Dr Edward R Long’s disturbing study of 48 urban rural pairs USA
February 27th, 2010 by Warwick HughesDownload the original pdf for yourself – it is only 14 pages and very readable – Dr Long is ex NASA.
This study looks at NCDC raw and adjusted temperature trends and finds that rural data has been adjusted warmer to meet urban trends. It would be great if somebody had the time to check what Jones/UKMO has for Dr Long’s stations (which he lists). I predict now Jones/UKMO will treat them quite differently.
Remember, four years back I showed that GISS was doing something similar – read Dr Jim Hansen’s email.
Posted in IPCC, Surface Record, Urban Heat Islands | 8 Comments »
February 27th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Dr Roy Spencer has confirmed this by a different method see wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/27/spencer-spurious-warming-demonstrated-in-cru-surface-data/
I have been wondering for sometime if correction factors for UHI were being applied correctly. These articles and some others such as Alaskan temperatures show factors are being used to increase rural temperatures to match urban temperatures rather than to reduce urban temperatures to rural ones. As Dr Roy says there is a need to start again using all the available raw data. Of course WSH has being saying that as well.
February 28th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Now here’s some interesting. On 14 Dec 09, I printed off the temp data for Lismore (Centre St) from the GISS NASA site. The ‘combining sources @ the same location’ had the temps for earlier years down from the ‘after homogeneity adjusted’ data eg 1907 = 19.45 down to 18.95C. Today I check the same sites and find the ‘AHA’ table is the same as the ‘CS@SL’. See both @:-
data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=501945860000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=501945860000&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
I have no idea if this is the only station affected as I don’t have the physical evidence to show if there has been any change except for Lismore.
Anyone know what’s going on?
February 28th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
My guess as to what is going on here is that prior to 1990, there was a recognition by the AGW alarmists that the UHI existed and effected urban station data. In 1990 Jones and Wang published a paper which used Chinese station data to “prove” that the UHI was only 0.1 C per century. This was greeted with great joy by the AGW crowd since Jones and Wang had “proven” that the UHI was not the cause of warming. Therefore, they thought, all the warming must be AGW.
The keepers of the GISS and NCDC databases now had a paper which told them what the delta between urban and rural station data should be. All that was left to da was for the NCDC and GISS databases to be adjusted to the 0.1 C per century difference that Jones and Wang had “proven” in their 1990 paper.
An artifact of the leaked Climategate emails was that we finally have the station IDs for the Chinese stations that Jones and Wang used. Sadly, for Jones and Wang, the data was shoddy and did not support their conclusions.
Dr. Long has taken the next step by looking at the unadjusted data and comparing it with the adjusted data sets. His paper supports what many of us surmised.
I remember calculating the adjustment GISS made to their data set several years ago. My calculation was no where near as elegant as Dr. Long’s. I simply loaded the old data and the new data into Excel and subtracting the one from the other. I had expected a random adjustment with some values raised and others lowered. I did find that some were higher and others were lower, but it was not random. All values after 1970 were increased and all values before 1970 were decreased. The further a year was from 1970, the larger was the absolute value of the adjustment. I am certain that Jim Hansen realized that it had to be that way to avoid a step change in the temperature record in 1970.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Thanks Brooks
Haven’t NASA GISS released their data online recently for public scrutiny? Maybe we will see some more ‘adjustments’.
This is my favourite ‘adjustment’ – De Bilt is the only station used by them in Holland. Check the difference (as you point out above).
data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1
No wonder there’s warming.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Hello;
Apparently Jones said some things today that seemed rather surprizing.
Perhaps you’ll have a look at ‘bishop hill’ blog where he had a question about the cognitive dissonance.
TIA
RR
March 1st, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Whoops @ 4 – put in the wrong raw data graph – should be
data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
March 1st, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Hans Erren has done a lot of work on De Bilt – Uccle and other Euro sites.
October 20th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I have looked at some of the Australian weather station records and see cases where cooling trends in raw data changed to upward trends in ‘adjusted’ data. here is a typical example:-
carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/echuca-temperature.pdf
When I look at isolated rural towns I see little or no evidence for warming in Australia. Big cities are a different story – strong warming. This write-up shows a small number of examples but I have found many more similar cases:-
carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mcclintock-country.pdf
When one combines these findings with ER Long’s it makes it hard to believe in AGW.