WUWT readers may recall: Upside-Side Down Mann and the “peerreviewedliterature” at Climate Audit. Steve McIntyre wrote then:
“…there isn’t a shred of doubt that Mann et al 2008 used these proxies upside down from the Tiljander interpretation. “
It seems the use of “upside down data interpretation” has leaked into a White House official report. WUWT reader “Jimmy” says in Tips and Notes: Check out the interesting temperature graph on this economic post from the White House today, “Deviation from Normal Temperature”.
Excerpt:
3. The first quarter of 2014 was marked by unusually severe winter weather, including record cold temperatures and snowstorms, which explains part of the difference in GDP growth relative to previous quarters. The left chart shows the quarterly deviation in heating degree days from its average for the same quarter over the previous five years. By this measure, the first quarter of 2014 was the third most unusually cold quarter over the last sixty years, behind only the first quarter of 1978 and the fourth quarter of 1976. In addition, there were four storms in the first quarter that rated on the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS). The right chart shows that no quarter going back to 1956 had more than three such storms.
Yes, while technically correct, showing heating degree days, it is upside down to the normal human interpretation of temperature, especially when the title says “Deviation from Normal Temperatures” while presenting degree days rather than a temperature plot. The other two largest positive spikes are the brutal winters of 1977 and 1978.
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/05/29/second-estimate-gdp-first-quarter-2014
UPDATE: here is how I would have presented this graph. Simply changing the title removes the inverted thinking about “Deviation from Normal Temperatures” and leaves it technically correct without unnecessarily confusing the reader.
Most people looking at that graph don’t have a clue what a heating or cooling degree day is. In case you don’t, here is a definition from NOAA/NWS
Q: What are degree days?
Heating engineers who wanted a way to relate each day’s temperatures to the demand for fuel to heat buildings developed the concept of heating degree days.
To calculate the heating degree days for a particular day, find the day’s average temperature by adding the day’s high and low temperatures and dividing by two. If the number is above 65, there are no heating degree days that day. If the number is less than 65, subtract it from 65 to find the number of heating degree days.
For example, if the day’s high temperature is 60 and the low is 40, the average temperature is 50 degrees. 65 minus 50 is 15 heating degree days.
Cooling degree days are also based on the day’s average minus 65. They relate the day’s temperature to the energy demands of air conditioning. For example, if the day’s high is 90 and the day’s low is 70, the day’s average is 80. 80 minus 65 is 15 cooling degree days.
Heating and cooling degree days can be used to relate how much more or less you might spend on heating or air conditioning if you move from one part of the country to another. Of course you’d have to take into account how well insulated your new home will be in comparison to your old one and the different costs of electricity, gas or heating oil. You could also use records of past heating degree days to see if the money you’ve spent on insulation, or a newer furnace or air conditioner is paying off. To do this, you’d also need records of past energy use.
The heating degree season begins July 1st and the cooling degree day season begins January 1st.
Source: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/cle/climate/info/degreedays.html
But also of interest in the same report is this graph and summary, which does make sense. It seems the winter of 2013/2014 set a new record for snowstorms.
4. Within the first quarter, several key indicators were lower in January and/or February before rebounding strongly in March, suggesting that the severe weather had a disruptive effect that only began to abate at the end of the quarter. Light vehicle sales, average weekly hours, core retail and food service sales, and core capital goods shipments dipped starting in December and/or January before bouncing back in March, and so were left little changed for the quarter as a whole. One outside group has estimated that the elevated snowfall in the first quarter slowed the annual rate of GDP growth by 1.4 percentage points, with all of that lost activity to be made up in the second quarter.
With this severe winter behind us, I have to wonder if any similar WH economic report (or any U.S. government report) exists that shows anything close to “slowed the annual rate of GDP growth by 1.4 percentage points” for a warmer than normal period. The summer of 2010 would be a good candidate for such a report.
If readers know of one, leave a note in comments.
Guys, there is nothing arcane about that chart. Charts just like this one but covering only the previous month used to come with my gas bill in Chicago forty years ago. They were (are) always done this way, never as you say other way up. No-one familiar with concept of degree days would ever do it any other way.
So what we have here is a reaction to something not understood or unfamiliar and the immediate assumption that it is liberal, (well it would be from this administration), propaganda. Think about the Chicken-Little story as an example – same thing.
Frankly, I’m astonished that our host wasn’t familiar with these charts given his profession.
Lest anyone think that what I’ve written is a general attack on this site, I would say that much of what gets posted here is interesting, often useful, and even substantial. But there is the occasional silliness and this is a good example.
REPLY: I take exception to your statement “Frankly, I’m astonished that our host wasn’t familiar with these charts given his profession.” That’s the sort of rubbish that attack loonies like “Sou” aka Miriam O’Brien would say. If I wasn’t familiar with it, why did I go to the trouble of trying to educate readers about the definition of it? My point is that they could have 1) labeled it correctly or 2) Presented the data so that the label of 3rd coldest was a downgoing spike rather than an uptick, like the way a thermometer reads.
The fact that so many people, including yourself are confused about it illustrates my point. – Anthony
A number of posters have noted that the objective behind this exercise was to show that extreme cold in the first quarter resulted in negative economic growth. My guess is that this analysis was performed by the Energy Information Administration, which keeps track of energy consumption in the U.S. What is interesting is that the NCDC, which is responsible for hyping global warming (aka climate change) by adjusting temperature data upwards, insists that the first quarter was slightly warmer than normal. Someone should ask the White House about this discrepancy.
Roy –
If it had been shown in the technically incorrect format, how many here would be complaining about it on that basis? Are we to pick our arguments based on a politically driven point of view or a technically driven one? There has been a lot of discussion here in the past lambasting the politicizing of technical information and I, for one, seek consistency in my approach.
I am shocked the White House did not find out about the GDP problem on the news like everything else they claim not to know about. This is just another opportunity to avoid responsibility again! It is ironic how this happened in the first full quarter after the ACA was implemented.
On a side note and kinda on topic, I missed this yesterday.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/29/u-s-house-hearing-on-the-ipcc-process/#more-15644
It seems a important factor is missing in the equation. Personal heating and cooling settings vary by quite a bit…..for instance I set my cooling threshold at 80 and my heating at 65. My neighbor claims to set his at 72/70. I suspect this factor would change much of the data, and it seems to be unaccounted for.
J. Ferguson, to think that anything coming out of this administration or any administration is innocent it tremendously naive. Any graph “up and to the right” communicates the party line that we need the cap and trade that is coming through the EPA. We have to consider the sources because over the last 15 years the BS consensus has been 100%. The simple fact that one of the worst winters in 20 years has barely been mentioned in “science” or the MSM, and when it is it is it is blamed on man made global warming should tell you something.
What Brian said. + 1
Mohatdebos @ur momisugly 7:21 –
They are not inconsistent. This is a US economic report. The NCDC reported the National winter temperatures as colder than normal, while reporting the Global land surface temperatures as still warmer than normal.
DayHay, “Tremendously Naive”?? I didn’t say they might not misuse it, but I think to pick on this poor innocent, and likely correct chart is to express a blind pessimism which is largely politically biased. I share your general view, but this isn’t a good example.
I think 65 must be the average of the data shown. These cumulative integrals veer off quickly one way or the other if they aren’t referenced to the long term mean.
Anthony, I read your reaction to my suggestion that you might not be familiar with a degree day chart. I still cannot understand how you would think it reasonable that this one single degree-day chart among the thousands published over the years that look just like this one with identical orientations should be inverted.
My guess is that I’m not the only one reading this who thinks this, either.
REPLY: See my update, you’ve missed the point. Simply changing the title removes the inverted thinking about “Deviation from Normal Temperatures”. The title is wrong, and sets up the uninformed reader with something that is inverted to any temperature anomaly graph they have ever seen.
BTW, I used to give HDD and CDD’s on a half hour farm report I used to do long ago in the Midwest, (farmers who have livestock buildings had to pay a lot of attention to fuel oil and natural gas/bottled gas use) so please don’t tell me that I’m unfamiliar with the terms and their method of derivation. – Anthony
“It seems the winter of 2013/2014 set a new record for snowstorms.”
________________________
Of course there were more snowstorms and it’s all your fault. Didn’t we all get the memo from the Climate Fearosphere? “Warmer air holds more moisture, so therefore Global Warming causes more snow storms”.
Colder winters? Those are your fault too; Climate Disruption.
You will pay for your sins.
See my update in the body of the post on how I would have presented the graph.
“Simply changing the title removes the inverted thinking”
That is true. The title does not reflect the variable that is being plotted.
Greg @ur momisugly 8:06 – Please see my explanation of the 65*F @ur momisugly 6:11
try flipping the graph
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=t540t2&s=8#.U4ijKaKBwrQ
general downward trend since 1998.
Thanks Anthony. Now it makes sense, even to this meanest understanding.
It’s unfair to Mia Tiljander to include her as part of the upside-down syndrome. She didn’t use her data upside down. It was Mann (followed later by Huybers and Tingley and IPCC).
REPLY: I never suggested she did, only that Mann’s interpretation of her data was inverted, much like the WH interpretation of temperature anomaly in the graph, but to be precise, I added the word interpretation so that this reads: “upside down data interpretation” – Anthony
Brian says:
Greg @ur momisugly 8:06 – Please see my explanation of the 65*F @ur momisugly 6:11
Well if that really a figure that was fixed decades ago and does not get adjusted, it must be damned close to true mean of the data.
Imagine the figure had been set at 64.99F that would introduce a drift of 3 degree.days per year or 180 degree.days in the 60y year record. Even one HUNDREDTH of a a degree would cause it to ramp off one way or the other.
Now I just don’t buy that 65F is _exactly_ the mean of that data to within 0.01 degrees, by pure accident , and happens to match what someone chose decades ago (when we all know it was MUCH colder than today).
Whatever NOAA, NCDC or the WH say, I’m telling you it’s mean of that data.
The big shocker to me is that the graph of heating days shows no trend decreasing with time.
If the climate is growing warmer, we should be heating less, right?
The graph looks about level, so no warming trend !
These standards are used, along with local extremes, by HVAC engineers to determine the proper size for your furnace and chiller. They have to pick something, and 65F is the consensus standard. Remember that this is the outside temperature, not the temperature in your home. With an outside temperature of 65F homes are more or less in thermal balance. Normal human activites produce enough heat that there is little or no demand on the heating system and in fact interior temperatures may be closer to 70F or so. FWIW, this is pretty much my own experience, and as usual YMMV.
Compare the last snap of cold years like that to the tornado records for EF3 and greater:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=257
We’re moving into a cooling period expect tornadoes.
This is the kind of extreme weather we can expect as world COOLS , it the new normal.
Sixty year record? You didn’t actually read the explanatory material, did you? First, the 65F temperature isn’t some calculated item; it’s an arbitrarily selected standard. Second, the anomolies aren’t calculated against the entire record, they are calculated against 5-year bins. For Q1 for 1980, it’s calculated against the average for Q1 for 1976-1980.
J says:
May 30, 2014 at 8:39 am
The big shocker to me is that the graph of heating days shows no trend decreasing with time.
If the climate is growing warmer, we should be heating less, right?
The graph looks about level, so no warming trend !
====
You would have been writing that as I posted the explanation just above you comment. That plot has to be relative to the mean of the data. Thus no trend.