Posted on 01/22/2011 3:39:06 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
fyi
Actually, it would be incorrect to round to the original significant figures, as that converted number is being used in further calculations. Tha appropriate place to apply the level of precision is at the final step.
That is the question.....
Pedro’s Weather Forecast: Chili today, hot tamale!
Climate change study had 'significant error': experts (OOPSIE!)
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WASHINGTON (AFP) – A climate change study that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature and massive worldwide food shortages in the next decade was seriously flawed, scientists said Wednesday.
Round to whatever's desired, whenever desired, if it's Hansen, from what I can tell.
Do We Really Know Earth’s Temperature?
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Errors in IPCC climate science at warwickhughes.com ^ | January 14th, 2011 | Warwick Hughes
Guest article by Pat Frank
We’ve all read the diagnosis, for example here, that the global climate has suffered “unprecedented warming,” since about 1900. The accepted increase across the 20th century is 0.7 (+/-)0.2 C. As an experimental chemist, I always wondered at that “(+/-)0.2 C.” In my experience, it seemed an awfully narrow uncertainty, given the exigencies of instruments and outdoor measurements.
When I read the literature, going right back to such basics as Phil Jones’ early papers [1, 2], I found no mention of instrumental uncertainty in their discussions of sources of error.
The same is true in Jim Hansen’s papers, e.g. [3]. It was as though the instrumental readings themselves were canonical, and the only uncertainties were in inhomogeneities arising from such things as station moves, instrumental changes, change in time of observation, and so on.
Once Hansen and his cronies realized that the guys manning the weather stations in Congo had been killed and eaten by rebel forces, they gave up on Africa as a source of temperature information!
If you use a rectal thermometer, you insert it in Washington DC to take the temperature of the US. Not really sure where you stick it to take the temp of the entire planet.
LOL!
From the comments:
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Ceri Reid says:
Very interesting post, thanks.
As an engineer, most of the ideas here were pretty familiar to me. I find it almost unbelievable that the climate records aren’t being processed in a way which reflects the uncertainty of the data, as is stated in the article. What evidence is there that this is the case (I think I mean: is the processing applied by GISS or CRU clearly described, and is there any kind of audit trail? Have the academics who processed the data published the processing method?).
I think the F to C conversion issue is tricky. I think the conversion method you favour (using significant figures in C to reflect uncertainty) would lead to a bias which varies with temperature. What is actually needed is proper propagation of the known uncertainty through the calculation, rather than using the implied accuracy of the number of significant figures. So the best conversion from 60F to C would be 15.55+/-1.1C (in your example above). But obviously, promulgating 15.55 is fraught with the danger of the known 1.1C uncertainty being forgotten, and the implied 0.005C certainty used instead. Which would be bad.
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Mike Haseler says:
I once designed a precision temperature “oven” which had a display showing the temperature to 0.01C. In practice the controller for device was only accurate to 0.1C at best and with a typical lab thermometer there was at least another 0.1C error. Then the was the fact you were not measuring the temperature at the centre of the oven and drift and even mains supply variation had a significant effect!
All in all the error of this device which might appear to be accurate to 0.01C could have been as bad as the total so called “global warming signal”.
I’ve also set up commercial weather stations using good commercial equipment which I believe is also used by many meteorological stations and the total error is above +/-1C even on this “good” equipment.
As for your bulk standard thermometer from a DIY shop. Go to one and take a reading from them all and see how much they vary … it’s normally as much as 2C or even 3C from highest to lowest.
Basically, the kind of temperature error being quoted by the climategate team is only possible in a lab with regularly calibrated equipment.
Good Stuff at the link:
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boballab says:
I actually ran a spreadsheet back in December showing how just 3 instrument changes, with each instrument having better resolution, over a long term historical record changes the trend of the data (over 1° F in change to the USCHN data)
http://boballab.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/do-we-really-know-what-the-temperature-is/
Ernest...I think you are missing something here.
What are you measuring? You have to measure something with mass. What is it? Air right?
To have a true average you must correct for the different masses associated with what you are measuring. So you must know wet bulb and dry bulb tempertures and a barometric pressure. For every station. If you don’t have this then you are just averaging readings from a thermometer.
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Ziiex Zeburz says:
As the earths surface area is +- 196,935,000 square miles and the geological parameters are as diverse as it is possible to imagine, we have intelligent people declaring that the world is heating by as much as 2.0c per 100 years, with official recorded temp. covering perhaps 1% of the total area of the earth. I fully agree with the above article, we as humans are all idiots, some of us think we understand what we are trying to do, but even reading a temp. looks beyond the scope of those who’s job it is.
Italy is a prime example of human intelligence, knowledge, and understanding, it is in that country for all to see, and Italians have in the past produced some of the worlds most outstanding thinkers, BUT !!!! if you put 100 Italians into a room and ask them to form a political party, at the end of a month you would find that they have formed 100 plus political parties, and thousands of political ideologies non of which address the problems facing the country.
And Italy is one of the worlds better countries, it had inside baths and running hot water when the English were still learning to make fire. but here we are 3000 years later and 99.9% of the world population still cannot read a thermometer, like i said above we are all idiots.
They didn’t. That is the problem.
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