Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere?

😮 UPDATED with GLOBAL values! The questions get bigger.  (See below) July 18th.

Frank Lansner has been a busy man, and he’s asking some very thought provoking questions.

The Northern Hemisphere has a ratio of 40% land to 60% oceans, and the Hadley Met Centre seems to use a similar ratio (NH HadCrut Series: 58% ocean, 42% land). But  Frank Lansner wondered why, when he graphed the GISS land-data-set alongside the combined-sea-surface-temperatures (CSST), GISS comes up with an “averaged” line that runs much closer to the land data set and not the sea surface set. If it were weighted 60:40 (ocean:land) the combined Northern Hemisphere line ought to run slightly closer to the ocean based temperatures.

So Lansner mixed the land and sea temperatures in different ratios and graphed them and an odd thing occurred. Perhaps there is some good reason for it, but the GISS NH average line is currently running close to a mix that could be almost 70% land, and only 30% ocean. Back in 1985 the NH Average was closer to the sea temps as would be expected. In fact as late as 1995, the NH line still ran at around 40% land area. But somewhere post 1995 – 1999 for some reason (see the update at the bottom for some good suggestions) the average tracks closer to the 70% line. According to Frank, this effect does not occur with the HadCrut average.

GISS temperatures compared with land ocean ratios

GISS temperatures compared with different ratios of land: ocean data values. See below for a description of the CSST (Combined Sea Surface Temperature).

Frank is looking for feedback and suggestions, and wondering if there could be any other explanation. So am I. The effect is clear also in this graph. The land-based datasets are the brown ones near the top. The blue ones in the middle are GISS and then below that Hadley, then finally the black line is the satellite measured average for land and sea, and the combined sea surface temperatures. It’s interesting how closely the satellite set compares with the sea surface data.

Land and Sea data sets

Comparing land and sea and “average” combinations.

Lansner points out that the key difference between the brown lines at the top and the blue-black lines underneath is that Urban Heat Island only affects the lines at the top (i.e. there is no urban heat island over the oceans, and not too much “urbanity” near the satellites either). Lansner further split up the satellite measurements into satellite-land versus satellite-ocean and what’s especially interesting is how the satellite-land values agree better with the ocean measures after 2001 than they do with the surface-land thermometers. Are we eyeballing the effects of UHI and siting problems in the thermometers on the land, and are GISS somehow inadvertantly amplifying these artificial effects with weighting, homogenisation, gridding or averaging proceedures that rely more on these land measurements than on the independently consistent satelites and sea surface measures?

Urban Heat Island Effect on Surface measurements?

Urban Heat Island Effect on Surface measurements?

As would be expected the land temperatures are more volatile than the sea, and the two might split for a while, but then return to each other, as you’d expect. You can see here that the green line (which is the difference between the land and sea temps) returns to zero every 10 or 11 years or so. (Is any one else thinking about sun spot cycles?)

Land temperatures and sea temperature variation

Land temperatures and sea temperature variation

Combined Sea Surface Temperature (CSST)

Frank combined the Northern Hemisphere sea surface records from 1960 onwards where they all agree fairly well. Prior to that there were wildly different recordings that make SST’s less easy to combine meaningfully, though some inconsistencies show up after 1990. The CSST curve is a smoothed graph calculated as an average of the above series of smoothed and 5 yr averaged data. (This graph is Fig 25 in Part II)

Graph: Sea surface temperatures combined for the northern hemisphere

Sea surface temperatures combined for the northern hemisphere

Comparing Hansen’s graphs over time

Frank Lansner got started on this line of reasoning by working back through the 1945-1975 decline that he had written on in March 2010. In Part II of his new post he compares changes and adjustments Hansen graphs over time in more detail and combines them into one (see below). The decline that was well known from 1945 – 1975 still becomes less of a decline as the newer analyses are published. But the latest version of NASA´s compilations of NH temperatures today are not calculated the same way the original GISS-product from land stations on continents and islands was described earlier.

As Frank says: “For some reason, the methods of using ocean data has been changed from surface air data to water temperatures measured 2 m under sea surface. So, now the NH temperatures are build on sources: GHCN 1880-06/2010 + SST: 1880-11/1981 HadISST1, 12/1981-06/2010 Reynolds v2”

The color of cold?

Lansner also finds this particular graph, which, rather like Sherwood 2008, uses an “unintuitive” scale.
The graphic below from Hansen and Lebedeff 1987,  shows the temperature trends from 1940-65. At a glance you might guess that things have become a little warmer. But the color of -0.5 to 0oC is a yellow, rather than a cool green, and it covers vast tracts of the world (most of Africa, Western Europe, North America, the North Atlantic, Siberia, and India). For the world to “look warmer”, it only needs to cool by less than half a degree. The “turning point” in the color scheme is at -0.5, not zero. This makes it look like cooling is only occurring in a few isolated spots.


Lansner points out in Part I that many of the reasons offered in papers for “adjustments” could just as easily change the data in either direction. The only way to know if the adjustments (which always seem to bring the observations of the world closer to the carbon-dioxide-powered-models) are legitimate would be for an independent team to go through all the data sets, all the reasons, and all the individual cases. It would be a large job. Does the free world really want to rely on unfunded volunteers to make sure that work gets done? Wouldn’t it be prudent to pay professional scientific auditors (no, not me) to go through the entire set with the aim of finding as many holes and flaws and inconsistencies as they can? Presumably, if it’s all unfaultable, expert and honest, they won’t find much that matters.

Lansner’s full original four part post is here and I know he would appreciate comments and feedback.  It’s quite ambitious, and it would be helpful if these lines of inquiry could be followed up. He’s done an extraordinary amount of work. If there were more funded positions for scientists who were interested in finding other causes of warming (non-greenhouse ones) these kinds of questions would have been posted years ago, and would not be left to volunteers to ask.

Thanks to DE, Cohenite, and George White for thoughts, and of course, thanks to Frank.

UPDATE 1: How land measurements take over the high seas…

Boballab #9 I think you will find that the reason has to do with the way GISS adjusts temperatures to make their gridded product. You will find that they use thermometer readings from land to adjust sea surface temperatures up to 1200km out to sea. An example of this is islands like Guam and Diego Garcia and the entire Arctic. Go to this link and turn off the SST data and use the 1200km “smooth”: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

From that you will see that the Arctic is a bright red color, the Arctic’s water temperatures are being derived from Land measurements from around that ocean.

Now with the SST data still turned off turn the smooth down to the 250KM setting and you get a vastly different picture. There is almost no data for the Arctic anymore, it has turned gray. You will also see the vast gaps in terresterial coverage too.

Now do the reverse with the SST data turned on and the land data off. On both the 1200km and the 250km smooth the entire Arctic ocean has no data, none, zip, zilch, zero. No SST data is used for the entire Arctic Ocean or the waters around Antarctica.

Now combine the land and SST data in the GISS map maker program and you once again get that nice big red splotch across the Arctic.
This shows that the so called water temperatures for the Arctic is 100% derived from LAND measurements, and probably why Frank is getting the readings he is (since one entire oceans readings are nothing but extroplations from LAND data). The HADCrut3 product of the Hadely center and CRU does not extrapolate Arctic temperatures, they leave it blank, only GISS does this. Matter of fact Phil Jones commented on this in one of the Climategate emails and that is how GISS got 2005 so hot, by using land readings as Arctic SST readings, and treating the Arctic Ocean as Land

DB writes in comment #10 – The most likely reason for the overweighting of land temps in the northern hemisphere lies in the Arctic. Since sea surface temps are not available when the the Arctic Ocean is covered with ice, GISS extrapolates land temperature anomalies out over the ocean. This graph by Bob Tisdale shows the total overlap of GISS land only and land+sea for the Arctic: GISS follows this practice year-round which results in higher anomalies in the summer since the warming trend for Arctic SSTs is about an order of magnitude lower than the land.

UPDATE 2 The Global ratios beg even more questions.

Frank has created a global graph. Back in 1910, the global temperature was a lot more like the sea surface temperatures. But over time, land measurements became more and more important. In the last ten years the global surface average appears to be calculated from a weighting of over 65% land measurements even though globally, land only occupies 30% of all the surface.



Global GISS land sea weighted ratios

Global GISS land sea weighted ratios

To put this in perspective

Frank writes in his new post that this change alone could account for 0.17 OC rise over the last century!

If the 30% land fraction from the real world was used, GISS global 2007 would be 0.55K warmer than GISS global 1900.

With the still increasing GISS land fraction actually used, we have GISS global 2007 0.72K warmer than GISS global 1900.

The difference is 0.17K added by increasing land fraction over the 20th century instead of using 30% land constantly. But this calculation could be done in many ways. We know for a fact that the oceans cover 70% of the planet. So why not use 70% of data from SST?

Animated arrow thanks to WI Gifs & Animations

8.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

133 comments to Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere?

  • #
    wes george

    It just never bloody ends with these people does it? Bulldust where are ya? Think we are gonna need to coin another appellation!

    20

  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Next new word phraise my little lambs will be “adjustments” in the models for the cool trends that WILL be predicted in the future to save face of the science.

    When you concentrate on just one area in a vastly complex system, you are going to miss a great deal of other input to make up these models.The biggest mistake is to put it under one heading as global when rotation has made sure that cloud cover CAN NOT pass across the equator. Science has not reviewed the past science to show mistakes that have been made and theories abound to make up for the lack of knowledge in these areas. New science is fluffed off to the peer review(old boys club) as it might effect many scientists grants and careers.

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  • #

    Well done to Frank, Jo and co. Takes some getting through but with the help from commenters here on this site, not too hard to understand, and a huge effort by Frank.
    Some scientists should be cringing with embarrassment….well I can dream can’t I.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    I want to know where this “land” is. It could be a great investment property…..

    10

  • #

    One might add, that this extra land appears to explain 0,134K after 1985 of the overall temperature increase from GISS NH. Have not checked the SH yet..
    Can this really be?
    K.R. Frank

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Jo

    The logical disconnect is that the AGW claim to be able to predict the climate in 100 years hence, but can’t tell us how of the northern hemisphere is comprised of dry land right bloody now. To quote the wonderful Peter Cook – “That would confuse a stupid man”. Or maybe most of our political leaders.

    Question # 1 to the reader. Are these guys incompetent or are they corrupt?

    Question # 2. Should you trust them?

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

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  • #
    BenAW

    Isn’t the way GISS fills in grids without sufficient data to blame for this?
    Look eg. at the world chart at the area around Hawaii. The land temp over there seems to be used for a large part of the ocean.

    10

  • #
    Chris in OZ

    Just un-bloody-believeable !
    At least they have solved one problem, it won’t matter so much when the sea level rises the 6 meters !
    That 30% more land will come in handy.

    10

  • #
    boballab

    I think you will find that the reason has to do with the way GISS adjusts temperatures to make their gridded product. You will find that they use thermometer readings from land to adjust sea surface temperatures up to 1200km out to sea. An example of this is islands like Guam and Diego Garcia and the entire Arctic. Go to this link and turn off the SST data and use the 1200km “smooth”: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

    From that you will see that the Arctic is a bright red color, the Arctic’s water temperatures are being derived from Land measurements from around that ocean.

    Now with the SST data still turned off turn the smooth down to the 250KM setting and you get a vastly different picture. There is almost no data for the Arctic anymore, it has turned gray. You will also see the vast gaps in terresterial coverage too.

    Now do the reverse with the SST data turned on and the land data off. On both the 1200km and the 250km smooth the entire Arctic ocean has no data, none, zip, zilch, zero. No SST data is used for the entire Arctic Ocean or the waters around Antarctica.

    Now combine the land and SST data in the GISS map maker program and you once again get that nice big red splotch across the Arctic.
    This shows that the so called water temperatures for the Arctic is 100% derived from LAND measurements, and probably why Frank is getting the readings he is (since one entire oceans readings are nothing but extroplations from LAND data). The HADCrut3 product of the Hadely center and CRU does not extrapolate Arctic temperatures, they leave it blank, only GISS does this. Matter of fact Phil Jones commented on this in one of the Climategate emails and that is how GISS got 2005 so hot, by using land readings as Arctic SST readings, and treating the Arctic Ocean as Land.

    10

  • #
    DB

    The most likely reason for the overweighting of land temps in the northern hemisphere lies in the Arctic. Since sea surface temps are not available when the the Arctic Ocean is covered with ice, GISS extrapolates land temperature anomalies out over the ocean. (

    This graph by Bob Tisdale show the total overlap of GISS land only and land+sea for the Arctic:

    http://i48.tinypic.com/34o3hjq.jpg

    GISS follows this practice year-round which results in higher anomalies in the summer since the warming trend for Arctic SSTs is about an order of magnitude lower than the land.

    10

  • #

    hi Boballab and DB!

    Just a fast note:
    Do your suggestions explain why there is more and more land% for GISS? If they allways used 70% land i would easier accept their findings. it would be like their point of view that land
    should dominated that much. But adding the land % bit for bit 1985 ??
    It adds 0,13K.
    I mean, if 70% due to whatever is “correct” – why did they then use down to 40% earlier?

    1000 thanks for comments and I will look more into it later.
    K.R Frank

    10

  • #

    Thanks, these are very useful comments and I’ve added them in as updates at the bottom of the post. Much appreciated.
    (Good to see the humour in comments too 🙂 )

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  • #
    boballab

    Frank the answer to your question lies in this page of the GISS site:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

    On it you see that the intial GISS method was layed out in Hansen Lebedeff 1987:

    The analysis method was documented in Hansen and Lebedeff (1987), showing that the correlation of temperature change was reasonably strong for stations separated by up to 1200 km, especially at middle and high latitudes. They obtained quantitative estimates of the error in annual and 5-year mean temperature change by sampling at station locations a spatially complete data set of a long run of a global climate model, which was shown to have realistic spatial and temporal variability.

    Then the analysis method was updated in two other papers, Hansen et al 1999 and Hansen et al 2001:

    Some improvements in the analysis were made several years ago (Hansen et al. 1999; Hansen et al. 2001), including use of satellite-observed night lights to determine which stations in the United States are located in urban and peri-urban areas, the long-term trends of those stations being adjusted to agree with long-term trends of nearby rural stations.

    Then you have the updates page here:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/

    April 2006: HadISST ocean temperatures are now used only for regions that are identified as ice-free in both the NOAA and HadISST records. This change effects a small number of gridboxes in which HadISST has sea ice while NOAA has open water. The prior approach damped temperature change at these gridboxes because of specification of a fixed temperature in sea ice regions. The new approach still yields a conservative estimate of surface air temperature change, as surface air temperature usually changes markedly when sea ice is replaced by open water or vice versa. Because of the small area of these gridboxes the effect on global temperature change was negligible.

    Prior to 2006 GISS used HadISST only but after that they used a combined NOAA/Hadely product and as seen they only used the SST temps when both datasets said open water, so that is another change over time. Then you got the whole GHCNv1 to GHCNv2 change where that caused changes in extroplated temps because the input figures were changed in the data source.

    Then in 2009 there was another change made that effected the land/sst ratio:

    May 2009: The sea ice mask adopted in April 2006 was slightly extended to include all ocean northward of 75N, since in that region in the winter months ice was present, particularly at the beginning of our data period, making water temperatures a bad proxy for air temperatures. This has no effect on our analysis, but it removes some odd discontinuities in some trend maps. The gridding tool on our ftp site was changed correspondingly. In addition, the last argument in that tool (mkTsMap.f) was changed to make it easier to use.

    So there you go prior to 2006 they used the SST data, after 2006 they started masking some of the SST data and replaced it with their land analysis data, then last year they extended this SST mask to everything above 75N so that all readings year round come from extroplated land data from 1200km.

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  • #
    Quentin Wallace

    I am no expert but boballab seems to be on the right track. GISS appear to be open and honest about what they are doing. Why didn’t Frank Lansner just look on their website for this information and then maybe email them for further clarification ?

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  • #
    David Spurgeon

    Jo has done it again!

    Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere?

    Ms. Nova I love you!

    10

  • #

    Hi buballab

    First of all, in my article there is links to the specific data I used, and here is how GISS describes the specific NH series in question, they go from 1880 to 2010:

    ********************
    GISS NH land:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/NH.Ts.txt

    N.HEMI Temperature Anomalies in 0.01 degrees Celsius base period: 1951-1980

    sources: GHCN 1880-06/2010 (meteorological stations only)

    ********************
    GISS NH land + SST:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/NH.Ts+dSST.txt

    N.HEMI Land-Ocean Temperature Index in 0.01 degrees Celsius base period: 1951-1980

    sources: GHCN 1880-06/2010 + SST: 1880-11/1981 HadISST1
    12/1981-06/2010 Reynolds v2

    ************
    And then they describe they use their homogeneity adjustment etc.

    Then I take the exact data from their Land and their Land+SST and I make exactly an SST using HADISST stitched with Reynolds V2.

    The result is that the combined Land+SST requires still more Land area %:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig83.jpg

    As you see more and more Landarea% required.

    Bullabub, For GISS data to add up, they need to weight the land area 70%.
    is it an explanation that GISS has a list of when they made changes to data?
    No, of course not.

    The point here is: Do these numerous modifications appear to be corect? No, not if they actually require 70% land area to make things add up.

    I have already read the Hansen 87, 99 etc when i wrote my article, but nothing explains the problem mentioned by me.
    Its not enough that they “openly” say that they have changed things if their result actually demands 70% Landarea 🙂

    Bullabub, IF IF iF there is one of these writings you point to that actually explains why GISS now has ended up needing 70% land area to explain their data let me know.

    Their 1200 km radius they have used since 1987. And as i showed in my article, the 1200 km radius indeed includes a lot of ocean. But so it did all the time, it does explain a gradual more and more land%.

    The 2006-change you mention: Nothing happens specifically around 2006: http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig83.jpg

    IF they for example in 2006 decides to use much more land area, THEN they should make a whole new temperature series this way (!)
    Im sure that if GISS in 2006 decided that more Land% was best estimate of temperatures, then they would have applied this to the whole data series all the way back to 1880!
    There fore what ever happens in 2006 does not even remotely explain a graduately more an more adding of land% over the years 1985-2007.

    Thanks for inputs, i hope you will comment further.

    K.R. Frank

    10

  • #
    DirkH

    Another fresh approach to tell the world that GISTEMP is rubbish. ChiefIO did that for some time now, but i like the Hansenizer and Frank’s Land-Sea ratio approach, it’s very intuitive.

    10

  • #
    Quentin Wallace

    @Frank Lansner. Hi, this is an interesting discussion. I am not trying to be facetious but why don’t you ask GISS ? Maybe they could explain ?

    10

  • #
    DirkH

    Quentin Wallace:
    July 17th, 2010 at 4:23 am
    “I am no expert but boballab seems to be on the right track. GISS appear to be open and honest about what they are doing.”

    Open and honest about how they butcher and slaughter any Ă­nnocent data they can get their filthy meatgrinders on.

    10

  • #

    – And bullabob, yes GISS has used 1200km radius since 1987 as mentioned, but of course this 1200km is applied to all years back and cannot explain a gradual increased Land% 1985-207. If they just applied 1200 km radius after 1987 (!?!) they would just have yet another problem , Can you olow this?

    Im sorry if i have overlooked a real explanation for gradually more and more land% 1985-2007 in you writing, if so could you specify?

    K.R. Frank

    10

  • #
    Brian H

    😀 😀 Antarctic Ice Increasing AND Decreasing! 😀 😀
    Schroedinger’s Climate Box!

    Check out the sidebar stories, too. Gems all.

    10

  • #

    Quentin:

    Yes I could ask GISS 🙂 , but lets first get some feedback from you guys! Perhaps I can then ask in a better way.
    And by the way, in my article
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/part1-the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-181.php

    This issue og land% is just one of many issues, if interested.

    10

  • #
    DirkH

    21Frank Lansner:
    July 17th, 2010 at 5:25 am
    “- And bullabob, yes GISS has used 1200km radius since 1987 as mentioned, but of course this 1200km is applied to all years back and cannot explain a gradual increased Land% 1985-207. If they just applied 1200 km radius after 1987 (!?!) they would just have yet another problem , Can you olow this?

    Im sorry if i have overlooked a real explanation for gradually more and more land% 1985-2007 in you writing, if so could you specify?”

    Frank, did you consider the gradual dying of the thermometers from 1982 onwards as diagnosed by E.M.Smith (ChiefIO) and also Steven Mosher here:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/#comment-429775

    This would distort the extrapolation artefacts in GISTEMP in the time interval you mention!

    10

  • #
    Brian H

    FYI, there are 100 perfectly functional weather stations in Arctic Canada, but GISS and the boys are taking the data from only one: in a relatively southerly townsite, palpably affected by UHI. This is the base for land and ocean “data” for most of northern NA!

    10

  • #
    DirkH

    DirkH:
    July 17th, 2010 at 5:30 am
    “[…]This would distort the extrapolation artefacts in GISTEMP in the time interval you mention!”

    … during the Great Dying Of The Thermometers, their numbers dropped from over 6000 to about 1500, and the surviving ones are mostly airport stations. As Anthony Watts documents here,

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/photos-noaas-carefree-climate-station/

    the temperature sensors used for the climate data are sometimes mounted in direct proximity of the thermometers that are used for avian purposes. While the latter one is meant to measure the temperature over asphalt, it distorts the temperature records for climate data purposes. By culling non-airport thermometers from the record and extrapolating the artificially high temperatures from airports up to 1200 km out to sea, Hansen would achieve the illusion of rising temperatures; the difference to SST would become greater and for Frank it looks like the percentage of land in the Hansen-Piltdown-Man-temperature record rises… just a guess.

    10

  • #

    Great job Mt Lansner! I’m impressed by your patience, diligence and perseverence.
    You show that Hansen is hardly the infallible Pope of temperature measurement, and that his results are in dire need of more quality control. To me this has all the premium ingredients of another “gate”. Climategate is far from being behind us.

    10

  • #

    Hi Pierre, and thanks for your site: http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/record-cold-set-in-antarctica/ its interesting news from Germany that even reaches me in Denmark 🙂

    The differencen 40% to 70% leads to a difference of 0,134 K of the total GISS NH temperature trend 1980-2007. So never mind what on Earth caused this, surely these 0,134K needs some attention.

    The funny thing is, that CRU does do this. In stead they just correct directly on their land data to change the total curve. So CRU and GISS gets almost same result, but GISS adds the heat when combining land+SST (somehow) and CRU just adds heat to their land data… Same result, but their criterias and assumptions are contradictionary.

    K.R. Frank

    10

  • #
    papertiger

    @Frank Lansner. Hi, this is an interesting discussion. I am not trying to be facetious but why don’t you ask GISS ? Maybe they could explain ?

    Yes, GISS is always honest and forthcoming, except for that time when Steve Mc found the Antarctic temp station buried in the snow.
    And when he discovered the Y2K problem.
    And any other time someone wanted to take a closer look at what they were doing.

    Besides those few instances, GISS has always been cheerfully helpful.

    And prompt.

    10

  • #
    DirkH

    At least GISS has the highest entertainment value of all these stooges.

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  • #

    Just a little explanation: I keep say that this is about “0,13K” in the overall GISS NH temperature curve.

    Why 0,13K?

    in several years in the mid 1980´ies adn a few years in the mid 1990Ă­es, GISS Land+SST is on the green 40% land curve – like the real world land fraction.

    But see the difference from the green 40% curve and the GISS land+SST curve in 2007. Its 0,13K+ .
    So if GISS had sticked to a 40% fraction for land, ther 2007 NH temperature would have been 0,13K colder.

    So what ever is going on to explain this 70% land – thing, its a + 0,13K that originates from some procedures that need more attention. GISS must not get away with adding 0,134 K heat and no one demands a good explanation.

    A Procces/method/homogenization whatever adding 0,134 heat trend when just combining land and SST needs our attention.
    K.R. Frank

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    Quentin Wallace

    Hello again, I am new to this site and I am trying to follow the arguments. Is it possible for the following contributors to provide links that explain your statements ? Thanks.

    Brian H: July 17th, 2010 at 5:35 am

    “FYI, there are 100 perfectly functional weather stations in Arctic Canada, but GISS and the boys are taking the data from only one: in a relatively southerly townsite, palpably affected by UHI. This is the base for land and ocean “data” for most of northern NA!”

    papertiger: July 17th, 2010 at 6:11 am

    “Yes, GISS is always honest and forthcoming, except for that time when Steve Mc found the Antarctic temp station buried in the snow. And when he discovered the Y2K problem.”

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    Brego

    Bob Tisdale discussed this matter in a good post a little while ago.

    http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html

    Its not just the NH, but the SH as well.

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  • #
    boballab

    Remember they are extrapolating Artic Temperatures from land based thermometer readings. So when you go back in time as an example to 1900 you will see there is little Arctic data, because there was no thermometers far enough north to extrapolate from to cover it all. Go to the GISS map maker I linked to and just change the time interval to begin in 1900 and end in 1900 and set it to a polar view, you will find the Arctic not completely filled. Now compare that to 2010 and you will see the difference in coverage. Also in the last quote I used it expressly stated that it wasn’t until 2009 that GISS masked out all SST data north of 75N year round. Prior to that for 3 years they treated it as land when it was Ice covered and as ocean when the ice retreated.

    Also when you make a map on the GISS map maker (which uses the GISTEMP program) they have this little note:

    Note: Ocean data are not used over land nor within 100km of a reporting land station

    I’m not saying the way they do it is right, just that GISS considers the Artic Ocean to be land because it has Ice covering it for part of the year and they extrapolate over it in very weird ways. It is one of the reasons that Phil Jones considered GISS inferior to CRUTEM3.

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  • #
    Siliggy

    Quentin Wallace:
    July 17th, 2010 at 6:48 am
    Hello again, I am new to this site and I am trying to follow the arguments. Is it possible for the following contributors to provide links that explain your statements ?

    Quentin go back to papertigers post and move your mouse over the line:
    “And any other time someone wanted to take a closer look at what they were doing.”
    The links are all there! Very well documented.

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  • #

    Hi Boballab

    – But from 1985 to 2007 (when GISS go from 40% to almost 70% land) the Arctic coverage is rather identical.
    Thanks for “testing” things, its appreciated!

    K.R. Frank

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  • #
    Bulldust

    O/T but… this is what we have to look forward to given that the PM wants as many young voters to register as possible before the next election is called:

    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/7597367/first-time-voters-want-climate-action/

    Now the libs will pay the price for the next generation of greenwashed voters. Abbott can outgreen Labor if he positions himself as a party taking a direct approach to real environmental problems such as salinity, overfishing, real pollution (not carbon), etc. But I suspect Joolya may head him off by changing to this position herself and putting the ETS on the backburner. She has already put a de facto carbon tax in place with the MRRT in any case.

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    Ross

    Maybe this explains this “alarming” report

    “WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year.

    For the first six months of the year, 2010 has been warmer than the first half of 1998, the previous record holder, by 0.03 degree Fahrenheit, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the federal National Climatic Data Centre. …..”

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    Roy Hogue

    Jo,

    That’s wonderful news that there’s so much more land up here. Now we can relieve all the overcrowding.

    Oops, maybe I was daydreaming. Didn’t you mention GISS?

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    Binny

    He’s a priest and a man of God, he wouldn’t molest a child…. He’s an esteemed scientist a man of higher learning he wouldn’t tamper with the data. Slowly but surely right around the world the blinkers are coming off. Just as the church initially tried to protect its priests, we are now at the stage where the universities are trying to protect their professors.

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    Quentin Wallace

    @ Siliggy Thanks I missed that

    10

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    AC

    Looks to me that when all your peers are fraudsters, in the end you get peer-reviewed fraud.

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    AC

    Question. Does the figure from Hansen and Lebedeff 1987 shown above extent to which GISS extends its land readings out into the oceans?

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    DB

    “WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year.”

    For comparison, if one looks at the mean US temperature for the first six months of the year (Jan-Jun) over the last two decades, the trend from 1990 through 2010 is -0.02°C per decade.

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html

    And looking at summer trends by decade:

    2000-2009 -0.66°F/decade
    1990-1999 0.97°F/decade
    1980-1989 0.21°F/decade
    1970-1979 -0.37°F/decade
    1960-1969 -0.77°F/decade
    1950-1959 1.24°F/decade

    So the decade with the lowest CO2 concentrations had the highest trend, and the decade with the highest CO2 cencentrations (half a century later) had a negative trend.

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  • #
    Brian H

    boballab;
    >:{
    There is no Artic. But lots of Arctic. ;p

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    Brian H

    DB;
    Since CO2 “shades” the Earth and prevents some IR from reaching the surface, it probably has a net cooling effect! 😀

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    Bulldust

    I can only say this… I am so glad I will miss almost the entire election campaign, because Joolya is determined to say “moving foward” fifty gazillion times every time someone puts a camera in her face. I notice she was also happy to say Tony was in “climate change denial.” So Joolya is stooping to “denier” terminology.

    Basically she has nothing new to offer over Rudd and it has become painfully apparent that the leadership change was pure political opportunism. Sadly I think the most likely election outcome is a closely balanced government with the Greens having the balance of power in the senate… this is probably the worst of all worlds…

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    AC

    Just to say explicitly what my garbled post said above was trying to ask.
    It looks to me like the Hansen and and Lebedeff 1987 graphic above actually shows where they find the extra 40% land mass. By eye, it looks like the uncoloured oceans are about 30% of the Northern Hemisphere.

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    co2isnotevil

    boballab,

    The Hansen Lebedeff paper claims that anomalies at a point correlate out to anomalies 1200 km away, not that absolute temperatures do. But even common anomolies would be true only if the points 1200 km apart were topographically similar. Land certainly exhibits more volatility than ocean. The measured slew rate of oceans relative to seasonal change is about 0.33 C per month, while that of land is about 2C per month.

    George

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    Mark

    Bulldust #37

    Don’t forget the dead voters mate, they can always be counted on in marginal seats. Libs are so dumb, they had a senate majority for three years but chickened out on Electoral Act reform.

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    Bob Malloy

    Bulldust: @ 48

    I can only wish Joolya as much luck in her upcoming campaign as Jubilation T Cornpone achieved in the following clip.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuWRh-lZicg

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    cohenite

    Zeke @ 15; I tried to post at Lucia’s in response to your comment there but was prevented; for convenience I’ll quote what you said:

    “Zeke (Comment#49140)
    July 16th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
    Quentin Wallace,

    If we take the GHCN land stations and use them to generate a Northern Hemispheric annual land anomaly, combine it with the HadISST/Reynolds ocean temps (the series used by GISTemp), we get a result slightly below GISTemp but almost identical to the NCDC Northern Hemispheric land/ocean anomaly.

    Given that GISTemp sans interpolation (e.g. run with the Hadley area) is nearly the same as the NCDC series, its safe to assume that most of the difference that shows up in this graph is due to the use of interpolation by GISTemp, not some facile mistake of using the wrong land/ocean ratio.”

    Interpolation assumes a spatial homogeneity which is the issue here, as it was in such papers as Steig’s Antarctic paper which found warming based on extrapolation mainly from WAP and coastal sites. The difficulty I have with your point of using NCDC as a ‘control’ to validate GISS is that NCDC has had its share of problems as well and may only be similar because they use the same ‘method’ as GISS.

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    Mark

    Douglas Keenan’s opening address to the Guardian panel:
    http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/b1007141.pdf

    Pretty straight shooter by the look of it!

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    Waylander

    Excellent work Mr Lanser , finding new ways to further invalidate the CAGW hypothesis is getting harder and harder as there is less and less of it left intact to hit , a bit like trying to poke more holes in a string bag* to prove it doesn`t hold water.

    *( Though a warmist would say ,”Look , the strings are damp , See ! it does hold water”)

    p.s. (Brian H @ 22 , thanks for the link , excellent parody of a warmist`s website )

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    Eddie Logan

    As someone who has been to the Arctic and also spent over a year in the Antarctic I should like to submit that “WHITEOUTGATE” would be most appropriate to this GISS temperature gridding rubbish.
    It would also lend itself to the triple ‘whitewashes’ over the CRU fiasco.

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    janama

    Bob Malloy:
    July 17th, 2010 at 2:00 pm

    thanks for that link – 🙂

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  • #

    Not only are humans adding to the Co2 in the atmosphere they are changing the amount of land area in the northern hemisphere!OMFG! It’s worse than we thought!

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    pattoh

    Now I know what I’ll be able to buy when I cash in all my carbon credits …an NH holiday home

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    Waylander

    That dastardly CO2 molecule , it causes cooling and warming at the same time !

    From NASA

    A PUZZLING COLLAPSE OF EARTH`S UPPER ATMOSPHERE
    “When carbon dioxide gets into the thermosphere, it acts as a coolant, shedding heat via infrared radiation. It is widely-known that CO2 levels have been increasing in Earth’s atmosphere. Extra CO2 in the thermosphere could have magnified the cooling action of solar minimum. ”

    Read the whole article at:-
    http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/

    I would like to think that this is “further understanding of the mechanisms” type of science as opposed to the “Covering our arses in case it all goes pearshaped ” variety .

    The sad thing for me is that I even consider the second option when new research comes to light. You can blame CAGW political and envirocultist agenda driven pseudo-science for that .

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    Ken Stewart of kenskingdom appears to have completed his look at all Australian States temperature adjustments to raw data by BOM with interesting results:

    (Ken Stewart, July 2010 The last State to look at is Australia’s first State, New South Wales. NSW is the oldest, most populous, and richest in the Commonwealth.}

    A great effort, Ken

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    Zeke: Do you have the ability to mask the LST data on the GISTEMP combined product (1200km radius smoothing) so that the GISS-adjusted SST data can be compared to the source SST data? GISS extends land surface data out over the oceans, but it seems to have little effect at mid latitudes (45S-45N). I’ve done some spot checking using the KNMI Climate Explorer, but it doesn’t allow me to mask the land data so that I can compare the GISS-adjusted SST data and the source SST data closer to shore. I suspect the reason for the apparent change in the ratio of LST to SST in the GISTEMP data shown in this post results at high latitudes in areas where GISS deletes SST data and replaces it with LST. I discussed the deletion of SST data at high latitudes here:
    http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html

    Regards

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    Jo and Frank: GISS extends Land Surface Temperature out over the oceans with their 1200km smoothing, so the apparent ratio of land surface and sea surface data has been altered. And as Brego noted above, GISS also deletes SST data and replaces it with LST in the Arctic and Southern Oceans:
    http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html

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    Otter

    I am reminded of the ‘donut’ theory of the shape of the Earth…..

    But: Where’s our resident warmists? Can they find NO way to spin / obfuscate / twist / avoid this subject, also?

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    Hi bob!

    Thanks for comments!
    You know, the 1200 km zone is applied for all years and thus must not be a reason. We have a gradually increaing land % to justify the GISS graphs, and therefore a constant method of 1200 km zone is not “it” 🙂

    Everybody: I have just made the math and graphs fot this issue globally and not only for NH. Result: its WORSE globally than on NH. Globally by simply mixing land and SST GISS has added around 0,18K in heat trend over the 20´ieth century. Globally GISS end at 66% land use in 2007, but in the 1930´ies they only use 30-40% land. Amazing!!! Some may not agree, but i think this is something you will hear a lot about, mark my word.

    K.R. Frank Lansner

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    Frank: You replied, “You know, the 1200 km zone is applied for all years and thus must not be a reason. We have a gradually increaing land % to justify the GISS graphs, and therefore a constant method of 1200 km zone is not ‘it’.”

    The difference between LST and SST anomalies increases as global temperature rises, Frank.

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    Hi Bob! I think you mis understand me: The case is NOT that we have a large fraction for land (e.g. 70% of 1200km etc.) and then this is more and more visible because the LST-SST difference is bigger and bigger. IF this where the case you where right.

    But the thing is, around 1985 GISS use down to 40% land fraction, and then in 2007 the fraction is around 65-70%. This would in your example correspond to a perhaps 300 km zone in 1985 and then a 1200 km zone in 2007.

    So we are dealing with something else than just a permanent 1200 km zone or whatever. When changing the zonesize or land% from 1985, then a trend of 0,134 K heat is introduced in the GISS NH LST+SST curve. And for the GISS global total curve, the change of land fraction over time adds 0,145 K to their heat trend.

    K.R. Frank Lansner

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    papertiger

    When Bob Tisdale pops in he gets an auto generated 😎 avatar.

    That just strikes me as humorous for some reason.

    It’s fitting too.

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    Heres the extra-land-issue for GISS GLOBAL:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/GISSglobal/fig1b.jpg

    Notice:
    – GISS LST+SST equals the used SST graphs approx 1900-1920. This means that land is weigted around ZERO % to begin with. around 1920-30 they use 30% land.

    And then from 1980 – 2007 they go from around 45% land fraction to 66% land fraction – globally. This does add heat to their trend.

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    DirkH

    Seems like Hansen’s magical science has given birth to a meta-science: Understanding what he does.

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    Bulldust

    I just wonder how anyone in their right mind can assume that temperatures are meaningful more than a few kms from the place at which they are measured. Making the gross assumption that Perth’s stations, which are all within a 50-100km radius of each other, are reasonably well sited, and looking at this morning’s temperatures:

    http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/observations/perth.shtml

    We have fourteen stations reading temperatures from 4.8C at Pearce to 12.2C at Rottnest. The low temperatures for the day at the same stations were 1.6C and 11.0C (though Jandakot got down to 1.2C). To repeat, all these stations are within 100km (approx) of each other. What on earth would make anyone think that any of those stations could be used to approximate temperatures 1,200km away?

    I assume that CRU and GISS expect us to believe that anomolies next to the tarmac at Svalbaard Airport are similar to those on ice sheets out over the Arctic Ocean? I really don’t understand why any scientist would look at either of those data sets and claim they have any validity whatsoever. Hence any research based upon the data sets would have to be highly questionable.

    I am sure defenders of the surface temp sets would say that the large number of stations somehow improves the “robustness” of the sets. Sorry, but thousands of questionable readings are no better than hundreds of questionable readings. You might as well go observe a thousand spins of a roulette wheel at a casino in Vegas and attribute a “meaningful” pattern to the results.

    And these are the people that wish you to believe it is the hottest half year on record… it beggars belief that in this “enlightened age” that we are still listening to these soothsayers.

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    Waylander

    Bulldust @ 71

    In this , the hottest year ever , the Antarctic station Neumayer III has set the record for cold by dropping below the -50 C mark . -50.2 c on 15 July ,

    http://pgosselin.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/record-cold-set-in-antarctica/

    Neumayer III station is on the Ekstrom Ice shelf which is moving at the rate of 200m per year ( to find it on a map head due south from Madagascar `till you hit ice )

    They could upset their warming trend if they extrapolated 1200km out from that !

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    cohenite

    Hi Frank; I really appreciate your work; Zeke from Lucia’s has raised an issue which I explain at comment 53 above; that is, GISS is validated because their temp record based on their LST/SST ratio is similar to NCDC; I assume NCDC has a similar ratio though [but I don’t know for sure] so this would be just circular argument by Zeke. In addition what Zeke has graphically shown is the anomaly based trend for both GISS and NCDC; by increasing the warm part of the data base, the LST, and decreasing the cooler, the trend will automatically increase; you note this at comment 69. Do you have an opinion on the obstensible NCDC validation?

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    Frank: Disregard my earlier reply. That explains the divergence between GISS and the other global temperature products.

    Are you using the GISTEMP LST product with 1200km smoothing in this post, Frank? Here’s a map from a post I’m working on that shows the spatial coverage of the GISTEMP LST dataset.
    http://i26.tinypic.com/4ieop2.jpg
    The land surface data covers a signifcant portion of the oceans. However, in its combined product with 1200km radius smoothing, GISS masks the LST data over the oceans and uses only SST data there. If my assumption is right that you’re using the GISTEMP LST product with 1200km smoothing, Frank, in order to do what you’re doing, you first need to mask out the LST data where it extends out over the oceans before you do any comparisons.

    Regards

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    papertiger: You wrote, “When Bob Tisdale pops in he gets an auto generated avatar.

    “That just strikes me as humorous for some reason.

    “It’s fitting too.”

    Wish to explain why it’s fitting?

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    cohenite

    Bob, in your linked graph @ 74, the grey areas are the “combined product”?

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    Ben

    NASA FRAUDULENT DATA MANIPULATION…………..

    On the subject of surface stations, at http://data.giss.gov/gistemp/station_data one can click anywhere on a world map and bring up temperature graphs of the surface stations in that area used by NASA’s GISS to help calculate global mean temperature.

    For Tasmania it appears that up until 1993 there were 25 stations being used. At the end of 1992 most of those stations were dropped for data gathering purposes, leaving only the ones at Launceston and Hobart Airports for the next six years. This wiped out many rural areas, all our high stations and also those on the colder, more exposed West Coast.

    Two coastal stations appear to have been resurrected around 2008 – Eddystone Point on the warmer north-east tip of Tasmania and Cape Bruny on Bruny Island south of Hobart in the D’entrecasteaux Channel. They are probably now automated.

    I have no idea why so many stations were dropped all at once, but interestingly, in examining the charts I found that almost all had recorded a sharp drop of between 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Celsius in the four years from 1988 to 1992, which of course would have been a rather uncomfortable fact for those pushing the AGW theory. Without the colder areas and combined with the known UHI effect at airports, Tasmania would presumably have been contributing warmer mean temperatures to the global calculations after 1992.

    However, at the risk of being accused of “cherry-picking”, Launceston Airport may still be an inconvenient truth for the AGW lobby, particularly Tasmania’s “catastrophic man-made global warming” alarmists, Christine Milne, Bob Brown and the Greens. The trend line has been remarkably stable and refusing to record any local or global warming in that area. The first recorded annual mean temperature was 12.1 degrees in 1939 and 70 years later in 2009, 11.8 degrees. The 1939 mean temperature has only been exceeded five times in that 70 years and only twice with any significance – by 0.4 of a degree in 1962 and 0.6 in 1988.

    A brief look at other parts of Australia show that many stations were dropped after 1992.
    It would be interesting to see the results if other posters here checked the stations in their own areas. Any takers?
    =================
    I have also noticed that the NASA GISS website has 2 data sets for each station. One set is ‘after combining sources at the same location’ and the second set is ‘after homogeneity added’.
    The first data set seems to be close to the original raw data but the second data set is their adjustment to the first. In many cases, the second set has the earlier temps decreased so that the warming looks worse than the original data set.
    However, sometime in the past month or so, I noticed for many Australian stations the second data set has been changed to reflect the first set.
    Try this. De Bilt in Holland is the only station used for that country. Check the ‘adjustment’ from data set 1 to data set 2.
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1

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    Ben

    Errors in IPCC climate science Âť Blog Archive Âť NASA GISS data does not back BoM hottest decade claim

    http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=469

    2010 could be “hottest year on record” says James Hansen – Australian Climate Madness

    http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=3812

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    Marcus

    Thought for today………..

    DON’T LET JOOLYA FOOLYA IN 2010!!!!!!!!!!!

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    Arno Arrak

    Looking at these temperature curves I realize that important and useful data can be lost by using a running average. I have been using the “magic marker” system in analyzing satellite temperatures. They have monthly resolution and are a superposition of two independently oscillating temperature systems: a multi-year ENSO oscillation and a monthly scale cloudiness variable. Using a magic marker approximately as wide as the cloudiness variable brings out the entire ENSO wave train of alternating El Ninos and La Ninas.This can be hard to see without it and can be wiped out by averaging. I made use of it multiple timers in “What Warming?” and was able to isolate the super El Nino of 1998 as not belonging to the ENSO system. You might want to look at the book just for that although its real purpose is to demolish that AGW.

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    janama

    Yes Ben – Casino Airport has a record going back to 1908 and shows a flat trend – so naturally it has been dropped.

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    janama

    I Love this article by Lawrence Solomon

    Lawrence Solomon July 17, 2010 – 4:12 pm

    The planet is experiencing “a summer of swelter,” states a front-page story in today’s Globe and Mail that provides us with anecdotes of the upshot, such as “more than 1000 Russians have drowned in the last month trying to escape record temperatures.” The Globe then speculates that one cause of the worldwide heat wave could be “the ever-shrinking size of the world’s ice caps.”

    First, the Russians. The Globe might have told us that they drown in droves every year, disproportionately in the summer months, and the Globe might also have told us why. “The majority of those drowned were drunk,” explains Vadim Seryogin, a department head at Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. Last year, when 3000 Russian drowned, one analysis of drowned Russian males found that 94% had been drunk.

    Perhaps the heat caused Russians to drink more – the data is not yet in – but most don’t need heat to drive them to drink. According to a study last year published in the British journal, the Lancet, alcohol was responsible for the deaths of about three quarters of all Russian men, and half of all Russian women, aged 15-54.

    Next, those “ever-shrinking” ice caps, of which this planet has two. The ice cap in the southern hemisphere, in the Antarctic, has been growing steadily since the 1970s, especially so this summer. The ice cap in the northern hemisphere, in contrast, did shrink temporarily over the last few months, after having expanded temporarily earlier in the year, and it is now expanding again. On balance, Planet Earth now has slightly more ice than usual, according to the most recent data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It shows the Arctic to have 1.379 million fewer million square kilometres of ice while the Antarctic has 1.404 more.

    “Ice reflects sun and when you melt it, the Earth absorbs more heat, which causes further melt back, which causes more warming,” Danny Harvey, a climate researcher at University of Toronto, told The Globe. “So when you lose ice, it means we’re in big trouble.”

    So, when we gain ice, as the Earth is now doing, does it mean we are we safe and sound? The Globe didn’t ask, and Harvey didn’t answer.

    Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/17/lawrence-solomon-the-globe-and-mail%e2%80%99s-overheated-rhetoric/#more-7123#ixzz0u0K9SwvG

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    co2isnotevil

    Arno,

    It’s unfortunate that warmists apply so much processing to their data. They miss a whole lot of context. The average global temperature varies by about 4C throughout the year which clearly shows that the climate responds relatively quickly to change. The hemispheric specific variability is even more dramatic and is up to 12C. There is little flux across the equator, so this is mostly the result of the Earth’s thermal mass heating and cooling which contradicts predictions that the Earth responds slowly to change.

    George

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  • #

    Hi Bob!

    I say that it “looks wrong” that GISS weights land with zero % in 1900-1920, 45% around 1980-85 and then 70% in 1995-2007. And it so happends that this adds heat to the GISS graph.

    On this basis, then you are correct, it would make sence to use time and energy to go further like you advise, i really totally agree with you on this (mask ocean area year fo year and other studies). I just made a 65-page long article comparing temperature graphs, and this GISS-Land% issue was just one of many (20?) very very odd thing I came accross that each should be investigated further. Therefore i bring the matter to attention, and im happy, very happy, to see that you and others do some qualified digging, that was my purpose.

    K.R. Frank

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    Gabe

    A comprehensive intelligence test has begun………….

    Will the media pass?

    Or will they again have egg all over their faces as they did when the previous Labor messiah turned out to be worse than hopeless?

    Have they learnt their lesson?

    Their glaring, glaring lesson?

    Will voting Australians pass?

    Will they defer to their own personal thoughts and instincts or just allow themselves to float on a sea of spin?

    Will Australia in 5 weeks be crowned with a graduation cap or a dunce’s cap?

    This is a huge test.

    A critical test.

    If Australia fails, in so many ways Australia will suffer, from loss of life to economic hardship.

    A droning fraud, filled with her own glory, is seeking to fulfill a long held ambition.

    A strutting Queen of Sheba.

    A true servant of his fellow man is seeking to lead us back to dry land.

    A man of humbleness.

    Do we want to be ruled by union bosses who have resorted to the girl trick as in N.S.W.?

    Grown men hiding behind a dress?

    Or do we want mature reality-orientated leadership?

    If only the best bloggers on this site were allowed to replace the media for one week. Australians would have a much clearer picture of the state of play than they now do.

    If only the Left filter was removed from the airwaves for one week –

    The smothering Left filter through which reality is distorted day in, day out, across our land.

    If only Tony Jones and others at Left inc. decided to conscientiously follow their terms of employment – balanced reporting.

    If only those who auditioned Mel and Kosh had chosen people who can giggle AND discern.

    Australians are truely on there own.

    The media will not serve them.

    Gillard will be spun into something she is not and will never be.

    Gillard, if elected, will try to show us all how incredible she is.

    Reality, if she is elected, will show her and all of us how incredible she is not.

    Where will Australia be when the penny finally drops –

    When her true colours are more visible, as are Rudd’s now?

    Where will Australia be?

    I hate to think.

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    Gabe

    Subject: New Book by Steve Milloy – Green Hell

    I would thoroughly recommend this as it explains how the Green Communists (the greens) are attempting to CONTROL every aspect of people’s lives!

    They MUST BE STOPPED before it is too late!

    It is indeed a FRIGHTENING PROSPECT!

    http://www.amazon.com/Green-Hell-Environmentalists-Plan-Control/product-reviews/1596985852/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

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    cohenite:
    Thankyou very much, and i will look into the GHCN data you mention irst thing a have a little moment 🙂

    K.R. Frank

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    In general to the idea that the GISS ocean coverage might explain things:

    This is “intensely” wrong 🙂

    The GISS ocean coverage is the ocean that is covered from the land stations, the blue area, here the extend of GISS ocean area 1987:

    If 40-45% land use was correct in 1980-85, what would it take to then make the 70% landdata use in 1995 correct? It would take a MASSIVE extra ocean coverage from 1985 to 1995. The use of coastal stations from 1985 to 1995 obviously has hardly changed, so to try to explain the increased GISS land% with extra coastal is very optimistic indeed 🙂

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    Wops picture missing: GISS ocean “coverage” 1987:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig28.jpg

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  • #
    Timdot

    I’ve gotta post this…

    Apparently NASA are saying that CO2 cools now, at least in the upper atmoshpere. But, it’s amplifying the cooling that’s caused by the current solar minimum.

    “When carbon dioxide gets into the thermosphere, it acts as a coolant, shedding heat via infrared radiation. It is widely-known that CO2 levels have been increasing in Earth’s atmosphere. Extra CO2 in the thermosphere could have magnified the cooling action of solar minimum.

    “But the numbers don’t quite add up,” says Emmert. “Even when we take CO2 into account using our best understanding of how it operates as a coolant, we cannot fully explain the thermosphere’s collapse.”

    According to Emmert and colleagues, low solar EUV accounts for about 30% of the collapse. Extra CO2 accounts for at least another 10%. That leaves as much as 60% unaccounted for.”

    Let me guess. They still don’t quite know what’s going on?

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    Brian H

    This whole “average temperature” thing is very irritating! About 300lb of asphalt and 10lb of styrofoam will cover the same area. Take the “average” temperature of the two. It means nothing. Almost all the heat energy is in the asphalt. Transferring less than 5% of the asphalt’s energy to the styrofoam will reduce the asphalt’s temperature by 5% K and double the styrofoam’s. So the average has increased by (-5+100)/2 = 47.5%! With exactly the same energy in sum between them.

    The specific heat of land << that of the oceans. Averaging them is nonsense.

    [fixed] ED.

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    Brian H

    Corr: “cover”, not “cove”. >-8-(

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    Mark

    US DoE withholds funding to CRU.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/18/doe-funding-for-cru-placed-on-hold/#more-22167

    Wonder how long they’ll hold out?

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    papertiger

    Re: Bob Tisdale #75

    Because you’re cool 😎 like Fonzie dude!

    (I spelled out “cool”, never expecting it to turn into a smilie in the original [comment 68]. )

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    Frank and Jo: Is there a reason you’re perpetuating this when above, Frank, you accepted that the method you used to calculate the percentage of land to ocean was faulty? You wrote, “On this basis, then you are correct, it would make sence to use time and energy to go further like you advise, i really totally agree with you on this (mask ocean area year fo year and other studies).”

    Further to this end, you wrote, “I say that it ‘looks wrong’ that GISS weights land with zero % in 1900-1920, 45% around 1980-85 and then 70% in 1995-2007. And it so happends that this adds heat to the GISS graph.”

    And to illustrate the error in this, I’ll repost a reply I made to a blogger on the similar post at WUWT:

    climatepatrol says: “In summery, am I right that Gisstemp basically uses about HadiSST/Reynolds from 1900-1935, then as the globe starts to cool, it takes about 30% land data, thus it cools more until about 1959. Then after 1975, land portion goes up and up including UHI effects and polar warming (temperature above the Arctic Ocean is of course smeared over by coastal land temperature data) comes in throughout the two last decades? No polar and no UHI warming at GISS until 1935, but all of it since 1975 and Gisstemp keeps shooting up unlike the other data sets!!”

    No. The method Frank uses to determine the percentage of land to sea surface data is faulty. He has been informed of this. In order to use the methods he’s using, he would have to mask the land surface data where it extends out over the oceans. This should be clear in my rebuttal that Anthony posted immediately after this one:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/giss-land-and-sea-ratios-revisited/

    I created the following maps of GISTEMP combined land and sea surface temperature data (1200km radius smoothing) with the KNMI Climate Explorer to help illustrate this. And I used KNMI as a third party source of GISS data. Here’s a map of the GISTEMP data in 1915:
    http://i27.tinypic.com/20kpq1v.jpg

    Areas in white have no data. The only major areas with data missing are the Antarctic and Southern Oceans and a part of the Arctic, which GISS treats as land, and some of Africa and South America. So GISS is presenting land surface data for a significant portion of the global land mass, not 0%.

    And here’s a map for 1945:
    http://i26.tinypic.com/2e49f6e.jpg
    And one for 1975:
    http://i29.tinypic.com/2ym90fd.jpg

    The major difference between 1945 and 1975 is the addition of Antarctic data and that has no impact on global temperature since the linear trends of the GISTEMP data with and without the Antarctic and Southern Ocean are the same:
    http://i30.tinypic.com/11awlqb.jpg

    And one more map, 2005:
    http://i30.tinypic.com/yj5ue.jpg

    Can you see the significant changes in the percentage of land surface temperature data that you described above and that Frank Lansner presents in the post?

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    cohenite: @76. No. That is a land surface temperature map. The grey areas represent no data.

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    Mark

    Just what are they putting in UK water?

    http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/187749

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    cohenite

    “The grey areas represent no data.” Thanks Bob. And so these grey bits are the interpolated areas?

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    cohenite: You replied, “‘The grey areas represent no data.’ Thanks Bob. And so these grey bits are the interpolated areas?”

    Nope. The easiest way for me to illustrate the 1200km radius smoothing is to show the difference between the maps of GISTEMP land surface temperature with 250km and 1200km radius smoothing, using a .gif animation:
    http://i32.tinypic.com/2jal02c.jpg

    Note that the above maps are “Trends” or the changes in annual temperature anomalies from 1982 to 2009

    The majority of the interpolation takes place over land. They call it smoothing, and it has a similar effect to the smoothing of a noisy dataset with a running-mean filter on a time-series graph, because, as you can see, it dampens the highs and lows of the data with the 250km radius smoothing. But they also extend land surface temperature out over the oceans when illustrating their land surface temperatures. This is a carry-over from the original paper when Hansen et al attempted to reproduce global temperatures without SST data. You’ll note that there are lots of data over the oceans with the 1200km radius smoothing, in places where the Hadley Centre and NCDC don’t have any land surface data. Some of those are islands and some are “Ship Stations”. In my recent post at WUWT, a few bloggers identified those ship points and you can find those using the word find feature of your browser here, searching for the word ship:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/giss-land-and-sea-ratios-revisited/

    I still don’t know if GISS is using NMAT or SST from the Ship Stations, but since their coverage is so small in the combined product, it’s really not worth chasing it down.

    I say that because, when GISS then introduces SST data for the combined product, they no longer extend the land surface data out over the oceans with their 1200km smoothing. Boballab’s note that Jo reproduces at the top of this post makes the same erroneous assumption that I made in my comments above, #62 and 63. It’s an easy mistake to make when looking at a gif animation comparison of SST and the GISTEMP combined product with 1200km radius smoothing. There are minor differences over the oceans. I’ve circled an area in the North Atlantic in the following as an example and there are others. But the difference is not caused by GISS extending land surface data out over the oceans; it’s caused by surface stations on islands and those “Ship Stations” noted earlier.
    http://i29.tinypic.com/2i0vhif.jpg

    Regards

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    Robin Guenier

    Jo – sorry to nit pick but your Update 2 heading includes a total misuse of the useful phrase “beg the question”. Correctly used, it describes a logical fallacy where an assertion is assumed to be true without evidence other than the assertion itself. It is therefore a misuse, as in your case, to use it as if it meant “to raise the question”.

    An example of begging the question would be to say, “We know the IPCC’s view on climate change must be correct because its conclusions follow the science set out in Chapter 9 of WG1 of its 2007 report”.

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    Brian H

    Robin. Prezakly! And, btw, have you stopped beating your wife yet? 😉

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    Bob Tisdale:

    You write: “The method Frank uses to determine the percentage of land to sea surface data is faulty. He has been informed of this. In order to use the methods he’s using, he would have to mask the land surface data where it extends out over the oceans. ”

    You are entitled to your opinion.

    The official GISS LAND data is weighted around zero in 1900-20.
    This you see because the GISS Land+SST lies on top of the HADISST graph:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/GISSglobal/fig1b.jpg

    I havent seen any of your writing anywhere near explaining this. Weight zero means all ocean areas + all land areas from the GISS LST is hardly weighted at all. So when you just show the minor variance in giss LST ocean cover you are 10.000 miles from explaing things.

    Then i pointed out that in 1980 the GISS land weight was around 40% while in 1995 it was 73%.

    So in 15 years, the lad date use are allmost doubbled.
    So now, Bob, will you please show me the maps where GISS LST(land+ocean area) is alomost the doubble in 1995 than 1980?

    I havent seen anything just remotely explaining this grotesque increase of GISS LST (land0ocean) in any of your maps or writings.

    So please (!) come up with the actual explanations for the grotesk increase of GISS land before you conclude anything.

    K.R. Frank

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    To add to Bob’s critique, I took a look at what happens if you use a masked and non-zonally-weighted land record: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-gistemp-land-fraction/

    Looks like most of the criticism here is somewhat unfounded.

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    Grant

    Ratiogate

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    Frank Lansner # 104: You replied, “You are in title to your opinion.”

    Actually, Frank, you agreed with me in your comment # 85, when you replied, “On this basis, then you are correct, it would make sence to use time and energy to go further like you advise, i really totally agree with you on this (mask ocean area year fo year and other studies).”

    You replied, “The official GISS LAND data is weighted around zero in 1900-20.
    This you see because the GISS Land+SST lies on top of the HADISST graph:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/GISSglobal/fig1b.jpg”

    Frank, you can’t simply eyeball these things. Subtract the HADISST from the GISTEMP Data. The difference is the impact of the GISS Land Surface Temperature anomalies. I did it for you in my response to your reply to Steven Mosher. See:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/giss-land-and-sea-ratios-revisited/#comment-433545
    *****
    You wrote in that thread, “In the present case for example we have a GISS LST+SST that is the same as the SST (HADISST) 1900-1920.”

    And I replied, What’s the source of your data? A quick trip to the KNMI Climate Explorer shows that to be incorrect. There are significant differences between Global GISTEMP LST + SST (1200km radius smoothing) and Global HADISST from 1900 to 1920:
    http://i25.tinypic.com/2mi14bm.jpg
    And here’s the difference (GISTEMP MINUS HADISST):
    http://i25.tinypic.com/2rwrbpg.jpg
    ******
    You wrote, “I havent seen any of your writing anywhere near explaining this.”

    Actually, you stopped in and left a message at the post at WUWT that was a rebuttal to yours, which Anthony posted immediately after yours. Here’s a link to your comment on that thread:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/giss-land-and-sea-ratios-revisited/#comment-433362

    You wrote, “So now, Bob, will you please show me the maps where GISS LST(land+ocean area) is alomost the doubble in 1995 than 1980?”

    I can’t. Why? Because it hasn’t doubled. Only your erroneous calculations make you believe it has doubled. Here’s a gif animation of GISTEMP Combined Land And Sea Surface Temperature anomalies with 1200 km radius smoothing for January 1980 and January 1995. White represents areas with no data, and the only land surface area without data is the small area along the shore of Antarctica, south of the South Pacific.
    http://i31.tinypic.com/33zfo5f.jpg

    Other than that, the land surface area coverage is complete and it hasn’t changed.

    I’ve asked you for the method you use to calculate this growing difference in land surface data percentage, and as of now, I have not found your reply. So I’ll ask, are you assuming that the growing difference between Global Temperature Anomalies and Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies is caused by an increase in the amount of land data? If so, it’s not. Land surface temperature anomalies rise significantly faster than sea surface temperature anomalies during warming periods and cool faster than SST anomalies during cooling epochs. If you’re not making that assumption, how do you account for the naturally growing difference between land and sea surface temperature anomalies with your calculations?

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    Mark

    Frank, you probably realise you’re under attack at the Blackboard.

    http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-gistemp-land-fraction/#more-11620

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    John Brookes

    To quote a comment from the Blackboard, which seems to fix up any confusion:

    Nick Barnes (Comment#49280) July 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am

    What GISTEMP actually does is this:
    0. It uses a global grid with 80 boxes, each of which is divided into 100 cells. 8000 cells altogether. Each cell has equal area.
    1. From GHCN, USHCN, and a small amount of other data, it computes a land-based monthly anomaly series for every grid cell (steps 0-3).
    2. From Reynolds it computes an ocean-based monthly anomaly series for every grid cell (step 4).

    Then in step 5:

    3. For each grid cell, it combines these land-based and ocean-based series to produce a single monthly anomaly series.
    4. It combines these grid cell series into box series: each cell is weighted equally (because they have equal area). Each datum in a box series has an associated weight, according to how many cell data contributed to it (i.e. how many cell series had valid data for that month).
    5. It combines box series into zonal series, including a global series. This combination is weighted according to the weights calculated in part 4 above.

    Obviously the meat relating to your article is in part 3 above, which has some tricky parameterized code which turns out to have very simple behaviour because of the values of the parameters. For each grid cell, if there are fewer than 240 valid monthly data points in the ocean series, or if the nearest land station is less than 100km from the centre of the cell, then the land series is used. Otherwise the ocean series is used for that grid cell.

    The global land series is computed using the same weighting and combining code, and can be thought of as simply flagging the all the ocean series as missing data (and in ccc-gistemp this is exactly what we do).

    So all this discussion of 30% land weight or 70% land weight is based on a misconception: that the GISTEMP global combined series is calculated somehow from the global land series and the global ocean series. It is not.

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    Robin Guenier

    BrianH: you’re only asking that to divert attention from the fact that you’re so unattractive – obvious because you’re ugly.

    PS: Jo of all people should know better that to misuse the useful “beg the question” – an important weapon in the war against illogic.

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    MattB

    Mark in #108 – When you say “under attack at the Blackboard” I assume you really mean “shown the error of your ways at the Blackboard.”

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    MattB: Why the rethoric??

    Now explain howcome GISS LST (city/airport temps claimed to be including a huge part of ocean temps) is weigthed ZERO in 1900-20 whereas it is weigthed strongly in recent years?

    And yes, you can use ALL the logic from the crowd at the Blackboard.

    simple question but… not answered.

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    Robin: Jo of all people should know better that to misuse the useful “beg the question” – an important weapon in the war against illogic.

    Robin, thanks for reminding me of the anachronistic concatenation of words that lives on as formal official logic. What a shame the “names” of logical errors can’t be updated so that the phrases intuitively make sense. When we need more people to understand logic it’s unhelpful that newcomers have to learn an old code of rules and terminology.

    Assume that when I mentioned “begs, the, question,” I was using the words in the colloquial modern english sense, and referring to one point that obviously raises other question instead. This was not an article where I was discussing fallacies of reason.

    Jo, of all people, would actually rather do away with jargonistic phrases that take an A4 page to explain the meaning of. I realize that will make me unpopular with dedicated logicians, and I’m sorry about that.

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    Bob Malloy

    This is not on topic; Tempretures on NSW ski fields coldest in 39 years. Ohhhh the perils of a warming world.

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    Mark

    Yup! -20 deg. at Charlotte Pass.

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    Mark

    Yup! -20 deg. at Charlotte Pass.

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    Brian H

    Sorry, Jo; that people do not know and understand “anachronistic concatenations” of logical terms is merely to say they are uneducated. And if “reverse engineering” the figures from GISS to determine that land is being overweighted is not an exercise in logic, then what is it?

    I’m with Robin 100% on this one. “Colloquial” usages don’t cut no ice in discussing science, nohow. >8-(

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    Bob, Im at work and its ARGHHH! that i dont have the time to answer back to you and the verbal fistfighters at the Blackboard.

    But im amazed the these peoble dont seem to see a problem in the fact, that only SST constutes the GISS temperatures 1900-20.

    Was the Earth 100% ocean in 1900-20??

    No, so something is wrong, and i suggest we all together finds out what it is.

    K.R. Frank

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    cohenite

    I value Bob Tisdale’s contribution and Zeke seems to be a straight shooter but I’m having some trouble accepting that Frank’s thesis is [totally] wrong. Frank has argued that the proportion of land based data to compute the GISS GMST has increased over time so as artificially increase both SST and GMST [as I understand the point].

    Zeke says @105 link: “Rather, its an an approximation of global temperatures using only land stations.” What this means is that GISS interpolates from land measures over sea but weights these interpolated sea areas to account for land based factors such as UHI; this, I gather, is another way of saying what Bob does @ 97 that Frank “would have to mask the land surface data where it extends out over the oceans” because since this interpolation has already been weighted to account for the land effect it would amount to double counting not to mask the unweighted LST data which extends over the ocean in comparing that with the weighted interpolations.

    Why is such a procedure necessary? John Brookes @ 109 provides the answer; the Nick Barnes comment that John refers to is this:

    “A quick logging run of step5.py, with some slightly old data which I happened to have around, tells me this:

    In 75 grid cells, there is no ocean data and no land data, so no data is used.

    In 2529 grid cells, there is no ocean data, so land data is used.

    In 7 grid cells, there is ocean data for exactly 50 months, so land data is used. I don’t know why this is.

    In 469 grid cells, there is complete ocean data (1564 months) but there is a land station within 100km, so the land data is used.

    In 3 grid cells, there is very nearly complete ocean data (1560, 1562, 1563), and no nearby land station, so ocean data is used.

    In 4917 grid cells, there is complete ocean data and no nearby land station, so ocean data is used.

    A breakdown of the cells in which there is land data but no ocean data:

    864 cells have a land station within 100km.
    677 cells have a land station within 100-200km.
    541 cells have a land station within 200-400km.
    292 cells have a land station within 400-700km.
    108 cells have a land station within 700-1000km.
    57 cells have a land station within 1000-1200km.”

    John is correct in concluding that “So all this discussion of 30% land weight or 70% land weight is based on a misconception: that the GISTEMP global combined series is calculated somehow from the global land series and the global ocean series. It is not.”

    It may be true what GISSTEMP is not but exactly how GISSTEMP is calculated is neither clear or legitimate. Which probably explains this:

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2010/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/to:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/trend

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    Cohenite, this article was introduced:
    “Frank is looking for feedback and suggestions, and wondering if there could be any other explanation. So am I. ”

    It was an observation than [totally correctly] appeared wrong, that we needed intput on. Both Jo and I have sent the info to a number of reviewers to hear if I had done something wrong. This gave no result, so we published still openly asking for ideas to solve this. However, after many blog entries still no real fault was pinpointed.

    Some of the issues are now more nuanced, but remember, Even if there is a method that explains matters, a data series that “explains” matters, this is not in any way a guarantee that then everythings ok. For one thing, CRU and Hansen uses practically the same data input for land, but CRU does not share Hansens ideas of how to use these data… like me.
    Ill be back!

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    Maybe it would help if we rephrased things.

    It seems to me that all of us can only guess as to exactly how GISS calculates their lines. It’s interesting to see how they do it and get into those details and there’s no doubt they don’t do it the way Frank does it.

    But lets not lose sight of the point that ultimately, the GISS global line ought to track in between the Sea Surface result and the the land result, and it ought to be closer to the sea results.

    Frank, instead of saying “that only SST constitutes the GISS temperatures 1900-20” it might clarify things to say that GISS’s global line matches the sea surface temps for 1900-1920, which is not what anyone would expect.

    I like the detailed discussion, because one day we might figure out exactly why there is a discrepancy between GISS and the measurements but Franks original question still stands. There is a lot that needs explaining.

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    Robin Guenier

    Jo of all people: “anachronistic concatenation of words that lives on as formal official logic” is a bit harsh when, as Brian H notes, BTQ is a tool most educated people should understand – and many value. Moreover, “ad hominem” also doesn’t “intuitively make sense” – and takes a good half a page of A4 to explain. Nonetheless, it’s useful and used (not least by you).

    In any case, why get into this muddle when the perfectly serviceable “raises the question” does the job rather better? Why put a conceptual label of real value to logic and philosophy at risk when there’s nothing to be gained in so doing?

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    Frank Lansner: Let’s take a look at the data and graph upon which you are basing your calculations of percentages of GISTEMP land surface area.
    http://hidethedecline.eu/media/GISSglobal/fig1b.jpg

    I’ve plotted dozens of global temperature anomaly comparison graphs and I don’t recall a divergence of land surface temperatures that you’re showing in the early part of the 20th century. So I attempted to recreate your graph. Unfortunately, I couldn’t duplicate that divergence from 1900 to 1920 or so.

    I used GISTEMP combined (LST&SST) and GISTEMP LST data, both with 1200km radius smoothing. I used HADISST, not a combination of HADISST and Reynolds OI.v2 SST data as you had, since I was only interested in the early part of the data, and merging the two datasets adds another couple of steps. All data use 1951 to 1980 as base years for anomalies and are smoothed with a 60-month running-mean filter, centered on month 30. The data cover the entire term of the GISTEMP data, January 1880 to May 2010. And all of the data is from the same source, the KNMI Climate Explorer. Here’s my graph, using the same color coding as yours:
    http://i27.tinypic.com/33e3kth.jpg

    As you will note, the LST data does not diverge as greatly from the SST and combined data in the early 20th century. This could mean any number of things, but I did double-check the data I used in this graph. A question, what type of smoothing did you use, since it apparently wasn’t a centered 60-month running-mean filter? Otherwise, your data would not have extended for the full term.

    I also created a second graph of that data, but in this graph I plotted the difference between the SST data and the two GISTEMP datasets. Note how the two residual curves “overlap” during the base years of 1951 to 1980. This can also be seen in your graph above and my attempt to duplicate it. This means your analysis is skewed by your election to use the standard GISTEMP base years of 1951-1980.
    http://i28.tinypic.com/33kuhwl.jpg

    So what happens if we use different base years, 1900 to 2000 for example? The next graph is a comparison of GISTEMP Combined (LST&SST), GISTEMP LST, and HADISST, with the base years of 1900 to 2000. Note that there is better agreement during the extended base period. The divergence between the SST data and the two GISTEMP datasets after the mid-1990s is influenced by my not using Reynolds OI.v2 SST data. Reynolds OI.v2 SST anomalies have a higher trend than HADISST. (And my assumption is that GISS uses it because of availability and not the higher trend. Monthly updates for Reynolds OI.v2 are available early in the month, while HADISST updates lag by at least one month.)
    http://i30.tinypic.com/212bwxs.jpg

    And the last graph is the comparison of the differences between the HADISST and the two GISTEMP datasets, using 1900 to 2000 as base years for anomalies. This graph should better represent the relationships you are expecting from the data.
    http://i32.tinypic.com/2m3i7oj.jpg

    Look reasonable?

    In summary:

    1.Please check your data, especially the land surface data.

    2.Please check your smoothing to determine if it’s imposing a bias on the ends of your data, or simply use a standard centered x-month running-mean filter. So you lose 36 months of data on the ends–who cares?

    3.Please try base years that represent the entire term of the data you’re examining, and:

    4.From an earlier comment, you need to mask the land surface data.

    Regards

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    Hi Bob!

    Thankyou very much indeed for your constructive attemps to uncover the issues, its highly appreciated and i will try to answer and considder al your points.

    In the mean time I have tried to assume that the GISS LST+SST graph is indeed based on a correct mix of landarea vs. ocean area.
    Doing this allows us to retrieve and thus evaluate GISS pure land data:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/are-giss-pure-land-data-important-to-understand-the-differences-between-giss-data-and-other-datasets-187.php

    When retrieving such a “GISS pure land” data set, it becomes apparant that some known features of the GISS data set seems to originate from this “GISS pure land” dataset.

    A dime for your comments!

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    Frank Lansner: It’s known that GISS is not a 70/30 ratio of ocean to land. They delete much of the Arctic and Southern Ocean data (anywhere there’s seasonal ice) and extend land surface data out over the ocean and permanent sea ice. Refer to:
    http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html

    So based on that, it’s more of a 64/36 percent split. A quick look at any of the GISTEMP combined maps reveals that about 1% of the globe in recent years has no data, and that’s primarily over the ocean. And then, as Nick Barnes pointed out in his detailed description of GISS methods at Lucia’s, land surface data is extended about 100 miles from all land masses. Bottom line: the relationship is about 60/40, which was also confirmed in the thread at Lucia’s.

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    HI Bob!

    The 36/64 ratio: Yes, I´ll change to this ratio that Nick has come up with. I wrote “qualitatively” because I was focussing on the fact that GISS did a down adjustment of the El Nino top while they up adjusted the years 2002-2007. This enables GISS to say that there is no stagnation in temperatures, can you see my point?

    Your first question, the data i used: In the buttom of my article:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/giss-global-temperature-trend-is-warmed-up-by-weighting-land-data-still-more-186.php
    i wrote:

    Data sources:
    ***********
    GISS global Land + SST

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
    GISS land temp
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
    Both HADISST and Reynolds can be seen using:
    http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
    Last changed: 18th July, 2010 at 01:06:57

    ***************
    These are the numbers officially presented by NASA / GISS.

    Are these numnbers not to be used? (if so, why do NASA present them???)

    Bob, if you ever have the time i would be very very very greatful and happy if you could go through it.
    Not only too “find errors” but I would really be thrilled if you could also say your general opinion of the many topic and issues I raise:

    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php

    If you go through this I will send you a bottle of wine 🙂

    You see, its not all reviewers who has your sharp eye, and neither Joanne nor I have any wish to come up with a “non-sensation”!

    Finally: On “the Blackboard” I must say its a very destructive tone, and I mention this because that “mob”-like attitude in writings against Me, Anthony Watts, joanne etc. just has the effect that it takes all the motivation out of digging in to these things. But we really need people to dig into these things. If peoble are scared to be bullied from a mob-crowd like that, it will silence peoble.
    You personally has kept a good tone, though.

    K.R. Frank Lansner

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    Tel

    Jo – sorry to nit pick but your Update 2 heading includes a total misuse of the useful phrase “beg the question”. Correctly used, it describes a logical fallacy where an assertion is assumed to be true without evidence other than the assertion itself. It is therefore a misuse, as in your case, to use it as if it meant “to raise the question”.

    I believe that to use “beg the question” in a way that implies an unsupported assumption and nothing else is a pure Americanism, the rest of the world expects the word “question” to imply the existence of some actual question or other.

    For what it’s worth, if you want formal logic you should say “petitio principii” which means “I demand to know the basis”. To the extent that “begs the question” means the same thing, the question being asked (either explicitly or implicitly) is an explanation as to how some particular factoid was produced (where it came from, what is the origin and methodology, etc). This is indeed the question that Jo is asking above, so I put it that she is using the term in exactly the correct manner.

    An example of begging the question would be to say, “We know the IPCC’s view on climate change must be correct because its conclusions follow the science set out in Chapter 9 of WG1 of its 2007 report”.

    Although this is a logical fallacy, most people would call it “circular reasoning” and “petitio principii” would not apply to this type of fallacy.

    By the way, only Lawyers and Archeologists still practice the sort of formal logic that existed before George Boole. Sadly, no matter how good you logic might be, you still need a basis in some assumptions somewhere, thus “petitio principii” depends on the reasonableness of those assumptions (which cannot be determined by logic).

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    Tel

    Just out of interest, I stumbled onto this one here —

    http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290

    Which claims that “petitio principii” is itself a poor translation of Aristotle and that it is better to say, either “asking the original point” or “assuming the original point” because these are more faithful to the original Greek.

    Also they give OED examples of “beg the question” so it must have been more than just an Americanism at one stage. If you say, “begging the thing in question” it makes a lot more sense as well.

    I can see why people avoid this phrase…

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    Dear Bob.
    regardng your article:
    http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/07/land-surface-temperature-contribution.html

    I offered you a bottle of wine if you would go through my new article:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php

    If you had done this, you would certainly not have written as you do.

    One more time. Please look at PART 2 of my article, chapter 3.4.
    This is where I explain that GISS inlcudes ocean in their station data series, and where I show a graphic of the ocean included.

    So if anyone is aware of this, its me. The fact that you and others keep writing that you think im not aware of ocean data in GISS station “land” data might be my fault due to bad communication.

    I wrote in my article PART 4:

    “I am sure that the algorithm or specific method used by GISS to combine Land temperature and SST explains some of these apparently odd findings. But whatever the “algorithm” used by GISS is, can it be justified that GISS gradually weights the warm NH-Land graph more and more? And ends up with around 67% NH land fraction in 2007 although NH only has 40% land? Maybe, this algorithm or method deserves some attention?

    And in the WUWT article i write: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/tipping-point-at-giss-land-and-sea-out-of-balance/#more-22126

    I write:
    “In general GISS defends use of larger land fraction due to their 1200km zones around land stations reaching some Ocean areas. But this does obviously not explain a land fraction that appears to go from near zero to around 70% globally during the 20th century.

    Now, Your article, Bob:
    You focus on the similarities between CRU and GISS – i suppose to say that the resulting GISS is ok?
    The thing is, CRU and GISS ends up rather alike. But in CRU data i find much more direct land data adjustment than for GISS. On the contrary for GISS, the direct land data adjustments are not so big at all (to my surprice) but in stead the GISS warming trend thats similar to CRU comes when combining the SST and “land”.

    SOmething thats messy in al this is, that you seem to trust that CRU land is not ocean while GISS is… Yes yes, GISS has ship and island data included, but a BIG part of the GISS ocean area in their “land” data is obviousy from coastal stations. These stations are exactly the same as for CRU. So its nonsense to say “CRU is just land data”.
    Just becasue CRU says that their coastal stations are land while GISS (the same) coastal stations covers huge ocean areas, you cant just treat the same data as if completely different.

    I have raised some serious problems in data, and I know you disagree strongly, but i have not seen conving arguments from you, its not bad will.

    K.R. Frank

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    […] Frank Lansner’s post Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere? at Jo Nova’s blog created a recent stir. Watts Up With That ran a similar post by Frank, Tipping […]

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    […] will surely win next year’s Nobel prize for discovering 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere.  The new continent is to be called […]

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    […] Frank Lansner’s post Did GISS discover 30% more land in the Northern Hemisphere? at Jo Nova’s blog created a recent stir. Watts Up With That ran a similar post by Frank, Tipping […]

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