tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2249983551893842827.post7184679797567452524..comments2023-10-26T23:39:36.158+01:00Comments on Climate and Stuff: What I cannot understand about Professor Robert Brown of Duke University.thefordprefecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07210786222021457913noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2249983551893842827.post-31486802772511644712015-08-14T18:42:02.880+01:002015-08-14T18:42:02.880+01:00Brown: GISS is even worse. They do correct for UHI...Brown: <i>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.</i><br /><br />Later in the text the "neutral to" is dropped. When this correction is negative it is extremely small. This is not as surprising as Brown seems to think. Urbanization only has a small effect and GISS nowadays uses data that is homogenized by NOAA by comparison with neighbours. This should remove most of the trend bias due to homogenization already and the additional correction for urbanization is actually not really necessary any more (they used to use raw data and maybe kept this correction for historical consistency).<br /><br />Brown: <i>They might get the warm fuzzies themselves from the belief that their scientific mendacity serves the higher purpose of “saving the planet”.</i><br /><br />If this were the case Brown will have to explain why these fuzzies <a href="http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html" rel="nofollow">reduce global warming when they remove non-climatic changes in the temperature record</a>. (The warming adjustments of the land temperatures, which WUWT likes to write about, are dwarfed by the cooling adjustments of the sea surface temperature.) My explanation would be that these scientists are trying to do a good job and try to be better than their colleagues to show how good they are.<br /><br />Brown: <i>A continuing divergence between any major temperature index and RSS/UAH is inconceivable and simple proof that the major temperature indices are corrupt.</i><br /><br />I would have no problems when improving the surface temperature record makes the difference with satellite temperatures larger. If that is what the evidence shows, then that is what the evidence shows. The buggy satellite temperatures is just a minute part of the evidence. This data is full of non-climatic changes, which are very hard to correct because there is little redundant data. There are only two groups working on it and they dedicate only a small part of their time to it because there are no users (humans do not live up in the sky) and the satellite record is short and buggy. Sometimes nice for a global overview, but not the best for trends.<br /><br /><i>he is part of the same scientific community.</i><br /><br />I think you are very generous. Scientists would at least inform themselves. And the confidence they display would at least fit somewhat to the expertise they actually have. With all the errors in the comment of Brown (and I only pointed out the most clear ones) and the overconfidence, I would not see him as a peer even if he has been granted to visit his home university as a visiting professor.Victor Venemahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02842816166712285801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2249983551893842827.post-54356365222954300642015-08-14T18:41:06.483+01:002015-08-14T18:41:06.483+01:00Brown: HadCRUT does not correct in any way for UHI...Brown: <i>HadCRUT does not correct in any way for UHI. </i><br /><br />They do.<br /><br />Brown: <i>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!</i><br /><br />Not sure if it is true, but <a href="http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/04/raw-temperatures-show-too-little-global-warming.html" rel="nofollow">the temperature record has a cooling bias</a>. Thus one would expect that with increasing abilities to remove this, better algorithms and more data to see data quality problems, more of this cooling bias is removed.<br /><br /><br />Brown: <i>One way in which they are corrupted with the well-known Urban Heat Island effect</i><br /><br />But Brown "forgets" that stations in urban areas are not only affected by warming in their surrounding, but are also regularly moved away from the centre because the measurement conditions become too bad or because the meteorological office can no longer pay the rent. What matters is how much UHI did the station notice in the beginning and how much UHI it notices now. That is an empirical question and can go both ways. Evidence from many studies show that in practice urban series do not warm much more.<br /><br />Brown on UHI: <i>water vapor from watering lawns</i><br /><br />The heat of the sun can either go into warming of the air or into evaporation. More watering means more evaporation and cooler temperatures. Irrigated regions are on average about 1°C cooler. The watering of vegetation in cities and especially suburbs is one reason for cooling biases in urban stations.<br /><br />In any case, the claim is wrong, the opposite is true.Victor Venemahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02842816166712285801noreply@blogger.com