New Scandal Erupts over NOAA Climate Data

Roger Pielke (right) claims NCDC removed weather station data to dodge public scrutiny. (Source: University of Colorado)

The theory of global warming began to explain one simple set of factsm-- surface temperature monitoring stations have shown a roughly one degree rise over the past century. But just where does these temperature readings come from? Most are reported by volunteer stations, usually no more than a thermometer inside a small wooden hut or below a roof overhang. In the US, 1,221 such stations exist, all administered by the National Climatic Data Center, a branch of the NOAA.

Two months ago, I reported on an effort to validate this network. A volunteer group headed by meteorologist Anthony Watts had found serious problems. Not only did sites fail to meet the NCDC's requirements, but encroaching development had put many in ridiculously unsuitable locations -- on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills.

Soon thereafter, a Seattle radio station interviewed the head of the NCDC, Dr. Thomas Peterson, informed him of the effort and quizzed him about the problems. Three days later, the NCDC removed all website access to station site locations, citing "privacy concerns." Without this data (which had been public for years), the validation effort was blocked. No more stations could be located.

Scientists were quick to respond. Climatologist Roger Pielke from the University of Colorado called the act a "coverup" and said it was designed to prevent public scrutiny. More shockingly, he revealed that researchers had been for years pressuring the government to validate the network themselves, and that the NCDC had begun to do j so, but cancelled the project and refused to make the data public, presumably to avoid this sort of scandal. Joined by Watts and others, Pielke called upon the government to recant.

The resulting furor forced the NCDC to again made site locations public. But so far, they've failed to address to root of the problem, which is the wholly unsatisfactory locations of many of their recording sites, loations which make the resulting data unreliable, and compromise a dataset upon which much of US energy and environmental policy is based.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/

One of the many images from the website - I looked carefully at each image and my blood is still boiling!

Compare with the installations in Australia, for example:

"Regular inspections by trained specialists will ensure that these stations are maintained to high standards. Detailed reports of any changes to the site and its surroundings will be made and procedures adopted to ensure that the quality of the records are not compromised. "

There's an interactive map on the website that shows EVERY Australian location:

And there's not an airconditioner, a tarmac, a tennis court, tall buildings or a sewage plant in sight!

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml

Australia’s Reference Climate Station Network

The Australian Reference Climate Station (RCS) network has been established for high quality, long-term climate monitoring, particularly with regard to climate change analysis. The establishment of the network followed a request by the World Meteorological Organization to all of its member nations in 1990.

Click on the link for the official definition of an RCS.

Around 100 RCSs have been selected from the existing Australian observation network. Preference was given to stations with

high quality and long climate records,
a location in an area away from large urban centres, and
a reasonable likelihood of continued, long-term operation...

A well maintained RCS network is important not only to the scientific community, but to local agriculture, tourism, other large industries, and society in general.

thank heavens for globull warming, the poor New Zealanders might have frozen to death in SUMMER!

New Zealand had coldest December for 78 years

Published: Tuesday January 2, 2007

Wellington- Defying talk of global warming, New Zealanders shivered in December, with the capital Wellington recording its coldest start to the southern hemisphere summer for 78 years, according to official figures released Wednesday. The National Climate Centre said that Wellington's average temperature was 12.9 Celsius, 2.4 degrees below normal and the lowest since records began in 1928.

Even Kaitaia, the country's northernmost town, suffered a 2.5- degree drop in the average December temperature to 15.6 Celsius, the lowest since records were first taken there in 1948.

The chill has continued into the new year as most New Zealanders are taking their summer vacations.

Snow fell this week on Mount Ruapehu, an active volcano and the North Island's highest peak at 2,797-metres, and the temperature in Wellington hovered Tuesday around 11 Celsius, about the same as European cities now in the depths of winter.

And then there’s the other side - you can count on Science Blogs to have global warming defenders. And to call anyone who asks questions “denialists.”

Science Blogs could just as well be the same guy posting under different names. There’s one or maybe two who are not atheists, none that I’ve been able to find who are pro-life or conservative.

The party line over there is that the numbers don’t make any difference, since they’re only in the contiguous lower 48 states.

Here’s a sample of the last 24 hours on the “Planet Earth” page
http://scienceblogs.com/channel/planet-earth/

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August 11, 2007
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The Scientific Activist

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The Intersection

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Flummoxed by Flossie Overnight and up through this morning, Hurricane Flossie in the Northeast Pacific—having started out as a category 1 storm—rapidly intensified into a weak Category 4 with a well defined eye, as you can see in the infrared image below: I...
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Gene Expression

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When Babylon was Jewish TNR has an interesting piece (here is a cache version of the first page) about Jewish-Christian polemics (in both directions). It is mostly a review of Peter Shaeffer’s Jesus in the Talmud; a scholarly work which predictably appeals to anti-Semites....
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The Island of Doubt

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1934 warmest year on record? How will Al Gore, James Hansen and all the other “enviromoonbats” recover from this embarrassing revelation? Probably without breaking a sweat, I would think.
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denialism blog

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No! Bad media! Do I have to roll up a newspaper? Big Tom warned me in today’s cranks post of the ABC news’ headline Global Warming Tipping Point in ‘09?” in regards to this paper from the Hadley Centre on new more sophisticated...
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Counting Food Miles to Curb Global Warming For enlightened foodies the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles...

For any period of global warming that is primarily caused by increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the laws of both physics and logic require all three of the following conditions to be true:

The temperature of the troposphere must increase at a faster rate than that of the lower atmoshpere
The rise in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide must be followed by an increase in global average temperature, and
The rise in global average temperature must be preceded by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately for those who have ulterior, political motives for having you believe that global warming is caused by human production of carbon dioxide, none of the three necessary conditions hold:

Since satellite measurements began in the 1960s, at no time did the temperature of the troposphere ever increase at a faster rate than that of the lower atmosphere--in other words, to believe that global warming is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide is to believe, for no known reason, that the laws of physics do not apply in this special case
There have been many periods, such as the last 9 years since 1998, and also the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, when increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have not been followed by increasing average global temperatures--so either the laws of logic do not apply, or else increased levels of carbon dioxide do not cause global warming, and
The ice core data show that carbon dioxide levels almost always rise only after a preceding rise in average global temperatures--so either the laws of cause and effect are reversed, or else rising levels of carbon dioxide are not a cause of global warming, but are instead an effect thereof.

From the article Up against the warming zealots:

To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.
Then there's the ice-core data, the jewel in the crown of global warming theory. It shows there's a connection between carbon dioxide and temperature: see Al Gore's movie. But what Gore forgets to mention is that the connection is the wrong way around; temperature leads, CO2 follows.
Then there's the precious "hockey stick". This was the famous graph that purported to show global temperature flat-lining for 1000 years, then rising during the 19th and 20th centuries. It magicked away the Medieval warm period and made the recent warming look alarming, instead of just part of the general toing and froing of the Earth's climate.
But then researchers took the computer program that produced the hockey stick graph and fed it random data. Bingo, out popped hockey stick shapes every time. (See the report by Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Virginia and others.)
In a humiliating climb down, the IPCC has had to drop the hockey stick from its reports, though it can still be seen in Gore's movie.
And finally, there are those pesky satellites. If greenhouse gases were the cause of warming, then the rate of warming should have been greater, higher up in the Earth's atmosphere (the bit known as the troposphere). But all the satellite and balloon data says the exact opposite. In other words, the best observational data we have flatly contradicts the whole bally idea of man-made climate change.
They concede that CO2 cannot have caused the warming at the beginning of the 20th century, which was greater and steeper than the recent warming. They can't explain the cooling from 1940 to the mid-'70s. What are they left with? Some mild warming in the '80s and '90s that does not appear to have been caused by greenhouse gases.
The whole damned theory is in tatters. No wonder they're defensive.

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Weather station data hidden from public; scientists allege government cover-up