Your Temperatures Diddled

ALMOST exactly three years ago Michael Hammer showed that the official temperature rise profile for the 20th century in the United States is largely, if not entirely, an artifact of adjustments applied after the raw data is collected from the weather stations [1]. It was a very neat little analysis, first published at this blog. It was a neat little analysis that was, for the most part, ignored.

Back then, meteorologist Anthony Watts was busy documenting evidence of problems with the official temperature record in the US because of poor placement of weather stations and Ross McKitrick was attempting to calculate just how artificially elevated temperatures might be as a consequence.

Then interestingly, just last month, John Hinderaker cited the original study by Mr Hammer at Powerline [2] and other studies, concluding:

‘These disclosures highlight a key fact with respect to global temperature data: the data sets are utterly lacking in integrity. Global warming alarmists confidently announce that worldwide temperatures have risen by, say .1 degree over a decade. It would be extraordinarily difficult to take measurements at many locations around the globe that would actually demonstrate that proposition. But the real situation is much worse: no one tells you what temperatures were actually measured at the world’s weather stations. Rather, they report claims of global warming based on “adjusted” temperature data–adjusted by alarmists, with the systematic purpose of manufacturing a rising temperature trend. If you subtract the “adjustments,” it may well be that there has been no net warming over the last 100 years at all.’

Ho Hum. But no one was publishing the proof in the technical literature.

Then along came an announcement by Mr Watts last Sunday that he had documented, and had ready for publication, the proof that the U.S. temperature record had been diddled. In particular his new analysis demonstrated that the reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward [3].  What Mr Hammer was explaining three years earlier, and for a longer period.

Given Mr Watts had the article ready for submission for peer-review, why didn’t he just get on, and get it published?

Well, apparently Mr Watts was keen to trump Richard Muller, from Berkeley University, who was about to announce that he had an article ready for publication.  But Professor Muller's article proved that not only were temperatures rising, and the official temperature record accurate, but that the temperature rise could be attributed to carbon dioxide.

Ho Hum.

Indeed.  Just last October Professor Muller released a study claiming that he had checked out the concerns raised by sceptics, including “the risk of data selection bias” and, temperatures really were rising [4].

But then about a week after that study was released Professor Muller was forced to acknowledge that this BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project) data might also indicate that temperatures have not rise for about 13 years [5].

Indeed, earlier this year David Whitehouse from the Global Warming Policy Foundation concluded that there had been no global warming for 15 years [6].

It should all be straight forward, but its not.  In part because it really is important to those who believe in anthropogenic global warming that temperatures are rising and it really is important to many so-called sceptics that they are not.

The following YouTube video entitled 'Hitler's Reaction to the Watts Study' explains some of the politics:

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References

1. Hammer, M. June 27, 2009. Does the US Temperature Record Support Global Warming?
 https://climatelab.com.au/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/

2. Hinderaker, J. June 9, 2012. Is the United States Actually Getting Warmer? http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/is-the-united-states-actually-getting-warmer.php

3. Watts, M., July 29, 2012. New Study Shows Half of the Global Warming in the USA is artificial. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

4. Earth Warming According to Berkely Analysis. https://climatelab.com.au/2011/10/earth-warming-according-to-new-berkeley-analysis/

5. No Global Warming for 13 Years. https://climatelab.com.au/2011/10/no-global-warming-for-13-years/

6. No Global Warming for 15 Years: David Whitehouse. https://climatelab.com.au/2012/04/no-global-warming-for-15-years-david-whitehouse/