NASA Admits Error: 1934 Back to Warmest Year in U.S.

Climate Audit ^ | August 8th, 2007 | Steve McIntyre

[chipengineer]

There has been some turmoil yesterday on the leaderboard of the U.S. (Temperature) Open and there is a new leader.

A little unexpectedly, 1998 had a late bogey and 1934 had a late birdie. (I thought that they were both in the clubhouse since the turmoil seemed to be in the 2000s.) In any event, the new leader atop the U.S. Open is 1934.

[Robert A Cook PE]

What was the sunspot trend between 1930-1940?

Does that also track with the observed temperatures before 1940 ... (Before the “cooling” trend of the 1965-1978, and the warming trend between 1978-1998?)

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure. :’)

[Thermalseeker]

I would not trust the quality of data from 1934 to be compared with that of today’s standards.

Given the recent revelation regarding the placement of numerous NOAA weather stations near A/C exhaust ducts, black asphalt parking lots and the like, I wouldn't trust "data" taken this morning, either.......

[SteveMcKing]

I am right.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I am right."

And your knowledge of accurate thermometry is precisely what??

The technology back in the 1940's was quite capable of making temperature measurements accurate to 100'ths of a degree Celsius. Adding electronics actually is more likely to cause errors than prevent them.

In the final analysis, the accuracy depends on how often and how well the sensors (thermometers or electronics) were/are calibrated. In the 1940's the techs doing the work were much more likely to be sufficiently well trained to get it right. Today, they're likely to be high-school dropouts working from a printout, sloppily.

[sono]

Al Gore is not amused.

[Between the Lines]

I have a neighbor who family has collected data for the National Weather Service since 1905 as volunteer weather observers under the Cooperative Weather Observer Program. Yep, three generations of the same family doing this for 102 years.

[SatinDoll]

I don’t really know. But I’m sure the information is available somewhere on the internet. The weather cycles about every 11 years from very warm to cool, and that correlates with the cyclic appearances of the sunspots. But what is was in the 1930’s to 1940’s - I just don’t know. Of course, more than sunspot activity can account for warming or cooling, an uptick in volcanism comes to mind as a prime cause of atmosperic cooling.

[chessplayer]

AGW`ers will laugh at this as inconsequential.

[onja]

Perfect. All the talk about how we are dangerously increasing in temperature, and now they realize they just had a Y2K bug, and actually half of the hottest ten years were BEFORE WWII. Watch how this doesn’t make the big news.

[VOA]

bump

[Vision]

Seems kind of a convenient mistake since the item was published at the height of the GW movement.

[PA Engineer]

There is also something else missing from the NASA faux data and that was the loss of hundreds of Russian and Siberian weather stations in the 90s. When the Soviet Union collapsed the funding to maintain them disappeared. Hundreds of cold-weather readings were missing from the world weather calculations without any proper weighting. This is another factor that if accounted for would break off the end of the “hockey stick”. NASA has to come clean with all of it’s methods and data and allow many more outside independent reviews.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Audio MP3 interview:

.larslarson.com mp3 onair interview of Climatologist Chuck Weiss

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the Blogosphere (Michelle Malkin):

Hot news: NASA quietly fixes flawed temperature data; 1998 was NOT the warmest year in the millenium

[samtheman]

1934 just might have been AGW. I'm sure this baby had a carbon footprint as big as any SUV!

[samtheman]

That’s a great interview. Turns out that 1934 is corroborated in Northern Europe as well.