Climate Audit

UC

The results from United States clearly represent an upper limit to the urban influence on hemispheric temperature trends.

(0.15 C 1901-84), Jones 1990

Jean S

Steve, I think that’s actually based on the “raw” USHCN data, the “adjusted” USHCN version (from 1996?) looks different. See (Plate 2) of

Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl 2001. A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Hansen_etal.html

Overall, the paper is rather “insightful” discussion on these adjustments. The press release figure in the previous post, on the other hand, seems to be the older GISS analysis of the GHCN network data, see (figure 6):

Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato 1999. GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1999/Hansen_etal.html

John G. Bell

How much data has been lost? Do we know? Was data selectively lost? That is, is the remaining data biased by the loss? How much additional data is contaminated (destroyed for this purpose?) by the uncertainty over its modification?

Please, I don’t care how this came about or who if anyone is involved. I just wonder about the data and the use we can make of it. Is there a problem here? Does Brohan think there is a problem or anyone else who is familiar with the archiving of this data?

Jean S

#4 (contd) If you look (i) plot of plate 2 (“total adjustments”) in Hansen et al 2001, if follows pretty much your figure 2. Then if you look figures (d)-(h) you see from where most of these adjustments are coming.

Milton

I am very sympathetic with your work into exposing “global warming climate scientists” for their biased work. However it has become very tedious to keep up with this never ending study after study by everyone concerned(I read RealClimate and others). Every day there is a new study of temps or glaciers or antartica or tree rings or sea levels or precipitation, etc,etc. etc. And it seems every government on the planet has their own study groups that dream up all kinds of climate issues. To me,the first order of business about future climate should be to determine if there is anything that humans can do to control it, whether climate changes are manmade or natural. If we have a proven method to control climate then we should have a plan of how to control a dangerously warming climate( we’ll know when it gets warmer every year for x number of years), and a plan for a dangerously cooling climate. If we don’t know how to control the climate then we’ll adjust to whatever occurs like we always have until we can develop a proven method of climate control. Why does no one address how to control the climate instead of fighting over who can prove what the past climate was or what the future climate will be? It would be nice to know that if we get into a new little ice age or new dust bowl that we can do something about it.

Onar à…m

Re #10

“( we’ll know when it gets warmer every year for x number of years),”

Will we? In case you haven’t noticed, this discussion is about whether we can trust the global surface temperature measurements. Steve has uncovered what can only be described as a disconcerting effort to eliminate the 1930s heat period.

Bill F

Has anybody emailed them to ask for a detailed explanation of the basis for the adjustments? Any response you could get from them would undoubtedly help in figuring out why the adjustments seem so much like a trend correction.

jae

Why does no one address how to control the climate instead of fighting over who can prove what the past climate was or what the future climate will be? It would be nice to know that if we get into a new little ice age or new dust bowl that we can do something about it.

Err, several states are addressing this, and the US Congress will be addressing this. Unfortunately, whatever they do will only harm the domestic economy and transfer wealth to China and India, without affecting the climate. It is foolish to try to control climate, when we don’t even know what’s going on. And we certainly cannot control Mother Nature.

Steve McIntyre

Milton, these are large questions, but there are lots of people worrying about big issues. I’m just trying to understand the data, brick by brick. There are lots of other approaches to the issues, but I can’t do every
thing. Let’s discuss data issues on this thread.

Darwin

Roger Pielke Sr. in November submitted a study to Geophysical Research Letters Unresolved issues with the Assessment of Multidecadel Global Land Surface Temperature Trends. It includes information from Lu et al about adjustments indicating a sort of hop step up in temperatures after adjustment. In 1989, Thomas Karl of NCDC and now head of CCSP published a piece with Phil Jones on the biases created by the urban heat island effect.It said:“Results indicate that in the United States the two global land-based temperature data sets have an urban bias between +6.1°C and +0.4°C over the twentieth century (1901’€”84). This bias is as large or larger than the overall temperature trend in the United States during this time period, +0.16°C/84 yr. Temperature trends indicate an increasing temperature from the turn of the century to the 1930s but a decrease thereafter. By comparison, the global temperature trends during the same period are between +0.4°C/84 yr and +0.6°C/84 yr. At this time, we can only speculate on the magnitude of the urban bias in the global land-based data sets for other parts of the globe, but the magnitude of the bias in the United States compared to the overall temperature trend underscores the need for a thorough global study.” His subsequent work went on to diminish the effect. And in a Nature article in 1996, Trends in high-frequency climate variablility in the twentieth century, that claimed to show that extremes of climate in the U.S. have increased since 1976, compared to the previous 65 years, consistent with the theory of global warming. Pielke Sr et al’s paper was in response to actions by Karl in writing reconciling surface and atmospheric temperature trends. Pielke wrote: “The type of analyses that are presented in our paper should have been included in the CCSP Report ‘Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences.’ Unfortunately, as I discuss in my Public Comment on CCSP Report, the CCSP Report failed to provide the appropriate breadth of perspectives that the policymakers need. That CCSP Report, therefore, is an advocacy document which promotes the narrower perspective of its authors on the subject of reconciling surface and tropospheric temperature trends. The JGR paper that we have completed should, therefore, be considered as adding information to be communicated to policymakers on the robustness of the multi-decadal surface temperature trends.” There seems to be a lot of scientists questioning the land surface numbers and what’s being done to them.

Michael Jankowski

Why does no one address how to control the climate

Maybe because it’s not possible.

Proving what the past climate was and what the future climate will (might) be would tell us how much of an effect (if any) we could have on the future climate, what we might need to do to adapt, etc.

JerryB

A few things may be getting combobulated here.

USA differences between new NOAA NCDC numbers, and old GISS numbers,
tend to exceed differences between new, and old, GISS numbers.

GISS numbers changed in large part due to GISS switching from “raw”
USHCN data to “adjusted” USHCN data.

A glimpse of USHCN adjustments may be had by looking at

and some brief discussion thereof is at
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html

If “time of observation bias” is a new concept to you, there is a brief
discussion of it at http://www.john-daly.com/tob/TOBSUM.HTM

I’ve got to get some snow off of my driveway, or I would a bit less brief.

PHE

Please clarify. I’m misunderstanding something. I cannot see any visual difference between the two graphs at the top of the article. Should I?

Bill F

I think the two graphs side by side are Steve’s demonstration that he can duplicate the slide with the digital data set. So if there is no difference, it means he has successfully duplicated the slide.

paul

Steve:

forgive me if I am writing this in the wrong place.
Seems to me that your original work on exposing the “hockey stick” is becoming more widely known but to me the real issue is the refusal to release data (from whoever) and that the IPCC is using information which cannot be replicated or tested due to the refusal to make known all data and codes etc to be able to test and replicate the results. (please orrect me if I am wrong).

Most people don’t know this. By most people I mean the man on the street. One of the biggest problems faced by those who question the IPCC findings is the technical nature of many of the arguments and discussions. There are many here in NZ who see the bias in the media and within the government but making the man in the street aware of the real issues is very hard. All we see is a picture of a polar bear and a statement by greenpeace or the WWF saying they are danger from GW. It tugs at heart strings and people believe it. Most of these people have the attention span of a gnat and most discussions on AGW end quickly due to them becoming too complicated. Therefore, when the subject is raised in an attempt to bring these issues into the public arena (which they are by a number of talkback hosts in NZ who do question the governments stance on GW and the IPCC) they are quickly ended as the media will not spend any time on matters which require a bit of thinking.

Is there a way that the problems you face with the data etc can be simplfied in a way that joe average might be able to understand? I think this is essential to gaining some public support. The Education minster here in NZ is contemplating having all NZ schoolchildren watch Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, hockey stick an all. This how absurd and ignorant our politicians are but we need something to fight them with.

Yhanks

Thanks

jae

20: That paper by Pielke is great. One of the photographs of a met station actually shows a barbeque grill sitting directly under the station. I hope they move it before firing it up!

Peter Lloyd

re 30

Same happening here in UK. Copies of Gore’s movie going to all State schools. Shades of Lysenko!

It’s frustrating – even as the AGW bandwagon becomes accepted as an everyday certainty in the public mind, the good scientific evidence against it gets better, stronger, harder to dismiss. Paul is right on – how to put the message across? Any good PR guys out there?

Steve Sadlov

RE: #33 and 35 – Assuming they would agree to be interviewed …. I am just picturing Mann, Jones and others, being picked apart by a Stossel or a Rivera. That would be priceless!

Steve Sadlov

RE: #31 – Heck, now that I think about it ….. from personal experience:
~ Late springs, summers of 1978, 82, 83, 84, etc – 103 Deg F at least once in places like Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas – e.g. along the south shore of SF Bay
July or Aug 1985 (e.g. right before the big Ojai fire), during a sundowner, 117 Deg F at Santa Barbara
Early June 2000 – 110 deg in my backyard (lower slopes of a coastal mountain range near San Francisco) due to a triple barrel High pressure series / extreme compression

These proclamations we often hear seem to miss all these events. And this is obviously a small sample.

Henry

Of the five NOAA adjustments to the USHCN raw data, four happen to raise the temperatures towards the end of the period, helping confirm the message that temperatures have risen. This is not statistically significant. But add in the GISS adjustments and, in the language of the IPCC, it allows the conclusion to be that the adjustments are “very likely” to have been chosen with a particular impact in mind.

My personal guess is that this is in fact not deliberate, but I would not be surprised if there are unconcious biases involved.

Lee

SteveM
You say:
“One wonders exactly what adjustments have been performed by CRU and the recent admission by Brohan et al 2006 that original versions of many series have been overwritten leaving only the adjusted versions is extremely disquieting.” Given that you are talking in this article about the adjustments from raw data to the final analysis, and that this sentence is talking about such adjustments, the sentence implies rather strongly that the data used by HADCRUT has been overwritten by their adjustments. This is not the case.

I assume (given that you didn’t quote it, one must make an assumption) you are referring to this, from page 6 of Brohan et al 2006 – emphasis added:

“Inhomogeneities are introduced into the sta-
tion temperature series by such things as
changes in the station site, changes in mea-
surement time, or changes in instrumentation.
The station data that are used to make Had-
CRUT have been adjusted to remove these in-
homogeneities, but such adjustments are not
exact ‘€” there are uncertainties associated with
them.
For some stations both the adjusted and un-
adjusted time-series are archived at CRU and
so the adjustments that have been made are
known [Jones et al., 1985, Jones et al., 1986,
Vincent & Gullet, 1999], but for most stations
only a single series is archived, so any adjust-
ments that might have been made (e.g. by Na-
tional Met. services or individual scientists)
are unknown.”

They are referring here to the data available to them, not to changes they have made. And it is not an “admission,” it is a simple factual description of the data available to them. They are pointing out the unremarkable fact that some available station data has been previously adjusted for “homogeneity” to correct for changes in station conditions prior to archiving, and they may or may not know how or whether those adjustments are made. And they make that description in the context of describing the uncertainties in the data, and how they deal with those uncertainties. There is nothing even the least bit untoward here.

DaleC

re #19 Jean S and the annual mean temperature for Alpine, Texas, CDIAC ORNL plot:

Using the USHCN raw daily data aggregated annually for max and min, and then taking the simple average, shows a plot which is higher to about 1960, and then lower to 2002 – that is, a lot flatter. The data at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/state_TX_mon.html appears to go only to 2002.

Chart with comparative scaled overlay is here.

Several points to note:
Since there is no daily data until 1927, how is the CDIAC series inferred from 1900 to 1927?
Why is the CDIAC plot 2 degrees F lower?
The observation record is very patchy, causing a big spike at 1962. How does the CDIAC plot handle this?
The number of observations drops dramatically from 2001.

Assuming that the CDIAC annual mean of the monthly means is created from exactly the same daily data as I have used (NDP070 downloaded September 2006), the point of this is to show the extent of the data adjustments which have been applied, and the extent to which different methods of summarizing the data can lead to quite different trends.

The observation record seems too patchy to me to trust a trend, but the good people of Alpine might be somewhat comforted to know that according to the simple average they have in fact been enjoying a downward trend of 2 degrees F since 1930.

David Smith

Re #43 Jerry B, thanks for the links. A question: why would the time of observation shift slowly over decades? It seems like there would be a measurement protocol, followed by all cooperative observers, and any change of protocol would be sudden and clean.

Also, I assume that the raw data includes observation time and that the climate people adjusted each station’s data. Do you know if that is correct?

Lee

re 47:

As near as i can tell, SteveM is voicing that concern based on no evidence.

That paragraph in Brohan et al is talking about the condition of the historical data available to them, not what they have done to the data.
Steve implied that CRU overwrote data – there is no evidence for that, and they certainly didn’t “admit” in taht paragraph that they had done any such thing.

James Lane

Lee, this is what Steve wrote:

One wonders exactly what adjustments have been performed by CRU and the recent admission by Brohan et al 2006 that original versions of many series have been overwritten leaving only the adjusted versions is extremely disquieting.

Brohan et al (2006) report that:

For some stations both the adjusted and un-adjusted time-series are archived at CRU and so the adjustments that have been made are known [Jones et al., 1985, Jones et al., 1986, Vincent & Gullet, 1999], but for most stations only a single series is archived, so any adjustments that might have been made (e.g. by National Met. services or individual scientists) are unknown.

I don’t see any inconsistentcy here (unless we’re going to get into some tedious debate about the meaning of “overwritten”). Do you think it’s satisfactory that for most stations the unadjusted data is now unavailable? And that the nature of any adjustments is unknown?

JerryB

Re #46,

David,

The US NWS coop volunteers get to choose their time of observation. They are
asked (urged, required, take your pick) to be consistent about it. It seems that
over the years, more and more succcessive volunteers opted for evening, rather
than morning, times of observation.

For the USHCN, the station history file at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/
includes such information up to October 1, 1994. The temperature data files
include “raw” and adjusted numbers. Changes of the usual adjustments for each
station coincide with changes noted in the station history file for that station, but
the rational for the precise amount of the adjustment is not described there.

JerryB

Re #52,

Oooops, that should have indicated that more volunteers
opted for morning, rather than evening, times of observation
in more recent years. Sorry about that.

Gerald Machnee

RE #43 – the only problem is that they are shifted down before about 1970 and up after that – The time shift cannot account for much of that. It looks the getting rid of a MWP in the 1900’s.

Steve McIntyre

“for most stations only a single series is archived, so any adjustments that might have been made (e.g. by National Met. services or individual scientists)are unknown”

I don’t recall any prior such admission that unadjusted data was no longer available. If they’ve admitted it previously, then I’d be happy to note this, but, if so, someone should have made an issue of it previously.

JerryB

Re #59,

David,

All of the USHCN adjustments are applied on a station by
station, month by month, basis. The magnitude of the time
of observation bias adjustments are calculated on a latitude,
longitude basis, and derived from “nearby” stations that
had hourly temperature readings.

Of 131,623 station/years of data, 6,230 station/years are
flagged as having “flaky” observation time information. 🙂

Lee

re 57:
“When Broohan sates that they adjust data because

Inhomogeneities are introduced into the station temperature series by such things as changes in the station site

he is saying that they are adjusting the data to remove the effect of UHI. Then they go back and use the adjusted data to show that there is no significant UHI. Do you find this sort of behavior acceptable?”

No., that is not what they are saying. They specifically describes in the paper manyh of the kinds of changes that introduce inhomogeneities, including things like changes in station location or height, reading time, and so on.

David Smith

Lee, can you help me with the following question (thanks in advance):

Figure 4 of Brohan indicates 763 known adjustments, with what appears to be a typical value of about 0.5C. The other 3,600 or so stations show no record of adjustments in the CRU files.

Per Brohan, adjustments are for such things as changes in station site, changes in measurement time or changes in instrumentation. It would be an unusual station which has not seen relocation, changes in instrumentation or (as we’ve seen with NCDC) changes in time of measurement, especially stretching back 50 or 100 or 150 years.

Yet, there’s no record of such changes (as indicated by retention of the unadjusted data in CRU files) for 80% of the stations. How does one construct a reliable 150-year history when one doesn’t know what’s already been adjusted, and why, and when, and by how much?

Brooks Hurd

Lee,

Adjusting the data to reduce temperatures in the 1930s and increase temperatures after 1980s is not a noise reduction excercise. The effect of such adjustments would enhance a trend, but it is not a technique to reduce noise.

It is surely possible to extract signals from data with large standard deviations. However when one adjusts data with the aim of making the signals more clear, one may be creating signals where there were none.

Ken Fritsch

Lee, I believe you get undeserving attention simply because you act as a sounding board for people asking rhetorically what is happening with these adjustments. They do not necessarily expect you to deliver a specific answer or details, and that you do not should not disappoint anyone.

The real question for this thread comes through loud and clear to those interested in better defining and understanding AGW and GW and has little to do with how you want to interpret how Steve M posed it. One sees a century trend in temperatures measured over the US that is (was?) relatively small compared to what was reported for the globe as a whole. The magnitude of the temperature adjustments that the agencies making them publish (if not the details on how they were derived) show that the adjustments are a large part of that trend. These adjustments are adjustments that have changed significantly over rather short periods of time and in the recent past. Those changes have got to pique the interest in how these adjustments specifically come about (not the published referrals in general terms) to all but those with unflinching faith in those doing the adjustments or those entirely content with the current consensus on GW.

Steve McIntyre

In light of some editorial parsing, I’ve edited the text to read:

One wonders exactly what adjustments have been performed by CRU and others and the recent admission by Brohan et al 2006 that original versions of many series have been lost (or never even collated by CRU in the first place) leaving only the adjusted versions at CRU (with the nature of some or all of the adjustments undocumented and unknown) is extremely disquieting.

Jones and Mann and the rest of the Hockey Team could remove much criticism by simply archiving data and methods without quasi-litigation. It’s a ridiculous issue to contest and I don’t know why other climate scientists put up with it. If their results are valid, they will survive careful scrutiny of the data. Relying on unaudited statements would be unthinkable in business and the resistance of Jones and others to archiving data should be of concern.

I’ve never expressed any opinions on policy other than scientists should be required to properly archive data and methods.

Jean S

Lee: I would hope you don’t disagree that it is possible to extract reliable signals from noisy data. Brohan 2006 is largely about how they do so in this case.

Absolutely no, Brohan et al is the way no sensible statistician would handle the data. That’s why there is a whole field called “robust statistics” for the cases like this. Extracting “signals” from “noisy data” is in some other contexts called “signal detection” and Brohan et al has neither nothing to do with that.

Lee, you came to his place claiming “open mind”. Now, what I’ve been following your contribution, the open mind in your case means opposing anything what Steve or anyone with disagreeing views with you writes here. Seriously, is that really an “open mind”?

To make this case clear, do you have anything to say how Brohan, Hansen, Jones etc. could have done better to avoid the indefinsible situation like the topic here: there is simply no way the temperature measurements in 1900’s were better than the ones in 1930’s. And if you look Steve’s figure 2 with an “open mind”, you realize that this is what it is implying: these guys implicitly believe the temperature measurements in 1900’s were better than the ones done in 1930’s. I can think only one reason for that, but maybe you “with an open mind” can offer other possibilities.

Seriously, I do not know if I’m the only one here, but I’m really tired of you. You claim to be somehow “scientific” but only thing you have to offer is some type of whining. I can understand the value of feedback from a strongly AGW committed person to this forum. IMHO, there are some “overreactions” from the “skeptic side” in this board. But even from that perspective you are a pale shadow of a person like Steve Bloom etc. So why in hell you keep posting here?!?!

John G. Bell

What would happen if people in cold climates, areas of the US, when given the choice, decided to go out to look at the thermometer when it was a generally warmer time of the day? Wouldn’t that cause the adjustment to be doubly wrong? I don’t know if that is how it breaks but without looking at the raw data, who can say?

Brooks Hurd

At the CA link that I referenced, the post was #29.

Ron Cram

re: 73

Lee,
The issue of what adjustments are being made and why has been a recurring question because data and methods are not being archived and made available for other scientists to audit. Karl Popper would call this pseudo-science and not science.

Most people would make an off-the-cuff assumption that any changes would either adjust older temps upward or more current temps downward in order to adjust for the UHI effect. As far as I know, there are no general conditions (or changes over time) that would cause older temps to be adjusted down or newer temps to be adjusted up. And there is certainly no reason why both should happen. It seems to me that, when making adjustments for changes over time, you would adjust one or the other.

I would be interested to learn more about why these adjustments were made.

johnmccall

re:56 & 78 “getting rid of a MWP in the 1900’s” and “pseudo-science” — sums it all up nicely.

JPK

Most, if not all of the weather stations in the 1930s were at airfields. Thier prime purpose was not to gather
climate data, but to provide surface readings for aircraft safety. In some of the more rural areas, the air-
traffic controllers would double as weather observer and give hourly “limited weather observations”. In those
days, the observer would use the sling pyschrometer to get his wet bulb and dry bulb temperatures. Today most stations
use an electronic device such as the TMQ-11. The sling pyschrometer, of course, still yields very accurate
surface readings. All weather oberservers, even back in the 30s, had to pass federal certification tests.

Hard data like dry and wet bulb temperatures were very accurate -even in the 1930s. Today, NOAA uses many volunteers
would give limited weather observations- I wonder how many of these observations have made it into the official
weather database? High School physics classes can now have wind, temp, and pressure data transmitted via the
web in XML format to NOAA; this has been going on for at least 5 years. Other volunteers -mainly
hobbyists do the same. Most of this information is collected automatically, but none of the equipment is certified
like the FAAs equipment.

James Erlandson

Cooperative Weather Observers (NOAA History)

Climatological records get more valuable with time. The climatological base generated through the efforts of the volunteer Cooperative Weather Observer provides not only the cornerstone of our nation’s weather history, but also serves as the primary data for research into global climatic change.

Gator

Click to access 2001_Hansen_etal.pdf

Aren’t the corrections explained in the above paper? Note, for example, they make a great effort to find stations in rural areas by looking at population and satellite light maps of the US at night. The largest effect in the adjustments of the temperature measurements came from “time of observation debiasing”.

Following on the post above (#85)this makes you all look very unprofessional. Do your reference searches, follow the paper. You would look really silly filing an official complaint about unprofessional behavior, only to have someone point to a paper and say “That was published in 2001. Didn’t you read it?”

Looking at #85 though, I guess this isn’t the point. It seems Tom C wants a political overclass that would censor and censure whatever didn’t fit his political point of view. All this masked in the name of “auditing” … pretty OTT when no one here seems to able to find the papers that are in the public domain in the first place…

John A

Steve,

It might be useful to compare the US composite record with the satellite record, putting them to the same arbitary zero in 1979

bruce

Re #85: Good points. In your point E you say:

New legislation or regulations, where applicable and appropriate, to address gross violations affecting the public interest. For example, if government agencies that fund Global Warming research do not adopt requirements for transparency, public disclosure, data access, and archiving, then the regulations or legislation may be needed.

It would also be good to invite a lawyer to review existing legislation to see whether charges can be brought. In Australia there is a clear body of law (mainly incorporated in the Trade Practices Act) relating to “false and misleading conduct”. I would be surprised if US law didn’t have similar requirements.

All of the work on this site, and other sites (Warwick Hughes, Pielke Snr, etc), actually marshalls the evidence in support of a charge that the IPCC and its contributors have knowingly engaged in false and misleading conduct with the aim of influencing policy, and scaring the public into supporting initiatives to continue lucrative funding.

I would have thought that at least some observers of this site will have a legal background, and be able to offer an opinion as to whether a legal case can be made, and whether, and in what jurisdiction, charges might be brought.

For example, it would be interesting to know whether it can be proven that there have been breaches of the Data Quality Act referred to on another thread (post #8 on HadCRU3 versus GISS thread).

I realise that it is unpleasant for all involved to engage in litigation. However, it is likely that nothing else will be as effective in causing people to be careful about the robustness of their work and the truth of their statements. Considering the massive consequences for countries and economies of the AGW scare campaign, is it not unreasonable to hold these people accountable for the truthfulness of their statements?

Larry Huldén

From Lee’s comment: “That the adjustments have that effect does not mean that the
adjustments were made with that intent. Your observation essentially restates the
obvious – that the newer analysis shows more warming in recent years than the older analysis.”
If you think of Philip Jones making adjustments you would not trust on him at all. He is hiding data
which he later is adjusting. If we never get to know which data he used in previous statements
we will never know if the new statement has any meaning.
I have seen volunteers checking temps when the outdoor temps have been -35 to -40 centigrades
in northern Finland, and I feel that they are doing a good job, even in night time. I don’t
think that there could be any large scale trend errors because of wrong time of checking.
Lee is right that changes in the station site doesn’t mean directly corrections concerning UHI.
Whatever corrections, they would be random in relation to general temperature trends when
you look at a large set of stations. The errors occur when some termometers come more often
in sunshine, and other in shade, because of many local changes in the environment.
Another problem is a large set of different algorithms used for calculating the daily mean
values. I have seen some figure in the US temp data set that there are some 200 different
methods in use. As far as I know they have been checked for discrepancies. So, the only big
adjustment to be done is UHI. The few studies I have seen indicate that deviations
sometimes are unexpectedly large. The difference have been several degrees celsius between
the city and the countryside in the surroundings (measured by engineers constructing houses).
The conclusion is that the large scale “urban correction” in climate research that has been
done has no meaning. The complex relationship is so far unknown. We don’t know what the
conditions are when the difference is affecting measurements in climate trends.

JerryB

Re #91

Jean and Steve,

Some background which may be of assistance:

The data with which the right graph of Steve’s figure 1 was generated came from
the then predecessor of the GISS page http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
on which you can see the current version near the bottom of that page.

From there is went to my PC, and from there to John Daly’s website. At that
time, John did not download that digital file. He downloaded the graph, and
later became interested in the digital file after I brought to his attention that
some of his “station of the week” graphs, which were generated from GISS
digital station data, seemed not to match the then current GISS digital station
data, but for reasons which neither he, nor I, knew at that time. He then
inquired of Hansen about the apparent discrepancies, and Hansen referred him
to the PDF to which you are referring Steve, or to a preprint thereof.

None of the graphs in this thread should be labeled “USHCN” even though the
reason for this thread is the change by GISS from using “raw” USHCN data,
to using adjusted USHCN data, as part of their sources for USA data.

Tom C

#86 It’s not about anyone’s point of view; it’s about upholding scientific standards whatever anyone’s point of view is on Global Warming.
It’s not about politics; it’s about scientific methods and professional standards that apply, or should apply, to all scientists.
It’s not about what scientists say or conclude; it’s about whether scientists will provide access to data so that other scientists can see if the data supports the scientist’s conclusion, or so that other scientists can try to replicate the scientist’s work.
It’s not about new standards for scientists; it’s about traditional standards for scientists.

As for censure and censorship, there already is a political overclass (the Global Warming establishment) that fully occupies that role. For example, the attempt to silence GW skeptics includes referring to GW skeptics as “deniers” on a par with Holocaust deniers. Al Gore helped establish this particularly odious smear and censure. In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Gore conjures up an “ecological holocaust” and says “the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.”

With the Feb 2, 2007 IPCC SPM, unfettered by public scrutiny of its scientific basis until May, the Global Warming establishment is now reaching a crescendo of censure and censorship.

Tom C

Re #90 ‘€” Bruce, Your call for stronger, more effective action, and specific suggestions, are exactly what is needed at this time. See Paul’s call for action at #103 on Unthreaded #4.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1136#comment-85575

See follow-up discussion in #107 on Unthreaded #4.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1136#comment-85621

If we get to a critical mass on ClimateAudit, maybe we can make a difference.

Luboš Motl

Thanks, Armand #99, you’re right. So I really wanted homo (genus) that is 1.5-2.5 million years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_%28genus%29

JerryB

Re #101,

Gaudenz, I would guess that it was a coincidence. As of
this time, it is up again, and its access log indicates
that it resumed operating about five minutes ago. I do
not have information about what caused the outage. Sorry.

bruce

re #92:

The few studies I have seen indicate that deviations sometimes are unexpectedly large. The difference have been several degrees celsius between the city and the countryside in the surroundings (measured by engineers constructing houses).

There is a way that we can all get a direct experience of UHI effects. 2 years ago I bought a new Subaru Outback which has an outside temperature readout on the dash – first time I have had a car with that. We travel regularly from our house near the coast in Sydney, past Sydney Airport, down to our place in the country some two hours (180km) southwest ie both inland and at an elevation of 600m.

It is fascinating to watch how much the temperature can fluctuate on that two hour journey. There have been times when we left the country place when the temperature readout was -4 deg C (a morning frost), increased to a peak of 26 deg C at Sydney Airport, and ended up being 22 deg C at our Sydney house.

More typically, last weekend when we left the farm the thermometer ready 22 deg C, it increased to 28deg C on the outskirts of Sydney, read 31 deg C at Sydney Airport, stayed at that level past Sydney City, and dropped back to 27 deg C at our house.

The conclusion that I draw from these experiences are two-fold. Temperatures fluctuate all over the place even within a traverse of 180 km, making a nonsense of grid-cell averages. Second, there is a measurable UHI effect associated with Sydney Airport and Sydney City.

I strongly suggest that anybody interested in whether or not there are significant UHI effects purchase a thermometer for their car (readily available at electronics or auto aftermarket shops) and observe the UHI effects directly.

Steve McIntyre

#105. I understand your point but I don’t want to encourage mere venting.

I’m a believer in writing letters and formal requests and making people answer. However I haven’t really pushed data issues for a while. If people are interested, I think that it might be worthwhile for lots of people to make formal requests to various institutions for data that they should have archived long ago. At a certain point, they might decide that it would be easier to simply archive the data than to continue having to handle requests, appeals and new requests. If it’s just me asking, then it’s fairly easy for them to stonewall. But if 10 or 20 people all ask separately for slightly different things, then maybe there would be some progress.

I’ll return this issue some time. However, I’d like people to stop thinking in emotional terms like “abuse of science” and more in practical terms like making a request for data in accordance with subsection x(y)(iiii)(2) or whatever. If there’s an overarching point to be made, it’s made better by having a proper file of requests and refusals – and it’s better if it’s not just me being refused.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #97

David Smith, I have been delving into the background references to the Hansen papers as you obviously have. It appears that some like Lee and Gator (in comment #86 in this thread) judge that the Hansen papers contain the pertinent data for evaluating the details of the temperature adjustments when in fact one has to go to the main references of these papers and secondary ones to get close to the details.

Several references were made to Karl, et al. (1988) and other years for these authors for the specifics for the adjustments. The individual and total adjustments noted in the Karl paper over the past 100 years were:

Time of Observation: +0.3 degrees C, Shift to Max/Min thermometers: +0.03 degrees C, Stations History Adjustment Procedures: +0.25 degrees C, Filling in missing station data: +0.08 degrees C, UHI effect: -0.10 degrees C. The total adjustments (from a graph): +0.54 degrees C.

With the adjustment being a large portion of the temperature trend increase over this period of time would seem to invite interest in just how these adjustments were made, and even more importantly what other alternative ways where available, if any. The possibility of data snooping the results using alternative methods of adjustments would seem to be something that one would want to investigate.

I would be more wary of ignorance of data snooping in the adjustment process by these people than their doing anything more premeditated. Certainly the procedures you listed for the TOBS adjustment might lead to different results if, for instance, other states where selected — or other months. I agree that the extra work of using all the data available would make better sense and wonder why it could not be scanned in with the modern technology available.

David Smith

Re #109 Is there a reference available on the internet that describes the specifics? I haven’t found one.

David Smith

Re #108 Ken, I am hoping that the process the USHCN uses is more robust than what is described in #97, and that I’ve simply stumbled across some obsolete document. I hope Jerry can help.

Otherwise, if the #97 document is indeed accurate of current practices, then an examination of the TOA model needs to be done for different months, years and locations to establish that it is robust.

paul

Steve: re: 106

You make the point well that responses should not be emotional. This is exactly what the AGW supporters use and it’s limit will be reached as it becomes overkill. What you suggest is absolutely what I had in mind but I believe we need assistance to ask the right questions in the right way.

It is hard for these things not to become politicised in this day and age and again I would remind you that you cannot wish the rules were different but only work within the current climate (sorry!). As the tide turns then influence can be used to change the rules for the better for the future.

As an example, I am quite happy to write to our government ministers, government scientists etc here in New Zealand to seek answers from them on the releveant points, but as I am sure you are aware they tend to try and wriggle their way out of hard questions so questions need to be phrased in such a way as to embarass them into giving answers rather than fluffy statements.

We need to be sure the questions are based on solid ground and solid information and that they elicite responses. If the same questions are asked of different governments in different countries and seperate organisations within a country I suspect we will obtain a range of answers which may well be revealing. I suggest that Steve lists those questions that he believes will achieve this aim and we then use those same questions within our own letters with the responses then being able to be archived here for all to view.

It would be nice to have an idea of how many countries are represented by visitors/contributors to the site.

DaleC

JerryB, re comment #39 in USHCN Versions,

Any progress on the file of global daily temperatures?
URL available?

Thanks.

JPK

If anyone checked the FMH1-B Handbook hourly surface observations cannot begin earlier than 10 minutes
before the hour, and must be transmitted before the hour. I believe this regulation is world-wide. I think
the TOA is uneeded. That 10 minute window could only yeild very small biases one way or another.

JerryB

Re #119,

Pardon my typos, The first sentence in 119 should have
started as: A sample of a very preliminary summary …

Michael Jankowski

If Spencer and Christy revise the UAH history to make the results “more accurate” via adjustments they have recently become aware of, the AGW crowd is up in arms, saying it’s a sign of flawed data and methods. The surface record gets “adjusted,” and not a peep is heard.

Paul Everett

[snip – no DDT]

I have a really nasty speculation. Pure speculation. It is “known”, I guess, that Antarctica was once tropical. If that is true, I say IF, then that would argue that it was not always in its current position. OR, that the planet was once so much hotter that no ice existed at the poles. That’s certainly possible. However, it is also “known” that either Mercury or Venus flips on its axis rather often, I’ve forgotten how often but relatively often.

Just suppose that the melting of the ice caps and the redistribution of all that weight into the liquid form of the great oceans destabilizes the axial rotation of the earth in such a way that it rotates 90 degrees, putting Antarctica and Arctic at the new “equator” and the equator at the new poles.

I think you could say that was the end of humanity as we now know us, or at least technological humanity. Just a very wild speculation about possible consequences of the melting of the poles.

Paul

David Smith

Acouple of papers on temperature reconstruction problems are here and here .

One section from the Pielke Sr et al paper discusses time of observation adjustments (p. 425-426):

“We attempted to apply the time of observation adjustment using the paper by Karl et al. The actual implementation of this procedure is very difficult so, after several discussions with NCDC personnel familiar with the procedure, we chose instead to use the USHCN database to extract the time of observation adjustments applied by NCDC… An example is shown here for Holly, Colorado (Figure 1) which had more changes than any other site used in our study.
” What you would expect to see is a series of step function changes with known time of observation changes. However, what you actually see is a combination of step changes and other variability, the causes of which are not all obvious…”

See Figure 1.

I see no fundamental problem with adjusting the data to correct for TOB or other biases, but there needs to be a clear, easy to find record of exactly what adjustments were made, and why.

On a related issue, as best as I can tell, the USHCN uses Karl’s Fortran program, based on his 1986 paper, to make the TOB changes. I hope that Karl’s reasoning and programming are proper and validated, as a lot of adjustment is based on that “black box” into which latitude, longitude, month, observation time, etc are entered and an adjustment is cranked out.

John G. Bell

I am trying to understand this in general terms. My lack of background prevents me from being able to contribute much but I did find this in the Keim paper right before the summary and conclusions

“Even at the climate divisional level, the USHCN pattern is more geographically cohesive in that no division cooled over the period of record, and the region of significant warming are all contiguous divisions in the southeastern portion of the study region(figure 1). This seems much more logical than the NCDC data pattern where adjacent divisions have significant trends, but in opposing directions, e.g., MA-1 and MA-2”

That may be so but do we really know contiguous divisions really behave this way relative to each other. They were put in different divisions because they represented different ecological niches after all.