Y2K Bug Drastically Changes US Climate Data
Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 10:38:56 am PST
According to the DailyTech blog, the NASA temperature data used to estimate the advance of global warming has been shown to be way off the mark, due to a Y2K bug in the graphing software—and the corrected charts tell a very different story: Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.
The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the U.S. global warming propaganda machine could be huge.
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/0 ... t_yea.html
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
98 unseated as hottest year in the United states by 34.
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Re: 98 unseated as hottest year in the United states by 34.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding.
Huh ... I went to the GISS site and right there on the front page it says:
The NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) provides a measure of the changing global surface temperature with monthly resolution for the period since 1880, when a reasonably global distribution of meteorological stations was established. Input data for the analysis, collected by many national meteorological services around the world, is the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998) except that the USHCN station records up to 1999 were replaced by a version of USHCN data with further corrections after an adjustment computed by comparing the common 1990-1999 period of the two data sets. (We wish to thank Stephen McIntyre for bringing to our attention that such an adjustment is necessary to prevent creating an artificial jump in year 2000.) These data were augmented by SCAR data from Antarctic stations not present in GHCN. Documentation of our analysis is provided by Hansen et al. (1999), with several modifications described by Hansen et al. (2001). The GISS analysis is updated monthly.
(emphasis mine)
Doesn't seem so "silent" to me.
Second, I don't see any evidence that this was a "Y2K bug" - it seems to have been an artifact of a switch between two sources of US temperature data.
And this has minimal effect on the global trend data - the contiguous US making up only 3% of the Earth's surface.
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- x-y-no
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Incidentally, I wonder what's going on with climateaudit.org (Steve McIntyre's site) ... I haven't been able to get in there for a couple of days now ...
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- chadtm80
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Yes 1934 was indeed the hottest year.. Can find this info on the net, yes.. However how interesting is it now that when 1998 was the hottest year and was story of the century for mainstream media.. Now that it is 1934 its "not a big deal" and "means nothing"
On another note.. Yes the 90's and 30's were both very hot.. specialy 98 and 34.. we are all weather buffs here so let me ask you.. what were they known for? Droughts! No rain equals hotter temperatures. Rain is mother natures way of cooling the earth. No rain = higher temperatures.. however I don't see anyone using rain as a factor when figuring the temps to prove "man made global warming"
On another note.. Yes the 90's and 30's were both very hot.. specialy 98 and 34.. we are all weather buffs here so let me ask you.. what were they known for? Droughts! No rain equals hotter temperatures. Rain is mother natures way of cooling the earth. No rain = higher temperatures.. however I don't see anyone using rain as a factor when figuring the temps to prove "man made global warming"
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- x-y-no
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Re:
chadtm80 wrote:Yes 1934 was indeed the hottest year.. Can find this info on the net, yes.. However how interesting is it now that when 1998 was the hottest year and was story of the century for mainstream media.. Now that it is 1934 its "not a big deal" and "means nothing"
1998 and 2005 are still the hottest years globally. As far as I can recall, it's the global record that was significant news, not the contiguous US record (which was pretty close to a statistical tie with 1934 even before this correction.)
Corrected US record:
Global:
On another note.. Yes the 90's and 30's were both very hot.. specialy 98 and 34.. we are all weather buffs here so let me ask you.. what were they known for? Droughts! No rain equals hotter temperatures. Rain is mother natures way of cooling the earth. No rain = higher temperatures.. however I don't see anyone using rain as a factor when figuring the temps to prove "man made global warming"
I'll have to dig for it, but my recollection is that globally, precipitation appears to be up slightly over the last few decades. Probably pretty big error bars on that, but still ...
EDIT:
The IPCC AR4 says this on global land precipitation (Chapter 3, sec, 3.3.2.1)
Trends in global annual land precipitation were analysed using data from the GHCN, using anomalies with respect to the 1981 to 2000 base period (Vose et al., 1992; Peterson and Vose, 1997). The observed GHCN linear trend (Figure 3.12) over the 106-year period from 1900 to 2005 is statistically insignificant, as is the CRU linear trend up to 2002 (Table 3.4b). However, the global mean land changes (Figure 3.12) are not at all linear, with an overall increase until the 1950s, a decline until the early 1990s and then a recovery. Although the global land mean is an indicator of a crucial part of the global hydrological cycle, it is difficult to interpret as it is often made up of large regional anomalies of opposite sign.
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- chadtm80
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Jan I own a TV and happen to know that it was huge news when they said 98 was hottest year here locally.
Like you I also don't buy this Y2K thing.. To be honest with you I believe officials at Nasa and others already knew 98 was not he hottest year on record.. Just didn't fit somes agendas, so was not corrected.. If true.. Terribly irresponsible
Like you I also don't buy this Y2K thing.. To be honest with you I believe officials at Nasa and others already knew 98 was not he hottest year on record.. Just didn't fit somes agendas, so was not corrected.. If true.. Terribly irresponsible
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- x-y-no
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Jan I own a TV and happen to know that it was huge news when they said 98 was hottest year here locally.
Well, to the extent that I encountered anyone making a big deal of the contiguous US record, my answer would have been the same mantra I repeat to every excited exclamation about some regional cold record: local and/or regional does not equal global.
However 1998 was and remains an extraordinarily warm year globally. This adjustment in US data had minimal effect on that - which is why it's "no big deal."
Like you I also don't buy this Y2K thing.. To be honest with you I believe officials at Nasa and others already knew 98 was not he hottest year on record.. Just didn't fit somes agendas, so was not corrected.. If true.. Terribly irresponsible
I'm not at all clear on how you conclude that. A marginal change one way or the other within the bounds of statistical error in a set of regional data isn't much of a way to push an agenda ... especially since it has hardly any effect on the global mean (which in my experience is what climate scientists make a big deal about).
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- chadtm80
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Re:
x-y-no wrote:Jan I own a TV and happen to know that it was huge news when they said 98 was hottest year here locally.
Well, to the extent that I encountered anyone making a big deal of the contiguous US record, my answer would have been the same mantra I repeat to every excited exclamation about some regional cold record: local and/or regional does not equal global.
However 1998 was and remains an extraordinarily warm year globally. This adjustment in US data had minimal effect on that - which is why it's "no big deal."Like you I also don't buy this Y2K thing.. To be honest with you I believe officials at Nasa and others already knew 98 was not he hottest year on record.. Just didn't fit somes agendas, so was not corrected.. If true.. Terribly irresponsible
I'm not at all clear on how you conclude that. A marginal change one way or the other within the bounds of statistical error in a set of regional data isn't much of a way to push an agenda ... especially since it has hardly any effect on the global mean (which in my experience is what climate scientists make a big deal about).
You know that.. I know that.. But most of the general public don't.. Why? Cause turn on the TV and mainstream media is filling thier heads with the "Its very hot outside.. Global warming bla bla bla.. And they use the fact that 98 (recent) being the HOTTEST as DEFINATIVE proof (thier agenda) of the affects of the man made global warming.
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- x-y-no
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From a 2001 paper describing the GISTEMP methodology (pdf):
(emphasis mine)
Note this was published long before this error was detected and corrected.
I don't know what NASA scientists were supposed to do to control what people say on TV, but clearly Dr. Hansen at least had no agenda to make 1998 appear to be the warmest year in the contiguous US.
The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis (Plate 6). This contrasts with the USHCN data, which has 1998 as the warmest year in the century. In both cases the difference between 1934 and 1998 mean temperatures is a few hundredths of a degree. The main reason that 1998 is relatively cooler in the GISS analysis is its larger adjustment for urban warming. In comparing temperatures of years separated by 60 or 70 years the uncertainties in various adjustments (urban warming, station history adjustments, etc.) lead to an uncertainty of at least 0.1°C. Thus it is not possible to declare a record U.S. temperature with confidence until a result is obtained that exceeds the temperature of 1934 by more than 0.1°C.
(emphasis mine)
Note this was published long before this error was detected and corrected.
I don't know what NASA scientists were supposed to do to control what people say on TV, but clearly Dr. Hansen at least had no agenda to make 1998 appear to be the warmest year in the contiguous US.
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- AussieMark
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Re: 98 unseated as hottest year in the United states by 34.
Jan how much can we blame the record warm in 1998 on the fact it was a strong el nino at the start of the year and by August it had developed into a La Nina.
I know here that 1997/98 summer was a very hot one where it was our hottest summer on record here for that time. and that year I know parts of the US had a very hot summer I remember Dallas had the most 100F days in a row since 1980 that summer.
I know here that 1997/98 summer was a very hot one where it was our hottest summer on record here for that time. and that year I know parts of the US had a very hot summer I remember Dallas had the most 100F days in a row since 1980 that summer.
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Re: 98 unseated as hottest year in the United states by 34.
AussieMark wrote:Jan how much can we blame the record warm in 1998 on the fact it was a strong el nino at the start of the year and by August it had developed into a La Nina.
You're absolutely correct. The strong el Nino in '98 was definitely the cause of the big global temperature spike that year.
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Re: 98 unseated as hottest year in the United states by 34.
Climate Audit is back up, I think the volume took them down.
Interesting post over there regarding datasets outside the US. If his data keeps showing this it could really make this an explosive topic.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1943#comments The link has comments which are pretty interesting to read.
Interesting post over there regarding datasets outside the US. If his data keeps showing this it could really make this an explosive topic.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1943#comments The link has comments which are pretty interesting to read.
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