Real Climate Science

For the past decade or so, I have been documenting how US temperature graphs released by NOAA and NASA are not representative of their own raw data. This work has been high profile on a number of occasions, but has been repeatedly censored by the press as “conspiracy theory.” This happened as recently as yesterday on DailyKos.

Reality is that the data alterations are no secret, and that NOAA and NASA acknowledge that they do it. In this post I will document the magnitude of the adjustments and how they can be visualized.

This graph of US temperatures was posted by NASA in 1999, showing a strong cooling trend from the 1930’s through the end of the century. The years 1934 and 1998 are circled.

NASA 1999

And this is NASA’s current graph, which now shows a strong warming trend during that period.

NASA 2019

Here is an animation showing how the data has been altered over the past 20 years.

It is more difficult to locate historical NOAA graphs, because they are generated dynamically and are not archived on the Internet. One example I can document is Texas. The graph below is NOAA’s current 1895-2010 graph for Texas, which shows a strong warming trend.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Anthony Watts captured the same graph in 2012, and it showed no warming.

Climate scientists who have been claiming Texas is warming are totally wrong. | Watts Up With That?

And this graph showing no warming was posted by the San Antonio Express News in 2012.

Mims: Research shows Texas is not warming – San Antonio Express-News

On January 26, 1989 the New York Times ran this headline : “US Data Since 1895 Fail To Show Warming Trend”

After examining climate data extending back nearly 100 years, a team of Government scientists has concluded that there has been no significant change in average temperatures or rainfall in the United States over that entire period.

While the nation’s weather in individual years or even for periods of years has been hotter or cooler and drier or wetter than in other periods, the new study shows that over the last century there has been no trend in one direction or another.

The study, made by scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters. It is based on temperature and precipitation readings taken at weather stations around the country from 1895 to 1987.

U.S. Data Since 1895 Fail To Show Warming Trend – NYTimes.com

Now NOAA shows lots of warming from 1895 to 1988.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

There is no question that the US temperature record has been altered over time. Additionally, the National Climate Assessment shows that summer temperatures were much hotter in the US ninety years ago, which is not consistent with current NOAA graphs.

Temperature Changes in the United States – Climate Science Special Report

The US temperature is very important, because the vast majority of stations which NOAA has long-term daily temperature data for are located in the US.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/figures/station-counts-1891-1920-temp.png

The global temperature record has seen similar data alterations. In 1989, Tom Karl at NOAA said earth had cooled from 1921 to 1979.

Analysis of warming since 1881 shows most of the increase in global temperature happened before 1919 — before the more re-cent sharp rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. said Thomas Karl, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

While global climate warmed overall since 1881, it actually cooled from 1921 to 1979, Karl said.

“In spite of all the well-publicized concern about global warming, you must understand that there is still considerable uncertainty among scientific experts about a number of critical factors which determine global warming,” NOAA administrator John Knauss said in a statement issued for the geophysics meeting.

07 Dec 1989, Page 14 – Santa Cruz Sentinel at Newspapers.com

NOAA now shows a strong warming trend during that period.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

There is no question the data has been altered. Now let’s look at the alterations being made to the US temperature record. This is the current NOAA US temperature graph for average temperature. It shows a strong warming trend since 1895.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

I can reproduce this graph fairly closely by taking a simple mathematical average of the NOAA United States Historical Climatology Network “final” (adjusted) monthly data set, which is available at this link. The software I wrote to calculate and generate this graph is open source and is being used by hundreds of people.

Here is the current NOAA US temperature graph for average maximum temperature. It also shows a strong warming trend since 1895.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

I can closely reproduce that graph by taking the numerical average of the NOAA United States Historical Climatology Network “final” (adjusted) monthly data set, which is available at this link. It shows a strong warming trend and recent years much warmer than the 1930s.

NOAA also provides the raw (unadjusted) monthly temperature data. For average temperature, it is available at this link. The unadjusted raw monthly graph shows much less warming than the adjusted data, and has recent years cooler than the 1930s.

The unadjusted average maximum temperature is available at this link. The unadjusted raw monthly graph shows much less warming than the adjusted data, and has recent years much cooler than the 1930s.

The NOAA unadjusted monthly temperature data, also closely matches the NOAA daily temperature data, which is available at this link. The graphs below show daily average and maximum temperatures.

The graph below plots unadjusted monthly average temperature vs. daily temperatures, with excellent correlation.

And this is the same graph for monthly unadjusted maximum temperatures vs. daily maximum temperatures. Again, the correlation is very good.

Also note that the frequency of hot days in the US has plummeted. The graph below plots the frequency of 95F (35C) days vs. year, and shows that there has been much less hot weather in the US over the past 60 years compared to the period from 1910 to 1960.

This correlates well with the graphs from the National Climate Assessment.

Temperature Changes in the United States – Climate Science Special Report

Now let’s get into the interesting part, comparing monthly adjusted (final) average temperature vs. unadjusted (raw) average temperature. This next graph shows the difference between the average adjusted and unadjusted temperatures – i.e. the adjustments. It shows a hockey stick of data alterations, with older temperatures cooled by about one degree (F) and recent temperatures warmed by about one degree.

And the next graph is the smoking gun of something amiss. It plots the adjustments vs. atmospheric CO2. It shows a very close correlation between NOAA US temperature adjustments and CO2.

And here is a more detailed view, showing extremely good correlation between the adjustments and CO2. The next graph includes data for the first nine months of 2020, and has an R² of 0.981.

The implication of this is that the huge adjustments being made to the US temperature record are being made to match global warming theory, which is the exact opposite of how science should be done. The unadjusted data shows essentially no correlation between CO2 and temperature.

In the next blog post I will analyze what I can deduce about the very poorly documented NOAA temperature adjustments, and what questions they need to be asked.

Sep 30, 2020 7:21am MDT by ClimateDenierRoundup, Community

A couple years ago, Youtube (belatedly) started to do something about the disinformation rampant on its platform, and began putting disclaimers on climate denial videos that pointed to more reliable information. Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly solve the problem.

The girl Heartland wants to make into their own pro-fossil-fuels-Greta, for example, can be seen as the forefront of the next generation of denier grifters, digital natives comfortable with creating their own videos. But she’s hardly the only denier that’s used the youtubes, and far from the first to exploit the ease with which videos can be used as vehicles for disinformation or outlandish conspiracy theories like Dilbert guy’s satanic numerology.

Only slightly less bizarre are the conspiracies presented by Tony Heller, formerly known by his blogging pen name Steve Goddard. His pet conspiracy theory is that scientists alter temperature records to show more warming where there hasn’t actually been any, so his schtick is to pull the raw data, add his own trend lines, and claim there’s no warming. At the same time, he also points to thermometer stations in cities, as part of the argument that the temperature record is artificially warmed by all the asphalt and concrete that wasn’t always there. Of course scientists are well aware of the Urban Heat Island effect, and in fact correcting for that is part of why there’s a difference between the published official figures, and the raw data. (He’s apparently immune to irony, as on Monday he complained about “beetle kill logs blocking every possible route” on his hike, apparently oblivious to the link between beetles killing trees and climate change.)

These days though, like many climate deniers, he’s spending a lot of his time on COVID-19 denial. And that’s apparently what’s gotten him in trouble with YouTube. After some 25 million views, with six million in just the last four weeks, YouTube has (finally!) given his channel ‘strike one’ for a video he posted about an anti-covid-lockdown doctor getting arrested. According to a screenshot he posted, the content violated YouTube’s policy against “content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of the World Health Organization (WHO) or local health authorities’ recommended guidance on social distancing and self isolation that may lead people to act against that guidance.”

This is, again per another of his screenshots, the first of three potential strikes, and prevents him from uploading, posting or live streaming for a week. The second strike will be a 2 week time out, and a three strikes “in the same 90 day period will result in your channel being permanently removed from YouTube.”

In response to being told not to lie in ways that potentially gets people killed, he of course got very angry (e.g. tweeting “@YouTube has been taken over by fascists and are destroying free speech”) and went to NewTube to create an account and start uploading videos. (What’s NewTube? An open source YouTube alternative for all your anti-vaxx and conspiracy content that apparently plans to crowdfund using the same platform that’s raised $500,000 for the Kenosha shooter.)

He’s apparently more serious about jumping to a new platform now than he was in 2015, when “the Nazis at Twitter” very briefly shut him down… Which isn’t ideal, but really is probably fine, because the odds are slim he’ll rack up 25 million views on this bargain-brand website any time soon. (For example, once they get kicked off of YouTube, performance actors like Alex Jones simply don’t have the same reach they did, despite the same sort of admittedly entertaining hysterics. In one recent totally-not-antisemetic rant about Globalists, Bill Gates, and George Soros, an amped-up-even-for-him Alex Jones attacks a drone with a sword.)

But it’ll be interesting to see how even bigger propaganda channels will be impacted by YouTube’s three strikes in 90 days rule. PragerU, for example, has racked up over a billion views, and basically all of its videos that are highly misleading in ways that contradict scientific experts and could lead people to hurt themselves or others. (That’s probably what fracking billionaires pay them for!)

Whether or not YouTube applies that same criteria to other non-COVID-19 issues remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, it wouldn’t hurt to try and get some real information on the platform! So we were quite amused to hear the voice of Bob Burger/Archer Sterling/Bredan’s Soccer Coach narrating a video announcing the Gravel Institute’s new Anti-PragerU campaign to create videos for the left that are similarly styled, but with very different politics. (And actual facts, not alternative ones… Oh and without oodles of oil money. )

This of course triggered a barrage of truly top-tier trolling, including reminders of “that time that PragerU quote tweeted a highly edited video from an open Neo-Nazi” or Dennis Prager’s complaint that “it is idiotic that you cannot say the n-word. Idiotic.”

Anyway, it’s cool to see that YouTube can, in fact, prevent the spread of dangerous disinformation on its platform. Perhaps had they done so with climate denial, there wouldn’t have been so many coronavirus deniers in the first place.

Longtime Climate Denier Tony Heller Gets YouTube Ban For COVID Denial

Today I checked the temperature data from Charlottetown located in Edward Island,?Canada.

I found that GHCN V3 Unadjusted data show Prince Edward Island doesn’t have the annual temperature data at all since 2001, despite the V3 data set being updated up to July 2019, and that V4 Unadjusted data show the station doesn’t have the annual temperature data from 1982 to 2012, but has the annual temperature data from 2013 to today.

? GHCN V3 Unadjusted

? GHCN V4 Unadjusted

In addition, GHCN V4 Unadjusted data are identical with V3 Unadjusted data until 1970, except 1934. But since 1971 the two data sets don’t match.

? GHCN V3 Unadjusted

? GHCN V4 Unadjusted

It’s strange that the station has different types of unadjusted data for each version.

NASA used to claim that GHCN-Unadjusted is the raw data as reported by the weather station.

The data called “unadjusted” should be unadjusted data.

My YouTube account was skyrocketing in a hockey stick, with nearly six million views in the past four weeks.  So YouTube has quite predictably shut me down.

Hi, everyone.

Here is an animation chart for mean annual temperatures in Quixeramobim, Brazil.

As you can see, GHCN V3 Unadjusted data show Quixeramobim had a cooling trend since 1896, while V4 Unadjusted data show a warming trend.

According to NASA, both are unadjusted data, but they aren’t in agreement.

To make matters worse, as I tweeted July 21 2019, NASA used to claim that GHCN-Unadjusted is the raw data as reported by the weather station, but now they changed their explanatory text.

Once you see the post, you can easily see what I mean right away.

Then, let’s look at the GHCN V2 data set.

?Data Source: (1896 – 1991), (1987 – 2011)

As you know, NASA simply like changing their temperature data.