The International Temperature Data Review Project
London, 26 April 2015 – The London-based think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation is today launching a major inquiry into the integrity of the official global surface temperature records.
An international team of eminent climatologists, physicists and statisticians has been assembled under the chairmanship of Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. Questions have been raised about the reliability of the surface temperature data and the extent to which apparent warming trends may be artefacts of adjustments made after the data are collected. The inquiry will review the technical challenges in accurately measuring surface temperature, and will assess the extent of adjustments to the data, their integrity and whether they tend to increase or decrease the warming trend.
Launching the inquiry, Professor Kealey said:
“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising. While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested. We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”
To coincide with the inquiry launch Professor Kealey has issued a call for evidence:
“We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them. The team approaches the subject as open-minded scientists – we intend to let the science do the talking. Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the data, and whether they are justifiable or not.”
All submissions will be published.
Further details of the inquiry, its remit and the team involved can be seen on its website www.tempdatareview.org
The controversy
Climatologists have long been aware of the poor state of global surface temperature records and considerable effort has been put into adjusting the raw data to correct known errors and biases. These adjustments are not insignificant. For example it has been noted that in the temperature series prepared by NOAA for the USA, the adjusted data exhibits a much larger warming trend than the raw data.
Source: http://1.usa.gov/1gQRThX
It has also been noted that over the years changes to the data have often tended to cool the early part of the record and to warm more recent years, increasing the apparent warming trend.
Although the reasons for the adjustments that are made to the raw data are understood in broad terms, for many of the global temperature series the details are obscure and it has proved difficult for outsiders to determine whether they are valid and applied consistently. For all these reasons, the global surface temperature records have been the subject of considerable and ongoing controversy.
The panel
In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and report on these controversies.
The panel features experts in physics, climatology and statistics and will be chaired by Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
Terms of reference
Detailed terms of reference for the panel have been published.
Submissions of evidence
With four major surface temperature series to consider, each incorporating several layers of adjustment, the scope of the inquiry is very wide. The panel is therefore seeking to benefit from the considerable expertise that already exists on the surface records and is inviting interested parties to submit evidence.
After review by the panel, all submissions will be published and can be examined and commented upon by anyone who is interested.
The deadline for submitting evidence is 30 June 2015.
Report
No timetable has been set for the panel to report.
Contact
The International Temperature Data Review Project
Chairman
Professor Terence Kealey
terence.kealey@buckingham.ac.uk
The International Temperature Data Review Project
http://www.tempdatareview.org/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I hope Ryan Maue submits his information regarding the ‘elimination’ of temperature stations! from NOAA’s network and the impact that the remaining urban and airport located stations have.
Check this out:
I have about as much faith in the integrity of this enquiry as I have in the Catholic Church or Dark Matter. Not much.
Aww…c’mon!
Dark matter has legs. 😉
Well the idea was started by Paul Homewood and Christopher Booker – two non-scientists who don’t seem to know what they are talking about and are clearly not very honest. And it’s hosted by the GWPF who don’t like to reveal their funding and don’t have any expertise in climate science either…. why wouldn’t you have faith in their integrity? Especially if they come up with something you agree with?
They have even brought in an awesome ‘clinical biologist’ with no qualifications, background or publications in climate science to be the lead scientist! What more could you ask for?
Sorry… I meant ‘bought’, not ‘brought in’.
Ok I understand that in most instances the data should belong to the tax payers that foot the bill for the instrumentation and pay the salaries of those that compile and “normalize” it.
BUT if I remember correctly Tony Heller put in a request for some information not too long ago and was told it would take months and many $1,000s of dollars for it to be supplied.
Will this panel run into the same such dodge?
Why don’t you use Tony’s Heller’s ‘real’ name? Steve Goddard. I’m still trying to find his ‘real’ qualifications. The ones he must have based his claim of being a ‘real’ climate scientist on. I wonder if he might be able to get some lessons in photoshop to make a ‘real’ PhD in Atmospheric Physics?
Didn’t Tony, sorry Steve, ask for copies of the original paper records from over a period of 100 years or so from everywhere around the country? I think he was told that it could take a year or so and he would have to pay enough to cover the salary of someone contracted to do all that work. Or did he expect the US taxpayers to pay the salary for him? I wonder if he wasn’t just setting them up so he could say they refused him- but they didn’t. They just said he would have to pay the costs. I wonder if he used his ‘real’ ‘scientist with a PhD’ name for the request?
I think it was actually several hundred thousand dollars. Why don’t you all chip in and give him the money to do it?
I was unaware of the books by Kealey, so I have some quick reading to do because for many years my position has been that government funding of science is inconsistent with rational basis of government where economics is just one dimension of the issue.
I think Kealey is thereby positioned to be unbiased wrt any governmental position that government therefore is the scientific authority on the government funded ‘official’ global surface temperature records.
John
Update: I will have a copy of Terence Kealey’s book ‘The Economic Laws of Scientific Research’ available to read next week.
John
Re the “Data”.
Has the CRU produced the “data” they acknowledged “losing”.
As examination of their so called work, perhaps product would be a better term, is best done using those same data sets they were entrusted with.
Yet as the feeble inquiries into the climate-gate emails acknowledged, that these experts had lost or destroyed the original weather station data from around the world, promising to recreate said data which they said would take 3 years.
Well those three years are rolling on to five. Where is this data?
Secondly a true and accurate admit of the data is not a solution to the real malaise of Climatology, the bureaucratic overreach and stunning incompetence of public servants.
Policies have been introduced stating as fact the suggestions of the IPCC.
Citing the IPCC “findings” as the science supporting public policy these documents then go on to state as fact, myths unsupported even by the IPCC’c fantasies.
Such persons will resist any audits, any exposure of their incompetence to the bitter end…. or their retirement.
Secondly a true and accurate audit…not admit .
However in passing, even if the entire Team IPCC ™ were to admit their sloppy work and overstatements of the massaged numbers, this would change little in the empires of the Greys.
The urge to delay, offuscate, deny and manipulate is the specialty of the bureaus and all who infest them.
In the US, the only way to get the data in a timely manner would be to get Inhofe and his committee to demand the data asap, and give it to this group. Peanuts from Canada.
Peanuts don’t grow in Canada.
PiperPaul
Oh. I take it that your comment means you are not in Canada.
Richard
I do hope they find a way of avoiding some of the problems that the Berkeley Earth Science group fell into when they attempted to audit/validate the temperature record. Jeff ID had a good critique of BEST investigation
Here. I think Jeff’s item #2, “UHI effect” is the major cause of errors in all of the temperature data sets, including BEST’s.Sorry, Jeff ID’s article is here: UHI effe is here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/03/a-considered-critique-of-berkley-temperature-series/
Yup. BEST was a whitewash.
Yep, should have been called Berkeley Urban Surface Temperature. (more accurate acronym)
Many articles on WUWT have raised issues with respect to specific, apparently inappropriate, adjustments to temperature data. I recall discussions of the Iceland records, the adjustments to Darwin station records in Australia, the change in numbers and distribution of land reporting stations and many more. I hope that the writers will take the time and trouble to bring their findings to the attention of this study group.
For Australia, a lot of work has aleady been done by Ken Stewart, Chris Gillham and others. Masses of raw data, level or sloping down, now reported as sloping up.
I would like to see another reality check: the tens of thousands of direct chemical bottle CO2 readings over 200 years, compared to the assumption of consistently low levels until about 1950.
How would this study be any different than BEST?
Most importantly. The difference in the people that are doing it. BEST was a whitewash. A trap for skeptics. Based on the organization and people involved in this inquiry I would be surprised if they did not do their best to do an HONEST evaluation of the data and the process used to “normalize” it.
I don’t think BEST was an amateur publicity stunt like this GWPF ‘project’ initiated by journalist Christopher Booker and blogger Paul Homewood. And I don’t think BEST was timed to be published just before a major climate change conference like this one is either.
And I don’t think BEST was asking for submissions by any old lay person with no climate science background to answer poorly written Terms of Reference questions which showed they don’t actually know what they are talking about. Have you read them? Who the heck wrote those questions anyway? Booker? Booker’s lapdog? It could have been one of the scientists they claim to have on their panel-unless they were suffering from a bad hangover.
The largest adjustments to the raw data that have had the biggest impact on the apparent trend in surface temperatures was discussed before, here –
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/25/historical-sea-surface-temperature-adjustmentscorrections-aka-the-bucket-model/
Removing this ‘correction’ would have profound consequences for the current assumptions about the rate of CAGW.
a call for evidence:….. https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
Someone’s finally calling for evidence of Tony Heller’s, sorry, – Steve Goddard’s – claimed qualifications as a scientist? He better get busy with photoshop!
Dang Ed, you be on a roll!
Too bad you don’t know what you are talking about, or maybe the rest of us could share your mirth.
If the CRU crowd can not genuinely provide the original data they used to create their ‘product’, then their product should be dismissed out of hand as being unverifiable.
That’s HADCRUT sorted.
As I’m sure it will be. It seems funny to me that with so much riding on the data, CRU loses source material. Its beyond fishy. Can you imagine, standing up with %100 confidence and declaring your results to the scientific community and then saying…”and about the source material…”
Maybe they sent it to Hillary?…as an attachment to an email? 😉
That’s about 1,000 X worse than this, and nary a charge has been leveled.
Don’t worry, those eighteen and a half minutes of missing emails are safe in the hands of our enemies. Well, her enemies anyway.
======================
The shot over the bow was the first disclosure. Go look, it’s amusing. El Sid, hee hee.
============
It would be useful for the Data Review Project to publish a running commentary of both progress and challenges. This would allow/force critics and proponents to deal with issues as they arise rather than having to face a massive carte blanche rejection of a complex effort after the fact.
The group has to act transparently to earn the required credibility.
A good start would be to be transparent about their funding. No mention of it anywhere on the website. Oh… and they need to rewrite the Terms of Reference so at least they don’t look like a blogger/journalist with no science background wrote them. Or is it too late for that now?
A whole bunch of sarcastic, disparaging replies this thread. No contributions, nothing substantial – merely insults.
How many so-called, self-selected, Big Government “scientists” can Big Government buy in three years for 92 billion dollars? How many editors will 92 billion dollars and tremendous political power and exposure buy? (Bill Nye was rewarded for his propaganda by getting a flight with the President on Air Force One. How many TV shows is that worth to him? Hansen gets on television as a government activist overseas while being paid as a NASA-GISS bureaucrat. How much is that exposure and political power worth to him?
+10
It really is fascinating how Ed knows that if you have the wrong funding that your work is by definition invalid, even before the work has started.
On the other hand nobody who works for govt has ever done anything wrong.
Here’s an overview of my submission:
I did a study of 2013 records from the CRN top rated US surface stations. It was published Aug. 20, 2014 at No Tricks Zone. Most remarkable about these records is the extensive local climate diversity that appears when station sites are relatively free of urban heat sources. 35% (8 of 23) of the stations reported cooling over the century. Indeed, if we remove the 8 warmest records, the rate flips from +0.16°C to -0.14°C. In order to respect the intrinsic quality of temperatures, I calculated monthly slopes for each station, and averaged them for station trends.
Recently I updated that study with 2014 data and compared adjusted to unadjusted records. The analysis shows the effect of GHCN adjustments on each of the 23 stations in the sample. The average station was warmed by +0.58 C/Century, from +.18 to +.76, comparing adjusted to unadjusted records. 19 station records were warmed, 6 of them by more than +1 C/century. 4 stations were cooled, most of the total cooling coming at one station, Tallahassee. So for this set of stations, the chance of adjustments producing warming is 19/23 or 83%.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/temperature-data-review-project-my-submission/
I bet there will be 100’s of amateurs climate ‘scientists’ submitting ‘studies’ they did at home using Excel then published on prestigious ‘peer’ reviewed internet blogs being sent in as submissions. Great stuff!
Notice how Ed doesn’t even bother with the science.
Since it’s not done by someone he considers to be an expert, it must be wrong. Especially since the conclusion is one that goes against Ed’s religious beliefs.
Ed, it’s called auditing. You take a sample at the field level and test to see if the numbers are reasonable.
The numbers are what they are: look at the unadjusted records from weather authorities and compare them with the records after adjusting. See, no “scientist’ required.
While this sounds promising, I have to suspect it will just be a white wash, allowing the alarmists to point to this inquiry every time we suggest that the temperature record is corupt. “Well according to this inquiry, it is actually 97% perfect!”
Nah. It’s going to show 100% what the “skeptics” want it to show. Wait… better make it 99.9% otherwise it might look amateurish and faked.
Know your sources, the “Global Warming Policy Foundation” gets its funding from the coal fired power companies.
http://bit.ly/1btVLqh
Yea and the alarmists get theirs from governments with agendas and big oil. And even the Sierra club has received big oil money. What I care about is the integrity of those that do the research and not so much where they got the money from to do that research. If they have a record of integrity and conducting good science then it doesn’t matter where the funding comes from.
The conspiracy you are attempting to incite is by factors a little brother to the hulking trillions on the table for CAGW players. Lol
Translation: I can’t refute the science, therefore I will attack the scientists.
What is the latest word on publishing the paper:
“An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends,” by Watts, Jones, McIntyre, and Christy
a.k.a. Watts-2012.
I haven’t heard of it being published, yet.
Neither has Google, by the search term “area and distance weighted analysis” & Watts.
I will not be impressed by any result until someone steps up and admits that whatever the method, there can be no certainty regarding the true state of nature. Claiming a result of fractions of degrees within the time scales of the last century is nothing short of a joke. Any method that attempts to interpret the data and claim to know the temperature of planet earth is in and of itself a ruse unless there is clear statement of broad and fundamental uncertainty associated with it. A reasonable scientist would reply we can’t confidently answer the question. Why not? Because the methods cannot be validated. There is no way to test the result because we don’t have a “standard planet” to test the method. Any reporting of results should be very circumspect and certainly, at the levels being reported, in no way can be used to claim catastrophic forcing from current concentrations of carbon dioxide.
+100
+1mm
I suspect that nearly everyone who is a skeptic or even a luke warmer has noticed that the government funded data sets have been manipulated from the get-go. You can call it observation bias or you can go straight to the “Fr**d” word, but the data has been severely tampered with.
What the tampering tells me is that those in charge and those on the front lines of the data sets know that the James Hansen Heifer Dust of CO2 controlling the planet’s climate is wrong. They know it is wrong.
I am led to believe that many paper records were destroyed. Why would that be? Why destroy a historical document. Heck, at least store a digital scan of the darn thing. Why??? We know why don’t we?
Yes, adjusting data when a station is moved or the equipment updated is a massive worldwide conspiracy. They should leave the raw data alone and just do graphs of the actual temperatures not those danged anomaly thingies. Those thousands of money grabbing dishonest scientists deserve to be homogenised!
Whatever you do, the original data must be preserved else you are destroying data. Why? What science course told you that destroying the historical record was part of honest science?
I don’t know that the temperature sets have been malevolently manipulated, but when you look at all the other chicanery by those promoting the alarmist narrative, it would be surprising if the records have not been corrupted.
Let’s see, motive, opportunity, and means. No, it is not a slam dunk. But if the alarmists haven’t scored then they’ve been surprisingly neglectful, given the full court press in all the other aspects of the game.
I could make that call even if I hadn’t seen the record of manipulated, er, adjusted temperature series.
Still, I’ll bet it has legitimately warmed. The question, as always, is why. Second question…. Is there a way to keep it up rather than to suffer cooling?
========================
Adjusting the data is not always invalid. Depends on what the adjustments are.
Which is to a large degree the problem. They refuse to disclose what adjustments were made.
To the extent that they have revealed their methods, they are questionable at best.
For the most part, you don’t attempt to fix bad data, you just throw it out.
I don’t think that this will be a whitewash. They will know that the matter is very controversial. They know that if they find convincing evidence of systematic fiddling of the temperatures it will have huge consequences.
I’m sure that these people know that the stakes are very high. They say that they will let the science do the talking and I believe them.
The GWPF would not give this task to painters and decorators.
Or house builders or journalists or clinical biologists….
Mr. Coffer,
Thank you for doing us all the favor of making sure that every single one of your comments is devoid of any useful information, or serious criticism.
You make it crystal clear what sort of a person you wish to be seen as.
So be it.
… or railroad engineers who have been arrested for sexual harassment. Oh wait…
+++++++++++++++++++
Dollars to donuts that Ed has no idea what you are talking about.
The mainstream climate scientists and the ideologues will reject and ignore this work as the machinations of right wing, Big Oil funded anti-science lobby. However, it is to be applauded and the kye-yi-ing to be ignored. I’ve long bemoaned the enormous task of anti-viral work that needs to be done to reboot climate science as an objective, ‘chips fall where they may’ exercise. I remember it was 1997-8 that GISS under Hansen, who was faced with 1935-40 still being the record highs at the time, had this ‘homogenized’ several tenths lower because he was impatient for the super El Nino to be a new record, probably worried that it may be the last chance for at least the remaining years of his career.
I don’t have the links but an underling in his group brought him several revisions of this pesky warm period and he sent him back for further revisions. I was sure this was going to prove to be the the end of the shenanigans but Mann came out with his hockey stick following this and killed the opportunity for another decade. I think a ‘pause’ for reconsideration is long overdue. Right on schedule after Mann et al 1998 erected the mighty blade, nature flattened the end of that blade for 17 years and counting. If the late 30s gets reinstated as the temperature to beat as it is likely to be, that will be the end of it. We will just have to wait for the center of gravity of the literature to rebalance and the millionaire retirees to retire.
One area that needs attention is the way “Best” and others adjusted ‘step changes’. Since ‘step changes’ seem to be a real factor in the temperature record and not necessarily just due to moving or compromising the station in some way, they shouldn’t be automatically considered to require lifting up sections of the record to remove them. E.g. after a large El Nino, it seems that a step change can occur. I think there is more than just looking at the fiddling with the record. We may need review of factors that give a step change to judge some adjustments.
Detecting step changes caused by station moving and equipment changes vs. those caused by nature was a major problem with BEST. They neither took nor had the time to investigate each of the thousands of stations to perform a reality/validity check on their algorithms.
I suppose somebody must have done it ?
Rather than adjusting the temperature readings because of where and how the thermometers are placed would it not be satisfactory to record the difference in temperature from day to day of the individual thermometers. So rather than agreeing the actual temperature you can say ” Oh it is getting hotter ” or ” Oh it is getting cooler ” ?
That’s exactly how it is done, Zemlik. In principle at least.That is why the temperatures are called ‘anomalies’, i.e. the difference in temperature over time.
However, sometimes stations move, thermometers are upgraded, Stevenson screens are changed or the Time of Observation has been changed. Because of this, there is sometimes a justification for ‘adjusting’ the old temperature records with the aim of making them consistent with the new equipment , siting or procedures.
but if you are only concerned with the difference then it shouldn’t matter how the thermometer is situated ?
No cigar, Mike.
It would be one thing if the graphs that incorporated adjusted temperatures said so in big letters at the top. They do not.
And they are adjusted over and over again without explanation, and many times these adjustments are outside of their own error bars.
Besides for everything else that’s been said, we have the Climategate emails and other documents which clearly show then an effort was ongoing to manipulate the records to fit in with the predetermined narrative.
Topping it all off is the graph which shows that the sum of all of the adjustments perfectly match the graph of increasing co2. That right there should tell anyone everything they need to know.
Funny thong about warmistas.
They never want to look at the whole picture all at once.
Rather, they insist on picking out one small detail at a time as if it proves anything to make a point about one detail in isolation.
@zemlik
If you’re only concerned with difference then yes, it does matter a lot how it’s situated.
No, it doesn’t matter as long as you have sufficient coverage. BUT, if you change something, for example, the time of day you read the thermometer, then that does matter.
If you want to understand what sort of adjustments are made and why then see Zeke Hausfather’s rather good post on Judith Curry’s website.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/
Better to read here unless you want warmista spin and apologizing:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/?s=Time+of+observation
This is our big chance to prove the reality of the all encompassing global conspiracy that is fiddling the surface temperature data. Of course, if the findings aren’t to our liking, this will prove that this bunch too are in on it.
Village Idiot
No, dear boy. You need to learn.
As I told the other trolls upthread, I have provided this link to the Inquiry as a submission, and I asked them to take especial notice of its Appendix B.
Removal of your delusion may be achieved if you read, learn and inwardly digest the main item and its Appendix A.
Richard
Don’t worry VI, I’m sure it will be to our liking. How could it not be? It’s has the GWPF and Christopher Booker and Paul Homewood behind it! And now rsichardscourtney! YeeHah! At last! A dataset of our own that totally proves all those money grubbing scientists have always been totally faking it all!
Perhaps this is just Task#1, for there is much to be done regarding other metrics like sea -level change and its adjustments, experiments perhaps using ERBE, ground instruments or other satellites to quantify aerosols effect so that it doesn’t simply remain a convenient fudging tool for avoiding reduction in GHG sensitivity.
I note Cryosphere Today hasn’t up dated for over a week. Every time we have a hiatus in data reporting, there is some fiddling afoot as per the sea level record that added a crustal rebound factor – a partial sea volume effect so that actual sea level that you would see if you went down to the sea is no longer recorded as such. I think they have been asked to fine a rationale to readjust their ice extent because, statistically, you can’t have this metric continuing to expand in Antarctica and for the arctic to recover so long after we have entered a warming period. It should be overwhelmed by the warming. To argue that its just natural variability gives this factor more and more weight as it is prolonged and the CO2 knob eventually falls off.
Gary Pearse … at 11:39 am
Every time we have a hiatus in data reporting, there is some fiddling afoot as per the sea level record that added a crustal rebound factor – a partial sea volume effect so that actual sea level that you would see if you went down to the sea is no longer recorded as such.
It’s worse than that, the “GIA” adjustment you refer to is 0.3 mm/yr, but some time after 2004 Colorado University’s Sea Level Research Group added in 0.6 mm/yr. All totaled with regard to the satellite sea level record, the historical data has been re-written by +0.9 mm/yr.