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One reason for this discrepancy is that NOAA has been cherry-picking its raw data

Temperature Record Shenanigans


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By —— Bio and Archives September 15, 2017

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If you heard that a temperature record had been set, how long would you expect that temperature to hold: 1 hour, 30 minutes, 10 minutes,1 minute? In 2008, Lin and Hubbard argued it should be 7 minutes, that even a 5 minute averaging was not long enough to avoid some warming bias in maximums and cooling bias in minimals. 1 No so in Australia! There the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) will write it in Australia's record books even if the heat lasts one second, and if the temperature a minute before was more than a whole degree cooler. 2
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recommends a one minute mean temperature standard be used, which is what the UK uses. In the US however, meteorologists use a 5 minute average. 3 In previous years, thermometers were not able to record a spike or heat (or cold) that lasted for such a short time. Liquid-in-glass thermometers just can't read that fast. As Joanne Nova asks, “Who remembers waiting with a thermometer under their tongue as a child?” She adds, “In the last twenty years, electronic sensors have replaced most of the old fashioned thermometers. It's for exactly this reason that we need side-by-side comparison data. The BOM can't supply these data because it is deleting the data as a matter of routine practice.” 2 The key question is how much of the warming trend in Australia is due to the switch in the mid -1990s from older, slower thermometers to new electronic zippy ones that could record every waft of hot air? How may records are just noise? The bottom line is they have 20 years of incomplete raw data that includes random noise from instruments that are nothing like the ones used for about eight of the last ten decades in Australian climate history.3 Other questionable issues about BOM data come from Lance Pidgeon and Dr. Jennifer Marohasy as they watched automatic weather stations which recorded very cold temperatures. They were astonished when those same readings either got entered into the Australian national raw database as warmer, or simply disappeared. The BOM apparently has a filter set so that super cold temperatures needed to be manually checked. Yet the filter was set so high, nearly five whole degrees warmer than temperatures already reported. 4 Is it any wonder why someone has called the BOM the Bureau of Mythology?
Pidgeon, a freelance radio technician and citizen scientist, has found instances where thermometers accurate to a tenth of a degree were adjusted by as much as two degrees. Original cooling trends in temperature records were being revised to warming trends. Records of extremely hot days before the turn of the century have been erased, in one celebrated case simply because a diligent worker had taken the observation on a Sunday, which was outside of usual practice. 5 Marohasy reported that thermometers are working fine, but a smart card has been added to some to filter out 'spurious cold' readings. Apparently, the smart cards don't filter out the spurious hot readings. She notes, “There is evidence to suggest that the last 20 years of temperature readings taken by BOM from hundreds of automatic weather stations spread across Australia, may be invalid because they have not been recorded consistent with calibration.” 6

United States' Temperatures

Climate Control and the Washington Post claimed the US was 'overwhelmingly hot' in 2016 and temperatures have risen 1.5 F since the 19th century, but they we wrong reports Tony Heller. 7 The first problem with their analysis is that the US had very little hot weather in 2016. The percentage of hot days were below average, and ranked 80th since 1895. Only 4.4% of days were over 95 F compared with the long term average of 4.9%. A graph created by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contains fake data; they create the warming trend by altering the data. NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century. 7


Anthony Watts reports, “The majority of weather stations used by NOAA to detect the climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts. NOAA's methods are not correcting for this problem, resulting in an inflated temperature trend. The trend for US temperature needs to be corrected.” He adds, “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend data manifests itself in the global temperature record.” The 30-year trend of temperature for the continental US since 1979 is about two-thirds as strong as official NOAA temperature trends. 8 One reason for this discrepancy is that NOAA has been cherry-picking its raw data. That is, it has ignored the evidence from those weather stations showing little or no late twentieth century warming and instead placed undue emphasis on the ones that do show warming But the ones that do show warming happen to be the least trustworthy. These are the ones which have been most corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect and other environmental factors. 8 References
  1. X. Lin & K. G. Hubbard, “What are daily maximum and minimum temperatures in observed climatology?”, International Journal of Climatology, 28, 283, 2008
  2. Joanne Nova, “BOM scandal: one second records in Australia—how 'noise' creates history and a warming trend,” joannenova.com, September 3, 2017
  3. Joanne Nova, “Australian Bureau of Met uses 1 second noise, not like WMO, UK and US standards, joannenova.com, September 13, 2017
  4. Joanne Nova, “Scandal: Australian Bureau of Meteorology caught erasing cold temperatures,” joannenova.com, Aigust 1, 2017
  5. Joanne Nova, “BOM scandal: smart cards filter out coldest temperatures. Full scale audit needed ASAP.” joannenova.com, August 5, 2017
  6. Anthony Watts, “Ooops! Australina BOM climate readings may be invalid due to lack of calibration,” wattsupwiththat.com, September 11, 2017
  7. Tony Heller ”100% of US warming is due to NOAA data tampering,” realclimatescience.com, December 28, 2016
  8. Anthony Watts, “Press release- Watts at #AGU15 the quality of temperature station siting matters for temperature trends,” wattsupwiththat.com, December 17, 2015

Jack Dini -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology.  He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.


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