Replies

Okay, Here are my problems with the story.

The main article says,

“Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade’s worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic ‘NOAA-16’ satellite.”

“NOAA has reported a succession of record warm temperatures in recent years based on such satellite readings but these may now all be undermined.”

“readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F.”

“NOAA declined to make any comment”....

and so on.

We don’t know how the NOAA-16 satellite data was used. If a calibration error was noted long ago, they may have been ignoring it. As Brugmansian pointed out, there is at least on paper published on this satellite’s problems. Even if some of the satellite’s data was used, they may have filtered out the bad data. There seems to be two issues conflated, one is sensor drift and the other is really wacky temperatures sometimes being reported. The two are not the same.

Okay, reading further, the NOAA has a cloud problem, not a drifting problem, that is causing the wacky temperatures.They probably filtered that out, to some degree.

“NOAA further explained that cloud cover could affect the satellite data making the readings prone to error.”

Then there is this statement which I am fairly sure is incorrect,

“The US record dominates the record, especially of the critical middle latitudes, and to change it so that it goes from having nine of the warmest years in the 1990s to four of them being in the 1930s, is a very significant change and must influence global averages.”

In fact, the increase in reported global temperatures is NOT driven by US temperatures but the temperatures, they say are increasing, near the poles. Most of the focus of the warmists has been on north pole temperature increases, i.e. Yamal tree ring data, etc.

Lastly, my real beef with the article is its sensationalist tone,

“With NOAA’s failure to make further concise public statements on this sensational story it is left to public speculation and ‘citizen scientists’ to ascertain whether ten years or more of temperature data sets from satellites such as NOAA-16 are unreliable and worthless.”

Real analytical people don’t write like that. I suspect his temperament. Then, given his conflating of the satellite problems and lack of hard evidence that this satellite has actually been a part of the official temperature record, I’m just not giving this article any credence.