieved sequentially day by day. The reading
of the 35 daily max/min values and the times of occurrence (as
opposed to the “global” max/min) are initiated by moving the
[Memory] switch to the left [On].
So, people being people, rather than being tied to the device, they tend to do it at their leisure if given the opportunity. One fellow told me (who had a Winneabago parked in is driveway) when I asked if he traveled much, he said he “travels a lot more now”. He had both the CRS and MMTS/Nimbus in his back yard. He said he traveled more now thanks to the memory on the Nimbus unit. I asked what he did before that, when all he had was the CRS and he said that “I’d get the temperatures out of the newspaper for each day”.
Granted, not all COOP volunteers were like this, and some were pretty tight lipped. Many were dedicated to the job. But human nature being what it is, what would you rather do? Stay at home and wait for temperature readings or take the car/Winnebago and visit the grand-kids? Who needs the MMTS ball and chain now that it has a memory?
I also noticed many observers now with consumer grade weather stations, with indoor readouts. A few of them put the weather station sensors on the CRS or very near it. Why go out in the rain/cold/snow to read the mercury thermometer when the memory of the weather station can do it for you.
My point is that actual times of observation may very well be all over the map. There’s no incentive for the COOP observer to do it at exactly the same time every day when they can just as easily do it however they want. They aren’t paid, and often don’t get any support from the local NWS office for months or years at a time. One woman begged me to talk to the local NWS office to see about getting a new thermometer mount for her max/min thermometer, since it wouldn’t lock into position properly and often would screw up the daily readings when it spun loose and reset the little iron pegs in the capillary tube.
Some local NWS personnel I talked to called the MMTS the “Mickey Mouse Temperature System” obviously a term of derision. Wonder why?
So my point in all this is that NWS/NOAA/NCDC is getting exactly what they paid for. And my view of the network is that it is filled with such randomness.
Nick Stokes and people like him who preach to us from on high, never leaving their government office to actually get out and talk to people doing the measurements, seem to think the algorithms devised and implemented from behind a desk overcome human urges to sleep in, visit the grand-kids, go out to dinner and get the reading later, or take a trip.
Reality is far different. I didn’t record these things on my survey forms when I did many of the surveys in 2007/2008/2009 because I didn’t want to embarrass observers. We already had NOAA going behind me and closing stations that were obscenely sited that appeared on WUWT, and the NCDC had already shut down the MMS database once citing “privacy concerns” which I ripped them a new one on when I pointed out they published pictures of observers at their homes standing in front of their stations, with their names on it. For example: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/coop/newsletters/07may-coop.pdf
So I think the USHCN network is a mess, and TOBS adjustments are a big hammer that misses the mark based on human behavior for filling out forms and times they can’t predict. There’s no “enforcer” that will show up from NOAA/NWS if you fudge the form. None of these people at NCDC get out in the field, but prefer to create algorithms from behind the desk. My view is that you can’t model reality if you don’t experience it, and they have no hands on experience nor clue in my view.
More to come…
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Phil,
Please, enough with government propaganda from 2010. Who is going to watch an hour long screed that begins, “global warming is unequivocal.”
If you’re new here, get up to speed: we know about global warming. The planet has been warming naturally since the Little Ice Age, along the same trend line, whether CO2 is high or low [and by “high” I mean 0.00039 of the atmosphere].
Therefore, the natural warming trend is ipso facto unaffected by the rise in CO2. Any effect from CO2 is negligible. Why? Because scientific evidence and empirical observations prove it. QED
Jan P Perlwitz: “Only, that “minor point” is already used, e.g. by the Fox News propaganda outlet, to spread desinformation.”
Not disinformation, but to control debate through — typically — emotional appeals. Such as labeling suspect classes or individuals in pejorative terms. Common examples are Blood Libels, War Time Posters, and claiming that a news agency is a propagnda outlet.
But if I accept your emotionally laden and unbacked claim that Fox News is a propaganda outlet that spreads disinformation then we they stated, as the first sentence: “Two new climate studies agree: the planet is definitely getting warmer.”
Then you mean that this is total hogwash. That this:
“Skeptic-turned-believer Richard Muller …”
Is nonsense. And that the following is a complete lie:
“Muller’s study attempts to correct for the quality of the data, in a transparent, repeatable fashion scientists should appreciate.”
Or are you simply engaged in propaganda?
Maus wrote:
What error are you talking about? “US global warming” is a nonsense word. No, here I mean “global warming trends”, because the Fox News desinformation outlet explicitly claimed, referencing Watts:
Watts cherry-picked the well-sited stations and reanalyzed their data; his results show the planet warming at just 0.155 degrees Celsius per decade, rather than the 0.309 C per decade cited by the government.
(http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/30/weather-station-temp-claims-are-overheated-report-claims/#ixzz22LoMRylg)
Fail. You do not win anything. I leave it to the ones who are capable to figure it out.
The rest of your comment is similarly without any substance with respect to my arguments. Just the usual “it’s all cooked” assertion, which false skeptics like to make. How boring.
Smokey says at August 1, 2012 at 6:23 pm:
Apparantly, this is how Smokey thinks science is done, and how scientific theories are being successfully tested or refuted. One shows a few colored pictures together with some stated bold assertions, and that’s it.
Jan P Perlwitz: “Because Hansen et al. (2010) did.”
Amazing coincidence! That’s the same year that Leroy published a paper on siting classifications, the focus of the current paper. Perhaps you’ve read Leroy?
Or even the validation of Hansen (1988) and the GISS II model?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/james-hansens-climate-forecast-of-1988-a-whopping-150-wrong/
Anonymous Coward “If you ask me, nobody commenting on this blog has the right to make those statements unless they study the scientific literature…”
This isn’t North Korea, we’re allowed to speculate on a blog.
Smokey says at August 1, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Yes, it actually was supposed to say “half-baked”.
Tu quoque argument. I don’t even have anything to do with Muller.
Perlwitz says:
“here I mean ‘global warming trends’, because the Fox News desinformation [sic] outlet…”
As opposed to the disinformation/leftist propaganda outlets of MSNBC, RealClimate, Closed Mind, ABCNews, Pseodo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science, C–>BS, CNN, etc., etc.?
Perlwitz fails miserably when he starts writing about trends. The longest term trends show unequivocally that the planet is warming naturally from the LIA, and that the warming has not accelerated despite a large increase in CO2.
Therefore, even the most casual observer must admit that CO2 is not the cause of global temperature rise. The CO2=AGW conjecture is falsified by Planet Earth herself, so Perlwitz can now stop pocketing the taxpayers’ grant payola that motivates his anti-science nonsense.
Anonymous Coward “If you ask me, nobody commenting on this blog has the right to make those statements unless they study the scientific literature…”
This isn’t North Korea, we have the right to speculate on a blog.
Jan P Perlwitz: “No, here I mean “global warming trends”, because the Fox News desinformation outlet explicitly claimed, referencing Watts:”
Wait wait. Did you mean that the disinformation was the claim that Watts ‘cherry-picked’ or did you mean that the disinformation was your cherry-picking a single misuse of a term by a journalist in an article that otherwise is repeatedly and extraoidinarily careful mention of the US network? I’m unclear as to which propagandist I’m supposed to consider a propagandist here.
“Just the usual “it’s all cooked” assertion, which false skeptics like to make. How boring.”
Indeed, and two naked assertions on your part. I was hoping that some mockery might get your thinking cap on. But hey, we’ve already covered how useless NASA these days. But I am curious as to how you think I’m a ‘false skeptic’. Wouldn’t that make me an agent provocateur and your comrade hitching rides with the Russians?
I’m going to need a citation for that one, Fries.
CoRev says August 1, 2012 at 6:46 pm
I don’t know where you got this from, but this is not correct at all. Please don’t spread any false information about me. And, I don’t speak for NASA or any other institution here. I only state my personal views. Just to clarify.
Thank you.
Yes, pro science. I don’t know how else I was biased.
Jan P Perlwitz;
Good thing you’re in HR because you clearly lack any pearls of wisdom to share, nor pearls of wit for that matter. In your last exchange with Smokey, we could clearly see 3 of your 5 witz taking flight. Another volley and you’ll be witless. Maybe have to change your name?
Seriously, you’re lack of wisdom and lack of wit is over shadowed by your poor grasp of the science, and one sided protests. If the climate science alarmists were held to even a fraction of the standard you’re trying to suggest Watts et al adhere to, they would have prescious few papers to publish at all, and as for the media outlets…. yes, they jump on headlines for they are all about the shock value and not about the substance, a matter which the climate science alarmists have abused to no end for decades.
But please, continue. It isn’t often we get to see someone so senior as yourself making a fool of themself in public while at the same time confirming to those of us that have followed the debate with any seriousness at all that the senior echelons of major government organizations are filthy with rent seekers with no real interest in the science but a strong interest in the politics of promoting global warming. Given your role as head of HR (I presume since you did not object that this description of you is correct) and your strong and clearly evident bias, one cannot be but surprised that actual scientists with an even handed approach to the issue seem to fail to make it through your screening process while wild eyed alarmists making one unsubstantiated and frequently easily falsified claim after another continue to be employed by your organization. Perhaps instead of touting Hansen et al you should be looking at the big picture regarding that individual and do your job, which would be to fire him.
Jan – we all know “global warming” when talking about the US is not exactly correct. It was mentioned many times in the orig thread. Yet we ALL know what the comment means as well.
In this case global warming is the generic, publicly understood term. Its a headline – you go with simplicity.
People still say they’re gonna go “Xerox” things even though there are few Xerox copiers left.
Perlwitz says:
“Apparantly, this is how Smokey thinks science is done, and how scientific theories are being successfully tested or refuted. One shows a few colored pictures together with some stated bold assertions, and that’s it.”
How telling. The charts I linked to are based on empirical, testable measurements. But Perlwitz cannot refute my trend analysis showing conclusively that CO2 has had no measurable effect on the long term warming trend, so his response is to denigrate my citations as “a few colored pictures”. That’s his whole argument.
Perlwitz isn’t very good at debating scientific facts, is he?
Jan P Perlwitz says: August 1, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Or is this a subtle try to intimidate me by bringing my employer into the argument? BTW: Who do you think is my employer anyway?
Jeez…. unless the budget cuts bit deeper than we thought or you developed a conscience, everybody and his brother knows you work for NASA/GISS. Nothing to be ashamed of, everyione has to earn a living. It’s not like exposing you would result in your being fired…. and then I’d find myself in the unique position of being on your side.
No, I don’t recognize that.
Jan, if you fail to recognize the global implications of Watts et al. 2012…. sigh. It’s not about Menne, Hansen… Leroy 2010 has over-taken them all and if Watts’ analysis holds up, then GISS, NOAA, CRU…. have all been rendered moot… as well as the thousands of papers based on them. Don’t even think of pointing me at Karl et al. 1987… I’ve spent the whole damn afternoon with it and I’m getting surly. Really, really surly.
On a conciliatory note, we’ll be announcing it shortly here on WUWT, but on August 18th I’ll be sponsoring an East Coaster’s WUWT commenters picnic at my place on the shore within 70 miles of NYC. You are most heartily invited. James and Gavin are also invited. We can duke it out over dogs, ziti, burgers and beer. Indicate accceptance and a solemn oath to keep the location secret, and I’ll e-mail directions.
@ur momisugly Ron Broberg says: August 1, 2012 at 6:34 pm
“Anthony Watts has chosen to withhold Table 1 from his draft,…”
Ron, if your data, that had been collected over a 5 year period, had been “borrowed” twice & used to produce 2 papers, would you withhold vital data until you submitted a paper? Borrowed btw by well-funded scientists (one in a gov. agency) vs you, a self-funded scientist.
Seems pretty obvious to me. Burn me twice, shame on them. Burn me 3 times…not gonna happen.
Yeah it is. But so what? It was just the result of condensing a thought for a headline, the thought to be expounded on in the abstract and study. It should be read as “US measurement of global warming”.
Happy now?
You’re welcome.
jan … mighta been things like this that lead people to their conclusions:
http://www.desmogblog.com/49-cliff-clavin-s-walk-bar-and-talk-climate-change#comment-726985
Looks like you’re a hero … 😉
Or they might got their idea of your employer here:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/janperlwitz.html
Obviously you’re knowledgeable … and I find I learn a lot more from contrarian viewpoints than those I agree with.
FWIW – I welcome your participation, but perhaps you could show a little respect for others – we can disagree without being disagreeable ….
Jan P Perlwitz: “I don’t know where you got this from, but this is not correct at all. Please don’t spread any false information about me.”
‘BTW: Who do you think is my employer anyway?’ — Jan P Perlwitz
Plus: http://www.google.com
Yields NASA/GISS as the first hit.
Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. But all that said, you have now cherry-picked a spurious outlier out of a quantity of data and proceeded to make a case that it is the ‘end of the world’ based on that selection bias. No jest, no hyperbole, and no insult: Who else could you be but a climate scientist?
Some may, or may not, object and state that perhaps it only indicates that you are in the ‘soft’ side of a scientific field, but not necessarily climate. And to be sure that might be a valid objection. But those in the sciences tend to have blinders on that narrow their focus to their own niche of a discipline. And NASS/GISS Jan P Perlwitz is a pre-eminent modeler if the citations are taken at face. As well you have exhibited a complete ignorance of Watts current paper on the issue of measurement and siting issues as well as Leroy (2010) about site classifications. Both notions from the ‘hard’ side of climate science.
But lastly you’ve made a repeated and unargued objection that Hansen, a colleague of NASA/GISS Jan P Perlwitz, is not cited by Watts. Either this is because you’re scratching backs for your pal because you think this paper is going somewhere. Or you are raising wholly irrelevant objections to attempt to Poison then Well and frustrate attempts at publication of a paper that takes a differing stand than your colleague.
And this certifies it. Others have claimed it, but these issues verify that you are indeed NASA/GISS Jan P Perlwitz. And to answer the question you asked in a public fora: Your employer is NASA or was until recently.
But now that this fun endeavour is out of the way: Perhaps you could use the intellect that simply *must* be present in you to be a NASA egghead and argue as to why Hansen (2010) is relevant to Leroy (2010) in the context of the current paper from Watts. Or stick with Nepotism or Spoilers. It’s worked for Hansen, but I have better hopes for you.
@Maus:
When someone who is in the business of spreading “news” and information follows a political agenda, and the spread “news” and information is selected and shaped so that it fits the political agenda, and if this even includes the spreading of falsehoods regarding facts how is such an activity called again? I would say “propaganda” is the right word for it. How is calling a duck a duck the same as a blood libel? Your assertion is just absurd.
Propaganda doesn’t consist only of lies. But the Fox News article contains falsehoods about the content of the manuscript by Watts et al. Besides that the manuscript hasn’t even published yet, not even peer reviewed, or even submitted to a specialist journal on climate, Fox News makes factually false claims, which create the impression that someone published a study with results that contradict the results from other analyses of the global warming trend. I can back this up. I already cited it.
No, I’m not. Apparently unlike others here, I don’t have any political agenda at stake here. My views about the science aren’t motivated by any non-scientific motives, like personal economic, political or ideological motives. So, it can’t be propaganda what I say.
Spent some more time looking, but I remain unable to find where NOAA asserted +0.308°C per decade. Can anyone with stronger google-fu help a brother out and refer me to that noaa.gov page?
“Moderator REP says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Jan P Perlwitz says: August 1, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Or is this a subtle try to intimidate me by bringing my employer into the argument? BTW: Who do you think is my employer anyway?
Jeez…. unless the budget cuts bit deeper than we thought or you developed a conscience, everybody and his brother knows you work for NASA/GISS.”
So once again, the MO here appears to be that if you agree with the work, anonymous review is fine, but as soon as significant or legitimate criticisms appear, you find it necessary to make a point of hunting down and exposing/blackmailing identities. This is DISGUSTING, and of course will not be a tactic available to you in peer review.
REPLY: Mr. H- whatever. You really want to go this way? Fine. Dr. Perlwitz is well known and well-respected in this community. It really doesn’t matter if he adheres to our “line” or not, he has my respect and that of many others. You can vehemently disagree with him, but if you try to silence him you may run into more of a problem than you thought. Dr. Perlwitz puts his name on his words.
You, on the other hand, are a sock puppet. Young Mr. Roberts is more than welcome to comment here… but if young Mr. Roberts wants to play stupid games, fine. His information gets dumped. One last warning, Mr. Roberts…. before I was allowed to be a moderator here, I made a comment in seven or eight different languages that in the cold light of morning I begged Charles to remove. Anonymity doesn’t make you free, it makes you stupid.
One more humbolt comment like this and your contact information gets published.Actually, that’s not gonna happen. but you are pushing the envelope. -REP
@Smokey:
You obviously don’t even know how empirical, testable measurements, or, generally, scientific results are presented properly. Links to colored pictures really don’t do it.
What trend analysis that allegedly shows something? Where can it be found? I can’t recall to have seen any.
CliffyJ says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:36 pm
Spent some more time looking, but I remain unable to find where NOAA asserted +0.308°C per decade. Can anyone with stronger google-fu help a brother out and refer me to that noaa.gov page?
I don’t know where to find it, but the number quoted in the text is +0.309, not 0.309, so looking for 308 obviously find not find anything.