Excellent article - just one question

Why do Americans pay NASA to lie to them?

Excellent article.

Enjoyed it - cheers.

What I'm going to enjoy...

...is hearing the perpetrators of this immensely expensive and resource wasting hoax talk their way out of it - when the Thames ices over every winter.

The graph actually fits warming better before adjustment

The unadjusted USA graph actually fits better the current global northern hemisphere models than the adjusted graphs.

IIRC, during the last several million years when Earth was warmer than now (not that there was a lot of that) Texas and the Eastern seaboard were much colder and wetter. The mathematical models show the same (as well as very cold Northern Sea and North-West Europe).

So the first map which has a very hot California, as well as parts of the midwest, etc and a colder than average Texas makes much more sense than the adjusted one.

and another question

And why did all the world's top scientists miss this too?

Mathematical bollocks

I don't need "data" and "studies" to tell me they haven't a fuckin clue.

On sunday morning all weather sources i checked said we were in for a fine sunny day, it pissed down all afternoon.

If they can't predict the same days weather, i'm not too bothered about all this crystal ball gazing.

Meanwhile, the glaciers retreat and ski resorts close down by the hundreds. Now thats data.

Every bit as good as the last one

1. Why focus so much on the US? It only contributes approx 2% to the global mean. The problem is global warming.

2. "what immediately grabs the attention is that NASA has essentially no data (gray areas) in most of Canada, most of Africa, the

Greenland ice sheet, and most of Antarctica "

Really? What are all these little red dots? http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/temptracker/global_weather_stations_map_532.gif

3. "In 1998 (left side of the graph below) NASA and the satellite data sources RSS and UAH all agreed quite closely - within one-tenthof a degree."

They do not 'agree quite closely' as the satellite and NASA datasets have different baselines (zeroes). It is not legitimate to plot them with the same y-axis without adjustment for this. The NASA anomaly baseline was chosen as a period of good quality coverage, it

does not imply any kind of 'normal' temperatures (and Why show a US map to illustrate a point about the global record? Hmmm). The difference in trends post-1998 is probably explained by the fact that the satellite and urface stations measure different quantities, the surface and lower tropospheric temperature respectively. 1998 was a strong El-Nino year which pushed temperatures two standard deviations above the trend line. I speculate that this effect was more prominent in the satellite record hence the differing trends since then. To see the long term comparison try http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080303_ColdWeather.pdf

4 NASA's data shows the month as the third warmest on record. In sharp contrast, UAH and RSS satellite data showed March as the second coldest on record in the southern hemisphere

Ho Ho. Not so much Apples and Oranges as Apple with half an Apple. The US NCDC found March the second warmest on record: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/mar/mar08.html

Can we expect a Register article on this sinister organisation soon ;-)

JP.

RE: Why did all the worlds scientists miss this....

Science is not about consensus, it's about theories which can be tested and proved or disproved. For climate scientists to say "the science is settled, we all agree" means nothing because if 11,000 scientists agree something is true and one lone nutter can prove it's not - then the science is wrong. "Settled science" is littered with dangerous denialists - Galileo Galilei, for one.

After the Nazi's took over, they rejected all things Jewish, including Einstein's so called 'Jewish physics' A book was published in Germany called "One hundred authors against Einstein". When asked what he thought of the book, the great man mused that if he had been wrong then only one would have been enough...

it's a blip

no its a trend

no its a way to lig about spending some research budget

I think the most telling graph comes first showing how what adjustments were applied. There's a lot of bollocks about the justification but I don't really find that credible without some empiric support.

Mines the one with the AC unit and heating element...no reason to take any chances.

comment

Certainly we should do what we can to protect the environment, reduce CO2 emissions, etc. It's just common sense. The planet will weather whatever we throw at it, in one form or another---however, we might not be able to stand the resulting climate. The scary thing is, we may have very little control over what happens to the Earth's climate, regardless of how we treat it. I'm not ready to believe in "Global Warming." The more I read articles for and against it, the more I simply believe that we just don't know, and that some of the more politically inclined either have their heads up their asses or are indulging in shameful manipulation for personal benefit. I just don't think we know enough about the planet's cycles to make any kind of accurate determination as to what the future holds, or as to whether we can affect it. Perhaps all the energy spent on this would be better spent in figuring out how to cope with worst-case scenarios. To think we really understand what's going on at this point seems like the story of the blind men and the elephant.

Self Fulfilling..

Of course the "Oh My God we'll all die if we don't cut Greenhouse gas emissions" are on a winning number here. If the NASA figures are totally wrong then when the temperature suddenly drops and drops so much that even the enviro-nutters at NASA have to show a global cooling then the press will be full of "We've saved the world.." style posts, when in fact its really done nothing at all.

Mine's the one with the fur lined hood... I've seen "The Day After Tomorrow"....

Please write more comments without checking the facts

@JonB

According to http://www.indexmundi.com/world/electricity_production.html, the world total electricity supply is 6.7e+19J/year. Solar energy reaching Earth is 2.0e25J/year. Even if power stations are only 30% efficient, the have only 0.001% of the heating effect of the sun. We are not going to cook the planet with power stations any time soon.

@Joe K

The biggest error in television and radio wether reports is trying to summarise a complete day's weather for the whole country in under a minute. Try getting the report for your home town from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/

Anyway there is a huge difference between predicting the temperature in your home town at midday tommorrow and predicting the average midday June temperature in your home town over a twenty year period. Just like it is easier to predict the average time of the three fastest horses than to predict which horse will win.

Re: John Philip

Hi John,

Excellent question about the NASA data locations. The NASA map was generated by going to http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ selecting "Mean Period: Mar" "Smoothing Radius: 250 km" and clicking "Make Map." You unfortunately can't link directly to their maps.

I just did that again, and noticed that the March map has been changed since the image I captured a couple of weeks ago. It now includes a few data points in the Canadian Arctic and Africa. Still large holes there, but not as bad as before.

I wonder what changed? The new data seems to have appeared since Steve McIntyre did a similar story on it two weeks ago.

@Solomon Grundy

It's more than that. With all the electronics and cell phones spreading microwave radiation and magnetic fields, the cumulative chaos effect on local flora and fauna will be unknown until we can quantify the effects of said radiation and magnetic fields. The animals may be reacting as much to the technology as to the environment, and we can't tell at this point.

[Imagine when the scientists figure out that Wi-Fi throws off migration patterns, and that cell phone towers render local wildlife infertile.]

@everyone else:

Does NASA adjust the data in areas where there have been massive wildfires for the past few years? Talk about making things hotter...actually, hotter, then colder, since scorched areas are effectively desert until re-growth occurs. This will definitely skew their figures.

And if you want the real causes of localized warming, you have only to look at three things: air conditioners, blacktop and humidity. Air conditioners force heat outside a structure. Blacktop absorbs and retains solar heat for a long time after the sun goes down (a difference in cities of 10 degrees Fahrenheit compared to rural areas). Humidity is water, which absorbs and retains heat like crazy. Put the three together: Pavement heats up...humans breathing out moisture...exhaled moisture and natural humidity heats up...humans turn on air conditioning, forcing more heat and moisture back into the outside air...go figure, lots of warming there, and no way of changing things short of storms, high winds, or nightfall. Just wait until the new cars come out where the only pollution that comes out is clean, clear water. They'll be crying global warming again until they figure out that the water coming out of the new cars is the problem.

In Washington D.C., there were quite a few 95+ degree days where the air quality was to the point where people were advised to stay indoors - not due to the air pollution, but simply due to the heat and humidity. This is what gets people in an uproar about global warming - most of the people who are sampled for polls concerning global warming live in cities (where it's easier to poll large numbers of people). They're hotter than the rest of the country, go figure. Out in the suburbs and rural areas, people are scratching their heads about global warming when this past winter was so damn cold.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the theory of global warming, but I'm not for it either. There's not enough data out there, and even the data being shown is being shown wrong. And anywhere where there's a dollar to be made, you can be sure there's a lobbyist or two million out there who wants to get legislation through that will mandate their company's new product.

NASA's peculiar thermometer

I smell an agenda at work!!

The agenda of the "Global Warming" crowd.

I remember an old saying: "Figures LIE and LIARS figure". So, noting that the numbers seem to have been "massaged"; why should I believe their "results".

AFAIAC "Global Warming" is the biggest "crock" there is.

What about variability?

The much more dramatic effect of global warming may be an increase in variability of weather - things get more extreme. I'd love to see a study looking at trends in temperature variance, for example. Global warming adds heat energy to the complex system of earth's weather and climate; much like increasing how hard you shake a bowl half-full of water, adding this energy is going to cause things to move a lot more - in the case of the earth's atmosphere, that means more extreme weather. Some of that will be hotter, some of it will be colder, some wetter, some drier. Looking at the overall mean temperature is looking for a subtle indicator of the underlying increase in heat energy. How has the number of hurricanes changed? The number of days more than two standard deviations away from normal temperature? The number of precipitation records broken? I'm sure this information exists somewhere, but I haven't come across it...

NASA's motivation

NASA: If you don't give us more funding to explore outer space and find us a new home, global warming will destroy all life on earth.

Sane Person: But the earth is in a cooling trend.

NASA: oh, than if you don't give us more funding to explore outer space and find us a new home, global cooling will destroy all life on earth.

SP: But earth cooling trends and warming trends are a normal part of human history and humans are better prepared to handle them than ever before.

NASA: oh, how about an asteroid?

SP: You watch too many movies.

NASA: But it COULD happen, right?

SP: Yes there is a slight statistical chance that sometime in the next 80 Quattuorvigintillion years, an asteroid large enough to kill all life on earth may collide with the earth.

NASA: But that means it is possible.

SP: Yes but by that time the sun will have swallowed the earth and gone completely dark.

NASA: oh, the sun could swallow the earth some day?

SP: How about if I pay you to shut up?

NASA: That will do!

By the way, I do think it is important to explore outer space. I am fascinated by it and I am sure it holds many great discoveries that will be beneficial.

I'll get my coat, mines the one with arms that strap tightly in front.

Brrrr....

Hell is freezing over....

Must be climate change.

No, wait, it's warming up again...

... with all those climate change corporation and government people making a fast buck arriving thick and fast.

No coat needed.

Let me explain some simple facts of life...

"And why did all the world's top scientists miss this too?"

Because if they had raised their voices they wouldn't have remained the world's top scientists for very long.

The world's climate is constantly changing. For most of recorded history, the Earth was covered in ice, and periods when it is comparatively free of ice are rare - we are lucky to be living in one at the moment. The world has been hotter than this, and had more free CO2, but has never had a runaway 'Venus-type' atmosphere. It has, however, had lots of runaway ice ages, and for my money they are the danger.

I have been following the climate science papers for a good few years now. The effect they are trying to measure cannot be distinguished from the background noise, and this is disguised by the use of dodgy statistical techniques. It may be there, but it is so small it cannot be perceived. Instead of discussing this in a scientific fashion, the proposers of Anthropic Global Warming have resorted to political, and worse tricks to marginalise opponents. They are in danger of ruining all scientific study, and it is a deep disgrace to see that the world's foremost scientific journals and august bodies have thrown their lot in with the tricksters. It seems to show that the first rule of the establishment is 'always to remain on top'.

@mark - Data Selection

Actually, CO2 is only one component gas of Global Warming, water vapour is much more powerful as a greenhouse gas.

For all those interested in global warming, try the Global Warming Test:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

If the world wasn't ending...

How could our politicians squeeze more money out of the average joe taxpayer?

Ask any mobster, nothing squeezes out money like a good dose of fear.

When it rains in Alaska

Living in Alaska, and having done so for only 10 years, I can tell you that temperatures have steadily risen during that time.

From October to May the southern most areas of the main portion of Alaska average 1 foot of snow a month, historically. During November through March, temperatures dip to around -30 F and rise to around + 30 F, historically. +30 F is 0 C, or freezing point.

In Anchorage, for example, it was common for snow to become packed down and frozen onto roads permanently from November to April. We're talking over 6" of ice that can't be plowed or removed.

The ground itself is frozen. If there is no snow during this period a natural insulation that protects sewers and water mains is missing, causing some pretty nasty consequences. High pressure steam is used to blast through the ice to unblock drains, but this doesn't help home owners with burst and frozen pipes under drives, followed by a particularly disgusting back flow of sewage.

As I said the ground is frozen, making digging even a single foot impossible with something like a spade until sometime in May.

But as I also said, things have changed. Over the last 3 - 4 years, roads have been melted clean of ice and snow in the middle of January... by rain. The absolute coldest month of the year, with sunlight lasting maybe 4-5 hours, and temperatures usually well below -20 C, it warms up now and rains.

This causes it's own havoc. Because the warming isn't consistent. So the freeze returns and that insulated layer of snow that protected our pipes is gone.

Then you have the rain itself. SUVs.. well it's curious but while driving with studded tires is safe and reliable on plowed roads, it takes about 1 - 2 days to clear a city like Anchorage. Obviously the airports and main roads are cleared immediately, but travelling around in 3 foot of snow is not unusual in the outer and less important parts of the city. Try doing that with a clearance of only a foot and you may be stable, but you're also stuck as the snow piles up under the car.

But that rain is ice rain, because while it may not be -20, it is close or just above the freezing point. This means sheet ice, and funny thing about metal studs is they slide really good on smooth surfaces. Great for getting traction in soft powder, shite for ice. 4 wheel drive is awesome unless you lose it, and then it's worse than anything you've experienced in even a rear wheel drive vehicle.

Funny how the very vehicles we relied on for so long to get us to work in Alaska have turned out to be one of the major causes of our undoing.

So when people tell me we're going through a cooling phase, and that temperatures in Alaska are normal - I laugh. Because I live here and I can tell you they are anything but normal and we are definitely NOT going through a cooling stage.

One of the worst things that can happen to frozen roads in a place like Alaska is rain. It gets under the tarmac and freezes, expands and breaks it up. Our roads are littered with pot holes, and even with the wealth of oil (that again ironically is the cause of our own downfall) a limited number of road construction companies can only do so much work in the 3 to 4 months of Summer that we have in Alaska.

The good news is the moose seem to be enjoying it. The bad news is a bit too much, and too many moose means too little food to go around (leafy trees and shrubbery not being overly common in a winter wonderland, even if the snow has melted) and of course they starve and die.

Interesting if it were accurate

You can get a good description of NASA's temperature model here.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

The real difference is that the satellites are measuring air temperature. Notice the title of the image in your article, "Troposphere". NASA data includes air, ground, water and ice measurements. Since Earth's ice has been melting, air temperatures haven't changed dramatically. I'll look forward to reading your next article, which will account for the fact that the globe consists of more than air.

How can explain what you don't know?

As I set here right now, the forecast for tomorrow is 100 degrees F for my hometown. It would be the earliest that it ever broke 100, a record that has lasted since World War II. Meanwhile, the month of May was abnormally cold. Go figure that one out.

Last year, the Arctic had a record low ice coverage. Meanwhile the Antarctic had a record high ice coverage. Go figure that one out.

This winter it snowed in Baghdad and in Jerusalem. In fact, it snowed in Jerusalem twice and the snow actually accumulated. The western US and Canada had so much snow, people were worried about their roof caving in. And lets not forget a La Nina that just doesn't want to go away. Global warming was supposed to cause more El Ninos. Go figure that one out.

The fact is the weather and climate is far more complicated than we think. Scientists try to model for all sorts of things, but they have yet to know all the variables and have yet to understand fully the variables they do know about. If you don't understand the dynamics of a system, how can you tell me what the system will do? This Armageddon message from the Church of Al Gore fails the logic test. That is why the founder of the American station The Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore. John Coleman knows that if this were a legal case, Global Warming wouldn't have enough evidence to prove anything.

It is also interesting that meteorologists, that is to say climate scientists whose income is not derived from funds or grants, don't believe this global warming is man-made, but other climate scientists do. The #1 point in Michael Crichton's book State of Fear was that scientists tend to reach conclusions based on who provides their income. Of course, that point was lost because State of Fear used global warming to deliver that point, thus people tuned out the point because it didn't match their religion from the Church of Al Gore.

Until you understand completely the dynamics of weather, don't preach to me and say we are all going to die because we are causing global warming. I'm getting my coat, it is going to be 100 degrees Friday.

Re John Phillips

Hi John,

Thanks again for your comments.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit and said "NASA reported March, 2008 to be the third warmest *March* on record." Obviously you can't compare March temperatures vs. July or December.

The 1200 mile radius map doesn't give you any information about the actual data locations, which was the primary point of using the map in this article. On the 250 mile map you can see (more or less) where the actual measurements are taken. What the 1200 mile map shows is GISS' willingness to extrapolate and interpolate across vast distances with no data. 1200 miles is the distance between London and Catania, Sicily. Does it make sense to use data from Sicily when calculating the map color in London? Does the temperature in London or Catania tell you anything about the temperature in Lisbon?

Not surprising that GISS uses 1200 miles as the "standard case," because it masks their increasingly sparse data.

Please reread the article with an open mind.

Re: John Philip

Hi John,

I looked again, and the GISS March data has changed since I downloaded them on April 13. This probably coincides with their addition of a few cold data points in Canada as seen in the most recent version of the map.

On April 13, GISS showed March at +67, which was the third warmest March on record. They have subsequently lowered that to +60 and it is now listed as the fourth warmest March on record after 2002, 2005 and 1990.

It is difficult keeping up with a moving target which gets modified in-situ without revision information or notice. Nevertheless, the difference between March UAH and GISS global is still 0.5 degrees.

The way watermelons can win in the US

The alleged believers in individual autonomy, the Republicans, consistently let the Democrats set the agenda, and then simply offer themselves as "Democrat Lite", rather than frankly and confidently repudiating nonsense like the Al Gore cult.

My sincere gratitude to El Reg for sticking up for science (small "s") and rationality in the face of the hysterical herd stampeding for Anthropogenic Global Warming(tm).

Silver linings

"Imagine when the scientists figure out that Wi-Fi throws off migration patterns,"

Maybe we can use it to re-route those filthy poo-machine Canadian Geese so that they migrate somewhere else and foul someone *else's* parks and lawns.

"and that cell phone towers render local wildlife infertile."

Tweak the cell towers' radiation so that the infertile effect applies to humans too, not just wildlife, and install hundreds of those modified cell towers into neighborhoods (and even entire nations!) where (*ahem*) undesirables live and breed. Human overpopulation problem solved!

Mine's the coat with the goose-stepping soldier picture in the pocket...

@Adrian Challinor

True, but H20 vapour falls out quickly. Rain.

It isn't cold enough for CO2 to rain out here on Earth.

So the only way to regulate CO2 is to combine it in something. Plant material needs water nitrogen and other nutrients and we know biomass isn't growing that much, but it can take some rate out. Not enough, but a residency of a decade or so. The ocean can take more but that turns it acid and that reduces the life it can support and the more acid the less CO2 it can take up. The long term store is combining with rocks. That can take thousands of years.

So the total H2O is whatever we can get up in the day-long residency before it starts raining. Total CO2 is whatever we can get up in the century long residency.

And because the warmer the air, the more H2O it will hold, if you up CO2 it will hold more H2O and go up more.

Though what this has to do with selective data I can't tell.

Raw, yes, but not data.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."... or choose only the raw data, if it collaborates with your pet theory. Don't bother asking WHY you should analyse it before using.

The adjustment is not arbituary. The biggest reason for the adjustment by NASA or anyone else in temperature is simple: Rain!

Everyone can understand, that if you stick a thermometer on your windowstill and it rains, the reading is lower than usual. Quite simply the falling water from the sky evaporates as it falls, eating up heat-energy. But in long term planetary weather, you can't simply state: It is colder! You must take into account, that more rain than usual is actually sign of temperature rising, not lowering (simple fact: higher the temperature of air, more water it can hold = more rain).

So if you superimpose the rainfall to the raw data Goddard so graciously allowed to us (never let an amatour use raw data, it kills people!), you start to see a pattern. Everywhere in the planet, especially tropics (the cool, blue bands on the planet-temp-map, rainfall is rising and rainfall is not 'adjusted' in any way, it is just mm/square meter number, raw and undeniable.

So real question these Goddards can't answer is: If the rainfall is rising, how can planet NOT be warming? If the air is still in constant temperature, how can it hold more water than before? Answer by highschool physics is: It can't. If rainfall in global scale is going up (even in Australia, which suffers from lack of rain in some areas), the temperature of planet must be going up. If it isn't, the planet has started to break the laws of nature.