Comments on: The Accidental Tourist

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:04:09 +0000

Coverage in Australia was mentioned in an earlier comment. Strangely, the April 2008 map seems to have no square overlapping Melbourne or Brisbane, two major cities. I can’t imagine why that would be the case, other than they haven’t acquired the data yet for some reason.

By: John M

John M — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:17:28 +0000

It is kind of interesting to compare the "holes" in the GISS global anomaly map to this image of anomalies for April from the RSS site (link).

By: anonymous

anonymous — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:18:58 +0000

Given the above and many many many previous re-adjustments etc (and even another one yesterday on March 08), and problems, maybe the only solution to dealing with GISSTEMP is this ad verbatim quote taken from Anthony Watts site; ( I Hope this is OK if not please remove this posting).

The site says he does not “bother plotting GISS global temperature anomaly data anymore” because

“I simply don’t trust the representivity of the GISS dataset. Since GISS uses polar “interpolated” data which does not exist in any of the other three datasets, I see GISS as an outlier and not truly representative of global temperature. For example, GISS interpolates from the closest high latitude surface stations and adds that data for the very high latitude arctic where no weather stations exist. None of the other 3 data sets use interpolation to create data for the arctic where no measurements exist. Hence, I have a greater degree of trust for RSS, UAH, and HadCRUT global temperature anomaly data.
……
“And there’s more, see a post called “The Accidental Tourist” about GISS data problems, from John Goetz (originally posted on Climate Audit) which I’ve reposted as the next item down.”

Since GISStemp sems to be consistently way off from all other measurements as a scientist I would reject it as a “outlier” and would not included it in any statistical analysis

By: EW

EW — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:16:34 +0000

(42) JohnG
The WMO No. of Kurgan on Russia’s Weather is the same as that given in other databases.

According to the server,

Weather Archive is being developed and maintained by
Satellite Monitoring Technologies Department of Space Research Institute, with support from Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project 01-07-90172)

This is something like Goddard Inst. at NASA, isn’t it?
Whereas meteo.ru is run by RIHMI-WMO (Russian Hydrometeorological Institute)
So there seem to be two nonidentical datasets for the same station from two quite official sources…strange…

By: Sam Urbinto

Sam Urbinto — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:39:55 +0000

Jae#48 Yes, as I’ve been saying, land-use is not just UHI, it’s UHI’s effect upon heat absorption, weather patterns and the like, coupled with (given my “look at Los Angeles, look at Chicago, look at the land between them) farms and roads and what happens to all the waste heat from the use of energy; cars, air conditioners, heaters. And all that goes someplace, it is the spheres after all. You know, teleconnections.

By: jae

jae — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:37:58 +0000

45, Sam: Yes, including all that reduced albedo in the summer, caused by irrigation! That has to have some significant effects.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:52:34 +0000

I note that another one of the gaps is North Island of New Zealand. Maybe after you found it for them, they have lost Wellington again. I t also appears that the South Island is still getting hotter despite Hokitika not showing that trend. It would be good to know just what adjustments they are doing.

By: Tim Ball

Tim Ball — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:02:51 +0000

Re Canadian data.
Here is the disclaimer at the start of printed data for Canada titled “Canadian Climate Normals 1951-1980, Published by Environment Canada.

“No hourly data exists in the digital archive before 1953, the averages appearing in this volume have been derived from all available ‘hourly’ observations, at the selected hours, for the period 1953 to 1980, inclusive. The reader should note that many stations have fewer than the 28 years of record in the complete averaging.”

By: Sam Urbinto

Sam Urbinto — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:45:18 +0000

Neil #36 Excellent point, one sees it whenever it snows, the roads take longer to stick and they also take longer to melt than the grass or dirt (or whatever) according to their heat content (length of time in the sun or covered with ice, and what the material is). Next time it snows if it snows where you are, take a look at roads, sidewalks, gravel patches, grass, flowerbeds, mulched areas, plain dirt.

All this albedo changing people thing has effects 24/7, 365.

By: Aviator

Aviator — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:38:43 +0000

#29 – I surrender! There were a lot of stations closed, but omission of sites and bad data adjusted and manipulated behind closed doors trumps a few closures for effect. Back to lurking and licking my wounds.