Re your observation regarding the 1930's. That's a lot of...

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    Re your observation regarding the 1930's. That's a lot of apparent warming in the US in the 1930's. And that's why Heller chose to use that as a cherry picked example. When you are arguing against the global warmest month it should be obvious that it's invalid to only compare the US for that month. But that's just part of it. The reason Heller chooses only the US is because when he uses raw data, as he does, it is the most misleading data he could cherry pick Because of time of observation changes and his use of raw data, he is comparing 1930's temps measured in the afternoon, with US temps measured in the mornings later in the century. It's an utterly false comparison.

    Par for the course with Heller.

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    Re your question on measuring changes where temp readings have not always been available:

    See here, and the quote below.
    https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/behind-curtains-noaas-monthly-global-climate-report
    "
    there are some areas that we have little or no data for, like Africa. However, during the merging process between the land-only and ocean-only datasets to create the NOAAGlobalTemp dataset, a statistical analysis takes place that interpolates (use scientific knowledge to fill in gaps) in areas with little to no data.Interpolating is a common and widely peer-reviewed process which takes into account neighboring data as well as historical information for the region in question in order to determine what the temperature departure from average would be for areas with little to no data. However, we are very conservative in our approach, and sometimes an analysis can’t be done. In those cases, the region will be set to “missing.”That is why the temperature departures map for land-only might have data missing for a region, but in the merged land and ocean dataset it has data for the same time period.
    "

    There was some discussion a couple of years ago (guessing when) regarding those gaps in Africa. I managed to find some info, including papers iirc, on how they handled the periods when they did not have data. Using periods when data was available, and the relationship of that data to temperatures in adjacent areas, including oceans, they found strong statistical relationships that they could use. When you are only using the land data you are missing the ocean data that helps that infill process. So as soon as you have the ocean data you improve coverage. You have periods when data was available, then periods when not - due to war, and other economic or political impacts. And, where appropriate you use the data rich periods to help infill the shortfalls, using verified relationships between the areas.

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    The link above also describes the difference between the anomaly data and the percentile data, which confirms my point about the different time frames for those two charts. And how Heller's commentary is hence totally false and misleading regarding those.

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    There is a reliable and fairly complete historical thermometer dataset from around the turn of the 20th century. There is useful global data that goes back to around 1850. It's true that this is not a totally evenly spaced set of global records, but it doesn't need to be. As I'll point out below.
    There is also additional global data supporting the earlier period of that record, from proxy data, which also helps provide data for sparse areas. So that's using proxies such as coral and tree ring temperature data. Some info on that at this link, including how it confirms the thermometer record.
    https://skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-intermediate.htm

    But it's important to recognise that you don't need a perfect global coverage. The data we have shows a consistent warming of the areas for which we have very good coverage, when comparing like to like data. That includes 7,000 stations with long records that provide good cover through Europe, Asia, Russia, the Americas, the Middle East, Australia, India and Africa. That geographic coverage is improved with infill on a conservative basis where the data and relationships warrant that. The obvious sparse area is ocean coverage, particularly the south Pacific.
    See fig 1 here:
    https://skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-basic.htm

    Everywhere we have measurements, across the globe from Alaska to NZ and everywhere in between, we get the same overall pattern of warming. Warming that models using CO2 greenhouse gas physics replicate, and that models that exclude CO2 and only model solar and other natural variables do not.

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    I've done my best to answer these sorts of questions often and it gets tiresome and time consuming to be continually repeating this stuff. But that's what happens when people are continually misled by the likes of Heller. He's a misinformation snow job.


 
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