"0BZN0" <0BZN0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:481e8cdd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Hansen is at it again!
>
>
>
> A tale of two thermometers
>
> Steven Goddard
>
> 2 May 2008
>
>
>
>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/page2.html
>
>
>
> QUOTE: "Temperatures from the years 1990 to present have more than
> one-half degree Fahrenheit artificially added on to them - which may
> account for most of the upwards trend in the NASA temperature set."
>
>
>
> QUOTE: "In fact, every year except one from 1986-1998 was adjusted
> upwards, by an average of 0.2 degrees. If someone wanted to present a
> case for a lot of recent warming, adjusting data upwards would be an
> excellent way to do it."
>
>
>
> QUOTE: "Data so far for April shows both hemispheres back on the
> decline, and April is shaping up to be an unusually cool month across
> most of the globe"
>
>
>
>
>
> Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler?
>
>
>
> A paper published in scientific journal Nature this week has reignited
> the debate about Global Warming, by predicting that the earth won't be
> getting any warmer until 2015. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of
> Marine Sciences have factored in cyclical oceanic into their climate
> model, and produced a different forecast to the "consensus" models
> which don't.
>
>
>
> But how will we know whether the earth is warming or cooling? Today,
> it all depends on the data source.
>
>
>
> Two authorities provide us with analysis of long-term surface
> temperature trends. Both agree on the global temperature trend until
> 1998, at which time a sharp divergence occurred. The UK Meteorological
> Office's Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut data shows
> worldwide temperatures declining since 1998. According to Hadley's
> data, the earth is not much warmer now than it was than it was in 1878
> or 1941.
>
>
>
> Hadley's data (April 13, 2008)
>
>
>
> By contrast, NASA data shows worldwide temperatures increasing at a
> record pace - and nearly a full degree warmer than 1880.
>
>
>
> NASA's data (April 13, 2008)
>
>
>
> The other two widely used global temperature data sources are from
> earth-orbiting satellites UAH (University of Alabama at Huntsville)
> and RSS (Remote Sensing Systems.) Both show decreasing temperatures
> over the last decade, with present temperatures barely above the 30
> year average.
>
>
>
> Anomalies 1998-2008; University of Alabama (UAH)
>
>
>
> Anomalies 1998-2008; Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)
>
>
>
> Confusing? How can scientists who re****t measurements of the earth's
> temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur
> if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period?
> Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data - but what is
> it?
>
>
>
> One clue we can see is that NASA has been reworking recent
> temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards - which creates
> a greater slope and the appearance of warming. Canadian statistician
> Steve McIntyre has been tracking the changes closely on his Climate
> Audit site, and re****ts that NASA is Rewriting History, Time and Time
> Again. The recent changes can be seen by comparing the NASA 1999 and
> 2007 US temperature graphs. Below is the 1999 version, and below that
> is the reworked 2007 version.
>
>
>
> NASA's original data: 1999
>
>
>
> NASA's reworked data: 2007
>
>
>
> In order to visualize the changes, I overlaid the 2007 version on top
> of the 1999 version, above, and a clear pattern emerged. The pre-1970
> temperatures have been nearly uniformly adjusted downwards (red below
> green) - and the post 1970 temperatures have been adjusted upwards
> (red above green.) Some of the yearly temperatures have been adjusted
> by as much as 0.5 degrees. That is a huge total change for a country
> the size of the US with thousands of separate temperature records.
>
>
>
> How could it be determined that so many thermometers were wrong by an
> average of 0.5 degrees in one particular year several decades ago, and
> an accurate retrofit be made? Why is the adjustment 0.5 degrees one
> year, and 0.1 degrees the next?
>
>
>
> Describing this more succinctly, the 2007 version of the data appears
> to have been sheared vertically across 1970 to create the appearance
> of a warming trend. We can approximate shear by applying a small
> rotation, so I tried "un-rotating" the 2007 graph clockwise around
> 1970 until I got a reasonably good visual fit at six degrees.
>
>
>
> What could be the motivation for the recent changes?
>
>
>
> Further examination of the NASA site might give us a clue as to what
> is happening.
>
>
>
> NASA staff have done some recent bookkeeping and refined the data from
> 1930-1999. The issues has been discussed extensively at science blog
> Climate Audit. So what is the probability of this effort consistently
> increasing recent temperatures and decreasing older temperatures? From
> a statistical viewpoint, data recalculation should cause each year to
> have a 50/50 probability of going either up or down - thus the odds of
> all 70 adjusted years working in concert to increase the slope of the
> graph (as seen in the combined version) are an astronomical 2 raised
> to the power of 70. That is one-thousand-billion-billion to one. This
> isn't an exact representation of the odds because for some of the
> years (less than 15) the revisions went against the trend - but even a
> 55/15 split is about as likely as a room full of chimpanzees
> eventually typing Hamlet. That would be equivalent to flipping a penny
> 70 times and having it come up heads 55 times. It will never happen -
> one trillion to one odds (2 raised to the power 40.)
>
>
>
> Particularly troubling are the years from 1986-1998. In the 2007
> version of the graph, the 1986 data was adjusted upwards by 0.4
> degrees relative to the 1999 graph. In fact, every year except one
> from 1986-1998 was adjusted upwards, by an average of 0.2 degrees. If
> someone wanted to present a case for a lot of recent warming,
> adjusting data upwards would be an excellent way to do it.
>
>
>
> Looking at the NASA website, we can see that the person in charge of
> the temperature data is the eminent Dr. James Hansen - Al Gore's
> science advisor and the world's leading long-term advocate of global
> warming.
>
>
>
> Data Sources
>
> NASA and Had-Crut data are largely based on surface measurements,
> using thermometers. They both face a lot of difficulties due to
> contaminated data caused by urban heating effects, dispro****tionate
> concentration of thermometers in urban areas, changes in thermometer
> types over time, changes in station locations, loss of stations,
> changes in the time of day when thermometers are read, and yet more
> factors.
>
>
>
> NASA has a very small number of long-term stations in the Arctic, and
> even fewer in Africa and South America. The data has been
> systematically adjusted upwards in recent years - as can be seen in
> this graph, reproduced below. Temperatures from the years 1990 to
> present have more than one-half degree Fahrenheit artificially added
> on to them - which may account for most of the upwards trend in the
> NASA temperature set.
>
>
>
> Official difference between the publicly re****ted temperature and the
> original data from USHCN/NASA - click to enlarge
>
>
>
> Satellite temperature data (UAH and RSS) is more reliable because it
> covers the entire earth - with the exception of small regions near the
> north and south poles. They use the same methodology from year to
> year, and the two sources tend to agree fairly closely. The downside
> of satellite data is that it only goes back to 1978.
>
>
>
> Now back to the present.
>
> NASA temperatures for March 2008 indicate that it was the third
> warmest March in history, but satellite data sources RSS and UAH
> disagree. They show March as the second coldest ever in the southern
> hemisphere, and barely above average worldwide. (The northern
> hemisphere in March was split between a cold North America and a very
> warm Asia, causing temperatures in the northern hemisphere to be above
> average.) Data so far for April shows both hemispheres back on the
> decline, and April is shaping up to be an unusually cool month across
> most of the globe (Africa, South America, North America and ****tions
> of Europe and Asia).
>
>
>
> Bottom Line
>
> Both of the satellite data sources, as well as Had-Crut, show
> worldwide temperatures falling below the IPCC estimates. Satellite
> data shows temperatures near or below the 30 year average - but NASA
> data has somehow managed to stay on track towards climate Armageddon.
> You can draw your own conclusions, but I see a pattern that is
> troublesome. In science, as with any other endeavour, it is always a
> good idea to have some separation between the people generating the
> data and the people interpreting it.
>
>
>
> Some good news moving forward was re****ted this week by Anthony Watts,
> who blogs at Watt's Up With That? USHCN has issued a press release
> indicating that they are upgrading their methodology and ending the
> practice of adjusting data upwards for future temperature readings.
> This will make the data more credible, though will not resolve the
> issues associated with growing urban heat islands or a lack of spatial
> coverage across the planet.
>
>
>
> Bear in mind that warming and cooling concerns are nothing new, as
> this alarming bulletin reminds us -
>
>
>
> The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in
> some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a
> re****t to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at
> Bergen, Norway. Re****ts from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he
> declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and
> hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration
> expeditions re****t that scarcely any ice has been met with as far
> north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters
> showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been
> replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the re****t continued, while
> at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few
> seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast
> shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far
> north, are being encountered in the old seal fi****ng grounds.
>
> A RealClimate blogger? No, that was the US Weather Bureau in 1922.
>
>
>
> We saw a global cooling scare in 1924, a global warming scare in 1933,
> another global cooling in the early 1970s, and another warming scare
> today. The changes the USHCN promised Watts won't help resolve
> anything for another decade or so, but perhaps future generations will
> be able to reduce the alarming increase in the number of climate
> alarms.
> --
>
>
> Warmest Regards
>
> Bonzo
>
> : "They don't tell you, that, in their computer models, it's assumed
> that CO2 drives global warming. In other words, you assume the result
> and say the computer model proves we were right. It's garbage in,
> garbage out. If you don't program the computers to cause temperatures
> to rise with CO2, then you have nothing." Dr. Don J. Easterbrook,
> Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Wa****ngton University
>
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