Replies

Here is a recounting of how it happened ... a kind AGW “rathergate” at work here, where officialdom is upended by truth-found-by-diligent-investigators + internet-speed-activity:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/08/giss-has-reranked-us-temperature-anomalies/#comments

The whole issue came up because of some photos Anthony Watts volunteers took of the Detroit Lakes, MN USHCN site in July.

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=3891

Climate Audit first commented on the Detroit Lakes site on July 26th.

http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?paged=3

The debate/discussion continued with a post at
http://rabett.blogspot.com/ on August 1st.

With a further look at the data, Steve McIntyre discovered the Y2K error and announced it on August 3rd.

http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?paged=2

And NASA corrected it’s GISTEMP data on August 7th. I believe.

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

All happened very fast.

Possibly Steve McIntyre could comment on whether or when he thinks the Y2K error would have been discovered if these photos had not been taken.

And while it appears Anthony Watts intentions were only to document this site, its unintended consequences have resulted in a significant correction to NASA’s GISTEMP records for all of the US. (And within 20 days of the photos being taken!)

Very interesting (and valuable) work.

Possibly Steve McIntyre could comment on whether or when he thinks the Y2K error would have been discovered if these photos had not been taken.

He has said he likely would not have. For that matter, he also credits Rabbets defense of Hansens adjustments as well.

Watts picture-taking project began in May when he took the St. Marys firehouse pictures, and he's been getting people together to perform systematic surveys of the 1200 USHCN sites. He and volunteers have managed to get about 260 surveys so far.

Part of how this discovery came about was with the open release of data under the critical view of adverserial argument...which is what the Climate Science field is very often lacking. Rabbet made some silly arguments in defense of Hansen, but he and his allies also pointed out that the biggest rise in temperature did not coincide with the air-conditioner move...and, this acknowledged, McIntyre dug about and discovered what did - a programming shift to a different dataset.

U.S temperature record:

Another comment on same site cited above asks ..."Also, as others have said, this was the low hanging fruit. The error noted by Steve M. was obvious, its source was obvious, and the fix was obvious. The keepers of the data could not argue against it and so they caved in and adjusted their data in less than a week. The fact that one error had such a profound impact on a key piece of hype that is used to push the need for drastic action should make everybody pause and wonder what the eventual outcome will be of the broader issues being looked at by Anthony Watts and his volunteer observers. What happens if there is another tenth of a degree (or more) taken out of the dataset by errors and biases uncovered there? Doesn’t that begin to call into question the whole theory of AGW? If the models can account for warming up to the 1950s with natural forcings, but not all of the warming since 1980, then what happens if that chunk of the post-1980s warming is found to be error or measurement artifacts? Will the experts admit that the models can account for all warming with natural forcings? Then what? The wheels fall off the Al Gore snake-oil-mobile."