Re: NASA and the cherry-picking of weather stations
zno 0b
22 Jan 2010
Climate researchers and the Weather Channel's founder accuse NASA of the
same data manipulation as Britain's Climate Research Unit.
Were weather stations cherry-picked to hide the temperature drop?
We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom
of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate
figures.
In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder
and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the
deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA.
As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA's two primary climate
centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and
the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York
City, are accused of "creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures
through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the
locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set
on which temperature record reports are based."
Joseph D'Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA "systematically
eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias toward removing
higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations."
The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global
temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today.
The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.
E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D'Aleo, said
he found "patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic
and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations."
The more he looked, the more he found "patterns of deletion that could not
be accidental."
Stations in places such as the Andes and Bolivia have virtually vanished,
meaning, according to D'Aleo, temperatures from these areas are now
"determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the
coast or in the Amazon." He says it's as if Minneapolis stopped reporting
and its average temperature was extrapolated from readings in St. Louis and
Kansas City.
Smith argues that the decrease in stations used and the selectivity of
locations make NASA's data and conclusions suspect. D'Aleo goes further,
saying such cherry-picking and data manipulation are a "scientific travesty"
committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.
To us, it looks like just another example of ideologically driven climate
deceit following the Climate Research Unit scandal and the fraudulent claim
by the UN's IPCC that Himalayan glaciers would soon vanish.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518890
Warmest Regards
Bon_0
"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct
from natural variation."
Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
zno 0b
those 1000?
(CNN) -- The first decade of the 21st century was the warmest ever on
Earth according to data released by scientists at NASA.
The U.S. space agency's data also revealed that 2009 was the second
warmest year since temperature records began in 1880, and only
narrowly cooler than 2005, the warmest year ever.
2008 was the coolest year of the decade but this was attributed to a
strong La Nina which causes extensive cooling of the central and
eastern Pacific Ocean.
James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS) said in a statement: "There's substantial year-to-year
variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La
Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to
minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing
unabated."
In the past three decades, GISS report surface temperature records
show an upward trend of about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees
Fahrenheit) per decade.
In total, according to GISS, average global temperatures have
increased by about 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since
1880.
GISS sources its data using over one thousand weather stations around
the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures, and
research station data from Antarctica -- all of which, they say, is
readily available to the public.
Surfer
>The US Is Also Warming Up Climate Data
>
>22 Jan 2010
>
>
>
>Climate researchers and the Weather Channel's founder accuse NASA of the
>same data manipulation as Britain's Climate Research Unit.
>
To prove that, they would need to demonstrate that a significantly
different global temperature change could be produced from the input
data.
cf
The Temperature of Science
James Hansen
http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_TemperatureOfS...
<Start extract>
The input data for global temperature analyses are widely available,
on our web site and elsewhere. If those input data could be made to
yield a significantly different global temperature change, contrarians
would certainly have done that � but they have not.
<End extract>