Source: NCDC climate data presented by Roy Spencer on www.drroyspencer.com.
Posted on 03/10/2015 5:57:50 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were “adjusted” by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists — now the same data shows a significant warming trend.
Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the National Climatic Data Center made large adjustments to past summer temperatures for the U.S. Corn Belt, lowering past temperatures to make them cooler. Adjusting past temperatures downward creates a significant warming trend in the data that didn’t exist before.
“I was updating a U.S. Corn Belt summer temperature and precipitation dataset from the NCDC website, and all of a sudden the no-warming-trend-since-1900 turned into a significant warming trend,” Spencer wrote on his blog, adding that NCDC’s “adjustments” made the warming trend for the region increase from just 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century to 0.6 degrees per century.
NCDC temperature data downloaded by Spencer in March 2014 looked quite different from data he downloaded this month. That’s because NCDC constantly adjusts its data to correct for errors, but critics have said these adjustments seem to always increase the warming trend for the U.S. or globally.
“Being the co-developer of a climate dataset (UAH satellite temperatures) I understand the need to make adjustments for known errors in the data … when you can quantitatively demonstrate an error exists,” Spencer wrote.
“But a variety of errors in data measurement and collection would typically have both positive and negative signs,” Spencer noted, adding that he corrects for such errors when calculating satellite temperature data even if they tend to cancel each other out.
“In contrast, the thermometer data apparently need to be adjusted in such a way that almost always leads to greater and greater warming trends,” he added.
Source: NCDC climate data presented by Roy Spencer on www.drroyspencer.com.
Spencer is not the first to criticize NCDC’s adjustments to temperature data. Science blogger Steven Goddard (his pen name) has been arguing for years that government climate agencies have been tampering with temperature data to create a significant warming trend where none actually exists.
“NCDC pulls every trick in the book to turn the US cooling trend into warming. The raw data shows cooling since the 1920s,” Goddard told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a previous interview.
Goddard says that NCDC has been cooling past temperatures in the data to make the present look much warmer by comparison, bolstering the case that global warming is being caused by human activity and is rapidly getting worse.
“NCDC does a hockey stick of adjustments to reverse the trend,” Goddard said. “This includes cooling the past for ‘time of observation bias’ infilling missing rural data with urban temperatures, and doing almost nothing to compensate for urban heat island effects.”
Meteorologist Anthony Watts has also caught NOAA changing the temperature record. For two years, NOAA claimed that July 2012 was the hottest month on record — that is, until it quietly adjusted the data so that July 1936 was the hottest month on record.
“Two years ago during the scorching summer of 2012, July 1936 lost its place on the leaderboard and July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the United States,” Watts wrote. “Now, as if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again. The past, present, and future all seems to be ‘adjustable’ in NOAA’s world.”
“You can’t get any clearer proof of NOAA adjusting past temperatures,” Watts wrote. “This isn’t just some issue with gridding, or anomalies, or method, it is about NOAA not being able to present historical climate information of the United States accurately.”
But what does NOAA have to say about its temperature adjustments?
I tend to believe this story. But who, in particular has the authority to make changes, and who is it who hands down the directive to the “adjuster?”
The other part of these manipulations is the so called modelling. Computers can be manipulated to come up with whatever results the programmer wants. That’s why I have a basic mistrust of them for voting.
Political scientists: Scientists who let their politics influence their findings.
Years ago, I lived in the Philadelphia area. This was in the 1980s. I had a series of jobs in the SE Pennsylvania region, and (since I'm a bit shy) would typically eat lunch alone. I'd leave work and drive to some deli, get a sandwich and eat in my car while listening to the radio. This means that I was often exploring out-of-the-way places to have privacy while I ate.
One place I used to park was behind one of the shopping malls on Route 1, north of Philly. It was either Oxford Valley Mall or Neshaminy Mall, I'm not sure which.
The spot where I parked was near the back of a Chinese restaurant. There was a large exhaust fan there; you know the type: covered with a huge aluminum housing, so it looks kind of like an enormous aluminum doorknob. About three feet in diameter, and it stuck out from the wall about two feet.
And right next to this fan, about four feet from it, was a tiny little fenced-in area, maybe five feet square, and inside this fence was a little equipment trailer. It had all kinds of sensors sticking out of it... an anemometer and wind-direction sensor sticking up, along with various louvered boxes that I presume contained thermometers, barometers, hygrometers, etc. It had a little yagi antenna pointing off in the distance, presumably telemetering information directly to some collection point via microwave link (this was before ubiquitous wireless internet access was available).
On the fence were "NO TRESPASSING FEDERAL PROPERTY" signs, and my recollection is that they identified the ownership agency as NOAA. There was an 800 number to call in case of an emergency.
This thing was literally in the shadow of the building. I remember thinking "who in their right mind would have located that thing within a couple of feet of a king-size restaurant exhaust fan." Another thing I remember thinking was "I wonder if someday we'll be hearing from the US Government that the world is getting hotter."
The siting of this thing was really unbelievable; you would have to see it to believe it. I had noticed other weather stations of this type. At least a couple were located in the median strip of the New Jersey Turnpike. One of these was located at a point very close to a large multi-unit gas turbine peaking power plant that was near the NJ Turnpike south of New Brunswick. I've tried to find this plant on Google Earth, but have not been able to; perhaps it has been dismantled. Some of you from that region may remember it though. It had a huge fuel tank next to it, the top of which rose and fell as fuel was withdrawn or replaced, depending on the season. It typically operated on the hottest days of the summer, and when it did it filled the air around it with a barely visible brownish-yellow cloud.
Anyway, there was one of these environmental instrument stations right near it, complete with its little antenna. In the summertime, there's almost no place more nasty than the median strip of the New Jersey Turnpike, and this one was located within a stone's throw of the peaking plant.
We have to dependable authority control for climate data now.
Is all of our data now lost? Are we able--at all--to reliably plot our climate history, or have the fraud scientists destroyed all of it, yet?
There needs to be a gulag for people like that. Some heads should role, to serve as an example, and grant monies should be repaid.
One of the things that undermines Dr. Spencer is that he is a creationist.
Every state land grant university has unbelievable amounts of weather and climate data, as well as analysis of that data from before the fraud started.
Farm states have even issued county by county books with weather, climate, soil and other data. FReepers should keep an eye out for them at estate sales and such..
Anthony Watts, of Watts Up With That? http://wattsupwiththat.com/
has a database documenting such egregious siting of weather stations. He’s written a paper about it and encourages people to send him pictures and locations for such examples. The Urban Heat Island effect is well known, but when it’s driven by things such as this the data gets skewed.
A freakin’ ice age could hit and NOAA would STILL show a warming trend!
Thanks, I’ll look at that.
Unfortunately, my observations were made long ago, before digital photography. I didn’t take any pictures; now I wish I had, although I don’t think I even owned a camera back then.
I’m pretty sure PSE&G has dismantled the peaking plant I described. I was just checking their website, it looks like they’ve switched over to natural gas for their peaking units.
That doesn’t mean they don’t still have weather stations in the median strip of the turnpike, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.