Comments on: O.B. Confidential

By: The End of CRUTEM? « Climate Audit

The End of CRUTEM? « Climate Audit — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:24:42 +0000

[...] comment here from May 2006: Maybe responsibility for temperature collection should be taken away from CRU. [...]

By: J. Sperry

J. Sperry — Thu, 11 May 2006 20:29:57 +0000

Re #30 (John A):

I’m assuming you chose the “Anomolies” map type, since that matches what you wrote, that the only significant positive area is Arc. Pen. When you choose “Time Interval: 1880-1999″ you are not looking at the change from 1880 to 1999, you are requesting a comparison between the average from this time interval and the base period. You merely confirmed that the average temp. from 1880-1999 closely matches the average temp. near the midpoint of that range.

If one were looking for global warming, one would either choose the “Trends” map type with that time interval (base period is not used) or choose the “Anomolies” map type with an early base period (say, 1881-1910) and late time interval (say, 1971-2000).

By: J. Sperry

J. Sperry — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:09:40 +0000

Re my #27 (continuing this fascinating off topic discussion):
The 0.445 on my last line should be 0.455. Plus, I’ve figured out why the graph slopes downward near equator of the first plot. The first two “pairs” are actually sets of 5 points (3 of the higher and 2 of the lower), and the last “pair” is a set of 2 points.

I’ve been able to recreate all graphs with the given data (using straight averages), but not the summary numbers. Remember that the ends (poles) of the graphs are based on fewer and fewer data points, so a line shooting upwards may be misleading.

By: jae

jae — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:34:40 +0000

BTW, what is the deal about “don’t quote or cite,” relative to the AR4 stuff. Hell, it’s now public information and it should be quotable or citable, as long as the proper caveats are included. Can I discuss it with my wife?

By: jae

jae — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:32:46 +0000

All the secrecy in “Climate Science” really makes me suspicious, and it should make the policy makers suspicious, too. I think we have a “Climategate” going on here.

By: John A

John A — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:15:08 +0000

Here’s a puzzle:

Go to GISTEMP and enter the following:

Land: Unadjusted 1880-1999
Ocean: None
Mean period: Annual (Dec-Nov)
Time Interval: 1880-1999
Base Period: 1935-1945
Smoothing Radius: 250 km
Projection Type: regular

and hit submit.

Would anyone like to tell me where (other than the Antarctic Peninsula) where the global warming is?

Yes, I know that I chose the warm 1935-1945 period as the base, but isn’t that the point? Without adjustment (which is a mystery wrapped within an enigma) and without selecting a known cold period (1950-1980) as the base, where’s the warming?

By: Gerald Machnee

Gerald Machnee — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:05:12 +0000

In order to get the confidential information you have to request it on special forms. Oh, I forgot, the forms are confidential.

By: John A

John A — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:00:42 +0000

Re #25

The answer is: nobody knows why. Perhaps the laws of algebra are slightly different in Norwich.

The whole question should be investigated by a statistical audit team, wouldn’t you agree?

By: J. Sperry

J. Sperry — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:00:03 +0000

Re 25&26:

1. Pedantic note – smoothing is 250 km, not 250 cm.

2. Entering “none” for Land AND Ocean gives an Internal Server Error (The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request). I think they save search results (for quicker retrieval) so that subsequent attempts using the same inputs may give a results page with no graphics or data instead of the error message.

3. My non-expert theory on Jean’s reported peculiarity is that these are geographically weighted averages*, so when the geographic extent of data for the base period changes, maybe the weightings change. So the equation would be where w is a number or function (I don’t know). For example, the graph for the Jean’s first set of inputs has a small, isolated segment near lat=0. Even though the data for the segment is 3 pairs of identical numbers at lat=7S, 5S, and 3S, the segment slopes downward to the right.

* You can download the data using links below the map/graph. Straight averages using Jean’s inputs are 1.418, 0.964, and 0.455, compared to the given results of 1.11, 0.73, and 0.30. (0.964 + 0.445 = 1.419, close enough.)

By: JerryB

JerryB — Wed, 10 May 2006 17:04:29 +0000

Re #25 Jean S,

While I’ve noticed various oddities in some GISS calcs, including funny rounding, I can’t help with that one.

The “Input Elements” section of that page is cute: “NO land temperature data are used” and “NO ocean temperature data are used”. Hmmmm.