Source: Watts Up With That?

by David W. Schnare, Esq. Ph.D.

When Phil Jones suggested that if folks didn’t like his surface temperature reconstructions, then perhaps they should do their own, he was right. The SPPI analysis of rural versus urban trends demonstrates the nature of the overall problem. It does not, however, go into sufficient detail. A close examination of the data suggests three areas needing address. Two involve the adjustments made by NCDC (NOAA) and by GISS (NASA). Each made their own adjustments and typically these are serial, the GISS done on top of the NCDC. The third problem is organic to the raw data and has been highlighted by Anthony Watts in his Surface Stations project. That involves the “micro-climate” biases in the raw data.

As Watts points out, while there are far too many biased weather station locations, there remain some properly sited ones. Examination of the data representing those stations provides a clean basis by which to demonstrate the peculiarities in the adjustments made by NCDC and GISS. (more…)

Source:  Courtesy of Watts Up With That?

by Anthony Watts

27 01 2010

Image: NOAA USHCN COOP station at Hanksville, UT, sited over a grave. Click for larger image. Photo by surfacestations volunteer Juan Slayton

There’s been a lot of buzz about the Menne et al 2010 paper “On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record” which is NCDC’s response to the surfacestations.org project. One paid blogger even erroneously trumpeted the “death of UHI” which is humorous, because the project was a study about station siting issues, not UHI. Anybody who owns a car with a dashboard thermometer who commutes from country to city can tell you about UHI. (more…)

Those of you following the Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero post (from Watts Up With That web site) I made yesterday will have already noted that it is essential in order to scrutinise the data feeding into the IPCC and CRU climate models that we have access to the raw data, the adjustments to that raw data, and the reasons for the adjustments which I will assume have been documented in a professional and reproducible manner as all good scientists would do without question. We hear climate alarmists saying that yes the Climategate scientists at the CRU destroyed emails, and hid from Freedom of information Acts, messed with proxies, and fought to keep other scientists’ papers out of the journals … but that doesn’t affect the data, the data is still good. Well Willis Esenbach’s research shown over on Watts Up With That casts serious doubt on that belief.

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