2004 version: sl_cu2004_rel1.2.pdf 2015 version: 2015_rel2
Based on comments yesterday, I am not sure that everyone recognized the gravity of this CU sea level disaster. Not only don’t the years line up on the X-Axis between the two versions, but in the 2004 version the Jason data begins an annual cycle earlier than in the 2015 version.
I have tried to figure out what sort of error could lead to this type of mess, and can’t fathom how it could have happened. It looks like they are just making data up.
As per comments on the previous post – the underlying data is all present in the text files. This is a display error and only affects the image in the PDF. If you had bothered to download the data and graph it yourself, you could have worked this out.
So everything’s fine really – apart from the way the data is presented to the reader?
I doubt I’m the only one who thinks that’s a pretty major screw up.
And that a careful writer/proofreader and/or peer reviewer might be expected to have noticed before publication.
Does that mean that the charts we get from the official government-paid-and-sponsored sources are not reliable? Don’t they check their own work before posting charts of the official records? If they are depending on solitary bloggerrs to verify their charts, what does it say about their dependability?
If they just missed one peak of the TOPEX data like you say then there should be a big discontinuity between the TOPEX and Jason data when the extra peak is included (or excluded). Since the trend is always up, both data sets cannot line up the TOPEX and Jason data like they do. That shows the the data is fudged! If they just forgot one peak of the TOPEX data the TOPEX and Jason data would not have lined up like they do in the 2004 version.
If the arguments the government are using are based on just a pretty picture that isn’t based on real data and they want to spend trillions of dollars of my tax money based on these arguments, count me out!
I like your thinking, Peter.
Next time I will look through any of their papers I will ignore the graphs. Why bother looking at them. Those are just pretty pictures and don’t mean anything. And why stop at the graphs? We know the same is true for the abstracts. They don’t agree with the content of the papers. Why waste any time with the authors’ conclusions? Why should we read them? Who knows they have anything to do with the underlying data?
Why should we think it’s different for any stuff published by governmental scientific institutions? I like your proposal to treat it like what we see on TV. It’s just pictures that have nothing to do with reality and the data. They just collected some numbers but who knows what they are. These people are clearly not good with displays. In the best scenario, if they didn’t screw the numbers up before they stored them they have the files somewhere. And if they didn’t screw with them afterwards or completely lost them, the files will still look the same next month as they do now. That’s all we know for sure.
The reasonable thing is to treat it all like a display error.
Of course, the likelihood they didn’t screw with numbers is very low. After all, that’s what they do when they come to work. They are so busy doing it they don’t have time to record what they did and why. Dallas Masters can explain how it really works.
A “display error?” How is that possible, unless they’re drawing graphs with paper and pencil? What kind of graphing software draws the axis markers in the wrong places?
They must have special software that has a check box that says “Make a pretty picture.”
I emailed Dr. R. Steve Nerem in August 2012 about all the one way corrections here’s the reply I got at that time from Dallas Masters:
***************
Mr. Case,
Thanks for your inquiry. The sea level time series release from 2004 is
over eight years old, and in that time many parts of the TOPEX and
Jason-1 processing have been updated to reflect instrument and ancillary
data improvements. Without recreating each processing change over the
last eight years, I cannot point to any specific update that is the main
cause of the differences between the 2004 and the current release. But a
partial list of the more influential updates include:
– updated orbits
– updated radiometer corrections
– updated tide models
– updated sea state bias models
– updated dynamic atmosphere
A review of the release notes
(http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/release-notes) shows how we
continually apply what the altimeter science community considers to be
the most up-to-date set of processing parameters. In fact, the Jason-2
data is currently being re-released and updated to the GDR-D standard,
and this will most likely affect the altimeter time series due to these
improvements.
—
Dallas Masters
Sea Level Research Group
CB431/CCAR
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0431
Well, What did I expect them to say (-:
It’s amazing how the data corrections in everything having to do with climate science, air temperature, sea temperature, sea level, extreme weather, acidity, are always in the direction of greater grant money. What a coincidence! I wonder what “adjustment” Mister Masters made to the sea level data added the extra peak in the TOPEX data and “adjusted” the Jason data upwards to dove-tale into it. These people have no shame. A grade school student would be ashamed to be called out on this… not these guys.
Hey Scott! Yes, that amazing coincidence that adjustments to past and current data seem to overwhelmingly. Note that I do not say “always”; there are some small exceptions but they are VERY rare and far between. For instance there was the adjustments recently where they claimed that the pause never existed. Some of the adjustments in that actually DID slightly warm the early 20th century, but the final result was to smear away the flat trend of the last decade or two.
Anyway, if their changes were done randomly, we would see a roughly equal number of warming the past and cooling the present. The fact that they so consistently show a pattern that works to increase their claims of warming is prima facie evidence of knowing fraud.
By the way, here’s a very good You Tube on Tide Gauges vs. Predictions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6aLN5EK1I
I suspect someone wasn’t paying attention to their adjustment algorithm and inadvertently applied the past reductions and current increases to the time scale in the spreadsheet they used to make their graph.
Engineers depend on ways to double check their results to make it easy to find errors such as this.
Climateers believe they are not making errors as long as their story spells doom for enterprising uses of fuel, and the activists will take care of engineers who disagree.