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Red faces at NASA over climate-change blunder
Toronto Star ^ | 8/14/07 | DANIEL DALE

Posted on 08/14/2007 9:34:47 AM PDT by ricks_place

Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial. Even the Canadian who spotted the original flaw says the revisions are "not necessarily material to climate policy."

But the revisions have been seized on by conservative Americans, including firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh, as evidence that climate change science is unsound.

Said Limbaugh last Thursday: "What do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA ... is in the scientific community with false data."

However Stephen McIntyre, who set off the uproar, described his finding as a "a micro-change. But it was kind of fun."

A former mining executive who runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, McIntyre, 59, earned attention in 2003 when he put out data challenging the so-called "hockey stick" graph depicting a spike in global temperatures.

This time, he sifted NASA's use of temperature anomalies, which measure how much warmer or colder a place is at a given time compared with its 30-year average.

Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations.

McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review.

"They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."


TOPICS: Extended News; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agw; climatechange; giss; globalwarming; nasa
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I found more than half the claimed source data sites in Maryland for the NASA tempurature monitor analysis, have been decommissioned for years!
1 posted on 08/14/2007 9:34:50 AM PDT by ricks_place
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To: ricks_place

Well there are Reds at NASA in the global warming scare, but it goes to their core, not just their faces.


2 posted on 08/14/2007 9:37:04 AM PDT by weegee (NO THIRD TERM. America does not need another unconstitutional Clinton co-presidency.)
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To: ricks_place
If the sites have been decommissioned for years, where are the numbers coming from?

Making an adjustment error is one thing . . . . pulling numbers out of thin air (or even less savory places) is data falsification.

3 posted on 08/14/2007 9:38:42 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother ((Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment)))
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To: ricks_place
I haven't seen one "Global Warming" discussion that includes reflectivity.
4 posted on 08/14/2007 9:41:36 AM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Did Dennis Kucinich always look like that or did he have to submit to a series of shots? [firehat])
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To: ricks_place

Wow!


5 posted on 08/14/2007 9:42:01 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: ricks_place
"There must have been some long faces."


6 posted on 08/14/2007 9:46:29 AM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: ricks_place; Killing Time; Beowulf; Mr. Peabody; RW_Whacko; honolulugal; SideoutFred; Ole Okie; ...


FReepmail me to get on or off
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH



7 posted on 08/14/2007 9:46:41 AM PDT by xcamel ("It's Talk Thompson Time!" >> irc://irc.freenode.net/fredthompson)
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To: ricks_place

review.


8 posted on 08/14/2007 9:46:42 AM PDT by sauropod (You can’t spell crap without the AP in it.)
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To: ricks_place

9 posted on 08/14/2007 9:46:50 AM PDT by GalaxieFiveHundred
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To: dead

That’s one long, orange face.


10 posted on 08/14/2007 9:48:59 AM PDT by xjcsa (Hillary Clinton is nothing more than Karl Marx with huge calves.)
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To: ricks_place

they should offer him a job at NASA.


11 posted on 08/14/2007 9:51:00 AM PDT by Disciplinemisanthropy (...and that, friends, is what grinds my gears.)
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To: xcamel

This is the one I referred to in my prior post to you; thanks for pinging me!


12 posted on 08/14/2007 9:55:43 AM PDT by alwaysconservative (Don't make me use my caps lock button!!!)
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To: ricks_place
I found more than half the claimed source data sites in Maryland for the NASA tempurature monitor analysis, have been decommissioned for years!

Well, help us out here. Help us sight a cite on decommissioned sites.

13 posted on 08/14/2007 10:00:57 AM PDT by kitchen (Hey, Pericles. What are the three things a ruler must know?)
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To: ricks_place
I have a question about “global warming”.
How is oil formed? I understand it is by dead plants and animals and pressure. If this is true, why and how is there oil deposits in ANWAR and the Arctic? And in the far north of Russia?
If all this is true, it MUST mean that those areas were at some time in our history, WARM enough to sustain the vast amounts of life required to then form oil deposits. WARMER than what we see today or even farther back than the Vostok ice cores so often used in the GW arguments.
Am I missing something?
14 posted on 08/14/2007 10:08:38 AM PDT by hophead ("Enjoy Every Sandwich")
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To: hophead
Am I missing something?

Plate techtonics can account for some - some regions drifted from warmer to cooler climates.

But climate also was much warmer at times globally in the distant past - to where the polar regions were warm enough for much more plant and animal growth. Just don't tell AlGore.

15 posted on 08/14/2007 10:13:19 AM PDT by dirtboy (Impeach Chertoff and Gonzales. We can't wait until 2009 for them to be gone.)
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To: ricks_place

This is just how they crunched the numbers.

The article and DBM is NOT discussing the microclimates of the thermometer locations!


16 posted on 08/14/2007 10:22:27 AM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: AnAmericanMother
...where are the numbers coming from?...

Exactly! What is the source data after a site is decommissioned?

The US source sites were taken from surfacestations.org and the site status was found at NOAA Satellite and Information Service. The Maryland temperature data source sites are listed in the table below with the decommissioned sites crossed out. Seven stations stopped reporting in the 1990s!

COOP# SITE Post Office Dist Dir STATE LAT LONG
180470 BALTIMORE WSO CITY 0.5 SE MD 39.28 -76.62
181385 CAMBRIDGE WATER TRMT PLANT 0.4 W MD 38.57 -76.07
181750 CHESTERTOWN 0.6 NE MD 39.22 -76.07
181995 COLLEGE PARK 0.7 N MD 38.98 -76.95
182282 CUMBERLAND 2 1.4 S MD 39.63 -78.75
182523 DENTON 2E 1.6 E MD 38.88 -75.8
183675 GLENN DALE BELL STN 1.5 SE MD 38.97 -76.8
185111 LAUREL 3W 2.8 W MD 39.1 -76.9
185985 MILLINGTON 1SE 1 SE MD 39.27 -75.87
186620 OAKLAND 1SE 1 SE MD 39.4 -79.4
186770 OWINGS FERRY LANDING 3.9 SW MD 38.68 -76.67
186915 PATUXENT RIVER 0.5 N MD 38.33 -76.42
187330 PRINCESS ANNE 1 NE MD 38.22 -75.68
187806 ROYAL OAK 2SSW 2 SSW MD 38.72 -76.18
188000 SALISBURY 0.6 E MD 38.37 -75.58
189440 WESTMINSTER POLICE BRKS 3 SE MD 39.55 -76.97
189750 WOODSTOCK 1 NE MD 39.33 -76.87

17 posted on 08/14/2007 10:29:07 AM PDT by ricks_place
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To: kitchen
...Well, help us out here. Help us sight a cite on decommissioned sites.

Thank You. Claimed facts should be verifiable. Follow the links in post 17. The sites are listed in surfacestations.org and are reproduced at the post. The site status can be checked at the NOAA link. Login using guest; search by COOP #. Please verify my assertion.

18 posted on 08/14/2007 10:39:30 AM PDT by ricks_place
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To: ricks_place

I would pose the question at climateaudit.org and see what they say.


19 posted on 08/14/2007 10:42:05 AM PDT by Free Vulcan (Fight the illegal Mexican colonizers & imperialist conquistadors! Long live the resistance!)
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To: ricks_place
Thanks!
20 posted on 08/14/2007 10:44:25 AM PDT by kitchen (Hey, Pericles. What are the three things a ruler must know?)
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