From Jo Nova: BOM finally explains! Cooling changed to warming trends because stations “might” have moved!
It’s the news you’ve been waiting years to hear! Finally we find out the exact details of why the BOM changed two of their best long term sites from cooling trends to warming trends. The massive inexplicable adjustments like these have been discussed on blogs for years. But it was only when Graham Lloyd advised the BOM he would be reporting on this that they finally found time to write three paragraphs on specific stations.
![875141-a5eda3f6-2a03-11e4-80fd-d0db9517e116[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/875141-a5eda3f6-2a03-11e4-80fd-d0db9517e1161.jpg?quality=83)
Who knew it would be so hard to get answers. We put in a Senate request for an audit of the BOM datasets in 2011. Ken Stewart, Geoff Sherrington, Des Moore, Bill Johnston, and Jennifer Marohasy have also separately been asking the BOM for details about adjustments on specific BOM sites. (I bet Warwick Hughes has too).
The BOM has ignored or circumvented all these, refusing to explain why individual stations were adjusted in detail. The two provocative articles Lloyd put together last week were Heat is on over weather bureau and Bureau of Meteorology ‘altering climate figures, which I covered here. This is the power of the press at its best.
more here: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/bom-finally-explains-cooling-changed-to-warming-trends-because-stations-might-have-moved/
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Nick Stokes: This is why your assumption that you KNOW what the data ought to be is nothing but hubris and has no place in data gathering. Exibit A is the Brisbane Aero station data 50 km away which also shows a similar cooling trend in 1980 which you claim from your armchair without any actual research is wrong. Your method is clever but when untested against the real world, is nothing but speculation not science.
Just wait. BOM has not gotten to that stations adjustments yet.
The blue trend line looks wrong to me. Just eyeballing it, it looks like it should be nearly flat.
It would seem the problem is one of analysis and expectations. The BoM intended use does not seem suited for our expected use. The better skeptical questions might be, what does the BoM intend to do with the measurements, what message do they intend to send/advertise, how do the adjustments support the message, and why is that message good/correct?
rgbatduke
August 26, 2014 at 5:37 am
As usual spot on.
If anyone is interested in what NCDC’s Global Summary of Days data looks like without scalpels, kriging, and homogenization, follow the URL in my name. NCDC does some sorts of “data quality” repairs before I get it, but the least I can do is not make it worse.
Nick Stokes
August 26, 2014 at 5:30 am
The BoM got this one right. The need for the adjustment is very clear from neighboring stations. I’ve done the analysis here. The change happened in August 1980, and I calculated the adjustment at 2.8°C.
Nick Stokes
August 26, 2014 at 5:35 am
Nick Stokes August 26, 2014 at 5:30 am
Oops, mixed up a number there. The adjustment is 1.4 C; the change to trend is 2.8°C/century.
Very nice, Nick. A beautiful job.
We see that station siting was improved in August 1980 to remove some artificial UHI. We need many more such changes, as Anthony Watts crowd research on US stations proved.
Then we need full access to raw data so we can see whether all or too many adjustments result in increasing the alarmism; or whether these adjustments are, in fact, valid and unbiased.
For number 2, you can simply compute the field under two cases: case number 1. No adjustment.
Case number 2: adjusted. Then look at your global result which is all that matters. What you find
is that the global answer doesnt change. Such that you might have the local detail wrong, but in the
big picture the global answer doesnt change.
Bottom line: you get the same global answer whether you include cooling stations or not.
====
Bottom line: you get the same global answer whether you include warming stations or not….
then there’s absolutely no reason to apply an algorithm or an adjustment to any of the temp readings, or any of the past temp readings……
……..they would all average out without it
I nominate the esteemed Duke professor’s comment for elevation to full post status. Title: “Begging for Climate Ponies”
A small change of a location of a weather station matters. But homogenizing over hundreds of kilometers is OK.
Hey Mosh,
You’ve mentioned that BEST does spot checking between the GAT field and test station measurements. Since you normalize for latitude, altitude, and whatever else you adjust for, what is the process to prepare for the test?
Do you (BEST), un-normalize the field value at that point, or do you take the station values (min and max), and run the same normalization process to convert it into a single point field value?
Nick Stokes August 26, 2014 at 5:55 am
Have you looked at the graphs that I showed? The need for the adjustment is obvious.
Nick, inspection of your first chart at your link
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/adjusting-amberley-as-it-must-be.html
suggests that you must warm Samford before 1980 and cool it afterward. It shows the exact opposite pattern of Amberly and it stands out with double the trend of the other 2 sites.
Was Samford adjusted downward? If so, cheers. If not, why not?
Whenever one has many data points with a certain error in measurement, then one takes the average in order for the too high measurements to offset the too low measurements.
What one CANNOT do is take the too low measurements, move them upwards to better match the average, then recalculate the average.
Latitude is correct. If the microclimate data does not change the trend in the overall average, then the data needs no adjusting, res ipsa loquitor.
Remember that we are talking about 0.1 degree or less per decade. It has been demonstrated that in most cases past tmeps were moved downward and more recent temps moved upwards. That will indeed move the average trend enough to see at a resolution of 0.05 degrees.
I wonder if the people behind this, would be OK with the idea that pay-packet should be reduced because ‘they might’ not been coming to work, or would they insist that their employer proves they did not ?
Just when you think climate ‘science’ can have lower academic standards they it already does , they prove you wrong .
In what other area of science can are you allow to make up data if your actual data is no good? Wouldn’t it be scientifically more rigorous to discard bad data? Isn’t it better practice to start tracking a site as new if it’s relocated instead of the fiction that the data is continuous?
It looks as if the station was moved very slowly say, 10m / month.
/sarc
Well Nick is great for entertainment value at least hahaha
“What you DONT HAVE is answers.”
But “you guys” are perfectly OK going in front of congress and the world with policy recommendations with something like this? You might be right. Or, you might not. That station might have moved, unless it didn’t…
Seems to me that ALL of these adjustments require certain UNPROVEN ASSUMPTIONS be made. Mosher’s explanation clearly shows that:
What you DONT HAVE is answers. You have choices
1. assume the metadata is correct …
2. Assume that the metadata is in correct or incomplete …
Yes, I read the rest of it. The problem is here: “ASSUME”. In either case there is no evidence.
How about – don’t assume anything and accept that we really don’t know?
But I guess you don’t get grants for that.
This is just not going to die
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-records-contradict-bureau-of-meteorology/story-e6frg6xf-1227037936046#
Oh, my. there is a serious problem with Nick’s explanation of Ambley.
If the site was moved in 1980, then only the data before 1980 would need to be adjusted so that you could get a trend line. If pre-1980 the thermometer reading was .7 too high, then you, Nick, are saying that it was .7 too high compared to the post 1980 readings after the thermometer was moved. But that is not what you are saying. You are saying it was originally in a spot that was .7 too warm, and then in 1980 it was moved to a spot that was .7 too cold.
If you adjust the pre and post 1980 numbers, you are saying BOTH locations were inaccurate compared to some imaginary midpoint. Mathematically that seems OK, but in reality, it doesn’t work unless by some improbable chance the thermometer was moved from one location that was exactly .7 too warm, to a location that was EXACTLY .7 too warm at exactly August 1980. Possible, but unlikely.
Let’s take it for granted that stations move – sometimes without documentation. Am I nuts, or is it reasonable to assume that over time stations like this will move to areas where the measure higher temps, to areas where they measure lower temps, and to a place where they measure basically the same temp. If this is what happens, then the changes average out over time and no need for adjustments of any sort. However, what I keep seeing is adjustments only in the direction of emphasizing warming. That does not make sense – there should be adjustments to lower temps too. And they should balance out over time – and once again, no need for any adjustment. About the only place I can see that adjustments might be necessary is in a place where UHI is growing around the station – and then the adjustment should be down.
Sometime they move without actually moving:
Analysis of the 100-year record at the station shows a cooling of 0.35C in the raw data had become a 1.73C warming after “homogenisation” by BOM.
A review of the data by independent scientist Jennifer Marohasy shows the warming trend had been achieved by progressively dropping temperatures from 1973 back to 1913.
For 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the BOM homogenised figure was 1.8C.
BOM said the discrepancy in the data was consistent with the thermometer site moving from a farm building on a small hill outside the town to its current location on low-lying flat ground. Minimum temperatures are normally higher on slopes than on flat ground or in valleys.
However, the official catalogue of all stations used to make up the national temperature record says the Rutherglen thermometer is an automatic weather station in the grounds of a research farm, 7km southeast of Rutherglen. Not only has the station not moved since being established in 1913, it’s “well outside the town area, on flat ground over grass but with low hills a few hundred metres to the north”.
“There have been no documented site moves during the site’s history,” it says.
BOM has so far been unable to explain that discrepancy.
Retired scientist Bill Johnston, who has worked at Rutherglen, said a temporary thermometer had been put on higher ground near the office of the farm but it never provided temperatures to the bureau.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-records-contradict-bureau-of-meteorology/story-e6frg6xf-1227037936046
Location is a physical reality, a specific longitude and latitude.
Temperature is man’s measurement at that specific location.
Temperature Data are strictly numbers.
Metadata is information about data, preferably as comprehensive as possible.
Location name is transient meta-data
Change any of these, for any reason affects all of them!
Change the temperature data because Stokes believes it is right; the number(s) are no longer temperature data for a specific location!
Yeah, world climastrologists believe they have the right to muck with temperature data; that still does not make the action correct and it most especially does not make temperature data accurate or usable.
In fact it makes the data unusable, completely.
Data collection wrong? Fix it!
Old data is skewed? Don’t use it! Be prepared to define exactly why in explicit detail.
Sensor is bad? Data is bad, don’t use it!
Data contradicts other data? Find out why! Explicitly! And then fix the problem b>if there is really a problem!
Climastrology’s insistence on using adjusted and re-adjusted temperature data proves the old maxim; “Garbage in, Garbage out!).
From JoNova’s post on Graham Lloyd article in the Australian:
“…Amberley is near Brisbane which also shows a cooling raw trend, though other neighbours like Cape Moreton Lighthouse, Bundaberg, Gayndah, Miles, and Yamba Pilot Station have an average warming trend. (See Ken’s Kingdom) NASA’s Goddard Institute also adjusts the minima at Amberley up by homogenization with other stations. But the radius of those stations is nearly 1,000 km…”
Even if temperature adjustment made any sense, Amberely’s adjustments are still irrational.
Let’s repeat for clarity:
If the physical location actually changes than treat the new location as a new location. The record for the old position is now discontinuous unless and until a new sensor is placed into the old location.
Sensor is bad; when the sensor is replaced it is tested alongside of the new sensor and irregularities are recorded. This does not allow data adjustment, but the metadata will identify corrupted or possibly corrupted data to exclude. Corrupted data should also go into a database to better identify when a sensor declines.
Use of ‘adjusted’ data is using corrupt data.
From an outsiders data viewpoint, it appears that climastrologists are adjusting data to further political actions as every time the data is used, the results are not strictly science but inferred future disaster. Urgent action is required now, but the science behind the reports and their data collection and storage procedures are near stone age.
Otherwise when a ‘climate’ graph is presented it would be easy for other scientists, degreed or not, to view all aspects of the data including the original data separately and then with all adjustments included to build the graph.
How can anyone look at any of the current climastrology outputs and make a decision based on actual facts is beyond rational.
Mario Lento
August 26, 2014 at 12:32 am
Mosher clearly has his BEST interests in mind…
In fact BEST’s results were used as a defense for the BOM corrections. What bugs me isn’t the homogenization so much as the apparent alteration of individual station records. Homogenized data should only be used to create a separate table of data entirely, area weighted, and not linked to any specific station(s). The resulting records can be tied to a centroid defined by the polygon delimited by the locations of the various stations used in the local homogenization. Also, the entire correction debacle seems to ignore the fact that if there is a global trend in a phenomenon, then that trend is going to be present in any series of measurements of that phenomenon regardless of whether raw data is corrected for measurement biases like TOBs and step changes or not. The only measurement problem that could seriously affect a trend estimate done properly would be a changing instrument sensitivity to the phenomenon being measured over time. Step changes would only be a problem if the trends were calculated over the step rather than treating the step as a discontinuity. In fact the timing, direction and extent of step changes should be analyzed separately, since they can offer distinct and independent data on the phenomenon
Jennifer Marohasy Puts BOM On The Chopping Block
Posted on August 26, 2014 by stevengoddard
HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved.
Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/jennifer-marohasy-puts-bom-on-the-chopping-block/
Steven Mosher
August 26, 2014 at 8:25 am
They are called un documented station moves. Happens all the time.
Some of the most un reliable data folks have is the meta data.
There are also metadata errors that are the result of “apparent” location changes that are pure humbug. Not long ago there was a discussion regarding a station on Long Island that in reality moved about 10 meters max. The metadata has it hopping all over a half-mile square area. The only real change was the installation of an automatic system in the same yard, a few meters away from the original Stevenson screen. The move would have been (barely) detectable with a consumer grade gps unit. No automatic (computerized) system on the planet will be able to determine this.
….
Bottom line: you get the same global answer whether you include cooling stations or not.
whether you adjust them or not. Given the absence of any physical mechanism to explain how
one patch of earth can cool while the rest warms, Given that the metadata record is not
gods word, given that the global answer doesnt change, it is reasonable and justifiable to apply occams razor and assume that the metadata missed a station move. It’s the most simple explanation.
The real bottom line from a methodological perspective is that if what you say above s true, there is no justification for any “adjustment” of the data.