Comments on: Jones et al 1990, TR055 and GHCN

By: Climate Audit and NOAA FOI Policy « Climate Audit

Climate Audit and NOAA FOI Policy « Climate Audit — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:30:43 +0000

[...] Immediately on receipt of this information, I wrote some interesting posts on Chinese stations here here here . Doug Keenan followed up on this information as [...]

By: Phil Jones and the China Network: Part 2 « Climate Audit

Phil Jones and the China Network: Part 2 « Climate Audit — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:16:18 +0000

[...] 2007, following receipt of the data, I did a number of posts at CA on the Chinese network e.g. here here here here here, analysis that we now know that Jones was monitoring. One of the few mentions of [...]

By: Armand MacMurray

Armand MacMurray — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:55:09 +0000

Re:#4

Interestingly, the terrain, etc., of the two locations is the same

It looks like (1) is sandwiched between a road and river, while (2) is near neither.

By: Douglas J. Keenan

Douglas J. Keenan — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:34:45 +0000

Regarding the graph of temperatures at Station 57516, the discontinuity is of course due to a relocation of the station. According to the CAS-ORNL report, there was a relocation, beginning 1951, from 29°33′N,106°33′E to 29°35′N,106°28′E. The distance is about 9 km. There is a map showing the two locations at http://www.informath.org/WMO57516.png (inserting images/links seems to be not working). Interestingly, the terrain, etc., of the two locations is the same.

The station relocation occurred before 1954, and so does not affect the papers of Jones et al. [Nature, 1990] or Wang et al. [GRL, 1990]. It nonetheless helps to illustrate how problematic relocations can be (and makes the possible undocumented homogeneity adjustments extra worrisome).

By: TAC

TAC — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:14:22 +0000

SteveM, this is fabulous! Your presentation is rich, balanced, fair, and devastating. While it obviously has important implications, the presentation is also highly entertaining.

By: Bob Koss

Bob Koss — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:52:58 +0000

I extrapolated the continuation of the Jones Dali series through 2006. It seems they made a reduction of about 1/2 a degree from the files I have. So I did the same. If the image doesn't show up. It can be found here.

By: John A

John A — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 18:27:37 +0000

Funnily enough, the GISS website (prop: J. Hansen) also perform the same trick of starting in the cold 1950s and ending in the warm 1990s. For example here the “warm stations” are all shown from the same baseline from the 1950s onwards. The excuse given is purely scientific and nothing whatsoever to do with cherrypicking or global warming advocacy:

Using 1951-1980 as a base period, we compute the fraction of the stations (in a given latitude band and globally) that fall in the “warm” category. The “warm” category is defined at each station location from the climatology for the period 1951-1980; the 10 warmest years (33%) in that 30-year period are categorized as “warm”, which is essentially the way that the National Weather Service defines the categories “warm”, “normal” or “average”, and “cool”. We choose 1951-1980 as the base period because that was the base period at the time that “global warming” began to be a public issue. Also it is the time that “baby boomers” grew up, so this choice for base period allows those people to relate today’s climate to that which they remember.

Also its curious that the longest series in the GISS database also show the same anomalies as the Chinese series cited above (a warmer 1930s-early 1940s and a colder 1950s-1970s) even though they’re nearly half a world away from each other:

Godthab/Nuuk (Greenland):

Cape Town (South Africa)

But then we’re dealing here with real temperature readings and not treerings so obviously there’s a problem of interpretation.