5 ms·

Don't disagree with you here, but I would be interested to hear opposing viewpoints as to why this shouldn't be done.

snowwrestler 11y ago
It's just re-reading old ground. The surface temp data has been the subject of intense scrutiny for years, starting with the competition among independent professional labs in the U.S., U.K., and Europe. In the U.S., Anthony Watts sponsored a project for people to send in pictures of poorly sited weather stations. That started in 2007 and they collected and reviewd hundreds of reports. The ultimate outcome was that they did not find any significant difference in mean temperature trend between stations. Richard Muller reviewed the surface temperature data and also found it to be reliable and useful, with no signs of manipulation or obvious error. In his own words: > Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-... Why would this organization re-tread old ground? Because most people don't follow the subject very closely, so the same doubts can be reinforced in the society over and over and over again, for political (not scientific) purposes.
- mkempe 11y ago
  You're completely misrepresenting the observations and conclusions of the surface stations project led by Anthony Watts. [1] [1] http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_media_resource_may08.pdf http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_medi...
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    No I'm not. I've been reading Watts for a long time. His original hypothesis in reviewing weather stations (starting with his "how not to measure temperature" series of blog posts) was that poor siting was allowing urban heat island effects to create a false impression of warming. Well, as the paper explicitly states, it does not. Mean warming trend at the stations they reviewed is the same as for the national network overall. They found differences in volatility (min/max extremes), which is interesting, but does not disprove the overall warming trend--which was Watt's expectation from the beginning.
    - mkempe 11y ago
      The surfacestations.org project of Watts is completely different from the linked project. The OP project is focused on understanding adjustments made by NOAA et al. (changing the values of past raw temperature data) not on the quality of location of measurement stations.
      - snowwrestler 11y ago
        They come at the same issue from opposite directions. Scientists make statistical adjustments to the raw data in an attempt to eliminate or mitigate sources of bias, including siting effects like Watts is concerned with. Watt sought to show that siting bias effects were too significant to mitigate, or were not properly mitigated, thereby calling into question the reliability of the surface temp data sets that show warming. Instead, the data he collected showed that actually, even poorly sited stations show a very similar warming trend. Since attacking the validity of the station data itself did not provide fodder for the political campaign, this project seeks to generate vague doubts about the statistical adjustments. The agenda is plainly clear when you consider that they bothered to embed a graph from NOAA, but somehow failed to link to the NOAA writeups that discuss--and in some cases provide source code for--the very adjustments they are wondering about. Version 1 (source of the graph): http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.htm... Version 2: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/

It's just re-reading old ground. The surface temp data has been the subject of intense scrutiny for years, starting with the competition among independent professional labs in the U.S., U.K., and Europe. In the U.S., Anthony Watts sponsored a project for people to send in pictures of poorly sited weather stations. That started in 2007 and they collected and reviewd hundreds of reports. The ultimate outcome was that they did not find any significant difference in mean temperature trend between stations. Richard Muller reviewed the surface temperature data and also found it to be reliable and useful, with no signs of manipulation or obvious error. In his own words: > Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-... Why would this organization re-tread old ground? Because most people don't follow the subject very closely, so the same doubts can be reinforced in the society over and over and over again, for political (not scientific) purposes.

mkempe 11y ago
You're completely misrepresenting the observations and conclusions of the surface stations project led by Anthony Watts. [1] [1] http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_media_resource_may08.pdf http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_medi...
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  No I'm not. I've been reading Watts for a long time. His original hypothesis in reviewing weather stations (starting with his "how not to measure temperature" series of blog posts) was that poor siting was allowing urban heat island effects to create a false impression of warming. Well, as the paper explicitly states, it does not. Mean warming trend at the stations they reviewed is the same as for the national network overall. They found differences in volatility (min/max extremes), which is interesting, but does not disprove the overall warming trend--which was Watt's expectation from the beginning.
  - mkempe 11y ago
    The surfacestations.org project of Watts is completely different from the linked project. The OP project is focused on understanding adjustments made by NOAA et al. (changing the values of past raw temperature data) not on the quality of location of measurement stations.
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      They come at the same issue from opposite directions. Scientists make statistical adjustments to the raw data in an attempt to eliminate or mitigate sources of bias, including siting effects like Watts is concerned with. Watt sought to show that siting bias effects were too significant to mitigate, or were not properly mitigated, thereby calling into question the reliability of the surface temp data sets that show warming. Instead, the data he collected showed that actually, even poorly sited stations show a very similar warming trend. Since attacking the validity of the station data itself did not provide fodder for the political campaign, this project seeks to generate vague doubts about the statistical adjustments. The agenda is plainly clear when you consider that they bothered to embed a graph from NOAA, but somehow failed to link to the NOAA writeups that discuss--and in some cases provide source code for--the very adjustments they are wondering about. Version 1 (source of the graph): http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.htm... Version 2: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/