Embarrassing mistake leaves global warming scientists with egg on their face

[JohnyCanuck]

The world has never seen such freezing heat

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008


A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

<SNIP>

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Oh Fuck...ya wouldthink....

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Pfft. The anti-science people have been repeating a variation of this lie for 6,000 years.

They'll use anything to bolster their lie that global warming isn't man-made.

This is nothing new.

[bean fidhleir]

3. The "skeptics" will grasp at any straw

This should be over in editorials, perhaps, since it's an opinion piece from the Torygraph, not a news article in any way

[JohnyCanuck]

4. I think its news

It was news to me that these global warming scientists can't guarantee the validity of the temperature figures they publish in order to support their hypothesis.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.

[bean fidhleir]

8. Maybe you do, but it's not.

This is news: ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ )

2008-11-13: NOAA combined the data it obtained from their various sources into another, slightly differing version of v2.mean. We ran our analysis again based on this new file; you may have to clear your buffer to see the updated results.

2008-11-12: It seems that one of the sources sent September data rather than October data. Corrected GHCN files were created by NOAA. Due to network maintenance, we were only able to download our basic file late today. We redid the analysis - thanks to the many people who noticed and informed us of that problem.

2008-11-11: Most data posted yesterday were replaced by the data posted last month since it looks like some mishap might have occurred when NOAA updated their GHCN data. We will postpone updating this web site until we get confirmation from NOAA that their updating programs worked properly. Because today is a Federal Holiday, some pages are still showing yesterday's data.


If you look at the plots using the bad vs the corrected data, here (one of that Torygraph hysteric's sources)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/12/corrected-nasa-gistemp-data-has-been-posted/#comment-57760

you see that the difference is one of MAGNITUDE, not valence. The world remains hotter than normal almost everywhere, with Siberia much hotter, the latter fact predictable by the nature of what's called the "continental" climate in Russian (I don't know what it's called in English). Far from the moderating influence of the ocean, summers are hotter and winters colder.

And the fact that NASA doesn't have staff members on-site everywhere in the world monitoring the instruments --- that's NEWS to you? How big do you think NASA is, anyway?

[Warren Stupidity]

11. "these global warming scientists"

you're sort of letting your agenda slip out there.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Link has gone walkies ?

.

[bean fidhleir]

9. Here 'tis

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

But there's no substance in it - it's all inflated innuendo.

[obiwan]

6. Sure the figures may have been faked. But global warming is real.

No doubt about it. Available information soberly analyzed by a rational and logical mind inescapably leads to this conclusion.

[bean fidhleir]

10. Is "faked" the right word for an error in reporting?

Since there's no suggestion that the data was invented, I mean? It was real, just stale.

[earth mom]

7. Who gives a flying fuck about a small mistake like this?

Look at the melting of the ice caps and then try to say that there is no such thing as global warming. :eyes: