Zeke Hausfather: Understanding adjustments to surface temperature data

This is a first. I am recommending an article that has appeared at Judith Curry's blog (archived here). It's a very good article about adjustments to surface temperature data, written by Zeke Hausfather. I couldn't see it anywhere else on the internet so Zeke may have written it for Judith and her readers. (Judith certainly needed the education. She has posted Zeke's article without comment, which is also a rare event.)

Unfortunately it means a lot of people who would benefit from reading it might miss out, because they avoid Judith's blog like the plague. On the upside, Judith panders mainly to the denialati and her readers might learn something. - Update: Note I said "might". Even at this early stage, most of Judith's readers are not interested in what Zeke actually wrote. Going by the comments they are too deep in denial and paranoid conspiracies. Updated archive is here. Sou. 12:44 am AEST Tuesday 8 July 2014

Here is an archived version of the article.

Understanding adjustments to temperature data

Zeke deals with a lot of the points raised in the recent idiocy started by "Steve Goddard" (Tony Heller) and perpetuated by Anthony Watts. He also promises two more parts, which I'll promote here when they appear, writing (my dot points):

This will be the first post in a three-part series examining adjustments in temperature data, with a specific focus on the U.S. land temperatures.

• This post will provide an overview of the adjustments done and their relative effect on temperatures. 

• The second post will examine Time of Observation adjustments in more detail, using hourly data from the pristine U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) to empirically demonstrate the potential bias introduced by different observation times. 

• The final post will examine automated pairwise homogenization approaches in more detail, looking at how breakpoints are detected and how algorithms can tested to ensure that they are equally effective at removing both cooling and warming biases.

Zeke Hausfather is a researcher with the Berkeley Earth temperature analysis project.  He writes a lot for Yale Climate Connections.  If you visit some denier websites you may have seen Zeke injecting a dose of reality to contrast with the normal conspiracy theorising and other idiocy that takes place. He is known for his integrity and for being straightforward and polite with one and all. He also writes very clearly so that even people without any scientific education should be able to follow what he writes.

Understandably, Anthony Watts doesn't always get along well with Zeke. Anthony prefers FUD and denial, which Zeke doesn't do at all.

Update: Comments from Judith Curry's blog

The comments are flying thick and fast, with the emphasis on commenters being "thick", as you'd expect given the location. Here is a representative sample. Judith Curry must be very proud of herself:

David Springer is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who prefers lies to facts. I'd say he's a right wing authoritarian who distrusts any and every "official" source. He also seems to want people to believe the entire edifice of climate science rests on the weather in Washington on one day in 1988 and his lie about James Hansen. Judith does cater for weirdos, doesn't she:

 | July 7, 2014 at 10:01 am |
Good faith was undermined about the time James Hansen sabotaged the air conditioning and opened the windows to scorching outside temperatures in the congressional hearing room in 1988. Good faith collapsed completely with the Climategate emails two decades later.

Good faith my ass.

sunshinehours1 is another crank who doesn't understand Zeke's article, despite it being written so elegantly, and who doesn't know that data is available - all kinds of data including raw data as well as gridded data. Nothing is "hidden".

| July 7, 2014 at 9:55 am | 
Why do climate scientists hide the raw data? Why do they use anomalies and 5 years smoothing to hide the data?
You can’t spell anomalies with LIES.

In fact almost all of Judith's readers seem to be certifiable. Rob Bradley is no exception. From what he writes, he thinks that scientists are fudging the data. That would be a bigger hoax than could conceivably be maintained. He's an utter nutter.

| July 7, 2014 at 9:48 am |
The author states: “Their methods may not be perfect, and are certainly not immune from critical analysis, but that critical analysis should start out from a position of assuming good faith and with an understanding of what exactly has been done.”
But surely incentives matter. Peer pressure matters. Government funding matters. Beware of the ‘romantic’ view of science in a politicized area.

Scottish Sceptic is now blatantly implicitly accusing Zeke Hausfather, who is an "outsider" to climate science, of being in on the imagined "hoax". Well, we already know Scottish Sceptic is just an other utter nutter.

 | July 7, 2014 at 10:37 am | 
When an auditor checks accounts, they do not assume bad faith.
Instead they just assure the figures are right.

So, why then when skeptics try to audit climate figures do they immediately assume we are acting in bad faith?

Because academics don’t have a culture of having their work checked by outsiders

The simple fact is that academics cannot stomach having outsiders look over their figures. And this is usually a symptom of an extremely poor quality regime

claimsguy is another right wing authoritarian who distrusts scientists because they are the go-to source for science. Would he go to a barber to get an expert opinion on his medical condition?

  | July 7, 2014 at 10:47 am |
Oh geez. You’ve poisoned the well by saying Gavin liked the post.

A lesson in statistics with E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister at WUWT

In a variation of the denier memes "CO2 is only a trace gas" and "it's not happening", Anthony Watts has a silly article about ice. Actually it's an article about "trillions of dollars", which is at the heart of most denier protests about global warming. (Archived here.)

Many deniers take the position that we can't afford to stop the sixth major extinction and we can't afford to make the world bearable for future generations. What they really mean is that they've got a lot invested in fossil fuels and they don't want to shift to clean energy.

The other common theme that you'll find on denier blogs is a fear of fear. Studies show that people in the USA who vote conservative are more likely to be hypersensitive to threats. In extreme cases like you'll find with inhabitants of denier blogs, they'll do anything to avoid what they perceive as threatening, even rejecting facts. (Judging by the number of articles denying melting ice and rising sea levels that Anthony Watts posts on his blog, the thought of it scares him more than anything else. Maybe even more than an increase in taxation.)

To cut to the chase, WUWT "guests", E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister wrote an article under the title "Lying with Statistics: The National Climate Assessment Falsely Hypes Ice Loss in Greenland and Antarctica"

What they are pretending is that it doesn't matter if the ice keeps melting and sea levels rise by one or two metres this century, and six to ten metres in coming centuries. All the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is tiny compared to the size of the world, didn't you know?

Actually, it's not quite that. What these two are arguing is that more ice won't melt as the world heats up. They reckon that ice will only keep melting at the same rate as it's melting today - or should I say, as it melted last century. They are rejecting basic physics. I expect they are surprised every time ice cubes melt in their bourbon.

Here are two charts they put up to PROVE the scientists are "lying with statistics":

See - in nine years the ice melted as a percentage of total ice was miniscule and "nothing to worry about".

Even NASA knows that if all the ice melted it would barely bother anyone (as long as they didn't live in Bangladesh or London or the Netherlands or China or Florida or anywhere near the coast). And NASA scientists, as every WUWT-er knows, "don't know nuffin'". The image below is not just all the water currently bound up in ice. It's all the water at or near the surface on earth - compared to the size of Earth.

Source: APOD NASA

Compared to that, what's the point of complaining about the ice melting? Even if it all melted it would only raise sea levels by 66 metres (216 feet). What's to worry about?

Nothing to worry about

That's only about 0.6% of the depth of the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench. It's like health fanatics (such as the guvmint) arguing that if you ingested 0.00029% of your body weight in arsenic it'd kill you. What do they think we are? Stupid sheeple?

Think about how "warmists" try to scare the poor little dears at WUWT about rising temperatures. Here's a chart to prove that a piddly rise of 6C wouldn't hurt a fly. Heck, the temperature here can change by more than that here in 12 hours.

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Needless to say you shouldn't trust the above temperature chart. It was obviously tampered with to make the oldest temperature readings colder and the later temperatures hotter! Here's another one. Not quite six degrees:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Oops! How did that chart get there?

Anyway, here's a couple of charts to prove that a sea level rise of sixty six metres is nothing at all. If all the ice melted it might take 5,000 years - that's what I've put in the chart.  First of all let's see how those deceiving scientists would probably portray it, just to scare the folk at WUWT:

Deceptive "scientific" chart

Now look at how it really should be presented:

True "statistical" chart - WUWT-style

Think about that for a while, scientists!


E. Calvin Beisner is not a climate scientist. No, he's an orthodox presbyterian elder and a member of the pseudo-religious cult, the Cornwall Alliance. His denial of science is to be recognised by the Heartland Institute, so we've been told.

J.C. Keister Jr is also associated with the Cornwall Alliance. He claims a PhD in something or other but I guess he gave that up for his crank religion.

The Cornwall Alliance forbids its members from accepting climate science. It's probably a mortal sin. Not sure about evolution - that might be forbidden too. At least one of its members, Roy Spencer, rejects biological science.

From the WUWT comments

Bernd Felsche says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:07 am
Alarmism is a characteristic of having lost a sense of proportion.

nickreality65 doesn't like it when someone tickles his amygdala and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:21 am
Now do the same w/ 100,000 years of co2 plotted next to keeling. And scores of temps, sea levels plotted w/ exaggerated scales to maximize the fear factor.

Dave confuses sea ice with land ice and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:36 am
How can Antarctica be losing ice if it just recently reached an all time greatest extent?

UnfrozenCavemanMD says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:05 am
Thus my maxim:
“Anyone who is giving you numerators without denominators is trying to deceive you.” 

---

Schreiber, Darren, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons, Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler, and Martin P. Paulus. "Red brain, blue brain: Evaluative processes differ in Democrats and Republicans." PloS one 8, no. 2 (2013): e52970. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052970

Anthony Watts shames former Apollo Astronaut, Walt Cunningham

Update

This tweet from @rubiginosa sums up Anthony Watts' article better than anything:

pic.twitter.com/Hp6C4G6A7j #climate MT @wattsupwiththat Apollo Astronaut: Climate Alarmism Is the ‘Biggest Fraud in the Field of Science’
— rubiginosa (@rubiginosa) July 6, 2014

---

Anthony Watts is mocking the 84 year old Apollo astronaut, Walt Cunningham. He's posted a rather embarrassing article about the poor chap, written by Eric "eugenics" Worrall** (archived here, latest here). Anthony's headline was: "Apollo Astronaut: Climate Alarmism Is the ‘Biggest Fraud in the Field of Science’".

Walt is wheeled out by the professional disinformers from time to time and made to perform in public. I've written about it once before.

If Walt wanted to, he could be remembered for his glory days. Instead he spends part of his retirement waving his hands about, weakly protesting climate change muttering paranoid conspiracy theories and making inane, nonsensical comments such as these, quoted on Anthony Watts blog:

“Since about 2000, I looked farther and farther into it,...I found that not one of the claims that the alarmists were making out there had any bearings, whatsoever. And, so, it was kind of a no-brainer to come to the conclusion.”...

...“The media are largely to blame for public misconceptions – not because they’re intentionally misleading the public, but because they “just don’t want to go into the time and trouble to find out.” “If they do go into it and look at it for themselves, they become a lot more neutral in their presentation,” 

...“I can only tell you that, even back in the days of Apollo, we didn’t have to face this kind of nonsense” 

Full of substance, eh? Just what he has looked into, neither Anthony Watts nor Eric Worrall is saying.  I doubt Walt has a clue.  He just knows that the Arctic can't be melting, the oceans can't possibly be getting more acidic, the surface temperature can't be going up and the seas couldn't possibly be storing more heat. Nor could the seas be rising.

Data sources: NODC/NOAA, PIOMAS, NASA (GISTemp), CU Sea Level Research Group University of Colorado

I suppose this is the first of a series of empty, meaningless protests at global warming and climate change that will be paraded at the denier festival at Las Vegas this week. Fodder for HotWhopper.

I do think it's a bit unfair of the science denial brigade to take advantage of a former astronaut who's lost the plot. Still, he's his own person and if he wants to make a fool of himself in his old age, then there will always be unscrupulous people waiting to make the most of the opportunity.

**Eric Worrall earned the nickname "Eugenics" because he made a habit of likening climate science to the study of eugenics in the 1930s, particularly when he commented at Watching the Deniers. It's his version of Godwin's Law.

From the WUWT comments

Sweet Old Bob says he wishes mainstream media was as cruel to the poor chap as Anthony Watts is:

July 6, 2014 at 6:22 am
If only the MSM would cover this speech…

Is Jeremy taking a swipe at the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park and his Force X? He says:

July 6, 2014 at 6:24 am
So true! Climate science is not rocket science – it is BS for Geography types – those people with coloring crayons who incapable of logical scientific enquiry and deduction. 

John piccirilli has been studying climate science in depth for a whole "twenty minutes" and says:

July 6, 2014 at 7:56 am
Follow the money..skeptics make $0 while alarmists and so called “green” energy scams are making millions. I looked into this “debate” for myself, it took all of 20minutes to know the truth.

Quote of the Day from David Evans, the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park

Wondering how David Evans was tracking with his Force X from the Sun, now that he's been challenged by some of the locals at WUWT. You may recall that for the last eighteen months he's been building a "model" in an Excel spreadsheet.  Force X and the notch were the subject of BIG NEWS - with eight plus articles and a 170 page paper, yet to be released. I guess he hasn't made much progress after all or he's not a very organised modeller, because I came across this comment from David Evans:

July 5, 2014 at 9:51 pm
Leif – I’ll get to it, but finding the parameters for the model is complicated and slow, takes a few days. Might be a few weeks before I can get to it.

Is it any wonder that he's not willing to share his workings? Sounds as if he's got himself into a real mess.  All that was suggested was that he replace his TSI data (an Evans Special concoction from multiple sources) with a single set. His comment was in reply to this suggestion by Leif Svalgaard, quoting David Evans (extract)

July 5, 2014 at 3:23 pm
...“Running the model (parametrized for the composite TSI data I use, basically Lean/PMOD/ACRIM) on your reconstruction of TSI also shows a hefty temperature fall in 2015 ”

This is the wrong way of doing this. You must parameterize using the same reconstruction as for running the model.

So, the valid test would be:
1) parameterize using ‘my’ TSI
2) run the model on ‘my’ TSI
3) compare with the temperature record

I await your agreement to this collaborative work with anticipation. Science should be [as generally is, except for fringe pseudo-science] building on each other’s work, so please join me in this venture.

I'm not the only one who finds David Evans' comment very strange after the grand build up to the Big News. Leif Svalgaard does too (extract):

July 6, 2014 at 3:11 am
Is your computer code that slow? Or is it just a manual process? If so, that would explain your reluctance to reveal the process. 

Before David Evans does plug in Leif Svalgaard's TSI data and runs the model again, I'd say he also needs to sort out his temperature concoction. From what I've read he didn't just mess with TSI, he also cobbled together temperature data from multiple sources combining surface and lower troposphere temperature data sets. Then he smoothed his temperature cocktail, quite inexplicably, with a 25 year running mean.

Las Vegas Denier Fest: Awards for best con artists, denial propagandists and plodders for hire

I've read that this is the list of the science deniers who are getting bravery awards being patronised by the Heartland Institute at an upcoming denier festival in Las Vegas.

The awards are for mostly well-paid work, which involves pretending to be extremely stupid at best and/or deliberately conning the gullible about climate change. It's the equivalent of the Academy Awards I guess, where deniers pat each other on the back and put their hands up for more speaker engagements at denier festivals. Like the Academy Awards, it focuses on a person's ability to present fiction to the hoi polloi rather than, say, scientific documentaries. It involves a fair amount of acting and there are separate categories.

One category is script-writing. One or two of this motley lot run a blog and a couple even manage to write the occasional paper or popular science-denying book. They have even been known to get published in the scientific literature. Well not in the best journals. Nor usually in mediocre journals. But deniers can't be choosers. Often they have to resort to vanity publications.

Another category is best comedian/make-up artist - you can guess who won that award.

Another is best pseudo-religious characterisation. That award was shared this year.

The Heartland Institute also awarded some prizes for trying, to dull plodders in their dotage.

Here are the people being paraded by the Heartland Institute, probably hoping to attract more funds from individual deniers who have more money than sense, and to faceless corporations with an agenda:

• Sherwood B. Idso - who is part of the Idso family, denialist shills for hire  
• Arthur B. Robinson, one of those who was behind the fake "Oregon Petition"
• Roy Spencer, a member of a science-denying alarmist cult called the Cornwall Alliance
• Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (I think it should be The Viscount Monckton aka the potty peer)
• S. Fred Singer,  another denier for hire 
• Willie Soon, another denier for hire
• Patrick Moore,  another denier for hire who falsely claims to have founded Greenpeace
• Tom Harris, a very weird person who can't even lie straight, and runs the Canadian branch of the anti-climate science coalition
• Alan Carlin, another American denier
• E. Calvin Beisner from the science denying alarmist cult, the Cornwall Alliance. 

Not all of the above have graced these pages yet. If they ever let women into denier festivals, maybe Judith Curry will get a guernsey when she's old enough.  She's been doing her bit for the denier cause these past few years.

About increasing winter Antarctic sea ice and decreasing summer Arctic sea ice

Science deniers are making a lot out of the growth in Antarctic sea ice, mostly over winter.  Strangely enough they aren't accusing scientists of fabricating the data, for a change.

Here's a chart from The Cryosphere Today (not, as Anthony's ill-informed "guest" referred to it, Today Cryosphere or maybe just Cryosphere). It's hit a record high for this time of year - ie since 1979.

Source: The Cryosphere Today

The main reasons for the increase in sea ice are described very nicely in this thread on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (h/t Neven). As AbruptSLR points out:

...on average the Antarctic Sea Ice Area is going up by 0.2% per year, and the average thickness is going up 0.2% per year, resulting in an average sea ice volume increase of 0.4% per year.  However, these numbers are orders of magnitude lower than the corresponding changes taking place to the Arctic Sea Ice.

I did this chart last year (you can read my previous article on the subject here, with some reading material about models not projecting the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice). I combined the Arctic and Antarctic at their respective minima to illustrate the point. That means I've put the September values in the Arctic with the February values for Antarctica. It's missing the latest years. I'll update it after September if I remember to do so. Click to see it larger, as always.

Data source: NSIDC

The big impact on climate is in the summer. It's summer ice cover that affects albedo, not mid-winter ice, when the poles are in darkness. (Not that there's any sea ice at the South Pole.)

As for why the sea ice in the southern oceans is increasing, AbruptSLR has this to say (and a lot more besides):

Denialist should be aware that not only is the average water temperature in the Southern Ocean increasing with time, but also the air temperature above the Southern Ocean is increasing with time, and the following linked research makes it clear that the most significant reason why the Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing is due to the formation of the seasonal Antarctic ozone hole after the mid-1980's created by anthropologically induced chlorides in the upper atmosphere over Antarctica; which in turn caused the circumpolar Antarctic westerly wind velocity to increase (see the following abstract for the influence of this increased wind velocity on the Antarctic Sea Ice); and the linked reference indicates that the intensifying regional winds in Antarctic is one of the most significant factors accounting for the increasing maximum extent of Antarctic sea ice. 

There is a lot of useful information and references to scientific papers in that thread. I don't have time to research and write about this right now. And I doubt I could do it any better than AbruptSLR in any case, and probably a lot worse.

Again, here is a link to the discussion. It's well worth a read, especially for anyone who wants to rebut denialist nonsense on the subject.

As for what's happening in the Arctic, well somewhat surprisingly, the ice extent is dropping quite a bit. It doesn't look as if it will break the 2012 record low though. Neven's blog is the place to go to keep up with what's happening there.

Source: Arctic Sea Ice Monitor

From the WUWT comments

Anthony Watts prefers to focus his readers attention on Antarctica, rather than the Arctic and to spread his usual disinformation about. Here are some of the mindless comments he hoped for and got:

Lucius von Steinkaninchen says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:24 am
* * * It’s getting colder around Antarctica and so the ice is growing * * *
In a world of some fields of Science degenerated enough to forget Occam’s Razor, it is so refreshing to see a simple model tying up cause and effect…

Bob Diaz says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:25 am
It appears that reality does not agree with the computer models.
How could reality be so wrong??? ;-))

Ben Howison says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:27 am
Looks kinda like a hockey stick, doesn’t it? 

Shawn from High River is about the only person who says something sensible, but I doubt he realises it. He says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:29 am
When these pesky facts get in the way of the prevailing theory,they just modify the theory to suit the facts

JimS says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:41 am
It is all so logical, it is astounding that no one can catch onto a very simple principle.
At the north pole, when sea ice trends to diminish, that means it is a sign of global warming.
However, at the south pole, on the opposite side of the earth, sea ice is increasing. But since this is on the opposite end of the earth, increasing sea ice means that is a sign of global warming.
These are opposite poles you see, so the exact opposite trend means the same thing. It is all global warming! 

Sheesh! (/sarc) 

John Schwartz says:

July 2, 2014 at 11:51 am
Just doesn’t fit the narrative, does it…  

Incompetent or deceitful? Anthony Watts is lost for words so substitutes pictures...

Update - see below. Judith Curry has decided to join forces with the loony camp. [Sou: 5:30 pm 2 July 14 AESDT]


This is a follow-up to Anthony Watts idiocy with regard to the US temperature record. You can read about his lead up tantrums here and here.

After all his mistakes of the past few days, topped off by this latest gaffe, Anthony Watts' reputation as far as the US temperature records go should be in tatters. Except he has no reputation with anyone who counts for anything. He's just another denialist blogger.

Lost for words

Today Anthony Watts is lost for words. So lost that when he found out that NCDC/NOAA had responded to a query from Politifact, he just posted the response "without comment" (archived here). The response from NCDC was, unsurprisingly, that their algorithms are working as intended.  You can read it in full in the archived WUWT article. It is just as Nick Stokes and others wrote.

Anthony peevishly wrote "The NCDC has not responded to me personally, I only got this by asking around." Yeah, you'd think that after Anthony's lunatic rantings at all and sundry and misrepresenting the NCDC they'd at least have paid him the courtesy of writing to him, the "bigger than Ben Hur" denier blogger, "personally"!

He stomped about for at least three hours trying to figure out how to get back at the NCDC/NOAA for ignoring him and his anti-science blog. "How could they do that?" He fumed. "I just put in a huge amount of effort telling my readers how bad and unscrupulous and wrong and positively evil the NOAA is and they ignore me."

The fact that it was Anthony who was so dreadfully wrong in almost everything he wrote about the US temperature record would have been beside the point. He wanted to stir up a hornets' nest, but the hornets flew off over his head. He wasn't worth even a little sting.

Anthony Watts takes a swipe at his engineering buddies

After three hours Anthony was still lost for words, but he came up with a sneaky way around this. He decided to say it with pictures. So he put up lots of big photos (archived here). Most of them were of engineering disasters. Given a huge (dis)proportion of Anthony's denier fans are engineers this may not go over well.

Anthony took particular aim at his fellow deniers, the Gang of 49 who are retired space engineers and astronauts. This motley lot pride themselves on rejecting climate science, though they can't do simple arithmetic and know nothing about climate. Anthony doesn't care if he shoots them down. He's prepared to drop a few allies in his quest to prove that all climate science is wrong. Here's a list of his pictures that PROVE the US temperature record is wrong.

• some early NASA rockets - would these have been NASA rockets designed by some of the Gang of 49 who Anthony promotes from time to time?
• the Mariner - that surely would have involved some of the Gang of 49 deniers
• the Mars Climate Orbiter - again, were any of those dismissed engineers close to the Gang of 49?
• the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse - which wouldn't endear him to his engineering buddies, 
• the de Havilland Comet, that's a bit risky. Some of Anthony's engineering fans would be old enough to have played a part in that one.
• the Titanic - that's probably safe enough. The people who designed the Titanic wouldn't be around any more. And I don't know that he has any admirers from the ship-building industry.

Anthony Watts - incompetent or deceitful?

Having listed a few engineering disasters that were not remotely connected to NOAA or NCDC, Anthony finally gets down to brass tacks. He's dug up the fact that on the "Climate at a Glance" website, the record displayed for the month of May for Dallas Texas, between 1970 and 2000, doesn't show a difference between the maximum and minimum temperature and average monthly temperature. Anthony reckons that's a travesty!  Anthony wrote:

While being told that “all is well” and and that “our algorithm is working as designed”, it is easy to discover that if one tries to plot the temperature data for any city in the United States like Dallas Texas for example you get plots for high temperature, low temperature, and average temperature that are identical:

Max/Min data to come at NCDC

So let's look into that, shall we? This is what NCDC had to say about version 1 of the US Climate Division Dataset (my emphasis):

Weaknesses of the U.S. Climate Division Dataset: The U.S. Climate Division Dataset does not contain monthly maximum or minimum temperature or any variables/indices derivable from daily data. Temperature data is adjusted for time of observation bias, however no other adjustments are made for inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneities include changes in instrumentation, observer, and observation practices, station and instrumentation moves, and changes in station composition resulting from stations closing and opening over time within a division.

Does the above apply to what Anthony found? I don't know, perhaps not directly anyway, because Version 1 has been superseded. However it does provide a clue.  A much bigger clue can be found right up the top of the webpage that Anthony himself linked to, where the NCDC has written (my emphasis):

NCDC transitioned to the nClimDiv dataset on Thursday, March 13, 2014. This was coincident with the release of the February 2014 monthly monitoring report. For details on this transition, please visit our public FTP site and our U.S. Climate Divisional Database site.

If you click on the "our public FTP site" link you'll find this, in black and white (my emphasis):

May 13, 2014

NCDC is planning to provide access to nClimDiv maximum and minimum temperature data coincident with the release of the May 2014 climate summary in mid-June.  

These data will be accessible from several of NCDC's products, including Climate at a Glance, and will also reside on our CIRS ftp site:

This isn't clear if it refers to monthly data or annual. On the NCDC charting web page annual data definitely has monthly max and min as well as average. So it may be that monthly data still is not available - or it's two weeks late. In any case, is it worth all the aggro that Anthony dished out? Does Anthony even know that it's ClimDiv data that he's looking at? What's he planning to do with monthly max and min data for Dallas between 1970 and 2000 - which is the chart he got all hot and bothered over? I'd say he could probably use USHCN data if he wanted to. [Para amended slightly a few minutes after posting.]

Shall we put Anthony's flap down to incompetence or is he deliberately leading his readers astray?

I'd say if you want any specialist advice on the US temperature record, avoid WUWT and Anthony Watts!

From the WUWT comments

Rhoda R doesn't know anything about US surface temperature but wants to join in the chorus and says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Did anyone ask what the design goal was that these algorithms were designed to meet?

editstet has nothing to add but adds it anyway and says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Ah, well, that certainly simplifies things.

editstet follows it up with another meaningless one-liner says:

July 1, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Or maybe NOAA scientists took the song Night and Day too literally.

pokerguy has nothing to say but says it anyway:

July 1, 2014 at 8:28 pm
“…working as designed.”
Well that’s a relief.

Rud Istvan is a fake sceptic who says:

July 1, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Anthony, call them on the max min avg mistake. They might respond since obviously and embarassingly wrong.

You just called them on much bigger climate temp issues, and were ‘blown off’. Time to escalate. And not just here. “algorithm does what we intended” is going to be one of those salient moments all round. What a lovely intent statement in any court of law able to convict.

davidmhoffer mistakenly thinks the NCDC has something to do with the Hubble telescope. Either that or he wants Anthony to stick the boot into the Gang of 49 some more, and says:

July 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Aw, you left out the Hubble Telescope. I think it a most appropriate example for no other reason that every single component and sub-assembly worked exactly as designed. It was only the fully assembled device that failed to work properly.

i sense the same mind numbing denial of the obvious in this case. The algorithm no doubt did work exactly as designed. That by no means proves that the design achieved an output commensurate with actual results, and, as the trends above show, it is quite possible to have an algorithm that works as designed yet, as part of a larger system, like the Hubble Telescope, produces incorrect information that is wildly and completely obviously wrong. Sadly, a quick look at the original photo from Hubble was enough to convince a rank layman that something was wrong. I don’t think a quick look by the MSM will have the same effect.

Update: Curried potatoes anyone?

Judith Curry has decided to pitch her tent alongside the unsavoury "Steve Goddard" and ignorant Anthony Watts (archived here). As every year passes (and as she herself admits), she shifts further and further into loony land. She's trying to portray absolutely nothing as a "political hot potato", based solely on the ignorant ravings of petulant, thwarted deniers.

No, Anthony Watts, this global warming is not "natural"

They really are a pack of duffers at WUWT, aren't they. Anthony Watts has an article about a doctoral thesis on climate change communication, which was based on farmers in Sweden (archived here). The paper was by Therese Apslund of Linköping University, The Tema Institute, Department of Water and Environmental Studies. Anthony reckons that:

Swedish farmers reject the 97% climate change consensus
...The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund, who led the study, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change, but got a lesson in reality from swedish famers [sic].

I looked over the paper and, while many of the farmers involved in the study were questioning whether global warming is anthropogenic in origin or merely some local variability, it's clear it wasn't all farmers in Sweden who doubt climate science. However farmers are a conservative lot in the main. If Swedish farmers are anything like Australian farmers then there will be a large proportion of them who are slow to accept science (including agricultural science). The more progressive the farmer in regard to adopting new farm technology, the more likely she is to accept climate science.

Climate change and agriculture

Here's a short article on some of the downsides of climate change and opportunities that climate change may create for Australian agriculture. And here's a list of just some of the research that is going on in my part of the world, to help farmers adapt. And if you think farmers as a whole are oblivious to the science you'd be wrong. Australia's peak farmer organisation, the National Farmers' Federation has this to say in it's policy statement on climate change:

The changing climate is potentially the biggest issue facing Australian farmers in the future. As a sector so dependent on natural resources, climate change poses a significant challenge to agriculture.

Anyway, the doctoral paper was about communication and framing of information about climate science and its implications. It wasn't an opinion poll of Swedish farmers.

Cyber-clubs for fools

As you know, deniers will turn to anyone to support their rejection of science. They find it reassuring that there are other wilfully ignorant people in the world. That doesn't make the science wrong, it just means that if you reject science (be it evolution, climate, geology, medicine or whatever) you can find like-minded people on blogs created as cyber-clubs for fools - like WUWT.

From the WUWT comments

Jean Parisot says:

June 30, 2014 at 7:07 pm
So the hypothesis that the farmers are right didn’t make it into the study?
God Forbid we listen to people with decades and generations of experience dealing with weather and climate professionally.

earwig42 doesn't realise that consensus is intrinsic to science. There'd be virtually no scientific advances if not for consensus. Researchers would be stuck in a loop forever repeating research from first principles. earwig42 says:

June 30, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Consensus is (or should be) irrelevant in Science. In Politics it is everything.

john piccirilli has a very strange view of scientists who research how the earth works, and says:

June 30, 2014 at 7:16 pm
Who do you believe, a farmer who is out in the weather every day 12hours a day, or some clown
Sitting in an air conditioned cube playing with his computer trying to get grant money? 

Mac the Knife is proud of his scientific illiteracy and says:

June 30, 2014 at 9:19 pm
God Bless the Farmers, every one!
From an old Wisconsin plow boy, bale chucker, and …. manure shoveler,
Mac

ntesdorf mimics john piccirilli says:

June 30, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Farmers around the World are practical people. Their livelihood depends on their having a knowledge of weather that is rather lengthy and rather detailed and which is passed on over the generations. Who would you rather believe on the Climate, a farmer who spends much of his day out in the weather or a government paid scientist who spends his day hunched over his computer, submitting applications for CAGW Grants?

NikFromNYC is a very mixed up chappie. He believes in the "climate science is a hoax" conspiracy but at the same time denounces Tim Ball's idiocy when he says:

June 30, 2014 at 10:54 pm
The full opening sentence is: “Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing because of the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide humankind pumps into our fragile atmosphere.”

This claim lives on and on as if alarm too is agreed upon and as if mainstream skepticism denies the textbook greenhouse effect. Alas, just enough do in fact loudly deny it to allow this slander to continue. Gee thanks, Tim Ball, a regular writer here, coauthor of the Sky Dragon book. Thankfully Mark Steyn has taken Ball’s ball and run with it with a counter suit against Mann, minus the maverick background. Sure, perhaps the greenhouse effect is lesser than assumed, but it’s self-defeating to promote that idea out of the blue in the face of clear evidence of scientific fraud coupled to highly speculstive amplification of that assumed greenhouse effect. A focus on fraud is now dearly needed, and you can’t cry fraud unless you also utterly and fully distance yourself from mavericks, because it won’t otherwise work, since no layperson will believe you when Al Gore can sincerely point to your association with greenhouse effect denial. 

Mario Lento has no idea that the climate has been relatively stable throughout human civilisation. He's going to be in for a rude shock in coming decades (depending on how old he is):

June 30, 2014 at 10:57 pm
The argument is silly. Climate changing is a given. Otherwise the word climate would have been defined as “homeostasis until the advent of industry.” The real deniers are CAGW believers.

---

Asplund, Therese. "Climate change frames and frame formation: An analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector." (2014). DOI:10.3384/diss.diva-105997

Latest ENSO update - El Niño still on the cards

The Bureau of Meteorology has a new ENSO wrap-up (or click here for the permanent record as a pdf file). There's still a solid chance of an El Niño later in the year:

While the tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperature is currently at levels typically associated with a weak El Niño, waters below the surface have cooled and atmospheric patterns continue to remain neutral.

However, over the past fortnight changes have occurred in the atmosphere that may be a response to the warm surface waters–the Southern Oscillation Index has dropped by over 10 points, and weakened trade winds have re-appeared. These changes would need to persist for several weeks in order for an El Niño to be considered established, and it remains possible they are simply related to shorter term weather variability.

Climate models surveyed by the Bureau continue to indicate that El Niño is likely to develop by spring 2014. The Bureau's ENSO Tracker remains at El Niño ALERT, indicating at least a 70% chance of El Niño developing in 2014.

Here's an animation comparing sub-surface temperatures from January to April this year with those of March to June. Note the two-month overlap.

Dan Satterfield has a short article in which he raises some points worth noting, particularly if you live in the USA.

For other references, I've included some good ones in an article about ENSO, which I wrote some time ago. (Yes, I'm being lazy.)

Ignorant WUWT-ers suffer CO2 phobia going back 900,000 years

Today Anthony Watts (archived here) copied and pasted the press release from a study I wrote about last week. It was about the paper by Leopoldo Pena and Steven Goldstein on what caused the ice ages to change around a million years ago. The paper was presenting an explanation of the 100,000 year glacial cycle. You can read about it here or at ScienceDaily.com.

I was struck by the intense CO2 phobia that commenters at WUWT suffer from. They obviously don't understand the carbon cycle or the role of carbon dioxide in climate. Nor do they understand the CO2/ocean interaction. A lot of them have never heard of Milanković cycles (and extensions to his theory). Not that I claim expertise or specialist knowledge, but the basics of all these are straightforward and not all that difficult to comprehend. (I did a search at WUWT for Milanković cycles and it's pretty clear why the people who don't venture beyond WUWT don't know anything about the subject.)

(If you're on the home page, click "read more" to find out more about the paper and see the reaction at WUWT.)