Hypothesising that the distribution of adjustments required is Gaussian, with a standard deviation of 0.75 C gives the dashed line in figure 4 which matches the number of adjustments made where the adjustments are large, but suggests a large number of missing small adjustments. The homogenisation uncertainty is then given by this missing component (dotted line in figure 4), which has a standard deviation of 0.4 C. This uncertainty applies to both adjusted and unadjusted data, the former have an uncertainty on the adjustments made, the latter may require undetected adjustments.

I’m almost sure that they are only joking.

Orwell saluda! Steve McIntyre, autor de Climate Audit, nos presenta un interesante caso de manipulacià³n de datos climà¡ticos. Resulta que, a pesar de que el “original” de la conferencia de prensa de Hansen en el 1999 ha desaparecido de los…

“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.

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.

Maier’s Law:

If the facts don’t conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries:
1) The bigger the theory, the better.

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

To the ‘FaithBased’ theorists you start with a conclusion and then construct hypothesis to support it.

No dissent will be tolerated.