NASA's curious climate capers

Could do better!

Yeah, the science here isn't great - adjusting numbers to fit what you want it to show is a stupid thing to do, because it just weakens your case, or shows that your measurement technique needs improving (As AC1 one points out - a global map from just 90 stations?), in which case you can't be trusted anyway.

Sadly, the skeptics are in exactly the same boat, but for *all* of their data, not just the odd one here and there.

C'mon Reg, do some real reporting, instead of taking the easy route of poking fun at NASA repeating it's own mistakes. Go check some skeptics figures for a change...

Lies

Lies, more lies, damned lies.

CAN all the adjustments and show the raw data!

All the adjustments do is fudge things. Show the ACTUAL measurements and then try to explain trends.

Unless you have measured a bias in an instrument (and show these measurements) any adjustment is arbitrary and therefore bad science.

Cargo-cult science is what Richard Feynman would probably say!

@Henry

Actually the raw data from a number of sources does not show anywhere near the warming that the doomsday predictors are stating. Also, because the model researchers are fitting models to fudged data, they then overpredict future warming even more. I do agree about one thing though - this topic is in desperate need of some real science applied to it.

@AC - Could do better!

So you are saying the likes of RSS fudge their figures are you. Where's your proof? Or do you mean is that they don't agree with your world picture, so you have to assume they are fudging their figures?

The whole scientific case for catastrophic global warming is weak because it relies on data that only go back a few decades. One problem we have is that severe volcanic activity a couple of centuries ago threw a lot of ash into the air and resulted in wonderful sunsets (no you don't see sunsets like Turner painted, but you did back then) and a significant drop in global temperatures. Then of course we had the industrial revolution, you should therefore have seen all those CO2 emissions producing significant global warming over the 18th and 19th centuries - but that doesn't seem to be the case from the data we have. These data are not necessarilly the most reliable but they are all we have. One reason for this could be the cooling effect of the volcanic ash in the atmosphere. Another could be the amount of particular crap pumped into the atmosphere by burning all that coal causing cooling. The latter is interesting because a lot of the world started cleaning up it's act in that respect in the mid to late 20th century. So we have rising temeratures which coincide with the gradual settling out from the atmosphere of volcanic ash and particulates from combustion.

Now I'm not saying that this explains the recent trend towards global warming, but it's something that doesn't get mentioned by the pro-global warming lobby.

Another thing they avoid is the so called "little climactic optimum" around the time of the Viking expansion. The problem they have with that is that we have a period in relatively recent history where temperatures rose and then fell again. Take things like this into account and you could be looking at our current warming trend being part of a cycle upon which man has no effect or control.

The argument is hugely complex and yet the pro warming lobby work on so many assumptions (or as they like to call them: facts) that they leave absolutely no room for debate. In that respect I find the pro lobby to be more of a religion than a school of scientific thought.

re: Re: 90 stations

must... rush... to... post... uninformed... opinion... can't... wait... to... read... article...

Not 90 total

A bit of cursory investigation indicates there were 90 stations for which the climate data was accidentally copied from September to October, there are a total of 908 stations used for surface weather monitoring.

I love the way that if the temperature goes up the reaction is "ZOMG!!! NASA CONSPIRACY TO TAKE AWAY MY PRECIOUS CAR!!!" and if the temperature is moderated down the reaction is exactly the same hysterical hyperbole.

The story here is: "Programming error found, corrected."

There is certainly an IT angle, but I don't think it's really all that big of a deal, no matter what the denial industry would have us believe.

The Climate Change Scam

Until Hansen and his acolytes start to behave in an open and honest fashion a significant number of people will simply regard them as charlatans. It is clear from their behaviour that they do not wish to be open and accountable for their work. Simple errors like copying the data across from one month to the next is for simpletons not large taxpayer funded programs. One can only assume that because the error was in favour of the warming theory they simply did not bother to check the data, if the situation had been reversed and the figures showed the coldest October on record - would they not have investigated it?

At least Paris openly displays her figure!

Hmm

Since only "England" was in the red zone, can Scotland start mass producing V8 supercars then?

Ahem.

Paris for the foolhardy behaviour and lack of geopolitical awareness.

England and Ireland

So England and Ireland dropped out of the red zone on the first revised map. Was there some anomaly over Wales then? Or is the author confusing England with the UK or, geographically, Great Britain? That's never been done before now, has it?

Please don't bash Hansen

Ok so yet another article on the register with a bashing climate change subtext (at least I can comment on this one!)

I met James Hansen when he was in the UK for the court case defending the people with the boats who climbed up the chimney (no I don't work for them, that's really not my style!).

One of the things that struck me when I chatted to him on the train back from Kent was his reluctance to resort to sensationalist language - everything he said was very measured and cautious. He didn't want to get drawn on reports about 'warmest years on record' and freak weather events since they essentially are single events (in the same way that the fact October was chilly in the UK doesn't debunk climate change). He was interested in the potential of 4th generation nuclear power, but was waiting to be convinced that it could be done in a clean way.

He was also quite bemused as his status of being a 'climate change celebrity' - he turned down a request to visit Australia - where there's a lot of anti and pro coal campaigning going on at the moment. The impression I got was of someone who'd really rather be in a lab somewhere doing science.

I think it's difficult to mix science and campaigning - but the potential dangers of climate change are really quite scary, and it's this that prompted Hansen to speak out. After all he first came to fame in the 1980's during a time where there was a lot of politically-inspired whitewashing going on over the climate problem.

With regards to the rest of the article - yes science should be more open - although when the mainstays of the climate change denier lobby are scrutinized they really fall apart.

You can read the statement he made to the court at Kingsnorth here:

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/climate/hansen.pdf

and watch an interview here:

http://nonewcoal.org.uk/?q=node/36

Almost no one can keep up with their "truth", it changes so often

I'm someone who is more concerned about toxins that aren't visible, so therefore must be ok, being dumped into the air ATM than global temp changes.

But, the biggest problem with this kind of "science" is that MOST of us do not keep up with all of the media stories, and their corrections that are usually barely audible after. A lot of people I know still believe that the shifting of the climate isn't a temporary way the world is using to absorb some of this extra energy being pumped into the system, whether it's mostly man made or not, the world usually adjusts with weather first until the energy absorption-output is at some sort of balance. Like ice melting in a glass of water, once the ice is gone the water warms up pretty quick until it reaches around room temp, which not nearly as complex as the earth. Complex systems that are generally in balance usually go through some kind of change that follows this pattern. With the ice in the water, the system is simple so the changes are very easy to predict. Earth is a soup of elements and molecules (and that's just using what we're sure of on it's surface), without having any kind of data on when something like this has happened before, there really is no way to predict what the change cycle will be like or to what extremes it could take. Scientists pretty much have no faith that anyone would be able to handle the, "we have no idea and are scared shitless because we like to know all the everythings and whys" excuse. Plus they don't get paid if they don't "know" anymore, with the busniness models that emerged in the 80's and 90's theres too much competition with hundreds of other smart yes men who would be very happy with the large paychecks ;P

We don't usually have so many warm winters during the solar minimums. Winter where I live used to be a season, now its fall most of the time with a few weeks here and there of winter. I know most people like the mild temps up here in the colder areas, but I liked the fact mosquitoes couldn't live all year round, and I'm mostly Nordic, so I can actually enjoy the cold :P AND, we're not used to having hurricanes come so close to where we live. But whatever, things change, as long as the weatherman still tells me when the storms are coming I'll be ok.

But it might not be that bad, everything alive today has survived on this ship we call Earth through every catastrophe that has ever happened, including us. I'm gonna have a drink to that :)

This is not science

Once you start fudging the data, or making unrevealed adjustments (or whatever else you want to call it) you're not doing science any more. This is propaganda, plain and simple, and I bet they'd have been perfectly happy to let it stand if they hadn't been outed. i'll bet that if the error had shown a cooling trend, they'd have been all over it, trying to find "the error."

Paris, because this type of thing is about all she can understand

@ breakfast

" The story here is: "Programming error found, corrected."

There is certainly an IT angle, but I don't think it's really all that big of a deal, no matter what the denial industry would have us believe."

Afraid I have to disagree with that. The issue is the behaviour of one of the foremost activist / scientists in the world today, James Hansen. I use that oxymoron deliberately in this case.

Speaking personally, if one of my colleagues behaved with such high handedness and a lack of transparency, I wouldn't trust a thing they say. Bullshit is bullshit in any language and in any field of scientific activity and I've seen enough of this kind of behaviour in the past to know what it means.

Lost stations

While only 90 stations had the error and many more were used the 90 stations were able to "raise the planet's temperature" considerably.

The real issue though isn't that this happened - mistakes always will occur. The problems are:

1) The lack of "version management" - ie an explanation of the differences between the first version and the current version.

2) The lack of quality control at NASA on this - GISS is the measurement used in the bulk of scientific literature to demonstrate warming and, as a result of this warming, we are going to spend billions on fighting global warming. And yet they only have 1 person spending 3 months a year on ensuring that everything works correctly? Surely a team of 100 checking and rechecking the data and code wouldn't even dent the billions being spent?

3) That the number of stations being used by GISS has, in recent times, decreased dramatically even though these stations are still recording data. Why is this? And what difference does it make to the overall record? Again a bit of money spent on this would be nothing compared to the total cost of fighting global warming.

Nasa/GISS

Your article stated

"The revised map still showed Siberia to be fairly warm. England and Ireland were no longer in the red zone, while North West Canada was somewhat cooler."

I must point out that SCOTLAND was also removed from the red zone.

England is the bit at the foot Great Britain.

All of GB was removed from the red zone.

Two Options - Only One Sensible

We only have two options - act, or don't act.

A sizeable majority of the scientific community says there is a problem.

The worst that can happen if we act upon their advice is that we create new markets, spur innovation and create new jobs, with a likely temporary increase in fuel costs while technology catches up.

The worst that can happen if we don't act is catastrophe.

So, I know which option I choose.

An Enigma Wrapped in an Anomaly

"So England and Ireland dropped out of the red zone on the first revised map. Was there some anomaly over Wales then?"

Always. (But we Evan Jonses don't like to talk about that.)

@IGnatius T Foobar

Feel free to live on in your fantasy world. Out here in the Real One, the effects of climate change on our environment are now trivially easy to see, and their link to human endeavour is also all too clear. Oh by the way, we know all about climate cycles. The current change doesn't fit the pattern.

@ all the people who complain about the adjustments. Perhaps you should read about why they're made instead of assuming they're fudge-factors as the article's author incorrectly implied. I mean, a little scientific research can't hurt can it - unless you're afraid of what you might find.... :-)

Gee, Ain't It Fun...

...watching all these PhD level scientists and those who follow their every utterance (on both sides of the debate) screw themselves into the ground over each little disclosure of information. Doctors, take off your PhD blinders and realise that the single biggest influence on earthly climate is that big yellow ball that traverses our sky once a day. Take your noses out of your faulty data sets long enough to learn that solar cycle 24 has come to us stillborn, and couple that with your own PhD-ly prediction (from NASA, no less) that solar cycle 25, due to peak in the mid 2020's is predicted to be an extremely weak one. Odds are good that we're in for at least 30 years of cooling temps, more if the sunspots go on a long-term hiatus like they have done many times in the past.

Little or no sunspot activity has occurred coincidental with each of the five reported periods of global cooling that have been recorded since year 1000, such periods lasting between 40 and 150 years. Tree ring growth data actually takes the connection back some 11,400 years, but I'll be a good boy and just report that which has occurred since civilised man was around to observe.

While you all pay your carbon credits like good little stooges, know that there is a sun god somewhere laughing at your folly in thinking that minute changes in the absolute level of a minor atmospheric gas are more powerful than the effects of the star that powers all of the energy sources on earth, save nuclear fission.

Arrogance, thy name is mankind - or at least Hansen/Gore.

A little extra info for ya Pete

Please don't bash Hansen

By Pete Posted Wednesday 19th November 2008 18:17 GMT

You might want to actually read what Hansen himself posts before you defend him.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

he clearly has an agenda just based on his own writing.

"My shoe is off, my foot is cold."

"Feel free to live on in your fantasy world. Out here in the Real One, the effects of climate change on our environment are now trivially easy to see,"

Thank you. Freedom is a beautiful thing. But I am not sure whom you are addressing, here.

The article did not claim climate change is not occurring. Neither did it say word one about probable cause. It did cite two sources that indicate that the warming trend has been exaggerated by around a factor of two. This is accounted for by miscalculation of UHI and a continually increasing trend of site violations (plus potentially bad FILNET and simply inexplicable SHAP).

As for urban effects, if you want to get technical, waste heat is a direct offset, but heat sink effect instead exaggerates a warming trend. And, of course, for a warming trend to be exaggerated, there has to BE a warming trend in the first place to exaggerate.

Note also that heat sink effect "undoes" itself in a cooling trend. So it is likewise possible that the sharp cooling trend of the last two years may be somewhat exaggerated as well.

"and their link to human endeavour is also all too clear. "

Taken at face value, surely. Human endeavor covers a very wide area indeed. it would include land use and "dirty snow", for two. What is not at all clear is how much CO2 affects temperatures.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has a positive forcing effect. Two vital factors are at issue:

First is the extent of the saturation effect (and how much "diminishing returns" are diminishing).

Second, and even more important, is that "positive feedback loop" theory (which multiplies the direct CO2 effects many times) has been called into extremely serious question by recent findings of the Aqua Satellite. AquaSat instead strongly indicates negative feedback leading to homeostasis. That would help explain the flat trend over the last decade.

"Oh by the way, we know all about climate cycles. The current change doesn't fit the pattern."

The multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles (the "Big Six" being PDO, IPO, AMO, NAO, AO, and AAO) were unknown at the time Dr. Hansen made his 1988 speech; they were not even discovered until a decade or more later. The severe cooling over the past year and a ahlf has been attributed to a PDO reversal.

The Big Six all flipped, one by one, from cool phase to warm from 1976 through 2001. Temperatures warmed. Then they were "all on warm". Temperatures remained flat. Now PDO has turned cold, and NAO a,d AO may be wavering. Temperatures have cooled. Does anyone see a pattern here? Especially if the initial warming was overestimated in the first place? It certainly correlates better than the CO2 curve. And you can trace the pattern back to the last warming-then-cooling from the 1920's to the mid-70's.

Add in a "Little Ice Age Recovery" underpinning, and anthropogenic effects (land use, soot, and, yes, a bit for CO2 but no positive feedback loops) as a slight underlying trend, and it fits prety well. Certainly better than Dr. Hansen's climate models.

What can we expect? I'm sure I don't know. I'm equally sure you don't know, either.

And the Sun may be saving up spit for another Dalton or even Maunder-type minimum. We don't know about that yet. Normal cycles only vary tempertures by c. 0.1C, and claims that TSI is at a long-time high are in dispute, so I do NOT attribute 20th-Century warming to the sun.

But what if it's the very model of a Modern Maunder Minimum? (We don't yet know.) If that's the case, all bets are off--short-sell your carbon credits and invest in mink farms.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are left with many factors, each with a nice, healthy margin of error. There are ten times the number of students majoring in climatology these days, and a lot more attention being paid to the subject. The above and other questions will be answered, probably in another decade. But we don't know now. We simply don't. The only thing we know for sure is how badly the computer models have failed.

So before we dance the Kyoto with Stern and "invest" a third to a half of world growth on a continuing basis (greatest suffering to be borne by the worlds poorest, at a cost of many, many lives), I think we badly need to find out what is actually going on. This ignores the very real possibility that AGW is all too real but a "cheap, quick, dirty, and effective" fix can be found such as, but not limited to, reflective pole-to-pole satellites or a new power storage method. (Mix and match?)

And if we are going to find out what is going on, methods and procedures--on both sides of the debate--need to be conducted in the open. Don't you think?

In the meantime, make mine one of those non-fur, high-tech padded jobs. Poor Tom's a-cold!

D.E.W. Diligence

"How many of the sensors actually stand in places that can give a sensible reference point?"

For GHCN (where NASA/GISS gets its data)? In the US, about one in seven. Sic.

In the rest of the world? Hard to say without better photographic evidence, but the indications are that with the possible exception of Australia (and WITHOUT the exception of Western Europe), the surface stations are much more unreliable and badly sited than in the US.

We do have some cursory shots of some of those "September Siberia" stations (there are around a dozen at or a bit under the 80th parallel) and they are magpie-scandals.

The sensors appear to be attached to heated buildings (any nearby building even without heat is a severe heat sink violation), even on roofs (a ghastly disqualifier--any sensor on a roof is estimated to be running at least 5°C hot, probably worse in winter).

And the many of the sites are in mini-urban areas using district heating (huge steam pipes running all over town) that, even if insulated (and photos show not all are), will create UHI (if 5 degrees warmer than forty-below warrants the letter "H").

And since there are no stations north of there and NASA hates a gap, they estimate the entire Arctic based on the (bad) stations surrounding the Arctic Circle. And the Arctic just happens to be where GISS is finding a very large amount of the warming. We don't know how bad it is, but I contend we need to find out.

Well, you get the idea.

@scotchbonnet: You're dead right

I studied astronomy, and have known about several papers showing a 98% correlation between sun-spot activity and global temperature for ages. Astronomers publishing this kind of thing have often been ridiculed or worse for their SCIENCE. There may be a man-made contribution to global warming, but the case is not clear.

However, it does make sense to preserve resources. Hey, if I get a car with twice the fuel efficiency, I can laugh my head off at the fuel bills of those driving your "average" American-built car. Better still, I cycle to work (and almost everywhere else). It's usually faster in city traffic, and it costs next to nothing. I realize this is not possible for everyone, but I know too many people who live a 15 min cycle from work (and 20 min drive, or up to an hour if there is a traffic jam (again)) and still persist in using the car, even in the best of weather. This is just wasteful. Providing good insulation to houses, rather than providing free heating to the mosquitos outside is another way to stop wasting energy.

Maintaining a good standard of living while keeping energy (and other resource) usage low is just plain economic sense. (at least to me but then I have a PhD ;-) )

and remember

..the Red Zone is for loading and unloading only.....

@TimM

So, technically, how deep was this mini ice age in 1880? Because it's a shitload warmer now after that "technically mini ice age" than it was before it.

re: @Henry

Well, one is a number, so I suppose I can't prove you wrong there.

@jake

"I seriously doubt that decent wine grapes would grow up there today. It's not warm enough long enough for proper sugar development."

You'd better check. Wine is now growing further north than it did during Roman times. And "decent grapes" sounds like a weasel way of backing out of being wrong: "Aye, but they aren't what *I'd* call decent grapes" (neglecting you don't know what the romans of the time considered decent or if it would make a blind bit of difference).

@Michael H.F. Wilkinson

I'm an astrophysicist. And there is a correlation but do you know what they MAGNITUDE of that correlation is? Fuck all. Also, do you know the sign of the correlation and have you asserted whether the changes you see are correlated with those sunspot activity graphs?

No.

None of you have.

@scotchbonnet

If the sole factor for the earth's temperature, ice would be frozen over the entire earth. 40+C is from greenhouse gasses. A 10% change in the insulating factors would make that ~44C. ~4C warmer. Since the difference in global temperatures between ice age and warm interglacial is about 2-3C and we're already well past the middle of a warm interglacial period, 4C warmer takes us into a climate system that has not existed for the period of animals colonising land on the earth.

PS I think they've heard of this mythical "daystar". Even the ones in the UK.

re: Greenland

Strange how many people know about the colonisation of Greenland but don't know the result.

It was unsustainable, the result of a short term warming in the area and died out VERY quickly.

Greenland was a scam. Even the name was made to enforce the scam.

Correction Section

@Evan Jones

Then how about correcting your expansion of FTE? It stands for Full-Time _Equivalent_ not employee.

Mark: Speed record for disinformation

Looks like someone has forgotten their meds:

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:05 GMT

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:08 GMT

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:10 GMT

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:13 GMT

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:19 GMT

By Mark Posted Thursday 20th November 2008 12:20 GMT

Lots of tombstones. Less haste, and more time checking your "facts" please. Especially about Greenland.

statistics

hmmm...over 99.2% of scientists agreed with their funders.

As usual, RealClimate has the details

RealClimate's 18 November posting "Mind the Gap!" shows why there has been an upward trend in the data, and goes into all the gory details that have been omitted here.

missed the boat

This sucks, I missed the boat on the Y2K scam, and now I’m going to miss it on this one too. I have to be quicker at figuring out how to profit from these mass scams sooner.

Flames because the world is on fire, now give me money.

Where is my nearest weather station...

So I can give it a good going over with a blow lamp:

"Yam-Yam Climate Shocker! - West Midlands in 1300c global warming melt down!"

Tidy, I tell you.

@ Mark.

I believe at this point one Eric Cartman (of South Park fame) would say....

"You just got F'd in the A!"

Thumbs up to that!

Cards on the table, PLEASE

"RealClimate's 18 November posting "Mind the Gap!" shows why there has been an upward trend in the data, and goes into all the gory details that have been omitted here."

Yes, they don't seem to find anything the matter with current SHAP procedure, do they, the poor dears?

"There seems to be a fair few people suggesting that the data should be entered into the models raw. This is not the case, the actual data the you get from monitoring stations needs to be processed before it can become usefull, this is for several reasons, the most significant being that different weather stations in different contries have different measuring procedures, some even measure in different temperatures (C or F) Sometimes one station will give a consistent error in its readings, maybe due to being out of callibration. All this data needs to be processed before it can be usefull."

Oh, I agree. I would go even so far as to say that measuring procedures, calibration, and conversion are the very least of it. However, raw data must needs be archived as well as with data at each stage of adjustment.

The objection, of course, is that adjustment procedures themselves are controversial. SHAP, FILNET, and UHI spring to mind! Not to mention "homogenization" (which somehow seems to involve a bit of pasteurization).

In short, provide raw data, the reasons and ALL methods for adjustment (i.e., logs of station histories, data forms, etc.). And don't expect the public to accept these very necessary adjustments unless all the cards are on the table.

Another problem is there is a margin of error at every stage of adjustment and after a half dozen adjustments things start to become meaningless in a milieu where 0.1C is an important difference. And no, oversampling doesn't feed the bulldog: Because of uneven distribution a lot of the data is based on a tiny number of stations. (I am not criticizing the gridding procedure, here, note.)

Of course the stations should conform in such a fashion that little or no adjustment should be necessary.

The NOAA is beginning to address this through the CRN network. These new stations are to be very well sited and fully automated, thus requiring no adjustment (outside instrument drift). All data to be served raw. Unfortunately this only covers the US and cannot redeem the historical data.

To sum: I don't care about how well it is explained by RC. SO not interested. Neither am I interested in stuff like the meaningless pap on NOAA's page that is supposed to explain the USHCN v2 ajustments (while somehow failing to mention the amounts of the adjustments).

I want to see all data archived at all stages of adjustment, with means of reproducing results at each step.

This would allow scientists from the outside to consider the data properly and maybe even (Shock. Horror.) suggest adjustments of their own. And furthermore I don't see how it is even vaguely possible to object to this.

Duh, Evans

"However, raw data must needs be archived as well as with data at each stage of adjustment."

They do.

How do you think they got the changes to the US temperatures that changed the warmest year to the second warmest? Guessing???

Duh.

Re: Wrapping Up, by Jake

Well hold on there. Firstly you may be able to read Roman texts in the original but that doesn’t give you any better insight than someone who relies on translations done by other experts. And if you can literally read cursive Latin in the original then I take my hat off to you –if.

The local wine on Hadrian’s wall – it’s perfectly clear from the Vindolanda tablets that while there might have been local wine, the officers much preferred imported wine from the continent. So that might be a valuable hint about the quality of the local stuff.

Secondly, the Romans would have drunk wine – even bad stuff – rather than local beer simply as a statement of Romanity – it’s what civilised people did and for the largely auxiliary troops that were about at the time that also would have been an important statement.

Finally, it’s unlikely that the viking Vinland was Newfoundland. Again, read in translation, but the Penguin edition makes it clear that the description of the land, and the natives that they met make that location unlikely and suggest that Vinland was probably further down the New England coast.

@ Mark.

No - you definitely got F'd in the A....BIG TIME.

Take it like a man - bitch!