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!
=============================================================
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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Kadaka
How about calling the cat IPCC as it will take up all your time and resources and be evasive when you try to get close to it…
tonyb
It appears to me that there is a little discrepancy between the headline and the graph on page 43 of “Overview of the paper (PPT)”
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al-station-siting-7-29-12.ppt
Page 43:
Comparison Rural, no Airports
Compliant Raw vs. Compliant Adjusted
Compliant Stations, Raw Data: .108
Compliant Stations, NOAA Adjusted Data: .251
The graph below has .310 and not .251
Several times in the presentation “(also adjusted upward” has the closing bracket missing.
Maybe this can be corrected. This is such an important piece of work and a excellent presentation of the findings. I don’t want any AGW believer who might now read this be distracted by some minuscule error (if so) and typos. They shall be deeply irritated just by the findings…
Fraudulent Climate Website is now up and running (thanks to tech guys), so please do listen to that Charles Monnet grilling on Video Wall #12. It may be a bit boring to the uninitiated, but the methodology is mind boggling. One quote …. I didn’t take any pictures of the bears, because erm, I can’t see too well you know….. This is the sort of data that such “peer reviewed papers”, as submitted by people like Monnet et al are based upon.
As to the matters being discussed here most recently, and the flood of comments by Jan P. Perlwitz.
Of course he submits publications at NASA/GISS, and according to their own directory, this information may be gleaned……
GISS Personnel Directory
Dr. Jan P. Perlwitz
Affiliation: Columbia University
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
2880 Broadway
New York, NY 10025 USA
According to Columbia University :
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
Applied Physics & Applied Mathematics (inc Materials Science & Engineering)
200 S. W. Mudd Building, MC 4701
500 W. 120th Street
New York, NY 10027
People – Research Staff
Jan Perlwitz
Associate Research Scientist, APAM/
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
2880 Broadway, Mail Code: 0201
New York, NY 10025
———
That appears to confirm that Perlwitz does work at
both NASA GISS and at Columbia University, and they
are just a few zip codes away from each other.
Yet, he may have a hidden agenda, even so, because I am
wondering if this next person is any relation to Jan P Perlwitz.
NOAA
Earth System Research Laboratory
Physical Science Division
325 Broadway
R/PSD1
Boulder, CO 80305-3328
People – Research Staff
Judith Perlwitz – Research Scientist
Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, University of Hamburg, Germany, 2000.
M.S., Meteorology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, 1992.
—-
Perhaps this recently submitted “paper” may give a clue as to the animosity from Jan P Perlwitz, with regard to Anthony Watts revelations about the surface temperature record.
Pay special attention to who are the co-authors of Judith Perlwitz …
Identifying Human Influences on Atmospheric Temperature: Are Results Robust to Uncertainties?, submitted to PNAS (2012)
Santer, B. D., J. Painter, C. Mears, C. Doutriaux, P. Caldwell, J.M. Arblaster, P. Cameron-Smith, N.P. Gillett, P.J. Gleckler, J.R. Lanzante, J. Perlwitz, S. Solomon, P.A. Stott, K.E. Taylor, L. Terray, P.W. Thorne, M.F. Wehner, F.J. Wentz, T.M.L. Wigley, L. Wilcox, and C.-Z. Zoun.
……
“Something rotten in the State of Denmark” – W. Shakespeare
From eyeballing the prior page, 42, it appears that .310 is correct, so Anthony’s .251 error was ‘innocent” (contrary to interest). Something one will rarely see in warmists’ pal-reviewed papers.
Attention Anthony et al.: I listed that error, and several others, in my post upthread at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/31/watts-et-al-paper-2nd-discussion-thread/#comment-1049196 (I just want to be sure it isn’t overlooked–that’s why I’m mentioning it.)
==============
I bet that 97% of climatologers thought until this week that NOAA’s numbers were grade A–and ditto for Hadcruts, etc. This raises the possibility that they’re full of it.
Doesn’t Harry of Harry readme fame say they discarded the tmax values for the CRU database?
“WELCOME TO THE TMIN/TMAX SYNCHRONISER
Before we get started, an important question: Should TMin header info take precedence over TMax?
This will significantly reduce user decisions later, but is a big step as TMax settings may be silently overridden!
To let TMin header values take precedence over those of TMax, enter ‘YES’: YES
Please enter the tmin database name: tmn.0707021605.dtb
Please enter the tmax database name: tmx.0702091313.dtb
“
Smokey is fond of saying that it is up to the cAGW community to conclusively prove the link between CO2 and global warming.
Leaving aside the point that it is impossible to prove anything conclusively outside mathematics, it is a bit more complicated than that. Scientists operate by looking for correalations in their data. They then make hypotheses and try to falsify them, ie show that they are wrong. This might clarify.
http://www.experiment-resources.com/falsifiability.html
Regarding climate change, the cAGW hypothesis has so far shown a better match to the data than any of the alternatives. It is not proven, but none of the attempts by either side to falsify it have done so, or demonstrated anything more likely.
Mr Watts’ paper sets out the hypothesis that problems with the adjustment process designed to filter out extraneous effects on weather stations have caused the warming of the US climate this century to be overestimated. He has produced evidence in support. If published, other scientists should attempt to falsify it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:53 pm
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 0.308, so looking for 308 obviously find not find anything.
—————
He’s not the only one who thought it was 0.308. Look at the bottom of page 1 here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/30/watts_et_al_temperature_bombshell/
Something else to check before peer review.
“Regarding climate change, the cAGW hypothesis has so far shown a better match to the data than any of the alternatives.”
Is that the alarmist mantra? The evidence I see is that nothing unusual is happening. The earth over the last 12,000 years is slowly cooling into another ice age, with cycles of warmth every few hundred years to give us respite from the cold.
The cAGW hypothesis is a proven failure.(CO2 follows temps in the ice cores, no troposphere warming as predicted, and currently temps are going sideways for 15 years, despite rising CO2, thus falsifying ALL of the IPCC models.)
Jace F says:
August 2, 2012 at 2:45 am
“Before we get started, an important question: Should TMin header info take precedence over TMax?This will significantly reduce user decisions later, but is a big step as TMax settings may be silently overridden!”
Tmin can have its own systematic errors. A station close to a heat source running overnight will overread and a station in a frost hollow will underread. Using Tmin instead of Tmax may shift the emphasis, but does not remove the problem.
Entropic man says:
August 2, 2012 at 3:25 am
Smokey is fond of saying that it is up to the cAGW community to conclusively prove the link between CO2 and global warming.
etc.
Regarding climate change, the cAGW hypothesis has so far shown a better match to the data than any of the alternatives.
Did it occur to you that you are explaining the obvious to the well informed?
The only thing I have seen that fits the CAGW hypothesis is models, models and more models — some about models. Observational data? Not so much…
Entropic man is bound to run out of energy sooner or later, isn’t he?
Anthony,
Awesome work. Absolutely an arrow of truth on target.
Now you are encountering attacks. Most to undermine your efforts. Blow them off.
You asked for comments for corrections and improvements to your paper. But the thread is full of attacks. Sieve through them to get the beneficial comments/suggestions.
Another donation placed in your tip jar. Keep up the good work.
I see you may need a second paper to address additional items you already knew about (TOB) and possibly how passwork by others need to be refine in light of your primary finding. Show them more than once. Keep it in front of us all. May God bless.
“but none of the attempts by either side to falsify it have done so, or demonstrated anything more likely” … in Your Opinion, Entropic Man.
Other hypotheses include the Relative Planetary Positional therory, the Total Solar Irradience theory, and the Solar Lunar Amplituded Magnetic Modulation theory, which seem as likely, if not more likely to me. Certainly the correlation of data is more striking than the cAGW hypothesis. Many do believe that the cAGW theory is bunkum, and has been disproved already. Some people simply deny the evidence before their own eyes, and I am not writing about the so called “climate deniers”. That old canard is sure wearing a bit thin now.
Etymology & Evolution of “climate denier”.
Originally doubters of Man Made Global Warming were called MMGW
Deniers. Although perjorative, at least that made grammarical and
logical sense. Then when the Globe stopped warming, the name of
the theory was changed to “Climate Change”. Proponents thought
this a great ruse, since the climate was still changing, and of course
no rational person could deny that.
Man could be also blamed for those changes, so they thought.
Yet when thousands did not accept that Anthopogenic Greenhouse
Gas could not be responsible for climate change, since this would
mean that rising CO2, for instance, was responsible for both rises
and falls in temperature. The fatuous nonsense of being called
now a “climate change denier” is exposed as ridiculous.
Actually according to Obama’s so called Science Tzar, the name
of the phenomenon, is now officially changed from “climate change”,
to “Global Weirding”, so really most people in here will now be
“Anthropogenic Global Weirding” deniers.
This whole episode in Human History will be looked upon
in the future as a weirding of the scientific method IMHO.
Auto-correction feature mistakes on prior post
Passwork = past work
Refine = redone
An update:
The project was worked on for a year before we released, a number of people looked at it at various stages. Dr. John Christy was in fact the one who suggested we should put a note in about TOBS at the end, saying we will continue to investigate it it, because he knew it would be an important consideration. I concurred. We also knew that to do it right, the TOBS comparison couldn’t simply rely on the “trust us” data from NCDC. Christy had already been through that with his study of irrigation effects in California and had to resort to the original data on B91 forms to disentangle the issue.
What we are finding so far suggests NCDC’s TOBS times (we have the master file for all stations) don’t match what the observers actually do. That’s a discrepancy that we need to resolve before we can truly measure the TOBS bias effect along with siting.
Critics would do well to note this comparison.
1. When The Team gets criticized on a technical point, they typically dismiss it with a wave of the hand, saying “it doesn’t matter”. Upside down proxies, YAD061, and lat/lon conflations are good examples.
2. When we get criticized on a technical point, we stop and work on it to address the issue as best we can.
Whining (such as we’ve seen from Mr. Mosher and Bunny Boi) won’t help #2 go any faster.
– Anthony
****
Jan P Perlwitz says:
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.
****
ROFLMFAO!!
Funny how this thread how this thread has been hijacked by people from the NASA-GISS CBU (Climate Blogging Unit). What do they really do at GISS to justify their six figure salaries (plus generous bonuses and benefits)?? Is there ANY work going on? [sigh]
Axel says:
August 2, 2012 at 6:40 am
“but none of the attempts by either side to falsify it have done so, or demonstrated anything more likely” … in Your Opinion, Entropic Man.
Other hypotheses include the Relative Planetary Positional therory, the Total Solar Irradience theory, and the Solar Lunar Amplituded Magnetic Modulation theory, which seem as likely, if not more likely to me. Certainly the correlation of data is more striking than the cAGW hypothesis.
The moderators have made it clear to me that they preferred me to document statements where possible. I am sure you would not mind providing peer reviewed links to support these.
Incidentally, you may note that I am using hypothesis instead of theory for cAGW since much of it cannot yet be demonstrated to the level of significance usually expected of laboratory physics. You should be doing the same.
Axel said:
“Then when the Globe stopped warming, the name of the theory was changed to “Climate Change”.” Absolutely right. That’s why the IPMMGW changed its name to the IPCC. Although I am having a hard time figuring out exactly when that happened. Do you recall?
Re: Entropic man says:
August 2, 2012 at 7:35 am
& etc….
I express my opinion that there are other theories and hypotheses.
I am not advocating any particular preference for those alternatives
here, merely pointing out that they are at least as valid, if not more so.
If you want some “peer reviewed” papers on the subjects you know
where to look. Be my guest. Do though check out the hundreds of
videos in my eclectic, and arcane collection, at the FC Website.
Some may be irrelevant to your particular field of interest. Simply then
ignore those. See Video & Audio Index Page, and make your selection.
I did not record any of those videos, and have just collated them.
As to the semantic difference between Theory & Hypothesis,
that is a moot point. The deviation between the two is slight,
and the meaning can subtly change according to the context.
For me, in this context they are interchangeable, though it is
possible that in a strict scientific hierarchical sense they may
be used sequentiially in a sort of ranking. I conceed that point.
@ur momisugly claimsguy
Sorry, I am unsure of the exact date when this occurred, but maybe it explains why John Holdren and his allies, decided to now change the name to “Global Weirding”. They can go back to using their old logos and notepaper etc. 😀
The IPCC was founded in 1988. A quick web search failed to find a previous name, but it’s possible.
As for the name change:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/09/the-name-game-of-climate-change/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm
Axel says:
August 2, 2012 at 7.35am
“If you want some “peer reviewed” papers on the subjects you know
where to look. Be my guest. Do though check out the hundreds of
videos in my eclectic, and arcane collection, at the FC Website.”
That is a copout, one which the moderators complained about when I declined to supply specific references on a previous forum. Specific links, please.
You’ll pardon my insistance on peer review, but it gives some indication of the technical quality of the science, if not necessarily its validity. (This is also why Mr Watts is seeking peer review and publication; to confirm, by the accepted standard, that his work has been properly done and should be taken seriously by all of Climateland and not just the sceptics.)
Entropic says:
“…you may note that I am using hypothesis instead of theory for cAGW…”
First, CAGW is not a “theory”. CAGW is also not a “hypothesis”. Both a theory and a hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable. CAGW/AGW are not. CAGW [and AGW] are conjectures, the first step in the scientific method hierarchy [Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law]. AGW is essentially an opinion. As Dr. Glassman points out, AGW [never mind the preposterous CAGW] is a ‘crippled conjecture‘.
No amount of hand-waving by Entropic man can change that fact, or elevate AGW from a conjecture to a hypothesis. That would require scientific evidence. Note that models are not evidence. Empirical, testable data is evidence. Verifiable observations are evidence. Models are simply opinions based on an appeal to a computer authority [although some models – very few – are based exclusively on evidence].
The climate Null Hypothesis is potentially falsifiable by an alternate hypothesis. But in order to falsify the Null Hypothesis, at the very least global temperatures must decisively break out above the past parameters of the long term trend [the longer the trend, the better]. That has not happened. Despite a very significant 40% rise in CO2, global temperatures have remained within their long term parameters. Warming has not accelerated. Thus, the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified, and Entropic’s belief system is just that: an evidence-free conjecture.
Ron Broberg says:
Just stop trying to pretend that he has made all his data and methods public. He has not. The public review will not be complete unless he does so.
You’re right, he has not – not yet. But he has also very clearly stated that he WILL upon formal publication. So what’s the complaint?
I see no problem in waiting for Anthony’s formal publication for his. Would be nice to get the same consideration from the Team.