Heavily adjusted temperature dataset shows a warming trend, but can we trust it?
NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who has come under fire for being more activist than scientist, sent out a tweet yesterday predicting that 2016 would be the hottest year on record and said he was 99 percent sure of that claim.
According to land-and-sea-based temperature stations, July 2016 was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1950 to 1980 timeframe. But when compared to the 1930s, July still is not a record breaker. But only if you don’t rely on an adjusted temperature dataset.
Schmidt, a director for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), is disseminating a chart on Twitter from a dataset that has been heavily adjusted to show a much larger warming trend than is actually occurring.
The adjustments have also come under heavy criticism because it uses a temperature dataset that wiped away the strong 1998 El Niño
Most of the world’s top meteorological organizations rely on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA for data prior to 1982. According to Tony Heller at Real Climate #Science, the 1930s will still go down as the hottest decade in U.S. history, long before carbon dioxide (CO2) levels started to rise. Temperatures across the country were over 100 degrees F across the country the week of July 25, 1936. And July 9, 1936, is still one of the hottest days in U.S. history.
Fact vs. fiction
Specifically, Heller illustrates in a recent presentation he gave to Doctors for Disaster Preparedness that July 9, 1936, in New York City was baking at a 106°F. Long beach, NJ, was cooking at 106°F as well. For one week in South Dakota, temperatures reached 120 degrees F, and Seymour, Indiana, saw 113 degrees F. In fact, more than 20 percent of all temperature records in the U.S. were set in one year alone: 1936.
That means the U.S. had more hot days during the 1930s than any other decade during the entire temperature dataset. And these hot spells lasted longer and covered more area. But once NOAA and NASA started adjusting the temperature record and filling in temperatures for non-existent weather stations, a warming trend of a 1.5-degree per century appeared.
Closed for good
So where are the adjustments coming from? As more and more temperature recording stations are being dismantled, there are fewer places actually recording data. The missing rural stations (cooler temps) are now being mixed with city stations (hotter temps). Because of the adjustments and altered data, the temperature record has now magically correlated with rising atmospheric CO2. Heller calls this “confirmation bias.”
Now you see me
Current NASA graphs show a steady increase in temperatures since 1880 as seen in Schmidt’s tweet above. But in 1974, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) showed no net temperature increase between 1870 and 1970. Same for the National Academy of Sciences, which in 1975 showed no warming from 1900 to 1970. Every organization across the globe that collected and analyzed temperatures acknowledged the cooling period from 1940 to 1970.
It has now magically disappeared from NASA and NOAA's graphs. And the satellite record (and previous charts) also shows a distinctive pause in warming from 1998 (strong El Niño) to 2015 (another strong El Niño) but not in the chart posted by Schmidt.
Verify, then trust
Whether it’s sea level rise or temperatures, NASA and NOAA should realize that datasets don’t disappear simply because they don’t conform with warming dogma. Archives of these articles and journal reports still exist, and they should be a source of concern because they don’t fit the narrative of catastrophic #Climate Change.
As Heller adds, "climate data is being manipulated to increase climate alarm, using techniques that are unsupportable and would not be tolerated in the private sector."
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