If you read this blog, Climate Change Sanity, you know that I believe the only global temperature data you can depend on are those made by the Satellites. A new study of global temperature measurements by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts titled “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?” is available on the SPPI website. After you read this report I suspect that you will agree that only the Satellite data is reliable. I have taken the liberty to lift some of this PDF for this blog. First:
QUESTION OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE
Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did.
This has inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. This report compiles some of the initial alarming findings.
There has clearly been some cyclical warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998. However, the global surface-station data is seriously compromised. First, there is a major station dropout and increase in missing data in stations that remained which occurred suddenly around 1990; about the time the global warming issue was being elevated to importance in political and environmental circles. A clear bias was found towards removing cooler higher elevation, higher latitude, and rural stations during this culling process though leaving their data in the base periods from which ‘averages’ and anomalies are computed.
The data also suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes and improper siting. There are uncertainties in ocean temperatures; no small issue, as oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface.
These factors all lead to significant uncertainty and a tendency for overestimation of century-scale temperature trends. A conclusion from all findings suggest that global data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts. And, consequently, such surface data should be ignored for decision making.
THE GLOBAL DATA CENTERS
Five organizations publish global temperature data. Two – Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) – are satellite datasets. The three terrestrial institutions – NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – all depend on data supplied by ground stations via NOAA.
And D’Aleo and Watts summarize their findings in the following 15 points:
| 1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.
|
|
2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.
|
|
3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.
|
|
4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.
|
|
5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
|
|
6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.
|
|
7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.
|
|
8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.
|
|
9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.
|
|
10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.
|
|
11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.
|
|
12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.
|
|
13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.
|
|
14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”
|
|
15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.
|
These contentions are fully backed up in their report which can be access by clicking here.
Cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 