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/
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Can’t we just send these people into to space? Maybe colonize Mars or something?
Mars has about 100 times as much CO2 in it’s atmosphere as the earth does. I don’t think they would like Mars.
I have a big problem with NCDC adjusting temperature records from 1900 in order to incorporate 2015 data – http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/03/even-though-warming-has-stopped-it-keeps-getting-worse/. There was a discussion of adjustments at climate etc, but I did not find arguments very persuasive. I actually got an impression that there is a computer program whose function no one really understands to compute adjustments. I’ll be grateful if a professional statistician could explain it so that even I could understand (not a small task).
Hmph. I know what’s wrong — and I know why. I thought pretty much everyone did.
Perhaps you would like to assist the GWPF in understanding it then?
It’s about time such an investigation is undertaken. Hope they can complete in a timely manner
George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA
From the Telegraph
“Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11561629/Top-scientists-start-to-examine-fiddled-global-warming-figures.html
Will there ever come a time when thermometer readings are accurate and stable enough to no longer need adjustments?
Even if they had to start from scratch, I think it would be worthwhile to start a new temperature record using only the raw data from accurate and reliable temperature stations. That way we could at least see if future temperatures are likely to be trending warmer, cooler, or steady without so much human bias.
The problem isn’t with the thermometers, it’s with the area around the thermometer not being appropriate, or changing over time.
Nothing but another layer of varnish to desperately try and lend some credibility to the claims.
Is this a falsification of AGW? Argo buoy results suggest that, in a ‘new’ paper posted at co2science, but published last year. Best kept secret? Reposted here: http://pindanpost.com/2015/04/26/oceanic-climate-data-falsifies-the-global-warming-science-models/
Still to be homogenized and fiddled with, I guess.
I’m not getting excited about this because again and again Congressional Comms on scandals such as Benghazi and Fast and Furious turn up nothing. ZERO
My cat can sniff out more s*it than any comm. can.
I don’t bother to hope that this British based panel/committee can do any better.
Check out Kealey’s bio and you may change your mind.
For the most part the adjustments are all the same, but the reasons differ markedly. For example. A weather station that moves 100 feet inland from the coasts is adjusted downward almost a hundred years in retrospect. (NZ)One moved from an inland area to the coast is adjusted downward in retrospect. (US). Two readings a mile apart, one on the air run way gives a reading consistently 1.5 degrees hotter than one on an inland coral bed., the hotter is always used by NOAA (Hon) even though, when asked, the meteorologists will explain that the ambient air temperature is always the cooler of the two and neither are actually representative of the temperature as a whole which is a bit cooler overall than the sea level weather stations that are in fact far from the cooling ocean.
It is science built on lies. Knowingly.
The most strange and unexpected thing to come from reanalysis of 20th century climate would be to find that climate had been static. It is a dissipative chaotic and under a multitude of periodic forcings. It oscillates fractall on all times and on all scales. Always has and always will. Why should the 20th century have been any different?
The failure, fallacy and fraud at the heart of AGW is the assertion, in the light of the above, that the 20rh century climate was in anyway alarminr or in any way departed from the null hypothesis of constant weakly periodically forced chaotic variation. As Richard Lindzen put it, static climate would be very anomalous – ot would look “like something dead”.
This is a timely study. Given Anthony et al. work on US stations, the good ones are flat or cooling. The compromised ones (airports, parking lots, etc.) are warming and they – here and elsewhere – get spread all over the globe to give us great globs of red on maps. If these compromised stations altogether are giving us no warming over the last nearly two decades, what is the real story? Are we seeing actually declining temperatures? Would we even know if we were starting the nosedive into the next glaciation? Let’s get a rigorous look at it; no more BS. Warming we can stand, and perhaps benefit significantly from it. Cooling is death.
I have suddenly become very optimistic about this project. (And, no, it’s not because my sister, my vampiric older sister is outta’ town.) It’s because I decided to Google Professor Terence Kealey. And, I ran across this description at Cato.org:
‘According to the University (of Buckingham), “It is because of Professor Kealey’s defence of independence in science, scholarship and higher education that he became Buckingham’s Vice-Chancellor.”
‘While doing this research, Professor Kealey learned how distorting government money could be to the scientific enterprise. In 1996 he published his first book The Economic Laws of Scientific Research where he argued that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, governments need not fund science. His second book, Sex, Science and Profits (2008) argues that science is not a public good but, rather, is organized in invisible colleges, thereby making government funding irrelevant. Both works are recognized as vital contributions to the study of science and public policy.’
Got my vote!
Welcome aboard, Professor Kealey!
I hope the good professor will expand his horizons to understand that ‘government money’ distorts ALL enterprise.
Money intercedes in virtually all relationships in society. If the monetary unit is corrupted, all relationships become corrupted. Science is but one arena in which monetary corruption spreads like fungus on a muck heap.
We are in the midst of a Gold War, a war that not one in a million can see. Yet it results in far more damage than any shooting wars, including the World Wars.
The current battle over CAGW, the raison d’être of Agenda 21, is but one front in the Gold War.
This skirmish over surface temperature adjustments captures, like a hologram, a view of the larger theater of battle over standards in general.
The primary attribute of any standard — and where would a modern society be without its countless standards? — is fixity. And without a sound monetary standard of economic value, the most important standard society has — without the fixity afforded by the only commodity on earth with constant marginal utility — civilization based on specialization and division of labor (the prerequisite of which is money), will be annihilated by the Gold War.
Sapere aude.
There’s the old saying; ‘war is the health of the state.’ CAGW is the state’s version of a kinder, gentler war – but it won’t stay that way. And look at just one of the provisions contemplated: dissolving consensual government as an emergency provision.
“Everyone has a price, you just have to find out what it is.”
— J P Morgan
Apparently Greens are on sale.
a woefully poor piece of writing in the Independent. readers, on the whole, not impressed – see comments:
26 April: UK Independent: Ben Tufft: Leading group of climate change deniers accused of creating ‘fake controversy’ over claims global temperature data may be inaccurate
GLACIER PHOTO CAPTION: ‘This is a very obvious attempt to create a fake controversy’
According to the GWPF, questions have been raised about the reliability of temperature data and the extent to which recordings may have been adjusted after they were collected…
On 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.”
Bob Ward, policy and research director at the Grantham Institute of climate change and the environment, told The Independent: “I think this is a very obvious attempt to create a fake controversy over the global temperature record ahead of the [UN Climate Change] Paris summit.
“The only purpose of this review is to cast doubt on the science. It is a political move, not a serious scientific one.”…
Former chancellor, Lord Lawson, set up the GWPF in 2009. His book on the subject of climate change, titled An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, was labelled “misleading” by Sir John Houghton, a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
While Bob Watson, another former head of the IPCC, said that Lord Lawson did not understand “the current scientific and economic debate”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-sceptic-group-sets-up-inquiry-into-accuracy-of-global-temperature-records-10204961.html
the writer:
Ben Tufft: About Me
I am a freelance journalist currently studying Newspaper Journalism at City University.
When not studying and keeping up to date with my patch in Stoke Newington I do freelance online reporting for The Independent.
Over the past year I have undertaken work experience at The Sunday Times, The Independent, Press Association and The Times…
http://www.bentufft.com/about-me/4584880862
Good to see the Independent living up to its name and bearing aloft the torch of impartial journalism! (/sarc).
Even if all this data was all accurate to 0.02 C it would not make any difference. The major problem, historically, is there is not enough data, particularly ocean data. The key advantage of satellite data is the global coverage.
i was critical of UK Independent’s coverage of the Inquiry, but at least they reported it!
Daily Times in Pakistan carries the UK Daily Mail David Rose article:
27 April: Daily Times Pakistan: Did exaggerated records make global warming look worse?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/entertainment/27-Apr-2015/did-exaggerated-records-make-global-warming-look-worse
no other MSM.
it’s times like these when the monolithic nature of the MSM when it comes to CAGW is most evident.
of far more interest to the MSM? Buzzfeed does a thorough investigation of this serious matter:
27 April: Buzzfeed: Kyle Blaine: Al Gore’s Climate Change Concerts Won’t Commit To Being Vegan Only And PETA Is Not Happy About It
On stage at Davos this year, Gore and Pharrell Williams announced the return of the Live Earth music festival — a concert series meant to raise awareness of climate change. And now the animal rights group is demanding each of the concerts exclusively serve vegan products, arguing that Gore’s own group touts the benefits of giving up meat to reduce greenhouse gas production.
In a series of emails obtained by BuzzFeed News, representatives from PETA repeatedly ask Live Earth’s organizers if they plan to serve vegan only food, meaning the menu would be absent from all animal products like meat and dairy. The organizers do not directly answer PETA’s questions in the emails, but say that they were working with their partner organizations on sustainability at the events and that they were invested in promoting the vegan lifestyle…
“They either care about stopping climate change or they’re more interested in the appearance of caring,” Lange (PETA) said in an email to BuzzFeed News…
Gore and his climate change movement are no strangers to the charge of hypocrisy. The original Live Earth concert event that took place in 2007 was criticized for featuring acts that flew in on private jets and whose songs promoted gas-guzzling SUVs.
BuzzFeed News contacted the venues where the two main concerts where the events are expected to be held — MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and Stade de France in Paris — asking whether animal products would be served during the event. A representative for MetLife stadium said that LiveEarth is not on their events calendar, and therefore she couldn’t comment. Representatives for Stade de France have yet to respond.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kyleblaine/al-gores-climate-change-concerts-wont-commit-to-being-vegan
Someone should give Chiefio a call. He’s looked into a lot of this fiddling stuff.
Already done so.
“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”
As a nearly retired trial lawyer often questioning one’s bias, I find this statement and the entire inquiry disingenuous. In essence, ‘We are conducting a major inquiry of global temperature records as possibly unreliable…but we still believe the earth has warmed.”
Good luck with that inquiry.
I thought the same thing when reading that. Also, “Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising” is vague. If they, and supposedly most climate scientists, “believe” in the 20th century warming, then why are they doing this inquiry?
Could it be another self-serving “investigation” which allegedly “clears it up” or can we hope for a fair examination of the history of the adjustments.
B gets an A.
There is something really strange happening with the daily updates on Arctic, Antarctic and Global Sea Ice Area….. Namely, the University of Illinois that prepares the daily updates stopped doing so 2 weeks ago…..
I’ve sent them e-mails asking why the daily updates have stopped, but no relies as of today…
I have a feeling that since the sea-ice data is not to their liking, they’re perhaps developing new algorithms to lower sea ice area values to better fit CAGW projections.
Or, perhaps….,…..their hard drives and servers all crashed and all the data has mysteriously vanished.. That seems to be happening a lot these days….
Sea Ice was the last hobby horse alarmists have been riding for the past 18+ years, ever since global temp trends went flat 18 years ago….
I think the alarmists are VERY concerned about the Antarctic’s 35-yr record sea ice area and the steady recovery of Arctic sea ice area since 2007,,,,
Things are not looking good for the Alarmists, and you can almost sense their panic.
Why does reality scare alarmists so much????
Lazy people always hate even the possibility of having to think about maybe someday doing real work.
“I have a feeling that since the sea-ice data is not to their liking”
Wow, pretty paranoid! But quite wrong too. The data is up to date. It’s tabled here and graphed here. JAXA, NSIDC NH and SH. A lot of Arctic melting last few days.
@ur momisugly Nick Stokes…yes, those winds moving south out of the Arctic and into the North Atlantic must be pushing a lot of sea ice southward. They have been blowing like that for the last 8 days. Interesting though, is to see is the effect they are having on local temps in Norway and the surrounding region.
@ur momisugly Nick Stokes…there have been strong surface winds moving south out of the Arctic and into the North Atlantic over the last week. What is interesting is how that has dropped temperatures everywhere south of there. Glasgow is currently almost 20 F below average. Much of the Scandinavian nations are also well below average from this Arctic blast. Ireland and the UK are also experiencing below normal temperatures. In the Southern Hemisphere take a look at how far below average temperatures are in Australia at the moment. That has been like that for over a week down there. Quite the change as global wind patterns have undergone quite a transformation since the beginning of this month. Change is in the air, and also in the wind.
Hear tell Spring is a-brewin’.
I have been wondering about that myself. Take a look at the NSIDC Sea Ice Index page, though. Antarctic sea ice has just moved above last year,s record pace. That could be a new daily record…http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
The global temperature has allegedly risen 0.8 C since 1845 measured on less than about 10% of the total surface area, initially on instruments somewhat cruder than this:
http://www.weatherforschools.me.uk/images/max_minsm.jpg
It’s absurd, it’s fake precision.
True, it could have risen more who knows but whatever, it had nothing to do with human fossil fuel emissions prior to ~1945.
There’s my thermometer!
Your right the reality is a great deals of claims are based on data which is ‘better than nothing ‘ not data which is ‘good enough ‘
Closer to about 1% of the earth’s total surface area.
What an absolutely thankless job. Lots of data “Lost”. The science is “in” so any conclusion contradicting it is “wrong”. If they get the “wrong” result they will not be believed and have a multi-trillion dollar industry demanding sacking and jail terms.
It’s a shame that the raw data has been “disappeared”.
Dear Sir,
I worked and travelled several countries in Africa and South America in 80s and also I was associated with preparation of formats and transfer of data on to punched cards in India Meteorological Department, Pune in early 70s and visited several met stations in late 70s. With this experience I raised the question on validity of global average temperature curve at several forums. Two days back I put forth the following questions in this direction as certain groups are aggressively propagating mis-leading information on global warming and its impact to science syllabus. This is dangerous. We must stop this until we get the clear answers to the following.
Global Warming: The following questions need an answer:
1. How accurate is the average temperature curve constructed based on interpolations and extrapolations over around 80% of the area where no continuous data series are not available; and where data are available, there is a large difference in density of network – for example in urban areas the density is high and in rural areas the density is low and both areas present large scale changes in land use and land cover patterns with the time.
2. How much is the contribution to the global temperature curve by (1) anthropogenic greenhouse gases, (2) land use & land cover changes, and (3) other factors.
3. Is global warming synonymous to climate change? Or Global warming is a small part of Climate Change?
4. Is climate refers to Temperature only? If not, all other climate parameters are controlled by temperature or other parameters also control the temperature over and above the natural Sun related seasonal & diurnal changes and local changes associated with topographic conditions? For example, just as that of evaporation or evapotranspiration estimates using Thornthwaite model and Penman’s Model.
5. Is natural variability a part of changes in meteorological parameters such as temperature & precipitation?
6. Is natural variability is part of changes in temperature in the Ocean waters and surface temperatures?
7. Why there are step-wise temperature changes since 1851 to date? Is it due to rise in global average temperature synchronized by natural 60-year cyclic variation in temperature?
8. What is the real term impact of local general circulation related impacts on averaging to get global average temperature?
From AR5 “It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period”. That means, 50.1% is also more than half; but it not only includes anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and also by other anthropogenic forcings. That means the anthropogenic greenhouse gas component is still less than 50%. They are all qualitative but we need an answer in quantitative terms to postulate the associated impact on glaciers retreat, ice sheet melt, ocean rise, etc.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Formerly Chief Technical Advisor – WMO/UN & Expert – FAO/UN
Fellow Andhra Pradesh Akademy of Sciences,
Convenor, Forum for a Sustainable Environment
Tel: [040]23550480
Jeevananda_reddy@yahoo.com
[Very good questions. Thank you. .mod]
Dr. Reddy, I am so glad to see someone with your expertise here to lay forward those proper questions you listed above. So glad. You are right, they must be answered through formal investigations… the various agencies and climate scientists involved have proven to be incapable of doing so honestly themselves. I would love to see an impartial congressional special prosecutor to lead one to address the countless billions of the public’s tax money has been squandered in various ways over this apparently manufactured +0.7°C. Most persons I speak with admit it was a bit milder, warmer in the late ’90s and early 2000’s but I also find none that think now is as warm as that period and this is across multiple countries. The sixty year natural cycle also peaked near the end of that mentioned period.
Since you were in India in the 70s was that not a period of cool weather there also that brought the great monsoon floods around that time? I was in college at that time and seem to distinctly remember those in the papers. Here in mid-US that was one cold period at the bottom of that sixty year wave in temperatures. So why are reported temperatures not rescinding to match what people are actually feeling over the last few years?
Brandon (Gates) is mesmerized by graphs of ocean surface temperature anomalies adjusted ‘downwards’, as he understands it. But objection to adjustments have not been an ‘argument-from-consequence’. No one’s going ‘the graph shows warming, adjustments have been done, that means the adjustments must have created warming’. This would have to be true for the childish ‘but we create cooling with adjustments too’ response to work.
Prior to adjustment, the ocean data show a sharp warming rate in the 1910-1940 period. ‘Cooling’ adjustments are applied to the period to warm up the first half of this period relative to the second. This warming reduces the rate of global ocean warming and makes it appear less sharp, in a period when CO2 emissions were very low. The resulting change in trend in the 1910-1940 warming rate therefore is entirely synthetic and nearly completely a product of adjustments.
Under these circumstances, how anyone can go on and on banging about ‘cooling’ adjustments is beyond me.
Shub Niggurath,
One wonders about your reading comprehension.
This is part of the point I made somewhere up top.
The trend line has been flattened.
There are parts of the unadjusted time series that shoot big holes in the “unprecedented” meme.
Surely the one group that should be investigating the quality of the data is engineers. They have experience in both the abstract side of data acquisition as do scientists but more importantly unlike scientists they are both trained and experienced in the practical aspect of it. This allows them to be so much better placed in understanding the limitations and inaccuracies involved and where adjustments should be matched by an error band in which no conclusions can be made with any confidence.
Your just given the very reason for them not being involved , given that outlook they would certainly not be welcome has they likley to find the ‘wrong’ if honest and accurate results ‘
I hope they check the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. I live in Sydney and we’ve had a conspicuously cool and wet late summer and autumn. I have an electronic thermometer and collect and record 5 minute samples. I have the last 4 months running 1.5-2C cooler than the past 7 years. The BOM has the same period as running higher than previous years. It is important to do this while the population can remember wearing winter clothing over the last few months so that the ridiculous recorded temps are no longer masked by the passing of time.