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I wonder how many of our readership question the ramification of the phrase "global mean temperature". When applied to ground/sea measurements taken back in time to lets say mid eighteen hundreds does it really have much of a meaning?
The term is used to frequently. How do we know how much global surface was carefully measured year after year on land and on sea. And how reliable where the given data collection methods. Just as an example... how much of the world's seas did Great Britain, the USA and other European nations carefully throw buckets into the surface water and draw out and carefully measure temperature and salinity.
This whole system looks more suspect to inaccuracies the more I gaze at so many graphs.
And as all now admit... in recent times fewer and fewer ground stations across many land masses came into play. The grids increased for their models. More fudging took place. Until very recently we did not even have any real reliable satellite systems in place that within their given design can be relied on for providing accurate measurement of a given phenomena whether it be surface temperature, ice extent, atmospheric temperature measurements etc..
The whole process is full of question marks in my mind.