A mess of adjustments in Australian capital cities — The inexplicable history of temperatures

Two out of three Australians live in our capital cities where the longest and best resourced temperature records would be found. These are the places where the weather reports matter to the most people on a daily basis — and where headlines about records and trends will be widely discussed.  But these are also the sites which have been affected by the growth of concrete and skyscrapers, and potentially have the largest urban heat island (UHI) effect, so might need the largest adjustments.

Bob Fernley-Jones has been going through the BOM records for six of Australia’s state capitals, looking at the original raw data (at least, as is recorded in the BOM’s climate data online, called CDO). Bob compares the new “corrected” dataset called ACORN for these locations — that’s the all new marvelous adjusted data. He finds many step changes that can’t be explained by known site moves or the UHI effect. Many step changes occur in either minima or maxima, but not in both at the same time, which is also odd. As we already know, the adjustments usually cool the past — especially the minima (see all the blue lines on graphs below that dip below zero) — which has the effect of increasing the warming trend of mean temperatures.

For some reason thermometers that read 4 degrees C on crisp mornings in Perth circa 1920 should have read 2C  (or  4F lower), which was only discovered decades later. Maybe there is a good reason for that, but despite the BOM’s keen interest in saving the Australian climate, they don’t explain why these kinds of large changes are necessary in physical terms or with historic documents (indeed they don’t even seem very interested in the oldest historic temperature records we have). Apparently the mysterious process of “homogenization” with other nearby stations (which may be hundreds of kilometers away) is enough. We skeptics think that thermometers are not brain surgery, and that the BOM ought to be able to explain these large changes in terms of site moves, changes, or documented events. And of course it should explain because it is a public organization.

The BOM acknowledges that these capital city sites are affected by the massive growth of concrete and cars, and say these sites are “not used in regional and national analyses”. However, these sites are potentially used to homogenize other sites. (Which raises the question: do those inexplicable historic cooling adjustments then infect other station records, which are used in state and national trends?) The capital city records are also the sources of a lot of news headlines (like the “hottest ever night”). The media stories never mention how much the headline depends on adjusting the original records.

We’ve previously discussed the mysteries of the Melbourne temperature record but spent little time detailing Perth, which has the largest adjustments of all the six capitals studied. Thanks to Bob Fernley-Jones for his dedication. Don’t miss his summary paragraphs.

Since 30-40% of the Australian warming trend is due to inexplicable adjustments, I maintain my position that the BOM needs to be independently audited (not by a group selected by them), and their processing replicated (from raw data to final product) with all reasons and explanations made public, which is clearly not happening.  —  Jo

 

Corrupted Australian Surface Temperature Records (Part 1)

 A tale of Six Cities       Guest post    Bob Fernley-Jones
The term “corrupted” is used in the technical sense: has the data become so damaged it has lost validity?

a) In choosing the six capital cities with long records, (and so excluding Brisbane, and Canberra), there was an expectation that these sites would have the best resources, and probably the most robust records out of the 112 ACORN stations.   However, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth are effectively six separate sites because of substantial relocations from within town centres.  (They need consideration WRT potentially different environments including; wind directional exposure, cold air entrapment, and UHI effect.    There was little or no site adjustment in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney.  The Melbourne (RO) site was appallingly bad for UHI etcetera and was finally closed in Jan/2015.   Sydney and Hobart sites are relatively open on grass, and it is specifically described in ACORN that there was no UHI effect in Sydney after 1910 and only a minor (vague) site adjustment in 1917.  There is no apparent justification for six subsequent step-changes.  See link below for site details).

b) There are many sharp step-changes that have no correlations in the ACORN Station History Catalogue.  There are also site changes that might arguably show step-changes but do not.  The mostly unaccountable random distributions are more chaotic in that they are different between minima and maxima.  However, there are tenuous arguments (e.g. Trewin et al) that a particular step change may be considered to only apply to either maxima or minima but not both, or, cause opposite effects between maxima and minima.  Whatever, it is unlikely that this is frequently validated.  There are also contradictions.  For instance a minor relocation at the Sydney Observatory in 1917 was claimed to reduce exposure that affected both maxima and minima, but a step-change is only seen in the maxima.

Summary points c, d, e and f continue below.

Notes on the graphs: These represent the size of the adjustments and are calculated as ACORN (new) – CDO (original). The blue lines are adjustments to minima, and the red lines adjustments to maxima. Lines running to the top or bottom just show points where data is missing. For all the details — see more expansive notes below.

Click to enlarge

Fig 1)  Adelaide…. Comments:  

Within the (blue) minima there are four step-changes prior to 1977, but they require careful inspection to see because of over-plotting by the (red) maxima.  But, during that same period the maxima only have two convincing step-changes versus four.  The ACORN site history gives three vaguely described site changes during that period but how the BoM could correctly determine their effect is unknown.  From 1977 when Kent Town replaced the original West Terrace site, there are three step-changes in the maxima towards ~2002, but no recorded site changes during that time.  Why the minima CDO are identical to ACORN back to 1977 but the maxima commonality only goes back to ~2002 is at least strange, (but by no means the most extreme case).  At Kent Town one of the step-changes embodies a notably different shape to the rest of the record.  That is to say, the “corrections” apply at different seasonal times.  Strange!
 

...

Click to enlarge

Fig 2)  Darwin…. Comments:

CDO is the same as ACORN way back to 1942 in the maxima, (after Japanese bombs permanently destroyed the original Post Office site), while the minima commonality goes back to ~1975.  (!)  There are three step-changes in the maxima versus none in the minima during those early ~32 years.  They have high displacements and atypical annual cycle shape.  Tree growth [progressive] at the Post Office is described in the ACORN site catalogue and those step-changes have no explanation.  Airport anomalies run 1942 to 1975.      Why is it that the equable tropical climate of Darwin has ACORN “corrections” over a range similar to that in Melbourne which is famous for far greater extremes even in one day.

 

...

Click to enlarge

Fig 3)  Hobart…. Comments:

Despite the site description below, Hobart station seems to be a relatively exposed elevated site at 51 m (167 feet) altitude.  It is arguably least effected by Urban Heat Island (UHI), within the periods of known anomalies.    It is irrational that for some 88 years prior to 2006 the average annual maxima have been raised uniformly by about 0.6 0C/1.10F, (by eye).  And, similarly in the minima going back from ~1966.  Again, there is great difference in duration of CDO common with ACORN!    Why should summer minima extremes be corrected to be almost 20C (3 ½ 0F) warmer for the first ~42 years despite it being an open site?  (photo with recent building above).

 

...

Click to enlarge

Fig 4)  Melbourne…. Comments:

The sharp step-rise in the minima between 1929 and 1963 is not explained in the station record and neither are the otherwise relatively uniform “corrections” prior to 1995.  Since this has been arguably a progressively warming city (UHI) site there should be no sharp and prolonged step-changes prior to the 1990’s except for any substantial sealed road widening at some stage, which might explain the 1929 step-up.  However, the maxima are unaffected, and the step-down in the minima in 1963 together with a smoothing of extremes thereafter is unaccountable.  It is irrational that past records are “corrected” upwards because UHI effect is the opposite.

The BoM admits to a discernible rise in minima with construction of tall buildings nearby in 1996/7 but they claim the “record summer highs” during that period were not influenced.  It is a little complicated in that those buildings also changed wind patterns. (E.g. the anemometer data were discontinued, replaced by that at the airport).   However, it is tenuous to suggest that those wind changes only affected minima, and not maxima.  Melbourne is known for heat with northerly winds, and cold with southerlies.  Those tall buildings would seem to hinder both northerlies and southerlies.  Additionally, they have, quite apart from their thermal mass, arguably high albedo resulting in middle day reflection onto the site and its closely surrounding paving etcetera.

Unfortunately, the anomaly record is bare during that complicated period. (CDO same as ACORN).

...

Click to enlarge

Fig 5)  Perth…. Comments:

The many differing step-changes in minima and maxima have no correlations with the ACORN station history, (not that the history is easy to follow, see link below).  In testing three ambiguous possibilities in change-over dates in the long overlap from the Regional Office to the Airport, only one at 1963 did not result in obviously corrupted data.  CDO and ACORN are common from 2014 back to adoption of an AWS in ~1996.

Perth has by far the greatest “corrections” prior to 1964 with an overall range of about 70C (12 ½ 0F) by eye, and an annual average range of about 2 ½ 0C (4 ½ 0F).  Compare Melbourne above!

There is an area of interest highlighted which in expanded view reveals monthly step-changes in the daily data and several concerns.  Careful study shows varying monthly step-changes throughout the Perth record.

,...

Click to enlarge

 

Fig 6)  Sydney…. Comments:

Between 1910 and ~1963 there are no step changes in the minima but four in the maxima.  Prior to 1917 the site was in a “more exposed” position that is claimed had originally ‘lower maximum and higher minimum temperatures’.  However, that is only evidenced with the maxima step-change at 1917, not in the minima.  Surprisingly, it is also claimed that ‘any urban influence on the data was already fully developed by the time ACORN-SAT begins in 1910’.  Yet, despite no other site changes between 1917 and 1982, there are five step-changes in the maxima.

Summary — more mysterious adjustments:

The main points a and b are summarized at the top, but there are many more questions raised:

c) It has been reported that ACORN “corrections” towards 1910 in the longer term rural records result in ever increasing cooling.  The opposite is mostly the case in five of the six capital cities, where ACORN increases the temperatures towards 1910!  However, to correct for UHI in the context of “carbon” = “global warming”, the temperatures at 1910 should be the baseline, and those towards 2014 should be REDUCED.  (In determining any REGIONAL TRENDS in “global warming”).

d) To elaborate more on c),

  • This note on the CDO Site Network Map (previously the HQ network) relates: Urban sites have some urban influence during part or all of their record, hence are excluded from the annual temperature analyses 
  • Ken Stewart advises:  Classified urban sites are not used in regional and national analyses.  (See BoM/CSIRO ‘Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research’ reports CTR049 and 050).
  • However Ken also says:  Melbourne RO is used as a comparison neighbor station for surrounding Acorn sites.  The same happens elsewhere- Mackay is adjusted using Townsville and for example Rockhampton and Snowtown use Adelaide.

e) It is questionable as to why in the maxima for Darwin, ACORN data are the same as CDO way back to 1942, (1975 in the minima).  Was “original CDO” changed to match ACORN, lost, or………?  In comparison, Hobart commonality in the maxima only goes back to 2007, (1966 in the minima)!  Why do they do it with such erratic preferences?

f) As discussed in ‘5) Perth’, it seems that the BoM develops a monthly step-algorithm for each step-change, with which the daily data are merged.  Oddly, here are two stations where they seem to have “forgotten” to merge the daily data.  I wonder what the algorithm might be that develops the monthly algorithms, given the illustrated wildly random shapes.

...

 

Methods, and notes on reading the graphs

This is a summary of part of a study involving some 50 Mb of data that was prompted by various controversies over the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) ‘homogenization’ of temperature records. The Bureau have made ‘corrections’ for nominal changes in site conditions over which criticisms have included that it has resulted in exaggeration of the reported warming trend, such as by excluding hotter data from before 1910; the starting point of their homogenisation.

However this is not about the methodology that the BoM has used in homogenization.  Instead it is a test for reasonableness in the resultant DATA after changes they made to their currently available “raw data”.  By raw is meant that recently retained under the BoM source; ‘Climate Data Online’ (CDO).

Still further controversy surrounds data earlier than the “raw data” used here.  However, it has been established alongside this summary that with all 24 locations researched so far having long records, that the homogenised data are undoubtedly based on the CDO “raw data” in those long records.  That said, many stations have short records and unfortunately much data in the shorter term have been made common between CDO and the homogenized ACORN- SAT (ACORN) files.

Nevertheless, any discovery of substantive corruption in that data is enough to say that the homogenization is unacceptable, regardless of what their methodology was or the “rawness” of the data used.

It is not possible to suggest what the BoM methodology should result in, because their processes have not been released to the public in sufficient detail.  However, it ought to be possible to validate if that data meets the required standards of reasonableness without knowing HOW they got there

In this part of the study, Six State and Northern territory capital cities are reviewed.

NOTES on the graphs:

The charts above visually illustrate anomalies in the BoM temperature records, by comparing downloads from two of their several data portals, namely; CDO and the homogenized ACORN files.

CDO daily data were subtracted from the ACORN version via digital processes and plotted in EXCEL 2010 spreadsheet software for 24 cities and remote rural sites, out of which six important sites are used here.  The anomalies are of great variety in their magnitude, shape and displacement.  (By displacement is meant the distance up or down of their centroids relative to the zero horizontal axis).  To assess comparative displacements, the vertical scale range is common in Figs 1 through 6.

These findings identify major problems with the BoM’s data processing methodology or skills (at least).

NOTES on reading the charts:

  • The graphs are unusual in format.  Please do not skip these notes.  The red plot lines are daily maxima and the blue are daily minima on a highly compressed scale spread over up to ~38,000 days.  Some blue data may be smothered by the red which is plotted secondly.  In all cases an annual cycle is clearly evident because of seasonality.
  • Those values that go up or down (in 0C) to the boundaries of the chart are the result of no data in either ACORN or CDO and thus are corrupted, (not anomalies in the sense as used here).  They are only of interest in indicating the completeness of the record.
  • Note that the horizontal zero axis origin is not at the base of the chart but towards the centre because of both positive and negative temperature anomalies.
  • In all cases, running back from 2014, ACORN is the same as CDO but for unexplained greatly varying periods.  Thus there are no anomalies (differences) in those periods, and only a red or blue line is seen atop the grey zero axis line.
  • Negative temperature anomalies (ACORN – CDO) that are biased towards 1910 mean that the homogenization has resulted in an increased warming trend. (Vice versa for positive anomalies)

BTW, the regimented cycling seen in the following plots is a partial validation of the anomaly methodology, which is further established elsewhere (Supplementary information).

Conclusions:

The great variety of inexplicable problems exposed in the anomaly plots means that the data do not pass the test for reasonableness.   It is currently not possible to analyse why this is so, but whatever, the data have gravely inadequate credibility.

References:

ACORN Station Catalogue. (Including history of sites involved…. Sometimes two entirely different locations)

Sortable list of ACORN-SAT stations with linked data

Climate Data Online (CDO starting page)

Acknowledgements:

Thank you especially to Joanne Nova and Anthony Cox, Chris Gillham, Phill, Warwick Hughes, Bill Johnston, Lance Pidgeon, Geoffrey Sherrington, Ken Stewart

 Disclosures:

I’m a retired mechanical engineer with no past or present funding for my subject research from anyone. (Or interests other than seeking proper scientific methodology.)

9.2 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

126 comments to A mess of adjustments in Australian capital cities — The inexplicable history of temperatures

  • #
    Mike Smith

    That charts illustrate rather powerfully our inability to accurately monitor temperature at a single and easily accessible site. The uncertainties are huge relative to the trends these people are seeking to divine.

    361

    • #

      A great point Mike. I would have thought (naive me) that in our capitals we would have had the ability to run two thermometers at once and compare the difference via overlap for a couple of years and simply splice those records into one continuous record.

      Though I grant that when trees gradually grow or buildings gradually build up, that makes it harder to correct because of the slow rise rather than quick step.

      241

      • #
        Hat Rack

        I have also thought that both the new and old locations should be monitored for a certain period after a change and then “simply splice those records into one continuous record”. Same thing for instrument change at an existing site. But what would a burnt out retired stonemason know?

        101

        • #

          Hat rack. My concern with that idea is that with no site change different screen condition can give different readings. If each old one is reading a bit high at the end of its life. Then each splice would introduce a false cooling of history.

          20

          • #
            Hat Rack

            Hello Siliggy. Man, have you had me thinking. In NSW all Public Weighbridges must, by law, be checked regularly for accuracy and re-calibrated where necessary. It used to be every 2 years but no idea what it is now. Subsequently, I have always assumed that, with all that is at stake, a similar system would apply world-wide to all official temperature measuring equipment.

            If such a system does exist, then I see no problem with a simple splice. But if it doesn’t exist, your observation is probably correct.

            Interesting. Is there an official checking system or not?

            40

      • #
        Radical Rodent

        I am still not sure why temperatures, historic or otherwise, have to be “adjusted”. Surely, a reading is a reading, and is as valid as any other reading. Should it be deemed necessary to replace a thermometer, its replacement is placed alongside for some time, for any differences to be noted. Should a station need to be moved, the new station thermometer is placed in the old station, alongside its thermometer for comparison over a few days, before being moved to the new site; readings are then taken from both sites for a few days, and any differences annotated. The readings are valid for that site, and might give an indication for any particular local weather. At the moment, it seems more like a children’s ward, where the temperatures of all the children are taken every day, and the results averaged, showing that all the children are getting worse, while ignoring the feverish one who is slipping into a hyperthermic coma. (Perhaps a poor analogy, so I hope someone comes up with something better.)

        271

        • #
          PeterPetrum

          Actually, Rattus rattus, that is a very good analogy. I am going to use it with my warmist friends, if I ever get the courage to broach the subject again!

          61

        • #
          Stupendus

          the observers of old will be turning in their graves. Obviously they were incompetent and blind and illiterate. Although I have seen some of those old journals, neat and precise the people doing the observations were obviously doing the job well, so why the need to constantly adjust the data? apart from making it match the current theory instead of reality.

          61

        • #
          Harry Twinotter

          Radical Rodent.

          There are several reasons to adjust temperature records, the objective is to remove non-climatic changes from the record. The stations were not really intended to track climate, they are primarily for weather.

          Some reasons I can think of:

          – a move of the Stevenson screen to a new location (site move)
          – changing the thermometers
          – new temperature measurement technology
          – time-of-observation (TOB) changes.

          20

          • #
            Radical Rodent

            Thank you, Harry Twinotter. If you read my comment more fully, you will note that I accepted the probability of site move and thermometer replacement, with a suggested process to account for it; they will also allow for new temperature technology. As for time-of-observation, why the change? Provided that they are at regular intervals (e.g. 0600 – 1200 – 1800 – 2400 ZT, LMT or GMT), there should not be need for change.

            00

            • #
              Harry Twinotter

              Radical Rodent.

              Time of observation can cause a large bias. Traditionally temps are measured once per day using a minimum maximum thermometer and then reset. This means warm or cold days are sometimes double-counted. If the time of observation has been changed say from morning to afternoon, or afternoon to morning, you can get a systematic warm or cool bias.

              00

      • #
        RB

        Adelaide has a short overlap between West Tce being closed and Kent Town being opened. Adelaide Airport is only 5km from the old West Tce site and was open at the time.

        This is just a quick look at the daily maximum temperatures for the three sites in 1978. The y axis is the difference from each site, Kent Town (KT), Airport (AP) and West Tce (WT), and the average of the three.

        Difference in Adelaide max temps.

        The data is smoothed with a 5 day moving average to see more clearly that rather than a constant difference between stations or just random daily differences, the time of year and weather patterns make a degree difference (C). For weeks, Adelaide Airport will be a degree cooler than WT and towards the end of the year its almost a degree warmer.

        Kent Town shows a seasonal variation possibly because of reflection of sunlight off buildings onto the station.

        These two stations are 2km between WT and KT and 6km between AP and WT on a plain with the AP halfway between WT and the beach.

        The uncertainty for the maximum temperature (and average) of the area represented by the station would have to be at least ±0.5°C. Homogenisation where adjustments smaller than this are made are just witchcraft.

        90

        • #
          Murgatroyd

          RB:
          There is a height above sea level factor as well. Minor, as West Terrace would only be 50M above the Airport.
          More important I would suggest is the openness to the SW winds. Adelaide is noted for the unidirectional nature of wind, about 70% from the SW (from memory). When it does blow, it is a cool change. The airport would be most open to its influence, followed by West Terrace. In fact, the West Terrace site was chosen because it was open to that breeze.

          50

          • #
            RB

            2m, 40m and 48 m are the heights of AP, WT and KT. I’m surprised that it is that much.

            Breezes would definitely make a difference to max temps and small changes in weather patterns could be the reason for a discontinuity rather than station shifts. Cool changes coming in earlier and wiping 3°C off on one day gives a drop of 0.1°C in the monthly average. My points pretty much that even if the station doesn’t shift, there is change due to local weather patterns rather than global climate or environment. How well does a single station represent the changes in the local area?

            I probably should have added trends to the above to make that point.

            50

      • #
        Allen Parsons

        Hi Jo,
        Long time reader, infrequent commenter or donor(sorry). Last summer in Perth we had a 44.2? degree C day and the West published the hourly readings the next day. I don’t have the numbers to hand but I recall there was a big(2.1?) degree difference between the hourly average and 24 hour “average”. If that is the case then there is hardly any point using the “average” ( was it Roy Spencer who said that the average of the max and min was a number- not a temperature?) Do you know if hourly temperatures are available on line?
        AP

        81

      • #
        Pat Frank

        Jo, it’s easy to show that splicing one thermometer record into another, after a side-by-side, only adjusts one measurement trend to match the average error of the other.

        The only valid way to do it is to use some high-quality sensor, necessarily aspirated, to field-calibrate your work-horse instruments. Then just include the error bars in the measurement record.

        No splicing. No adjustments. If there’s a step-change between instruments, just show it. Outliers are defined as 5-sigma; all others kept.

        00

    • #
      tom0mason

      Mike Smith,

      So true Mike also any persistent outlier (that is a actually a true indicator of the general direction climate is taking) is adjusted and homogenized out of existence.

      Adjusting and averaging away the regional variations as Bob Fernley-Jones great job here highlights, is what BOM (and most all other meteorological offices globally) is (are) doing. And by this process BOM is assuring everyone that it will actively and comprehensively attenuate any true climate signal lurking in the data.

      101

    • #

      It’s a hot, it’s a cold, it’s a ‘Gore’. It’s not poetry, but think about it. 🙂

      50

    • #
      drjohngalan

      I would like to re-inforce this point.

      Many years ago I was the head of a UKAS-accredited calibration laboratory. One of the measurements we did was temperature. Our best measurement uncertainty (95%), in the range 0 to 50C, was ±0.005C if the calibration was done in the laboratory. We claimed ±0.1C if the measurement was done in the field (albeit with well-stirred calibration baths and frequently verified reference devices).

      For the calibrations in the laboratory, the uncertainty budget comprised 11 separate items including, for example, calibration uncertainty and drift of the extremely delicate 25Ω quartz platinum resistance thermometers, the radial and axial non-uniformity of the very well-stirred calibration baths, uncertainties of the resistance bridge and standard resistors, etc. And all of this was done in a temperature-controlled room by very experienced technicians.

      Does anyone know where the uncertainty budgets are specified for the temperature measurements that contribute to “global temperature” figures? I think they would make interesting reading.

      250

      • #
        Manfred

        I have never seen Global Mean Temperature stated with SD or range.
        Hoping therefore for an ‘error’ budget would seem, well, a tad beyond hopeful?

        41

      • #
        • #
          drjohngalan

          Superb. Many thanks, Paul – I had not seen this before.

          This fits with my “gut” feel : ±1C as the (2-sigma) uncertainty at its very best.

          20

      • #
        Pat Frank

        drjohngalan, I’ve published on Pt resistance thermometer field calibrations, here (869.8 KB pdf).

        Systematic temperature measurement error is large and generally ignored.

        And that neglect has further unrecognized consequences. (1 MB pdf)

        10

        • #
          drjohngalan

          Many thanks, Pat

          I am sorry to say that I was not aware of your work. As the conclusions do not fit with the “consensus”, I guess they did not attract much MSM attention.

          Are you involved at all with the GWPF’s International Temperature Data Review Project? (http://www.tempdatareview.org). Even though their main thrust is data adjustments, it seems to me that your work would very relevant.

          00

          • #
            Pat Frank

            Thanks for your interest, John. I’m not associated with any group; just an independent worker motivated to rescue science from the noxious and corrosive villainy of the AGW crowd.

            I’ve most of the work done on a follow-up paper. The analysis will establish more strongly that no amount of adjustments will ever produce a useful 20th century air temperature data set.

            There has been a bit of notice. After 2010, the papers of John Kennedy of UKMet began to notice systematic measurement error. Prior to that time their papers, and those from the UEA, made zero mention of it. One suspects he’s backing into my position but without ever referencing my work.

            10

      • #
        Pat Frank

        Opps, I see that Paul Bamford has already posted a link. Thanks, Paul. 🙂

        00

  • #
    Manfred

    Thank you for your substantial work and this article Bob.

    In view of the position taken by The Royal Society who appear to have stated that ‘It will take another 50 years without warming, before we admit we were wrong’ (see below) and in spite of ‘adjustments’, I suppose the grandchildren of the current BOM could step up and offer clarification once 50 years has elapsed? Do you think we might get an ‘unadjustable’ position statement from the BOM on that now?

    “We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years?

    “Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.

    303

    • #
      Bob Fernley-Jones

      Manfred,
      I dunno, maybe this story is over inflated. The full Breitbart article gives that the RS was represented by two anonymous people of unknown title. Also, it appears that they were not asked the question what of their wisdom over various studies that suggest that it will get colder over the next few decades. (or what is the new climate change mechanism of heat vanishing immeasurably in the oceans only over the recent hiatus period?) or…….
      Neither do we know when they might fall off their perch and not be proven wrong
      Cheers, Bob_FJ

      70

      • #
        Manfred

        Agree BFJ. Citing an another website citing an MSM article is an unlikely route to accuracy. Still, it provides the opportunity for the interested to explore the moment.

        Alarmists peddle climfi for all its worth – from their models to their catastrophist babbling, writing and film.

        Can’t see any reason not to introduce a little judicious counterpoint now and then?

        50

  • #
    Ursus Augustus

    This whole ‘global’ temperature thing is a joke.

    Either you design and implement a global sensor system including the appropriate siting, spacing and local housing specifications for the express purpose. i.e like the Argo Buoy system or the satellites, or you don’t.

    If you don’t, you do not pretend that some sorted of fudged average of a bunch of thermometers which have all sorts of spatial, site shift, UHI, reading biases, accuracy uncertainties and other problems is a suitable substitute for anything other than some sort of indicative value.

    Here we are in a time when we use relativistic adjustments to satellite clocks to coordinate with earth stations in our GPS systems for example and we are using essentially hillbilly technology whose data is controlled by a technocratic clique as a basis to leverage the sort of world economic system policy change.

    This makes the Spanish Inquistion look completely rational and objective. We might as well hand over executive government to the ACTU or the BCA for that matter.

    Completely and utterly nuts. The utter lack of integrity of these global records should be attacked and lampooned. Look at longer term trends and comparative temperatures from robust tree ring/ice core/sediment records and the like then look at the more recent records using fit for purpose methods only.

    Lets face it, the ‘consensus’ on the long term records evidences the various maxima and minima quite clearly both locally and globally. The leave the Hockey Stick out in the cold. The rest is details.

    413

    • #
      TedM

      Ursus Augutus says:

      “This whole ‘global’ temperature thing is a joke.

      Either you design and implement a global sensor system including the appropriate siting, spacing and local housing specifications for the express purpose. i.e like the Argo Buoy system or the satellites, or you don’t.”

      I say “Correct”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Absolutely correct. Nobody would do what the BOM or NASA/Giss are doing, if they wanted to arrive at the truth.

      262

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        lies…damned lies…and statistics…..

        Damn the torpedos…full steam ahead….*boom*!!

        81

        • #
          Bruce J

          Or, to expand an old saying: Economists were put on this earth to make astrologers look good …. and statisticians were put on this earth to make economists look better!!

          10

    • #
      tom0mason

      Ursus Augustus,

      Also is the loud noise made about the fiddled figures from forecasting faithful, that according to the unelected UN is significant — figures of the order of tenths of a degree C over decades. Significant they say, get some perspective I say.

      What are these figures proffered to collate to global average temperature and portend to so much catastrophic climate anyway? Just two points —

      1. There is NO such thing as a global temperature.
      There are temperatures measured in some locality somewhere. These are the true temperature records. Unadjusted and true data records.
      Everything, and I mean everything else are figures. Not data. Not temperatures. They are just proxies if you like, mere derived figures — a statisticians delight for winnowing out patterns from the chaotic noise, and for others to play meaningless ‘what if’ games with.

      2. Who really cares if these fictional averaged figures rises a few tenth of a degree per 2 or 3 decades. How has it affected you? Is life worse or better than 20 or 30 years ago because of the climate. I know the what the honest answer is, and it is no. How has it affect the rest of the life on this planet? — Sorry, the scary message is lost in the noise of chaotic normalcy.
      My point is global climate is a meaningless, empty phrase. Climate is regional! Truly.
      If all of North America, Russia, and Europe and Antarctic Basin have naturally cooled over the last 20 years but other hotter area of the globe push up the average figure (like an ocean quite naturally overturning a vast amount of deep warm water to the surface). What does this tell us about global climate? Nothing! Why? Because real climate is not global but region specific.
      Just look at the proxy records for the last few hundred thousand years and see all those regional variations at any major climate event.

      What ever happens with these adjusted, mean, homogenized, averaged, figures is pointless. On the other hand the regional variation that slowly gets further away from the ordinary is (for me) what really matters. Each outlier variation may be the true indicator of the direction this planet’s climate could be taking. But hey, don’t worry nobody is looking for it.

      171

      • #
        Radical Rodent

        This is another concept that I do not understand: the more the readings the greater the accuracy of the average. Sorry, but my own understanding is that, if you take readings from 10,000 thermometers, each with an accuracy of +/-0.1°C, the average is accurate to within +/-0.1°C – NOT, as many seem to claim, accurate to within 0.00001°C!

        151

        • #
          bobl

          Not exactly, there is a difference between the accuracy and precision. The result is accurate to 0.1 degrees but the figure is precise to much greater than that, for example if just one thermometer out of 1000 was reading 5 degrees low, the impact on the result is 5/1000 th of a degree. This means that the difference between successive measurements using the same set of thermometers is very accurate, the actual temperature measured is not.

          The problem of course is that in the case of climate over 200 years the set of thermometers at the beginning are completely different to those at the end in location and technology – they are not even comparable in the mechanism by which the temperature is measured! The homogenisation is a poor attempt to account for that, frankly because of huge differences in response time and thermal inertia. I’d doubt it’s possible without completely modelling the differences, taking account of the actual temp, the rate of change at the time, wind, humidity, cloudiness and any number of other parameters.

          10

        • #
          Radical Rodent

          Okay, red-thumber, could you explain why you do not agree with me?

          00

      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Right on!
        cli·mate (klī′mĭt)
        n.
        1. The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
        2. A region of the earth having particular meteorological conditions: lives in a cold climate.
        3. A prevailing condition or set of attitudes in human affairs: a climate of unrest.

        When people speak of the mythological “climate change” what do they mean? How would one go about establishing “global wind” or “global precipitation”? How would one establish an “average” value for Vladivostok and Honolulu? Average wind? Average precipitation? average vegetation? Nonsense!

        The only meaningful definition of “climate change” can be the growth or shrinking of a particular climate classification (Koppen-Geiger).
        The other possibility is a change in regional vegetation, as in the Trewartha classification. Regions change, but not simultaneously.
        Granted, such changes do occur over a period of time. But what metric would establish a “global climate change”?
        The obvious answer is that “climate change’ is in reference to a temperature. But then, as you say, a metric known as “global temperature” is nonsense.
        “Climate change” is nonsense. In order to establish a change in a parameter, it is necessary to be able to measure it.
        It is no more logical than saying something like “global currency” has changed. How much? Where? When? How? Why?
        Specifically, the term “global warming” was nonsense because the metric used is impossible.
        The more ridiculous term “climate change” is obviously used to suggest that the temperature changed. Where? When? How much? Why?
        The climate of Tasmania is apparently cfb. (warm temperate, fully humid, warm summer) When is the last time that changed?

        11

        • #
          Duster

          Climate is a reified generalization about the weather experienced (or ideally measured) over time. Classically, “climate” referred to the environment one experienced over a lifetime living in a particular place as mediated by geography, biology and weather. Climate is not “real” like gravity. Weather, however, is. If the weather patterns change for a long enough period, that can affect things like plant community structure and soil formation processes, which in turn affects animal populations, arability, erosion, etc. In short, climate is dependent upon weather, not the opposite. Your common “climate scientist” has the cart before the horse.

          01

    • #
      gnome

      Or in layman’s terms, one adjusted coconut plus one adjusted apple does not equal two unadjusted oranges.

      190

    • #
      aussiepete

      I agree US.
      I can’t believe this whole homogenisation thing has the credibility it seems to have amongst both sides of the argument. It is absolute rot, tripe, an abomination and absurd.It is an insult to my intelligence. Dress it up with all sorts of hokus pokus as much as you like, in the end it all comes down the a valued judgement made by a human at some point. To demonstrate, i am in a football tipping competition and i always tip the the team i want to win, regardless of form etc. Needless to say i’m not doing well with this.

      172

  • #
    john robertson

    Well for years government has been a dumping ground for the useless and clueless, why do we now act surprised when their work quality is consistent with”Good enough for Government”?
    It is long past time to thin the ranks as we can no longer pay for this “help”.
    Everything in life and nature goes in cycles, we are at or near the top of the stupid cycle.
    Which seems to coincide with peak bureaucracy.

    283

  • #
    Ross

    Excellent work Bob.

    Add that to the recent post by Anthony on WUWT and these guys swanning off to Paris soon have major problems

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/14/despite-attempts-to-erase-it-globally-the-pause-still-exists-in-pristine-us-surface-temperature-data/

    160

  • #
    pat

    scorching new data!

    16 June: Guardian: John Abraham: The latest global temperature data are breaking records
    Today’s global temperature data keep 2015 as hottest year to date
    Just today, NASA released its global temperature data for the month of May 2015. It was a scorching 0.71°C (1.3°F) above the long-term average. It is also the hottest first five months of any year ever recorded. As we look at climate patterns over the next year or so, it is likely that this year will set a new all-time record. In fact, as of now, 2015 is a whopping 0.1°C (0.17°F) hotter than last year, which itself was the hottest year on record…
    Below, NASA’s annual temperatures are shown…
    I have added a star to show where 2015 is so far this year, simply off the chart…
    First, there has been a lot of discussion of the so-called ‘pause.’ As I have pointed out many times here and in my own research, there has been no pause at all…
    The recent warming skyrocket has put the contrarians in a bad position. In 2013, when contrarian Christopher Monckton repeated a claim that temperatures might decrease by 0.5°C in two years, I challenged him to a $1000 bet. He never took that bet, but we can see he would have lost handily if he had.
    More recently, contrarian Judith Curry was reported as warning about decades of cooling (or perhaps lack of warming) stretching out to the 2030s. We see that this prediction is not looking very likely. Other contrarians have made similar predictions and it makes one wonder how much evidence will have to pile up before they climb down…
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jun/15/the-latest-global-temperature-data-are-breaking-records

    16 June: Daily Mail: Richard Gray: Our scorched Earth in 2100: Nasa maps reveal how climate change will cause temperatures to soar
    Nasa has released 11 terabytes of data predicting temperature and rainfall
    It allows scientists to predict climate change for individual towns and cities
    A map released by Nasa shows large areas in July 2100 will exceed 45°C
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3125113/Earth-2100-Nasa-maps-reveal-world-need-adapt-rising-temperatures-caused-climate-change.html

    61

    • #
      Murgatroyd

      So there is a global temperature? Based on what? 80% unsuitable site in the USA (WUWT survey)?
      50% of figures from continental USA?
      Satellite data from 80% (if you’re lucky) which shows NO warming?

      The whole thing is garbage, we may as use pigeon entrails.

      As an after thought I point out that the IPCC (fifth report) and the Potsdam Institute in Germany have admitted that there has been a “pause” in the temperature rising. Also that Phil Jones of East Anglia University ( hardly unknown at the IPCC) admitted that the temperature rise since 1995 has been ‘statistically insignificant’.

      121

    • #

      Even if this years temp finally rises –
      temps have been rising for 400 years since the little ice age so it proves nothing
      The climate models did not forecast the pause / slowdown as thus prove they are all wrong
      There is nothing to show that Co2 caused the warming or that man had anything to do with it or hardly anything anyway depending on who you believe)
      and finally
      It was way warmer in the past – in fact recently the Roman Warm period and Medieval Optima were both warmer than today and life was GREAT
      So – even if it does get warmer and even if we caused some small part – it all GOOD news . More plant life , less people dying from cold .
      Google – “ports that are no longer at the coast” ( Cinque Ports , Temple of Artemis ) that proves sea levels were WAY higher in the past ( naturally because it was so much warmer ) and yet HERE WE ALL ARE , with coral and Polar bears

      31

  • #
    pat

    keep in mind the timing of the Papal Bull…er Encyclical!

    15 June: WaPo: Chris Mooney: How the climate debate keeps us from just letting science be science
    This is the latest installment in a weekly column on energy and the environment — “Planetary.” This column will try to draw together major trends in this sphere and provide analysis and perspective that extend beyond our daily reporting. We welcome ideas from readers about major topics I should write about …
    Recently , the climate world received stunning news. Top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists published adjustments to their temperature dataset that, in effect, took away what has long been the number one doubter argument — the notion that global warming has “paused” or slowed down over the past 15 years or so…
    But the “pause” wasn’t just touted by doubters — it was repeatedly studied, in paper after published paper, by scientists themselves, who were seeking to explain what seemed to be a major mystery…
    On the one hand, scientists are thrilled to publish papers about such topics, in areas where there’s true doubt as to what’s actually happening…
    But on the other hand — and as a recent paper on the exaggeration of the “pause” by University of Bristol psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky, Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes and a team of other scholars notes — skeptics and doubters often use uncertainty very differently. They seized on scientific statements about the “pause” and took them to mean something they really didn’t. For instance, even if there really had been a “pause,” it would never have meant that we shouldn’t worry about global warming — only that its rate was proceeding a little slower than anticipated, over a relatively short period of time…
    In any event, the era of the “pause” — not just its temperatures but its media visibility — may now be ending…
    If this keeps happening, it’s because so many people still have their political identities implicated in the climate issue. They need to argue about it. So they seize on anything they can, even esoterica like Antarctic sea ice.
    ***Someday, to be sure, this pattern will cease — ***just as soon as the issue is resolved on a political level and there’s less motivation to argue over it…
    But in the meantime, we should all contemplate why we can’t just take a deep breath and let mysteries be mysteries — even as the people actually capable of sorting them out, the researchers, get to work.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/06/15/how-the-climate-debate-keeps-us-from-just-letting-science-be-science/

    71

    • #
      diogenese2

      “just as soon as the issue is resolved at a political level and there is less motivation to argue over it”
      Brilliant comment , made my day. So there goes 30 years of scientific endeavour, discourse and debate, all that earnest blogging – why “Climate Etc” alone has 6 figures of comments –
      and the mods here haven’t time to draw breadth. It was a political and ideological issue the whole time – “science” was just a tool of persuasion.
      Some of us (especially here) have been saying this for some time, its nice for a warmist to confirm. Of course there are alternative views. His Holiness declares that it is a religious issue. Well I can sympathise with that perspective.

      60

  • #
    pat

    15 June: Carbon Brief: Sophie Yeo: In-depth: Is the 1.5C global warming goal politically possible?
    For the past five years, international climate change negotiations have been guided by the principle that the rise in global average temperatures should be limited to “below 2C above pre-industrial levels”.
    Is this goal adequate? Probably not, according to a report conducted by the UN and launched at the climate change negotiations in Bonn…
    It is these policymakers – not the scientists – who get the final say on whether the findings become the new basis for future political decisions, embedded in a new international climate deal set to be signed at the end of this year in Paris…
    In any case, two weeks of discussions ended in an outcome that most had hoped to avoid: just two short sentences acknowledging that a report had been written, and that countries would continue to discuss it when they meet again in Paris…
    The 2C temperature goal was the product of the UN’s 2010 climate conference in Cancun, Mexico.
    It is often painted as a scientific threshold, but the decision was, ultimately, a political one…
    The report recommends some adjustments to the 2C goal.
    But the adjustments it suggests are to the language used to describe the goal, rather than to lower the target to 1.5C.
    Instead of using the metaphor of a “guardrail” to describe the 2C, countries should instead see it as a “defence line”, the report says. Keeping with the military imagery, Andreas Fischlin, co-facilitator of the scientific review of the goal, describes it to Carbon Brief as follows:
    “2C is the really very last retreat that we defend at all costs, and the goal is actually to keep global warming as low as possible. That is somehow a new idea.”…
    The difference is subtle…
    A study published last month in Nature Climate Change modelled possible paths to a 1.5C limit. It concluded that it was still possible, but only just – and that all scenarios involved “overshooting” the emissions reductions target initially, before returning to it by 2100 through the use of negative emissions technologies…
    For a number of reasons, it seems unlikely that diplomats will agree to push down the 2C target at the Paris climate conference in December…
    China and India are concerned that tougher climate regulations could create an extra burden for poorer nations, which want to grow their emissions as they develop.
    Indian environment minister Prakash Javadekar articulated this in March when he warned: “The developed world which has occupied large carbon space today must vacate the space to accommodate developing and emerging economies.”…
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/06/in-depth-is-15c-politically-possible/

    WISHFUL THINKING ABOUT THE VERY FUTURE??

    16 June: CarbonBrief: Simon Evans: The Carbon Brief Interview: Dr Fatih Birol (chief economist, IEA, chairman of the World Economic Forum’s energy advisory board, who will become chief executive of the IEA in September)
    BIROL: So then, if we are serious to have agreement in Paris, we have to get all the countries on board. A big challenge here, of course, is to have the emerging countries on board. When we look at emerging countries, climate change is not their, perhaps, first priority – they have other concerns as well, such as energy security, such as the cost, and the access to energy. Today, 1.2bn people have no access to electricity, and in many countries, fossil fuels are the cheapest source of generating electricity, if there is no agreement worldwide to provide some support, aid, or something like that…
    CARBON BRIEF: Last week the G7 declaration said that those leaders wanted the global economy to decarbonise over the course of the century, which many at the time interpreted on newspaper frontpages as the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. How significant do you think that declaration was and what do you think it means for coal, oil and gas?
    (BIROL IGNORES THE COAL PART OF THE QUESTION)
    BIROL: I think we will definitely see that we will still need oil. We will still need gas. And because current – the transportation system is based on oil. 99% of cars we run today are oil-based, so-called internal combustion engines. So to go from one day from this level of dependency to something else would be definitely WISHFUL THINKING. But, if we put [the] right policies in place, building on the INDCs, and following our bridge scenario, and if we can get a good signal from Paris, we may well get signals for the investor to look for other options as an opportunity to make money in the future. Electric cars is one of them. But we need to bring the cost of batteries down, and this would require a signal. Because investors will never invest primarily because it is good for the world. They will invest only, or I should say mainly, because they will make profits…
    Therefore, we need to get a signal from Paris, that they may make money if they invest more in the new technologies coming, and therefore these are technologies which would reduce the role of fossil fuels in the VERY FUTURE. But tomorrow, to think that we would not need fossil fuels, may be rather again, WISHFUL THINKING…
    CARBON BRIEF: So campaigners like to talk about a 100% renewable energy future. Do you think that falls into the category of WISHFUL THINKING that you talked about.
    BIROL: No, it depends on which future, and when. If it is tomorrow, that’s WISHFUL THINKING. But if it’s in the VERY FUTURE, it is definitely feasible, and it is also something that I would like to see.
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/06/the-carbon-brief-interview-dr-fatih-birol/

    51

  • #
    el gordo

    The evidence continues to mount, yet no independent audit. We have been asking for years, yet without success.

    Dennis Jensen put his hand up last year, then just as quickly pulled it down again, so I don’t expect any political traction until hell freezes over.

    Good effort Bob, when they get around to a Royal Commission into the adjustments I expect your work will be acknowledged. Along with Joanne Nova and Anthony Cox, Chris Gillham, Phill, Warwick Hughes, Bill Johnston, Lance Pidgeon, Geoffrey Sherrington, Ken Stewart and Jennifer Marohasy.

    242

  • #
    Sonny

    Hi Jo,

    This undercover footage from inside the BOM provides a first look at the device used to make the temperature adjustments. Now we can really sizzle that old Slugworth.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wZFJAlycv5o

    110

  • #
    Leonard Lane

    I had tough time reading the graphs with the red and blue smudged together and the frequency so high that the graphs showed confusing, blurred data. Surely there is a better way to illustrate the data and the points you are trying to make. And why does the red line extend to current years but the blue line just stops in the first figure?
    Why the last graph that is easy to read? And why wasn’t this type of readable graph prepared for every station.
    I give up!

    20

    • #
      Bob Fernley-Jones

      Leonard,
      Thanks for describing your difficulty. Unfortunately the visualisations are unusually difficult to show. To see the shape of the annual cycles it is necessary to plot all of the data, which is only available as daily data from the BoM ACORN files. In order to see any changes over the length of the record since 1910, it can only be readily done by plotting ~38,000 points of data. This can only fit in a page width within the size of your monitor…. BTW, you did click the images to get a full screen view?

      Ideally, if you can use a larger monitor such as a TV screen and suitable cables/adaptors it shouldn’t be a problem. They look OK on my 15” laptop.

      The last pair of graphs are clearer because they show much different information of the underlying monthly cycle over only one year and instead of ~38,000 data points only twelve.
      stretched-out points.

      Cheers, Bob_FJ

      90

    • #
      TedM

      Good question

      20

  • #
    Rick Will

    I have looked at data from a number of remote temperature recording sites in Australia with a long history. They consistently show that now is no warmer than the late 1800s. This is an example:
    http://www.rickwill.bigpondhosting.com/Broken_Hill_Temp.pdf

    One outspoken Australian skeptic is in the news today:
    http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/06/17/03/38/ret-bill-likely-to-be-voted-on-by-senate

    120

  • #
    RoHa

    I trust my memory more than I trust those “records”.

    When I was a boy, summers were hotter, winters were colder, rain was wetter, and young people didn’t mumble the way they do now.

    And we had music worth listening to.

    251

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    >”Many step changes occur in either minima or maxima, but not in both at the same time, which is also odd.”

    Yes, odd. I first saw this in ACORN at the Rutherglen site move from the “ghost” site to the other side of the hill. I’m OK that the site move seems actual but not with the adjustment.

    There was a large adjustment to minima (I think it was) but not to maxima. How this is realistic is beyond me. I’m convinced this needs to be validated by an AWS installed near the previous ghost site.

    It’s time these adjustments derived from neighbour or remote sites are validated at the target site by actual measurements.

    I mean selected case studies of overlapping actual temperatures at statistically identified breakpoints to corroborate (or not) the statistical methodology.

    81

  • #
    Alan

    Haven’t had a chance to read the full article yet but looks intriguing. Got to the graph for Hobart and nearly choked. You stated that
    “Despite the site description below, Hobart station seems to be a relatively exposed elevated site at 51 m (167 feet) altitude”
    If you look at the Hobart site on Google Earth it’s at the very end of Ellerslie Rd (42 deg 53.393 147deg 19.657) you can see the site (even watered lawn?). I would consider this about as far from exposed as you can get. Surrounded on three sides by tall buildings and the fourth by a sealed road and housing and would be sheltered from Hobart’s prevailing winds
    Anyway keep up the good work and I had better get back to it

    61

    • #
      Bob Fernley-Jones

      Alan,
      My point was that although the BoM describes Hobart as an urban site it is relatively exposed when compared with particularly Melbourne. The tall buildings in the photo are late construction. That is, they were after the unaccountable 88-year step-change. Another thing is that urbanisation (UHI effect) is generally a progressive change, whereas for all the capitals, we do not see progressive changes

      111

    • #
      Robert O

      The Hobart site is on the hill, adjacent to Anglesea Barracks, and bounded by Davey St., Albuera St., Hampden Rd., and Sandy Bay Road. It is fairly open but with a lot of scattered buildings of the barracks ( mainly sandstone and built in the late 1800’s), sealed tarmac areas and some trees. Hobart doesn’t get particularly hot over the Summer months due to the daily sea breeze, and the temperature generally rarely exceeds 21-22 degrees (C). In fact it evens drops sometimes about 1 PM. when the sea breeze comes in from the SE. Rarely a northerly wind occurs and the temperatures will get to the high 30’s. The weather of Hobart is strongly influenced by both the sea and the adjacent Mt. Wellington (1270 m.), in Winter there is a lot of cold SW wind associated with the frontal systems.

      Good to see some objective commentry on “massaged” temperature data.

      61

  • #
    TedM

    Am I correct in assuming that the BOM has adjusted rural temps to conform to urban temps, rather than the opposite? Please someone tell me I’m wrong, or I’m about to lose trust in science totally.

    161

    • #
      Yonniestone

      You’d think it’d be the opposite, maybe our capital cities have such a massive footprint the UHI effects the entire country?

      What an exciting time we live in.

      80

  • #
    Another Ian

    Jo,

    Oh for that tips page – so sort of O/T


    peterj | June 17, 2015 1:19 AM | Reply

    I know this will shock many readers but somehow the sun could affect climate change and rising sea levels…….in millimeters.

    http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/carbon-week-the-sun-raises-the-seas

    97% of climate scientists employed by the IPCC have never heard of the sun since it is not factored into any computer models.”

    Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/06/reader-tips-3165.html#comments

    81

    • #
      Konrad

      This the core of the problem. Climastrologists don’t understand how the sun heats the oceans.

      They believe all watts are equal, but empirical experiment proves this false. The oceans are provably an extreme SW selective surface not a “near blackbody” as the pseudo scientist claim. The shorter the wavelength of a photon, the greater the heating effect on deep translucent liquid water. Climastrologists have dismissed solar variation of 0.1% for TSI without considering component SI. UV varies dramatically over and between solar cycles. Say hello to David’s “notch”!

      PS. Now I should just sit back and absorb the “red thumbs” from AGW believers and their quisling lukewarm supporters.

      PPS. There is no chance anyone will have the spine to stand up and actually post a challenge on radiative physics or computational fluid dynamics. Anyone got anything? No, thought not…

      PPPS. Sure I am a foul mouthed bastard. What of it? The only real question is “Is Konrad wrong?”. Ya gonna go with 18C or science? Choose.

      2316

      • #
        Richard C (NZ)

        >”They believe all watts are equal”

        Yes, they’re fooled by apparent, but ineffective, power.

        Worse, they’re not radiative heat specialists but they expect everyone to share their belief, albeit ignorant of the electromagnetic spectrum and unqualified in the specialty, because they’re climate scientists and “experts”.

        Me I’d rather defer to relevant specialists and expertise (e.g. see below).

        >”The shorter the wavelength of a photon, the greater the heating effect on deep translucent liquid water”

        Others to choose from but my favourite graph of the effective penetration of water by radiation comes from medical laser physics. Corroborated research without which there wouldn’t be successful safe laser surgery (Hale & Querry 1973):

        http://omlc.org/spectra/water/gif/hale73.gif

        The solar range of IR-A/B (DSR) is 0.75 – 3 µm (microns). Downwelling longwave IR-C (DLR) is 3 – 16 µm. Peak CO2 emission is at 10 µm wavelength.

        At 10 microns WL the effective DLR penetration of water is less than the thickness of human hair (100 µm say). How climate scientists believe this to have a heating effect is beyond me. It doesn’t of course, which explains why their models introduce too much heat to the ocean. Their models bypass the physics of the AO interface, instead they “impute” heat to the ocean by radiative forcing (RF) methodology i.e. Konrad’s “They believe all watts are equal” above so they erroneously treat DLR the same as DSR in terms of heating effect.

        And anyway the net OLR – DLR effect is OLR cooling. Even Trenberth et al’s Global Energy Flows diagram confirms this (as do in-situ studies e.g. Fairall et al 1976):

        http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200904/images/trenberth-fig1.gif

        396 – 333 = 63 W.m-2 cooling.

        This cooling effect can be used to make ice in the right conditions, see:

        Radiative cooling
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_cooling

        So much for GHGs heating the surface of the earth.

        Just as the oscillatory component of temperature (60 yr climate cycle, ocean oscillations, “natural variability” etc) has caught climate scientists with their pants down this century, the decelerating secular trend (Macias et al 2014) which corresponds to solar change plus planetary thermal lag will be next to catch them out sometime after about 2020.

        Examples of planetary thermal lag due to the oceanic heat sink or sun => ocean(+land) => atmosphere system:

        10 – 100 yrs, Trenberth (essay The Role Of The Oceans In Climate)

        14 +/- 6 yrs. Abdussamatov (2012). About 20 yrs for ocean alone.

        30 – 40 yrs, Zhao & Feng (2014). SSN – T over millennia in the Antarctic.

        The IPCC’s “all watts are equal” and AR5 Chapter 9 contra-solar case (Jones, Lockwood, and Stott 2012) will look sillier and sillier as the recession of the climate’s primary energy source, solar radiation, progresses.

        310

        • #
          Konrad

          ”so they erroneously treat DLR the same as DSR in terms of heating effect.”
          Richard, sorry for the delayed response. You are correct, this is the critical error in the “basic physics” of the “settled science”.

          You could run further empirical experiments, but the solid evidence you and I are correct is right here on this thread. 26 read thumbs but no radiative GHE believer actually offering any scientific counter argument 🙂

          20

  • #
    richard

    seems the WMO attach a big fat Zero to quality from Urban stations- page 4

    https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/Publications/gcos-34.pdf

    A little worrying as the little temp data that does come from Africa is mostly from Urban stations. This represents one fifth of the world’s land mass.

    Add on that 27% of the world’s temp stations are in Urban areas and large areas of the world are estimated.

    Add on the each area has it’s own micro climate-

    “If we compare the climate statistics for three locations in Devon, one upland and the other two coastal,
    namely Princetown, Plymouth and Teignmouth, each only 20 miles apart, you would think that the climate
    of these three locations would be very similar. However, looking at the statistics below, you can see that their
    climates are quite different.”

    and GISS estimate up to 1200 kilometres from a temp station and expect the climate to be the same and estimate the temps.

    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/n/9/Fact_sheet_No._14.pdf

    I call bulls… on every piece of temps data that spouts out of NOAA,GISS, BOM……..

    51

    • #
      richard

      WMO

      “These changes can also occur to weather stations that are still in rural locations and are often harder to detect. For instance, the growth of trees around a farmstead that maintains a weather station alters the local wind flow and temperature patterns, and so reduces extreme wind speeds and the incidence of frosts (where they occur). The trend in the observations reflects the changes in the microclimate of the farmstead while the general climate may not have changed”

      An admittance that the general climate may have not changed but the temps and surroudings have!

      30

      • #
        richard

        surroundings

        00

        • #
          TedM

          Unfortunately that doesn’t suit the narrative. For anyone with a backyard thermometer, try moving it around your back yard and see what temperature differentials you can find. When you get a frost, where is it heaviest? In the open, or under any trees or bushes where it has protection from so called back radiation. The warming (heat sink) effect from the tree or bushes has a much greater influence. It mightn’t fit the global warming narrative but it sure fits the facts.

          Funny how facts work like that.

          60

  • #
    PeterS

    Imagine if temperatures taken by nurses were homogenized in like manner. They’d be arrested for falsifying data.

    121

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Imagine if temperatures taken by nurses were homogenized in like manner. They’d be arrested for falsifying data.

    And yet that 98.6° F (37° C) standard human temperature against which your basic state of health gets judged was arrived at by just such a process — the average of a large number of subjects. Almost no one reads out at exactly 98.6. 😉

    80

    • #
      Yonniestone

      More likely your temperature would be higher if taken by a nurse, excluding the nurse Ratched factor of course….see yet another variable right there. 😉

      60

  • #
    Ruairi

    If the climate had warmed as predicted,
    In steady degrees as depicted,
    And by models agreed,
    Would warmists then need,
    To have all the past temps. contradicted?

    141

  • #
    lemiere jacques

    there is no reason to assume that we can define a temperature of “some air” close to the ground…first there is wind…
    it is messy…not equilibrated at all… sensitive to a lot of things..

    because we can not measure it,we measure something else, we don’t really know what it (well it is the temperature of thermometer of course) …but exactly in the same ..same height, same shelter … same environment…

    for sure it gives an information about temperature but changes of environment as well..we have no idea how much, and even in what way : cooling? warming?
    then a miracle happens..and we can, by averaging the messy data…detect a global anomaly from we don’t know exactly what.

    and of course we can not redo the all thing ..

    well since there are satellite weather balloons…it is more reliable…but there is still divergence..but becasue station and satelite don’t measure the same thing we don’t even know why they diverge.

    it is unbelievable that we discuss about that.

    52

  • #
    Mike Smith

    As many have pointed out in this thread, measuring temperature accurately is hard. Really, really hard. And that’s just for a single point.

    But climate scientists have fooled themselves into believing they can do it. Then they invented some totally artificial construct they called “global temperature” and persuaded themselves they could measure that too. And based on a very short term (and far from unprecedented) warming trend they concluded it was all driven by human produced CO2 and life itself was under threat of runaway warming. The science is settled they say.

    In reality, only the dogma is settled. We have barely scratched the surface of the science. We just have a popular hypothesis that, so far, has failed very single test that could be applied to it.

    It just makes me want to scream.

    122

  • #
    Dave in the states

    Such manipulations of the record, for the most part, are obviously done to reestablish their failed hypothesis’ in my opinion. First they had to get rid of the MWP and the LIA. But the biggest problem is the pause. Such manipulations smells bad. It’s rotten. Corruption of data is the right description.

    It is changing data to fit their models instead of constructing a model based on observed data. Am I wrong here?

    110

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal in Oz

      G’day Dave,
      No, you’re not wrong. But I think it’s worse than that. They have also maniipulated the control of scientific papers to stop publication of opposing views. And they’ve manipulated the message getting to the general public through normal news channels via their (false) claim that the science is settled.
      The good news, which may not be sufficient, is that that you’re not alone in your understanding.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      51

  • #
    Ian George

    ‘Apparently the mysterious process of “homogenization” with other nearby stations (which may be hundreds of kilometers away) is enough.’

    Here is an example of this homogenization which I came across when checking western NSW during the 1939 heatwave.
    According to the CDO, Bourke had 17 consecutive days of 40C during Jan, 1939. The average monthly max mean was 40.4C.
    I checked ACORN and found every temp over 30C had been reduced by anything up to 0.9C which reduced the max mean to 40.04C.
    So I thought I would check the other nearby stations as to why this temp record would have to be corrected.
    I found that the three neighbouring w/s (Cobar, Walgett and Tibooburra) had also been changed but adjusted upwards so that these three, which had cooler CDO max means than Bourke, were all now warmer in ACORN.
    It’s as if the person adjusting Bourke looked at the neighbouring stations and adjusted down and those doing the others looked at Bourke and adjusted upwards.
    Here are the Av monthly means, the CDO (Raw temp) and the ACORN adjustments for the four sites for Jan, 1939.

    Mean Raw Adj
    Bourke 36.3 40.4 40.04
    Tibooburra 36.2 40.1 40.08
    Walgett 35.4 39.15 40.16
    Cobar 35.0 40.1 40.19

    51

  • #
    Travis Casey

    Somebody needs to take a subset of these stations and do a full analysis and publish the results in a scientific journal. Make the BOM, or whoever, answer in the public arena!

    50

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    Many thanks Bob for taking the trouble to work through all this.

    It gives me a headache just looking at the mass of print and graph work.

    How can supposedly “real scientists” allow themselves to be put in a position of having to “reprocess” measurements in such a way that is obviously meant to create a new image of the past.

    Of course people want to keep their jobs and so go with the flow, money is important, but surely they must feel dirty when they go home and look themselves in the mirror.

    Sadly I believe that if all the wasted effort and money that has gone into the Global Warming scam had been properly directed we would be much further along the path to having viable solar, hydraulic and wind powered systems which match conventional power production costs.

    So much waste! So much Eco-religious drivel.

    KK

    102

  • #
    Gerard

    Why doesn’t the BMO publish unadjusted records alongside the adjusted ones so that what they have done is truly transparent?

    51

    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Gerard

      Unfortunately that solution is the only truly scientific method.

      To graph ALL data and then point to the differences in origin or detail circumstances which might cause distortion.

      The correct method is NOT to reprocess all data so that it is unrelated to the original story being extracted from the data.

      KK

      61

    • #
      Ian George

      KinkyKeith
      The BoM has done a comparison but for annual means only. It clearly shows how downward adjustments have been made to raw temps prior to 1965 and how there have been some upward adjustments made after 1994 (around the time AWS’s were rolled out).
      It shows quite large adjustments for 1914-1915 and in the early 50s.

      http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Adjustments

      Just scroll down to the anomaly graph. The BoM claim that they have not made any difference. I leave that for others o judge.

      31

  • #
    handjive

    05/06/2014. Huffpo:
    Climate change is no longer a distant threat, but a real and present danger in the United States, according to a government
    report issued Tuesday.

    One of the main takeaways, said David Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell University and a coauthor of the chapter on the Northeast, is that “you don’t want to look at the weather records of yesteryear to determine how to set up your infrastructure.”
    . . .
    Quite so.
    Not after they finished adjusting them.

    51

  • #
    handjive

    2011: Climate Change and the End of Australia

    “Australia is the canary in the coal mine,” says David Karoly, a top climate researcher at the University of Melbourne.

    “Sadly, it’s probably too late to save much of it,” says Joe Romm, a leading climate advocate who served as assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration.

    With nine degrees of warming, computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie.
    Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish.
    Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half, severely curtailing food production.
    (rollingstone)
    ~ ~ ~
    ABC, 18 June 2015:

    “Cod numbers are rising in the River Murray, more than a decade after the species was listed as threatened.
    She said the flooding back in 2010 had boosted the numbers of juvenile fish since, but recreational or commercial fishing remained a long way off.”

    ABC, 2 June, 2015:
    Platypus populations in Melbourne’s urban areas are showing signs of recovery, five years after drought wiped them from the map in many Victorian habitats.

    60

  • #
    Safetyguy66

    Senator Lambie while commenting on the RET has adopted some alarmist language. I still don’t like the idea of locking up people for being loopy, but at least its aimed at the right fruit loops.

    Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie is highly critical of most forms of renewable energy.

    “If you think you can stop the world’s climate from changing by making pensioner’s pay more for their energy, by building wind farms and by mandating renewable energy targets, then you are worse than deluded,” she said.

    “You are dangerously deluded and you should be locked up.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-18/glenn-lazarus-accuses-government-labor-of-dirty-ret-deal/6554764

    70

    • #

      Shitcan all Climate Buffoons using meteorology based on the religion of temperature!

      Hire some competent engineers like those at JPL and Lockheed. These folk have some background in aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. They would at least know where to start asking questions of: This rotating sphere with surface velocity up to 1000 MPH rotating in a self imposed compressible fluid atmosphere with the only motion constraint on that atmosphere a single gravitational force always in the direction of the center of that sphere!!
      Computational fluid dynamics has already studied this much!! They have Identified the air lift points and the likely angular location, with respect to the spin axis, of instabilities and likely vortexes all depending on Reynolds number and local viscosity of that atmosphere. All this has been done without the added complexities of vast temperature gradients formed by the uneven insolation.

      58

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Safetyguy66:

      Jacqui Lambie might be a fruit loop, but she can see through the renewable energy scam. On the other hand Glen Lazarus seems to be exhibiting brain damage from the rugby field.

      40

  • #
    ROM

    I think that I could lay money on there being some sort of incoherent step change in Australia’s temperatures within a year or so of the inevitable turn over of personnel from the older temperature keepers to when they are replaced by newer and possibly younger faces in weather and temperature recording and consequent and seemingly inevitability of a hard wired pathologically driven desire by so many climate scientists whether they are competent to do so or just plain incompetent to fiddle with and mess with and adjust the weather and climate data records in the oft times self serving belief that they are “improving” the data.

    It is inevitable that with new faces, systems and data adjustments and conclusions on what adjustments need to be made will all change when new and generally much younger and somewhat differently trained personnel are seconded to the temperature and weather analysis sections.

    Nowhere have I ever seen any attempts to take a look at the effect that possible / probable personnel changes and therefore the different attitudes and different methods of analysis could have had on the data with the obvious outcomes that constant adjustments to the data from a series of change overs in personnel.
    It is human nature for each individual and researchers in particular, to have their own personal ideas and fancies and hang ups, particularly if they have been elevated up the totem pole of bureaucratic importance, ideas on the face of it that might seem to be in agreement with the established practice but in reality differ subtly or significantly from the former established practices in manner in which data is to be adjusted or changed and interpreted.

    The personnel changes and the consequent changes in the manner and system of adjustments even if they are quite subtle will ensure that over time, the always changing methods and systems of adjustments from a whole series of researchers just leads to a tangled and unholy mess of highly corrupted data that even when they know it is completely wrong and completely corrupted data they are using to promote to the public , it is in the universal interests of the entire cabal of the relevant researchers to pass it all off as established science so as to not foul their own reputations and to have to admit to the public that they have been utterly incompetent at keeping the public record of historical weather and climate data in a truthful and honest manner.

    42

  • #
    pat

    “top-tier”, “prominent” “pure scientific excellence”, “not co-opted by the ***United Nations”:

    17 June: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Behind the Scenes With the Pope’s Secret Science Committee
    These are the top-tier researchers doing research for the Vatican
    Several dozen of the world’s most prominent scientists sprang from their seats and left the Vatican hall where they were holding a conference on the environment in May 2014… Among the horde was Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Since 2004, he has also been a member of a 400-year-old collective, one that operates as the pope’s eyes and ears on the natural world: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
    He had a message for Pope Francis…
    “The pope has his own experts, who are completely secular,” said Ramanathan. “Not all of them even believe in a god. They are there for pure scientific excellence, and they are not co-opted by any country. They’re not co-opted by the ***United Nations.”…
    More than a dozen faith leaders heard from one of the world’s top climate scientists, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, about how the earth went “from glacial chaos to climate paradise” during the last big climate transition 12,000 years ago, and what we may be in store for next…
    And they heard Jeffrey Sachs, prolific writer and Columbia University economist…
    Members of the academy don’t always get feedback from the pope or Vatican officials on their work…
    The pontiff never revealed his thoughts on a 2011 report documenting the melting Himalayan glaciers, which provide water to a billion people…
    They were compelled by the work of Sachs — who’s also director of the ***United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network — according to Martin Rees, a British astronomer and an academy member since 1990…
    Nigeria’s poor are asking far simpler questions than the pope and his scientific advisers about the changing world around them.
    “You begin to wonder,” he (Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria) said, voicing their perspective, “are the gods angry?” (THE END)
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-16/how-the-pope-got-religion-on-climate-change

    21

  • #
    pat

    The Weather Channel???

    The Weather Channel: The Voices of Climate 25
    WATCH all 25, includes:
    Thomas Friedman: The revolution fueled by climate change
    Henry Paulson: Doing Nothing is “Radical Risk Taking”
    Christine Todd Whitman: We Can Grow the Economy and Fight Climate Change
    General Charles H. Jacoby (ret.): The biggest national security threat you haven’t thought of
    Paul Polman: How CEO Tackles Unilever’s $300M Climate Change Challenge
    Heidi Cullen: This is what the perfect risk looks like
    Dr. John Holdren: W.H. Science Advisor’s Surprising View on Why Climate Matters
    Rear Adm. David Titley (ret.): The nation’s defense is at stake
    Brigadier Gen. Stephen Cheney, USMC (ret.): 70% of the world’s militaries are preparing for climate change
    Joe Romm: We can save the world from hundreds of years of misery
    James Woolsey: Former CIA Director’s Surprising Take on Climate Change
    The Climate 25 is a digital media and television experience featuring interviews with the world’s 25 most compelling voices on one of the most pressing issues of our time – the impact of climate disruption on human security…
    Climate 25 is part of the The Weather Channel’s commitment to quality journalism, a commitment that has led us over the past two years to investigate everything from the lives of the homeless in Alaska in “Down and Out in Anchorage” to the dangers faced by undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S. border in the Polk Award-winning documentary “The Real Death Valley.”…Neil Katz, Editor in Chief
    http://weather.climate25.com/

    31

  • #
    Dennis

    Attention: Earth is quickly running out of water. I suspect that all will return to normal after the Paris Conference;

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/28487039/the-earth-is-quickly-running-out-of-water-nasa/

    30

    • #
      Dennis

      It is my understanding that there is no new water on Earth, only recycled water. And fresh or almost fresh water on the surface in rivers and lakes, underground water and more recently almost fresh water under the oceans in deep depressions, one off the coast of Western Australia for example. And then, desalinated water.

      Quickly running out?

      30

      • #
        handjive

        13 June, 2014, the Guardian:

        Scientists say rock layer hundreds of miles down holds vast amount of water, opening up new theories on how planet formed

        After decades of searching scientists have discovered that a vast reservoir of water, enough to fill the Earth’s oceans three times over, may be trapped hundreds of miles beneath the surface, potentially transforming our understanding of how the planet was formed.

        50

        • #
          Oksanna

          Today ABC Radio National aired a repeat of an interview with Simon Winchester, author, about his book on China ‘hand’ Joseph Needham. In the course of that Winchester mentioned his dream project of researching the five great whirlpools of the world. Into one of these a telegraph pole was flung, with radio transmitter attached, and after descending 100 metres into the miasma, the signal stopped. Shades of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Shakespeare wrote:
          “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
          Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
          – Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

          00

    • #
  • #
    pat

    not sure where this goes:

    10 June: American Chemical Society: Cutting carbon emissions could have indirect effects on hunger
    LINK: “Consequence of Climate Mitigation on the Risk of Hunger” Environmental Science & Technology
    A new study has found for the first time that efforts to keep global temperatures in check will likely lead to more people going hungry. That risk, they say in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, doesn’t negate the need for mitigation but highlights the importance of comprehensive policies…
    ???Curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change can help maintain the yields of existing crops.
    But there might be indirect ways in which cutting emissions could actually put more people at risk of going hungry. For example, some grasses and other vegetation used for biofuels require agricultural land that might otherwise be used for food production. So, increased biofuel consumption could negatively affect the food supply. Also, the high cost of low-emissions technologies such as carbon capture and storage will be borne by consumers, who will then have less money to spend on food…
    The researchers used multiple models to determine the effects of strict emissions cuts and found that many more people would be at risk of hunger than if those cuts weren’t in place…
    The authors acknowledge funding from the Japanese Ministry of the Environment and the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan.
    http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2015/acs-presspac-june-10-2015/cutting-carbon-emissions-could-have-indirect-effects-on-hunger.html

    11

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    Euan Mearns analyzed GHCN V2 for 30 climate stations (Figure 2) within a 1000 km radius of Alice Springs

    http://euanmearns.com/temperature-adjustments-in-australia/

    Adjusted data was flat after about 1915.

    The average anomaly temperature series (bottom of page) is completely flat from 1880 to 2011.

    Which leaves the periphery – and cities.

    60

  • #
    el gordo

    William Reville: Something has gone very wrong with science.

    ‘Chief concerns with the way scientists do research include inadequate understanding of statistics, publishing studies that can’t be reproduced because they used shoddy procedures or didn’t have enough data, or because they ‘spun’ the data to please sponsors.’

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/william-reville-something-has-gone-very-wrong-with-science-1.2245846

    20

  • #
    Rick Will

    This shows how a popular Australian economics blog supports the AGW myth along with the Pope:
    http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/science-and-religion-vs-the-sceptics/

    20

  • #
    Peter C

    BOM TECHNICAL ADVISORY FORUM

    Readers may recall that the Dept of Sustainability and Environment set up a Technical Advisory Forum to review temperature adjustments by the BOM.

    I wrote to the minister, Hon Bob Baldwin months ago and received a reply, stating that the forum agenda, minutes and reports would all be made public. As far I know that has not yet happened.

    Now could be a good time to ask a follow up question of the Forum Committee.
    Bob FJ, could you condense this into a short question suitable for sending to the to the Forum Committee?

    60

    • #
      Bob Fernley-Jones

      Peter,

      You picked the right moment, the whitewash has been published today

      http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/documents/2015_TAF_report.pdf

      I’m feeling quite cross about it

      61

      • #
        David-of-Cooyal in Oz

        Thanks for that link Bob. I was also wondering if the report had ben produced. I’ve downloaded, but not yet read the report.
        Cheers,
        Dave B

        20

      • #
        Andrew McRae

        In my brief scan, figure 4.1 was the money shot, which shows:
        “the difference in mean temperature anomalies between the homogenised ACORN-SAT and unadjusted AWAP datasets”.
        Conventionally in English and mathematics, the “difference between A and B” is calculated as B-A, so this is a graph of AWAP – ACORNSAT, which starts with ACORNSAT being less than AWAP and later converges to zero.
        Since AWAP is “unadjusted” data, this means ACORNSAT has cooled the past but not the present, which must therefore add warming to the trend.

        It all seems quite straighforward, I don’t know what you skeptics were complaining about.
        /sarc

        Remember they are not really altering the truth, that’s just a “concern” and a “perception”:

        address public concerns about the Bureau’s rationale for adjusting the raw data, and to counter the perception expressed within unsolicited submissions that the raw data represent ’truth’ while adjustments seek to alter that ‘truth’.
        The Forum strongly endorses the view that the raw observations, like almost all measured quantities, are potentially subject to both random and systematic variation and that such statistical variation must be taken into account in analysing the temperature record. Any analysis or presentation of climate data which ignores this feature of the measured raw data is likely to be misleading.

        The role of expertise is going to be important. If every adjustment had a statistically defensible basis, how would any of us know. They are correct that raw is not necessarily more accurate than adjusted if raw was affected by factors other than the real world quantity being sought, in this case regional/global average temperature.

        Why do I get the feeling that nothing BoM says will satisfy anyone? We’re going to have to hear an ‘OK’ from outside statisticians before it pleases anyone here; so much poison in the well already.

        10

      • #
        el gordo

        Looks like its going in the bottom draw.

        ‘In the opinion of the Forum members, unsolicited submissions
        received from the public did not offer a justification for contesting the overall need for
        homogenisation or the scientific integrity of the Bureau’s climate records.’

        10

  • #
    Roger

    Maybe a simple question, but is it possible to find a compilation in tables or graphs of the unaltered data or is it all destroyed once altered?

    21

  • #
    pat

    Rick Will –

    28 Oct 2011: EU Observer: Andrew Rettman: French finance chief joins Vatican
    attack on markets
    France’s top financial regulator has told bishops he shares the Vatican’s view that financial markets are out of control and need central regulation.
    Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the head of the French Financial Markets Authority, laid out his views at a yearly meeting of 24 senior Roman Catholic bishops in Brussels on Thursday (27 October), a few hours after EU leaders finished their anti-crisis summit up the road…
    He also endorsed Vatican ideas on how to deal with traders and globalisation. “In this regard, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is right to emphasize in its latest report the need to strengthen global governance,” Jouyet said.
    The Vatican report on Monday urged the G20 and the UN to create “a kind of central world bank” to discipline markets and, later on, a world government or “public authority with universal jurisdiction” to promote peace…
    The Vatican’s own bank, the Institute for Works of Religion, is one of the world’s most opaque and least-regulated financial bodies. Last year Italian authorities temporarily seized €23 million of its assets on suspicion of
    mafia money laundering.
    https://euobserver.com/economic/114120

    link in the above to the document, which includes:

    2011: Vatican News: Full Text: Note on financial reform from the
    Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
    With due respect for the competent civil and political authorities, the Council hereby offers and shares its reflection: Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public
    authority…
    Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson +Mario Toso President Secretary Presupposition Every individual and every community shares in and is responsible for promoting the common good. Faithful to their ethical and religious vocation,
    communities of believers should take the lead in asking whether human family has adequate means at its disposal to achieve the global common good…
    “The governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together.” …
    However, a long road still needs to be travelled before arriving at the creation of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction. It would seem
    logical for the reform process to proceed with the United Nations as its reference because of the worldwide scope of its responsibilities, its ability to bring together the nations of the world, and the diversity of its
    tasks and those of its specialized Agencies…
    —-

    I have a theory that Benedict aka the “Green Pope” was forced out because he wasn’t CAGW-progressive-left-friendly enough and Francis was brought in to do the job.

    31

  • #
    pat

    worth noting. the big NASA scary CAGW story in the Guardian & Daily Mail yesterday (linked in the comments above) went nowhere! didn’t hear it on any broadcast media.
    apart from Mirror, Express & Metro – all in UK – which picked it up, there was basically only the following.
    i do love how this one directly links the story to the Pope’s encyclical:

    17 June: Dataconomy: NASA’s Big Data Climate Change Model
    When both NASA and the Pope are speaking out about climate change, you know something is up. Yesterday the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) unveiled a public data set showing how rainfall, temperature and CO2 levels will change over
    the next 85 years…
    “NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said ***Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist…
    This NASA dataset integrates actual measurements from around the world with data from climate simulations created by the international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project…
    Download data.
    http://dataconomy.com/nasas-big-data-climate-change-model/

    11

  • #
    pat

    i highlighted NASA’s Ellen Stofan in the dataconomy piece i just posted, because i want to reference her on another topic today:

    17 June: HuffPo UK: Nitya Rajan: Former NASA Astronaut Say ‘Aliens Probably Know We Exist’
    John Grunsfeld, a former NASA astronaut told the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago U.S., that changes that life on earth has created in the environment might be a dead give away to aliens…
    Grunsfeld, who is now an associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said:
    “If there is life out there, intelligent life, they’ll know we’re here.
    “We put atmospheric signatures that guarantee someone with a large telescope 20 light years away could detect us.”…
    ***In April, NASA’s chief scientist ***Ellen Stofan predicted that the search for alien life should only take us 20 to 30 years. Plenty of time to get ready for company then.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/17/nasa-astronaut-says-aliens-know-we-exist_n_7603486.html

    i find the build-up of UFO/alien stories in the MSM fascinating (there have been many, and often they come from NASA). some may recall Ronald Reagan in a 1987 speech at the United Nations saying, in part:

    “In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an
    alien threat from outside this world.”

    earlier this year, the UFO/alien crowd online jumped on a John Podesta tweet: “Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files.”

    Wikipedia: John David Podesta is the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
    Podesta previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama. He is the former president and now Chair and Counselor of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was a co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.
    ***In 2008, Podesta authored his book The Power of Progress: How America’s Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our ***Climate, and Our Country.
    (Podesta is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.)

    16 March: Reason: Ed Krayewski: Did President Obama Admit the US is Controlled by Space Aliens?
    Obama UFO joke on Jimmy Kimmel Live throws conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.
    A recent disclosure about UFO secrecy by John Podesta, Obama’s former White House Counselor for Climate Change and Energy Policy, suggests that Obama was serious about a situation he had no control over. Here is what Obama said
    in response to Kimmel according to the LA Times:
    [Kimmel] wanted to know whether Obama had tried to get to the bottom of the “UFO files” about the mysterious desert region known as Area 51.
    “The aliens won’t let it happen,” Obama joked. “You’d reveal all their secrets. They exercise strict control over us.”
    But President Clinton once said he’d checked on the matter and found nothing, Kimmel protested.
    “That’s what we’re instructed to say,” Obama responded
    http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/16/did-president-obama-admit-the-us-is-cont

    just noting all this because the CAGW world governance narrative seems to run lock-step with the UFO/alien narrative.

    11

  • #
    el gordo

    News Alert

    According to Warwick Hughes it appears ENSO has slipped into neutral territory and now we wait to hear the gnashing of teeth at BoM.

    31

    • #
      Dennis

      Lots of rain mid north coast NSW, drought areas west receiving some rain too.

      Lots of snow down south.

      Oops

      30