Global Warming: Interesting change in climate numbers from NASA

[morphius]

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the US global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

Then again-- maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.

An nice summary here: http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/200...ttest_yea.html

...
Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)
...
I salute the work of Steven McIntyre, he has now made two major contributions to climate science.
1) Proving how the Mann "hockey stick" used in all Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was based on unsupportable data and methods.
2) Proving how yearly temperature anomalies for the USA are based on data that had been processed incorrectly.

Interesting stuff.

[BucEyedPea]

Ya' know what else is interesting? I have a friend that just got back from a trip to Alaska with his family. They have those information centers and there are markings on the ground for a glacier that was receding. But the markers showed that it was slowing down in its melting. So he points it out to the man in the info center and like a robot he says "There is global warming."

The man is a doctor too. So he's no dummy. He has a patient who knows Al Gore who believes in Gore-gw and thinks Gore is brilliant. Has lots of dough. My friend told me that he gives thsi patient a hard time all the time about Gore and GW. So he told him about his last trip and eagerly this man asked: "So the glacier is melting faster right?" Nope.

Now ya' know what's scary....the UN is trying to make it illegal to say GW is not happening, as in crisis mode. Nice! My friend told me it's gotten to the point where meteorolgists are going to be stripped of their credentials if they don't tow the line.

[morphius]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Ya' know what else is interesting? I have a friend that just got back from a trip to Alaska with his family. They have those information centers and there are markings on the ground for a glacier that was receding. But the markers showed that it was slowing down in its melting. So he points it out to the man in the info center and like a robot he says "There is global warming."

The man is a doctor too. So he's no dummy. He has a patient who knows Al Gore who believes in Gore-gw and thinks Gore is brilliant. Has lots of dough. My friend told me that he gives thsi patient a hard time all the time about Gore and GW. So he told him about his last trip and eagerly this man asked: "So the glacier is melting faster right?" Nope.

Now ya' know what's scary....the UN is trying to make it illegal to say GW is not happening, as in crisis mode. Nice! My friend told me it's gotten to the point where meteorolgists are going to be stripped of their credentials if they don't tow the line.

Some of the things I have always found interesting is how much Antarctica is brought up as if we have been studying it for centuries. Sure we can look at the ice, but how much is skewed by the fact that we can't tell anything about other years that the ice has melted. It isn't even until VERY recently that we could even notice that a big piece fell off.

Is it a good idea to stop burning fossil fuels, absolutely. Is it a good idea to worry about the climate, of course it is. Do humans destroy everything we touch, eh, not so much.

[StcChief]

Just put an * next to the GW.

BS is BS.

[Hog Farmer]

I was watching a show last night on the history channel or something like that and it showed how 7000 years ago all these glaciers melted and flooded north america and the resulting flood created what is now the great lakes. If the water in the great lakes were to be spread out across North America we would all be in water 9 feet deep. So the way I see it since we are running out of water in the Ogalalah aquifier we need a few GW episodes.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Hog Farmer

I was watching a show last night on the history channel or something like that and it showed how 7000 years ago all these glaciers melted and flooded north america and the resulting flood created what is now the great lakes. If the water in the great lakes were to be spread out across North America we would all be in water 9 feet deep. So the way I see it since we are running out of water in the Ogalalah aquifier we need a few GW episodes.

Ya' know when I was in the Badlands in 2000, even that Information Center showed a huge flood a long time ago as well as thousands of extinct species.This is what my friend was pointing out, these Information Centers have contradictory information too. I've seen that too.

[banyon]

Meanwhile, the North Pole has become so loose that Russia is claiming it for oil reserves when the entire area was inaccessible for as long as we have known it.

This is all about trends and not isolated incidents, but the 30's were hot and the recalculations definitely affect some of the figures in "Inconvenient Truth".

[banyon]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Now ya' know what's scary....the UN is trying to make it illegal to say GW is not happening, as in crisis mode. Nice! My friend told me it's gotten to the point where meteorolgists are going to be stripped of their credentials if they don't tow the line.

What the f***? How does someone make such an outlandish statement? Do you have one shred of evidence to support this statement? When did the U.N. get authority to prosecute Americans in criminal actions?

[irishjayhawk]

A Y2K bug. Come on.

Global Warming is happening because the science makes too much sense and is pretty well backed up. The question or debate is on, or should be, whether humans are causing it.

[go bowe]

Originally Posted by banyon

What the f***? How does someone make such an outlandish statement? Do you have one shred of evidence to support this statement? When did the U.N. get authority to prosecute Americans in criminal actions?

oh, don't worry about poor pea brain...

most of the time she's just a little loony...

and other times her posts are downright kooky...

nevertheless, i enjoy watching her every now and then for laughs...

[CHIEF4EVER]

Is the climate changing? Sure it is. It is measurable. Are HUMANS causing it? That is another question entirely. Whether we are causing it or not is irrelevant IMO. In our own self interest, we need to stop being so reliant on petroleum (especially from foreign sources) and polluting the air is NEVER a good thing. Leave out whether MMGW is a reality or not.....we are spewing way too many contaminants into our air and water and we need to be better stewards of what we have been given. JMHO.

[tiptap]

The error exists but it has nothing to do with Y2K. A Y2K error would not have affected 1998 data. So what is taking place. Will loosely there have always been two distinct data sets from the Federal Government for US and US only temperatures. One set has always had 1932 warmer than 1998. But the distinction doesn't exceed margin of errors. In other words the two years are statistically the same. However there was an error with the data set that rewarded 1998 as warmer and in the correction 1932 gets the ribbon. But again the two are statistically the same. As far as the change for the 21st Century scores, will the claims of the article are not true. The averages of both data sets are used in the WORLD TEMPERATURE average. And it is that number that indicates the rise in WORLD temperature.

And I have argued all along that removing our dependence of oil and reducing our gluttony (not our standard of living) in consumption of carbon based energy sources serves us well beyond GW concerns.

[tiptap]

I would add that the indication is that the arctic ice has retreated to it smallest extent since data has been collected. Now mine you, two measurements are made. One looks at the area of ice and excludes water between icy fingers and the other just looks at how far any ice reaches. So only one of them has has already reached this measurement. But ice will continue to melt until mid September. There is little doubt that by then both computations (one by the Dept. of Defense) will see the smallest arctic cap on record. Here is a physical response to more heat. Just like the physical evidence of rising oceans, longer and earlier growing seasons, etc etc. Where are the contrarian TRENDS?

[morphius]

Originally Posted by tiptap

I would add that the indication is that the arctic ice has retreated to it smallest extent since data has been collected.

This bothers me just like the antarctic measurements, how long have we been collecting the data? I'm guessing less then 30 years.

I am also for getting away from oil ASAP.

[Logical]

Originally Posted by CHIEF4EVER

Is the climate changing? Sure it is. It is measurable. Are HUMANS causing it? That is another question entirely. Whether we are causing it or not is irrelevant IMO. In our own self interest, we need to stop being so reliant on petroleum (especially from foreign sources) and polluting the air is NEVER a good thing. Leave out whether MMGW is a reality or not.....we are spewing way too many contaminants into our air and water and we need to be better stewards of what we have been given. JMHO.

Possibly the post of yours I most agree with, well stated.