UPDATE: See the first ever CONUS Tavg value for the year from the NCDC State of the Art Climate Reference Network here and compare its value for July 2012. There’s another surprise.
Glaring inconsistencies found between State of the Climate (SOTC) reports sent to the press and public and the “official” climate database record for the United States. Using NCDC’s own data, July 2012 can no longer be claimed to be the “hottest month on record”. UPDATE: Click graph at right for a WSJ story on the record.
First, I should point out that I didn’t go looking for this problem, it was a serendipitous discovery that came from me looking up the month-to-month average temperature for the CONtiguous United States (CONUS) for another project which you’ll see a report on in a couple of days. What started as an oddity noted for a single month now seems clearly to be systemic over a two-year period. On the eve of what will likely be a pronouncement from NCDC on 2012 being the “hottest year ever”, and since what I found is systemic and very influential to the press and to the public, I thought I should make my findings widely known now. Everything I’ve found should be replicable independently using the links and examples I provide. I’m writing the article as a timeline of discovery.
At issue is the difference between temperature data claims in the NCDC State of the Climate reports issued monthly and at year-end and the official NCDC climate database made available to the public. Please read on for my full investigation.
You can see the most current SOTC for the USA here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/11
In that SOTC report they state right at the top:
Highlighted in yellow is the CONUS average temperature, which is the data I was after. I simply worked backwards each month to get the CONUS Tavg value and copy/paste it into a spreadsheet.
In early 2011 and late 2010, I started to encounter problems. The CONUS Tavg wasn’t in the SOTC reports, and I started to look around for an alternate source. Thankfully NCDC provided a link to that alternate source right in one the SOTC reports, specifically the first one where I discovered the CONUS Tavg value was missing, February 2011:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/02
That highlighted in blue “United States” was a link for plotting the 3-month Dec-Feb average using the NCDC climate database. It was a simple matter to switch the plotter to a single month, and get the CONUS Tavg value for Feb 2011, as shown below. Note the CONUS Tavg value at bottom right in yellow:
All well and good, and I set off to continue to populate my spreadsheet by working backwards through time. Where SOTC didn’t have a value, I used the NCDC climate database plotter.
And then I discovered that prior to October 2010, there were no mentions of CONUS Tavg in the NCDC SOTC reports. Since I was recording the URL’s to source each piece of data as well, I realized that it wouldn’t look all that good to have sources from two different URL’s for the same data, and so for the sake of consistency, I decided to use only the CONUS Tavg value from the NCDC climate database plotter, since it seemed to be complete where the SOTC was not.
I set about the task of updating my spreadsheet with only the CONUS Tavg values from the NCDC climate database plotter, and that’s when I started noticing that temperatures between the SOTC and the NCDC climate database plotter didn’t match for the same month.
Compare for yourself:
NCDC’s SOTC July 2012:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/07
Screencap of the claim for CONUS Tavg temperature for July 2012 in the SOTC:
Note the 77.6°F highlighted in blue. That is a link to the NCDC climate database plotter which is:
Screencap of the output from the NCDC climate database, note the value in yellow in the bottom right:
Note the difference. In the July 2012 State of the Climate Report, where NCDC makes the claim of “hottest month ever” and cites July 1936 as then benchmark record that was beaten, they say the CONUS Tavg for July 2012 is: 77.6°F
But in the NCDC climate database plotter output, the value is listed as 76.93°F almost 0.7°F cooler! They don’t match.
I initially thought this was just some simple arithmetic error or reporting error, a one-off event, but then I began to find it in other months when I compared the output from the NCDC climate database plotter. Here is a table of the differences I found for the last two years between claims made in the SOTC report and the NCDC database output.
In almost every instance dating back to the inception of the CONUS Tavg value being reported in the SOTC report, there’s a difference. Some are quite significant. In most cases, the database value is cooler than the claim made in the SOTC report. Clearly, it is a systemic issue that spans over two years of reporting to the press and to the public.
It suggests that claims made by NCDC when they send out these SOTC reports aren’t credible because there are such differences between the data. Clearly, NCDC means for the plotter output they link to, to be an official representation to the public, so there cannot be a claim of me using some “not fit for purpose” method to get that data. Further, the issue reveals itself in the NCDC rankings report which they also link to in SOTC reports:
Note the 76.93°F I highlighted in yellow. Since it appears in two separate web output products, it seems highly unlikely this is a “calculation on demand” error, but more likely simply a database output and that is simply displayed data.
Note the claim made in the NCDC July 2012 SOTC for the July 1936 CONUS Tavg temperature which is:
The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F.
But now in two places, NCDC is reporting that the CONUS Tavg for July 2012 is 76.93°F about 0.47°F cooler than 77.4°F claimed as the previous monthly record in 1936, meaning that July 2012 by that comparison WAS NOT THE HOTTEST MONTH ON RECORD.
The question for now is: why do we appear to have two different sets of data for the past two years between the official database and the SOTC reports and why have they let this claim they made stand if the data does not support it?
There’s another curiosity.
Curiously, the last two months in my table above, October and November 2012 have identical values between the database and the SOTC report for those months.
What’s going on? Well, the explanation is quite simple, it’s a technology gap.
You see, despite what some people think, the nation’s climate monitoring network used for the SOTC reports is not some state of the art system, but rather the old Cooperative Observer Network which came into being in the 1890’s after Congress formed the original US Weather Bureau. Back then, we didn’t have telephones, fax machines, radio, modems or the Internet. Everything was observed/measured manually and recorded by hand with pen and paper, and mailed into NCDC for transcription every month. That is still the case today for a good portion of the network. Here’s a handwritten B91 official reporting form from the observer at the station the New York Times claims is the “best in the nation”, the USHCN station in Mohonk, New York:
Source: http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html
Note that in cases like this station, the observer sends the report in at the end of the month, and then NCDC transcribes it into digital data, runs that data through quality control to fix missing data and incorrectly recorded data, and all that takes time, often a month or two for all the stations to report. Some stations in the climate network, such as airports, report via radio links and the Internet in near real-time. They get there in time for the end of the month report where the old paper forms do not, hence the technology gap tends to favor more of a certain kind of station, such as airports, over other traditional stations.
NCDC knows this, and reported about it. Note my bolding.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the world’s largest active archive of weather data. Each month, observers that are part of the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) send their land-based meteorological surface observations of temperature and precipitation to NCDC to be added to the U.S. data archives. The COOP network is the country’s oldest surface weather network and consists of more than 11,000 observers. At the end of each month, the data are transmitted to NCDC via telephone, computer, or mail.
Typically by the 3rd day of the following month, NCDC has received enough data to run processes which are used to calculate divisional averages within each of the 48 contiguous states. These climate divisions represent areas with similar temperature and precipitation characteristics (see Guttman and Quayle, 1996 for additional details). State values are then derived from the area-weighted divisional values. Regions are derived from the statewide values in the same manner. These results are then used in numerous climate applications and publications, such as the monthly U.S. State of the Climate Report.
NCDC is making plans to transition its U.S. operational suite of products from the traditional divisional dataset to the Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN) dataset during in the summer of 2011. The GHCN dataset is the world’s largest collection of daily climatological data. The GHCN utilizes many of the same surface stations as the current divisional dataset, and the data are delivered to NCDC in the same fashion. Further details on the transition and how it will affect the customer will be made available in the near future.
See: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2010/10
The State of the Climate reports typically are issued in the first week of the next month. They don’t actually bother to put a release date on those reports, so I can’t give a table of specific dates. The press usually follows suit immediately afterwards, and we see claims like “hottest month ever” or “3rd warmest spring ever” being bandied about worldwide in news reports and blogs by the next day.
So basically, NCDC is making public claims about the average temperature of the United States, its rank compared to other months and years, and its severity, based on incomplete data. As I have demonstrated, that data then tends to change about two months later when all of the B91’s come in and are transcribed and the data set becomes complete.
It typically cools the country when all the data is used.
But, does NCDC go back and correct those early claims based on the new data? No
While I’d like to think “never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple incompetence“, surely they know about this, and the fact that they never go back and correct SOTC claims (which drive all the news stories) suggests some possible malfeasance. If this happens like this in CONUS, it would seem it happens in Global Tavg also, though I don’t have supporting data at the moment.
Finally, here is where it gets really, really, wonky. Remember earlier when I showed that by the claims in the July 2012 SOTC report the new data showed July 2012 was no longer hotter than July 1936? Here’s the SOTC again.
Note the July 1936 words are a link, and they go to the NCDC climate database plotter output again. Note the data for July 1936 I’ve highlighted in yellow:
July 1936 from the NCDC database says 76.43°F Even it doesn’t match the July 2012 SOTC claim of 77.4°F for July 1936. That can’t be explained by some B91 forms late in the mail.
So what IS the correct temperature for July 2012? What is the correct temperature for July 1936? I have absolutely no idea, and it appears that the federal agency charged with knowing the temperature of the USA to a high degree of certainty doesn’t quite know either. Either the SOTC is wrong, or the NCDC database available to the public is wrong. For all I know they both could be wrong. On their web page, NCDC bills themselves as:
How can they be a “trusted authority” when it appears none of their numbers match and they change depending on what part of NCDC you look at?
It is mind-boggling that this national average temperature and ranking is presented to the public and to the press as factual information and claims each month in the SOTC, when in fact the numbers change later. I’m betting we’ll see those identical numbers for October and November 2012 in Table 1 change too, as more B91 forms come in from climate observers around the country.
The law on such reporting:
Wikipedia has an entry on the data quality act, to which NCDC is beholden. Here are parts of it:
=============================================================
The Data Quality Act (DQA) passed through the United States Congress in Section 515 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001 (Pub.L. 106-554). Because the Act was a two-sentence rider in a spending bill, it had no name given in the actual legislation. The Government Accountability Office calls it the Information Quality Act, while others call it the Data Quality Act.
The DQA directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue government-wide guidelines that “provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies”.
…
Sec. 515 (a) In General — The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall, by not later than September 30, 2001, and with public and Federal agency involvement, issue guidelines under sections 3504(d)(1) and 3516 of title 44, United States Code, that provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies in fulfillment of the purposes and provisions of chapter 35 of title 44, United States Code, commonly referred to as the Paperwork Reduction Act.
=============================================================
Here’s the final text of the DQA as reported in the Federal Register:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/fedreg/reproducible2.pdf
Based on my reading of it, with their SOTC reports that are based on preliminary data, and not corrected later, NCDC has violated these four key points:
In the guidelines, OMB defines ‘‘quality’’ as the encompassing term, of which ‘‘utility,’’ ‘‘objectivity,’’ and ‘‘integrity’’ are the constituents. ‘‘Utility’’ refers to the usefulness of the information to the intended users. ‘‘Objectivity’’ focuses on whether the disseminated information is being presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner, and as a matter of substance, is accurate, reliable, and unbiased. ‘‘Integrity’’ refers to security—the protection of information from unauthorized access or revision, to ensure that the information is not compromised through corruption or falsification. OMB modeled the definitions of ‘‘information,’’ ‘‘government information,’’ ‘‘information dissemination product,’’ and ‘‘dissemination’’ on the longstanding definitions of those terms in OMB Circular A–130, but tailored them to fit into the context of these guidelines.
I’ll leave it to Congress and other Federal watchdogs to determine if a DQA violation has in fact occurred on a systemic basis. For now, I’d like to see NCDC explain why two publicly available avenues for “official” temperature data don’t match. I’d also like to see them justify their claims in the next SOTC due out any day.
I’ll have much more in the next couple of days on this issue, be sure to watch for the second part.
UPDATE: 1/7/2013 10AMPST
Jim Sefton writes on 2013/01/07 at 9:51 am
I just went to the Contiguous U.S. Temperature July 1895-2012 link you put up and now none of the temperatures are the same as either of your screen shots. Almost every year is different.
2012 is now 76.92 & 1936 is now 76.41 ?
Just in case it was some rounding / math issue with Javascript, I checked the source code & then checked the page in both IE & Chrome… the data for the comma-delimited data is distinct and matches those of the plot. So, in the 2 days since your post it has changed yet again… for all years apparently?
That’s verified, see screencap below made at the same time as the update:
This begs the question, how can the temperatures of the past be changing?
Here’s comment delimited data for all months of July in the record:
1895,71.04
1896,73.43
1897,72.97
1898,72.93
1899,72.68
1900,72.82
1901,75.93
1902,71.81
1903,71.58
1904,71.06
1905,71.60
1906,72.03
1907,72.20
1908,72.80
1909,72.24
1910,73.66
1911,72.28
1912,71.90
1913,72.66
1914,73.68
1915,70.53
1916,73.92
1917,74.19
1918,72.00
1919,73.95
1920,72.31
1921,74.24
1922,72.61
1923,73.37
1924,71.49
1925,73.72
1926,73.01
1927,72.28
1928,72.98
1929,73.24
1930,74.63
1931,75.30
1932,73.75
1933,74.73
1934,75.98
1935,74.76
1936,76.41
1937,74.19
1938,73.36
1939,74.44
1940,73.72
1941,73.62
1942,73.55
1943,73.89
1944,72.39
1945,72.53
1946,73.43
1947,72.43
1948,72.90
1949,73.85
1950,70.85
1951,73.26
1952,73.69
1953,73.75
1954,75.13
1955,74.10
1956,72.73
1957,73.98
1958,72.29
1959,73.27
1960,73.56
1961,72.92
1962,71.77
1963,73.39
1964,74.40
1965,72.37
1966,74.79
1967,72.28
1968,72.64
1969,73.86
1970,73.73
1971,72.18
1972,71.97
1973,73.08
1974,73.95
1975,73.39
1976,72.77
1977,74.30
1978,73.68
1979,73.03
1980,75.63
1981,73.79
1982,73.08
1983,73.92
1984,73.07
1985,73.94
1986,73.51
1987,73.26
1988,74.75
1989,74.15
1990,73.27
1991,73.93
1992,71.28
1993,72.25
1994,73.53
1995,73.61
1996,73.56
1997,73.24
1998,75.49
1999,74.44
2000,73.90
2001,74.61
2002,75.90
2003,75.50
2004,72.98
2005,75.34
2006,76.53
2007,74.77
2008,74.21
2009,72.74
2010,74.83
2011,76.28
2012,76.92
SUPPLEMENT:
For now, in case the SOTC reports should suddenly disappear or get changed without notice, I have all of those NCDC reports that form the basis of Table 1 archived below as PDF files.
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ October 2010
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ January 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ February 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ March 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ April 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ May 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ June 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ July 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ August 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ September 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ October 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ November 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ December 2011
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ January 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ February 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ March 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ April 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ May 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ June 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ July 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ August 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ September 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ October 2012
State of the Climate _ National Overview _ November 2012
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Hey, folks, dig the ENSO meter!
GIGO = CON US
Don’t know if this has been mentioned in earlier comments, but there is likely a systematic, cool bias in the data from the COOP sites which arrive a few weeks after the end of the month. Let me explain: In some areas, COOP observers report their daily data sometime in the morning, say between 6 and 9 AM. They report 24-hour high and low temperatures once a day at those times. Let’s say, for example, that on Monday at 7 AM they report a high of 65, low of 45 and current temperature of 46. It can be assumed that the low temperature reported occurred on Monday morning shortly before the reporting time. Later on Monday, a warming trend began. The next day (Tuesday), the 7 AM observation is a high of 75, low of 46 and a current temperature of 55. From the data here, it can be implied that the actual Tuesday low was closer to 55 than 46 because that was the temperature reported at the observation time. The reason the low is 46 is because that was the temperature the instrument was reset to on MONDAY morning after that observation was taken. When listed as a daily temperature report, the Monday morning low is 45 and the Tuesday morning low is 46. A more realistic daily temperature report would have Tuesday’s low closer to 55. Therefore, the COOP data is “double-reporting” the Monday low because of the time and manner in which the data is reported, not because of an intentional skewing of the data. Data from NWS ASOS stations is reported from a midnight-midnight, which leads to far less of this “double-reporting” of morning lows.
“The question for now is: why do we appear to have two different sets of data for the past two years between the official database and the SOTC reports and why have they let this claim they made stand if the data does not support it?”
Without exploring motives, though they should be clear at this point, the facts remain — The SOTC reports are released first, which is of particular importance to those personally invested recalling that It is a widely accepted belief that you never forget ‘your first’!
Jaye Bass says:
January 7, 2013 at 12:32 pm
Do they use a version control system and a configuration management plan for dealing with the data? One should be able to get previous versions very easily with a nearly perfectly traceable history.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is what the US government demands us peons do. The thousand little gods help you if the FDA or FAA finds you messed up you version control system. (I have been through audits by both)
Since my last post I noted and read the link to the About Us page which as far as I could see did nothing to allay my fears of the historical data changing… I concur that current plots can change as data is added from stations still using snail mail and the like, but I cannot see from anything on their site why the 1936 temperature should have changed in the 2 days since the WUWT post?
The only explanation is they are playing with either the Math behind arriving at a plot, or creating new data that was missing from a station’s reports using… dare I say it… a computer model to fill in the vacant holes… and as noted in other posts, the 1936 temperature is dropping… conveniently…?
Today’s NOAA 1936 plot is 76.41 and 2012’s is 76.92, which is what they were when I posted… 76.43 & 76.93 being the temperatures on the WUWT screenshots. 0.01 actual difference may not be much, but as also mentioned… it does seem convenient that the modifications favour the AGW argument… or at least maintains the half a degree increase. It is almost as if the 1936 temperature plot is linked to the 2012 plot… i.e. when they ‘had’ to adjust the 2012 plot ‘down’ because of late data turning up, which I accept as OK, some algorithm then kicked in and adjusted 1936 and other plots down to compensate?
It will be interesting to watch this over the following weeks and if the plot for 2012 ‘needs’ further adjustment as late data is added and therefore changes the plot value, what happens to the 1936 plot? Will an increase in 2012 spur an increase in 1936 and conversely a downward 2012 make 1936 go down?
Will watch for a while and report back if it does.
The headlines about 2012 being the hottest year are everywhere. According to the NY Times, it was not even close.
Don’t let up Anthony.
This is yet another example of the preposterous nature of the anthropogenic climate change debate. Everyone learned in grade school that the precision of a result can only be as precise as the least precise variable in the calculation. We also no by experience, than any deviation of inaccuracy is exaggerated the further out you expand that error. As such, the climate change crowd wants it both ways, they want to be able to project their models out decades and centuries into the future, while dismissing errors and gaps in the precision of the data used in those models. They can’t have it both ways……Bottom line is that it is absolutely impossible for anyone to prove or disprove anthropogenic climate change because our understanding of the non-linear interconnected systems is so poor, and the data is so imprecise, that any result is garbage.
We are spending billions, if not trillions, on trying to prove something that cannot be proven either way. As such, all we have is a multibillion/trillion dollar marketing, fundraising, propaganda, and scientific welfare program.
Mark H says:
January 9, 2013 at 8:08 am
“Bottom line is that it is absolutely impossible for anyone to prove or disprove anthropogenic climate change because our understanding of the non-linear interconnected systems is so poor, and the data is so imprecise, that any result is garbage.”
If we base our understanding on average temperature, I agree 100%.
But I think there are ways to disprove AGW. I’ve been analyzing the nightly drop in temps in the temperature record, which shows no trend.
I’ve also just purchased a handheld IR thermometer, and pointing it skyward on a clear 35F day, and it was colder than the minimum temp it reads -40F. Which looks to eliminate any CO2 signal out to ~12.5um. I think this is proof any heating from CO2 is minimal, if it’s even measurable.
Trying to argue based on temperatures is futile, the warmest own that dialog, but I think there’s plenty of evidence that makes that argument meaningless. We have to change the rules of the games.
E.M.Smith says:
January 7, 2013 at 12:33 am
========
Thanks for the links to your temp processing example (if that would be a correct term).
That, along with what Anthony has presented here suggests that something as elementary as maintaining temp data and processing it seems to be in the hands of the incompetent.
One other problem could be an inconsistent method of calculating the average. Let’s say you have 100 sites reporting for a month.
1. Do you take each site, add up their temperatures to get a monthly average, then add each sites average and divide by 100 to get a total average;
or
2. Do you take all 100 sites, add them up together and divide by the total number of days used, in this case approximately 3000 (30 days x 100 sites)?
I know that I would use the second process but in all likelihood they are probably taking the average of an average which could change the output by +- 0.5 degrees or so. Especially considering that sites will at times have missing data so you might compare one site with 25 days to another with 30 days which is no longer apples to apples if following the first process.
The NOAA web pages do prominently list contact information for concerns like this. Before accusing someone of incompetence and/or malice, I would think you might ask them about their side of the story. Quite possibly you are right, and by bringing the discrepancies to their attention you would actually help improve government services. Or possibly their methodology is correct and you are making something out of nothing.
In any case, July 1936 and July 2012 were undoubtedly hot in the lower 48. This doesn’t strike me as warranting a lot of self-congratulation and backslapping.
I have to admit, I was deeply troubled by what you found. There seemed to be no logical explanation. However, I also would have hoped and expected that you would take the next step and contact NOAA to alert them to this issue or at the very least see if they can explain it. To me it seems doing so would be the bare minimum research to call this truly “objective” work. Now I am not discounting your thorough research, nor the concerning confusion this data presented, but your story is incomplete.
I read your article on 1/8/12 and immediately contacted NOAA via email (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-monitoring/contact.php). I described the questionable data that is presented on their website as your research highlighted (including a link to this story) and asked for an explanation. Honestly, I did not expect a response. Yet, within 24 hours I received an email back. Turns out someone else had the same concerns, but chose to contact NOAA before publishing a potentially misleading article…perhaps something to take note of in the future. The response is pasted below in its entirety.
I think this neatly clarifies the discrepancies found.
“The differences seen in the CONUS temperature for July 2012 are not due to late arriving data. They are due to our change from version 2.0 to version 2.5 of the US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), from which we calculate the CONUS temperature index.
First, as part of the changeover, we recalculated the baseline temperature upon which “anomalies” are compared, which were first computed nearly 20 years ago in an era with less available data and less computer power. In other words, we now have a better estimate of what is the average July temperature (and the average August, and September, and so on). This resulted in a cooler baseline value for all of the July values throughout the record. This component was applied equally throughout the record and does not affect the trend, nor does it change the characterization of 2012 temperatures as the warmest, nor does it change the relationship between one year and any other.
The other factor that affected the July 1936 temperature was the improvements to the methodology in v2.5. The basics of the changes and their impacts are below. But please visit the more detailed information at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/, where the differences are detailed thoroughly, and even the code used to run the two versions is available for download.
The short version: v2.5 improved the efficiency of the algorithm that confirms inhomogeneities (“breaks in the record” due to siting or instrumentation – documented or undocumented). This means that more of the previously undetected break points are now confirmed and corrections can be applied. The impact varies from station to station. Because, on average, the newer instrumentation reads “cooler” than the historical instrumentation (please see attached Menne et al., 2009 paper), the adjustments, on average, cool the deeper past data to better conform to the observing practices of today.
Speaking strictly to the July values that you are interested in: the July 2012 temperature decreased about two-thirds of a degree from v2.0 to v2.5, entirely due to the new baseline temperature for July. The July 1936 temperature cooled mostly because of this same baseline change (about two-thirds of a degree), but also an additional one-third of a degree due to the improved breakpoint detection.
It is erroneous to compare the v2.0 version from one year to the v2.5 version from another, as they refer to different baselines. In version 2.0, the CONUS temperature for July 2012 was approximately 0.2F warmer than that for July 1936. In version 2.5, the difference is approximately 0.5F. This is the result of the improved inhomogeneity detection algorithms. In both data sets July of 2012 is warmest ever measured.
We announced the change prominently within the September 2012 report itself (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/9), just below the “Significant Events” map, and before any results are presented. The announcement contained and still contains links to more detailed information, including a technical paper describing exactly the differences between the two versions, and links to the code for each.
Thanks again for contacting us before writing your article. We appreciate the consideration.”
One part of this article that I don’t get. In one place they have 77.6 in 2012 vs. 77.4 in 1936, and in the other it’s 76.92 in 2012 vs. 76.41 in 1936. Do they then not agree, at least, that it was warmer in 2012 in 1936?
GW is a religion, just like BO.
This comment is probably the funniest thing I have ever read.
As one who believes global warming to be the greatest challenge facing humanity, I find your work meticulous and your conclusions troubling.
Doug Broome says:
=============================
What global warming, pray tell
NoCherryPicking says:
January 9, 2013 at 1:17 pm
=================================
And so, did you swallow their justification for adulterating the data?
Also:
“Turns out someone else had the same concerns, but chose to contact NOAA before publishing a potentially misleading article”
And who was that? Pray tell.
Looks like a good response by NOAA. They should, however, go back and caveat their monthly summaries to avoid this type of confusion in the future. It kind of reminds of the unemployment statistics that make headlines and then are readjusted later, but the new numbers get less press.
I suggest everyone read this story that has the responses from both sides. (Yeah it is Fox but at least they presented both sides) http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/10/hottest-year-ever-skeptics-question-revisions-to-climate-data/
A NOAA rep. Peter Thorne gives NOAA’s reason for changing the data and you also get Dr. Roy Spencer’s comments.
I would note that the NCDC website has held back on finalization of all Class 1 LCD data for December 2012, by leaving Missing data in the final day of the month… well past it’s normal time. January 2013 data is already available through the 10th.
When I called NCDC on Monday the 7th, I was told by staff that the final runs and upload would take place later that day. Here it is Friday the 11th, and my call today elicited exactly the same response… that the final runs and upload would take place later today.
Could LCDC be holding back on that final day’s data so that the “official” monthly temperatures for December 2012, and by implication the “official” Annual temperatures for 2012, will not be available until they are finished with manipulations?
As for the response to explain why monthly historic temperatures are changing, the link to an explanation of differences between Version 2.5 and Version 2.0 was
“Last Updated Thursday, 4-Oct-2012 08:25:07 EDT by ron.ray@noaa.gov “, based on the articles date stamp.
If the V2.5 has been available since last October, why are the changes just showing up this week? Did they not turn the switch on for V2.5 until now? Did some influx of new data create a seismic change in the temperatures that propagated back to the 30s?
Also, it now appears that we will no longer see “raw” data [Version 1] from any stations in the NCDC database. Everything after January 2006 is now “QCLCD”, Quality Controlled Local Climatological Data, in Version 2 [automatic QC] and Version 3 [Final QC, subsequent to the end of each month]. http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/qclcd/qclcdimprovements.pdf
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” – WOO