A post at wuwt data fudging / incompetence:
Problematic Adjustments And Divergences (Now Includes June Data)
Rgbatduke June 10, 2015 at 5:52 am [the full entry]
The two data sets should not be diverging, period, unless everything we
understand about atmospheric thermal dynamics is wrong. That is, I will add my
“opinion” to Werner’s and point out that it is based on simple atmospheric
physics taught in any relevant textbook.
This does not mean that they cannot and are not systematically differing; it
just means that the growing difference is strong evidence of bias in the
computation of the surface record. This bias is not really surprising, given
that every new version of HadCRUT and GISS has had the overall effect of cooling
the past and/or warming the present! This is as unlikely as flipping a coin (at
this point) ten or twelve times each, and having it come up heads every time
for both products. In fact, if one formulates the null hypothesis “the global
surface temperature anomaly corrections are unbiased”, the p-value of this
hypothesis is less than 0.01, let alone 0.05. If one considers both of the major
products collectively, it is less than 0.001. IMO, there is absolutely no
question that GISS and HadCRUT, at least, are at this point hopelessly
corrupted.
One way in which they are corrupted with the well-known Urban Heat Island
effect, wherein urban data or data from poorly sited weather stations
shows local warming that does not accurately reflect the spatial average surface
temperature in the surrounding countryside. This effect is substantial, and
clearly visible if you visit e.g. Weather Underground and look at the
temperature distributions from personal weather stations in an area that
includes both in-town and rural PWSs. The city temperatures (and sometimes a few
isolated PWSs) show a consistent temperature 1 to 2 C higher than the
surrounding country temperatures. Airport temperatures often have this problem
as well, as the temperatures they report come from stations that are
deliberately sited right next to large asphalt runways, as they
are primarily used by pilots and air traffic controllers to help planes land
safely, and only secondarily are the temperatures they report almost invariably
used as “the official temperature” of their location. Anthony has done a fair
bit of systematic work on this, and it is a serious problem corrupting all of
the major ground surface temperature anomalies.
The problem with the UHI is that it continues to systematically increase
independent of what the climate is doing. Urban centers continue to grow, more
shopping centers continue to be built, more roadway is laid down, more vehicle
exhaust and household furnace exhaust and water vapor from watering lawns bumps
greenhouse gases in a poorly-mixed blanket over the city and suburbs proper, and
their perimeter extends, increasing the distance between the poorly sited
official weather stations and the nearest actual unbiased countryside.
HadCRUT does not correct in any way for UHI. If it did, the correction would
be the more or less uniform subtraction of a trend proportional to global
population across the entire data set. This correction, of course, would be a
cooling correction, not a warming correction, and while it is impossible to tell
how large it is without working through the unknown details of how HadCRUT is
computed and from what data (and without using e.g. the PWS field to build a
topological correction field, as UHI corrupts even well-sited official stations
compared to the lower troposphere temperatures that are a much better estimator
of the true areal average) IMO it would knock at least 0.3 C off of 2015
relative to 1850, and would knock off around 0.1 C off of 2015 relative to 1980
(as the number of corrupted stations and the magnitude of the error is not
linear — it is heavily loaded in the recent past as population increases
exponentially and global wealth reflected in “urbanization” has outpaced the
population).
GISS is even worse. They do correct for UHI, but somehow, after they got
through with UHI the correction ended up being neutral to negative. That’s
right, UHI, which is the urban heat island effect, something that has
to strictly cool present temperatures relative to past ones in unbiased
estimation of global temperatures ended up warming them instead. Learning that
left me speechless, and in awe of the team that did it. I want them to do my
taxes for me. I’ll end up with the government owing me money.
However, in
science, this leaves both GISS and HadCRUT (and any of the other temperature
estimates that play similar games) with a serious, serious problem. Sure, they
can get headlines out of rewriting the present and erasing the hiatus/pause.
They might please their political masters and allow them to convince a skeptical
(and sensible!) public that we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a
year to unilaterally eliminate the emission of carbon dioxide, escalating to a
trillion a year, sustained, if we decide that we have to “help” the rest of the
world do the same. They might get the warm fuzzies themselves from the belief
that their scientific mendacity serves the higher purpose of “saving the
planet”. But science itself is indifferent to their human wishes or needs! A
continuing divergence between any major temperature index and RSS/UAH is
inconceivable and simple proof that the major temperature indices are
corrupt.
Right now, to be frank, the divergence is already large enough to be raising
eyebrows, and is concealed only by the fact that RSS/UAH only have a 35+ year
base. If the owners of HadCRUT and GISSTEMP had the sense god gave a goose,
they’d be working feverishly to cool the present to better match the satellites,
not warm it and increase the already growing divergence because no atmospheric
physicist is going to buy a systematic divergence between the two, as Werner has
pointed out, given that both are necessarily linked by the Adiabatic Lapse Rate
which is both well understood and directly measurable and measured (via e.g.
weather balloon soundings) more than often enough to validate that it accurately
links surface temperatures and lower troposphere temperatures in a predictable
way. The lapse rate is (on average) 6.5 C/km. Lower Troposphere temperatures
from e.g. RSS sample predominantly the layer of atmosphere centered roughly 1.5
km above the ground, and by their nature smooth over both height and surrounding
area (that is, they don’t measure temperatures at points, they directly measure
a volume averaged temperature above an area on the surface. They by their nature
give the correct weight to the local warming above urban areas in the actual
global anomaly, and really should also be corrected to estimate the CO_2
linked warming, or rather the latter should be estimated only from unbiased
rural areas or better yet, completely unpopulated areas like the Sahara desert
(where it isn’t likely to be mixed with much confounding water vapor
feedback).
RSS and UAH are directly and regularly confirmed by balloon soundings and,
over time, each other. They are not unconstrained or unchecked. They are
generally accepted as accurate representations of LTT’s (and the atmospheric
temperature profile in general).
The question remains as to how
accurate/precise they are. RSS uses a sophisticated Monte Carlo process to
assess error bounds, and eyeballing it suggests that it is likely to be accurate
to 0.1-0.2 C month to month (similar to error claims for HadCRUT4) but much more
accurate than this when smoothed over months or years to estimate a trend as the
error is generally expected to be unbiased. Again this ought to be true for
HadCRUT4, but all this ends up meaning is that a trend difference is a serious
problem in the consistency of the two estimators given that they must be linked
by the ALR and the precision is adequate even month by month to make it well
over 95% certain that they are not, not monthly and not on average.
If they grow any more, I would predict that the current mutter about the
anomaly between the anomalies will grow to an absolute roar, and will not go
away until the anomaly anomaly is resolved. The resolution process — if the gods
are good to us — will involve a serious appraisal of the actual series of
“corrections” to HadCRUT and GISSTEMP, reveal to the public eye that they have
somehow always been warming ones, reveal the fact that UHI is ignored or
computed to be negative, and with any luck find definitive evidence
of specific thumbs placed on these important scales. HadCRUT5 might — just might
— end up being corrected down by the ~0.3 C that has probably been added to it
or erroneously computed in it over time.
rgb
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What I would like RGB to answer is:
He is basically stating that all major providers of temperature series of either
1 being incompetent
2 purposefully changing the data to match their belief.
IF 1. How can so many intelligent educated people be so incompetent. This seems very unlikely. Have he approached the scientists concerned and shown them where they are in error. If not, Why not?
IF 2. This is a serious accusation of scientific fraud. As such have he approached any of the scientists involved and asked for an explanation? If not, why not? he is part of the same scientific community.
Can he give reasons why he thinks scientists over the whole globe would all be party to the same fraud. Do climate scientists live in luxury mansions taking expensive family holidays - perhaps he could provide proof?. What manages to keep so many scientists in line - are there families/careers/lives threated to maintain the silence. why is there no Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, willing to expose them?
The Misunderstanding of Drought
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