Category Archives: Surface Record

Articles focussing on the reliability of the surface record

First Look at the USHCN Quality Classification

Anthony Watts has posted up a quality assessment of the USHCN stations here. John V presented some graphics in the comments thread here and below is my first pass – this comment is not intended to exhaust all possible cross-cuts of the data is merely the first thing that I looked at. I compared the […]

The September 2007 Bear Market in NASA Temperature "Pasts"

Since August 1, 2007, NASA has had 3 substantially different online versions of their 1221 USHCN stations (1221 in total.) The third and most recent version was slipped in without any announcement or notice in the last few days – subsequent to their code being placed online on Sept 7, 2007. (I can vouch for […]

USHCN Survey Results based on 33% of the network

With 33% of the USHCN weather station network now surveyed, the site quality rating is now applied, see the USHCN Station Master List file in HTML and XLS format. The rating system for site quality was borrowed verbatim from the new Climate Reference Network being put into operation by NCDC and NOAA to ensure quality […]

Hansen Then and Now

In the “good old days” (August 25, 2007: after they had corrected their Y2K error), I downloaded Hansen’s “combined” version (his dset=1). Jerry Brennan observed today that Hansen appeared to have already “moved on”, noticing apparent changes in Detroit Lakes and a couple of other sites. Here is a comparison of the Detroit Lakes (combined) […]

Crossword Puzzle #4: Re-Visiting Y2K

In my opinion, one of the main purpose of compiling the Hansen code is to produce intermediate versions to determine what Hansen really did. Today I’m going to compare the Step 0 version of Detroit Lakes MN (familiar to many readers from the Y2K error) as produced from running Hansen’s code with a current USHCN […]

Hansen Code

Technical Comments only.

The Bias Method's Perfect Siberian Storm

I have been spending some time (my wife would say “too much time”) examining how the Hansen Bias Method influences the temperature record. We have already observed that the Hansen method introduces an error in cases where the different versions are merely scribal variations. See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2019 and discussion. The cause of the error has also […]

Hansen's Station Lists

The section of Hansen’s code that we’d been looking at immediately prior to the dump of relatively unannotated code was how Hansen combined scribal versions of different stations in a 2-column case – which looks to contain a material error already discussed without the benefit of source code and which is going to be examined […]

Hansen Frees the Code

Hansen has just released what is said to be the source code for their temperature analysis. The release was announced in a shall-we-say ungracious email to his email distribution list and a link is now present at the NASA webpage. Hansen says resentfully that they would have liked a “week or two” to make a […]

Waldo in Siberia

We have some firm sightings of Waldo in Siberia, as Warwick Hughes has long told us. There are very remarkable differences between temperature series depending on the site in Siberia. When Gavin Schmidt or James Hansen encounter differences of this order of magnitude between the U.S. and the ROW, they ascribe it to “regional” climate […]