Hadley Centre Reviews SST Data

Dr. David Parker of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre,  one of the global warming temples,  is reported as saying that research into relationships between sea surface temperature (SST) and marine air temperature ( MAT)suggest that they may have been exaggerating the rate of global warming by 40%, see article at bottom of page.

David old son, sceptics have been saying for a decade that your beloved SST's century long warming trend  is not worth the paper it is printed on !!  The large corrections needed are greater in magnitude than the trend produced.
If you do a survey of century long SST trends produced by various research groups since say the 1970's, you find that the more recent the research, the greater the warming,  just reflecting people producing findings to suit the IPCC dogmas.

This announcement by the Hadley Centre has to be seen for what it is, damage control.

The real story in global warming trends is the continued inclusion of thousands of urban heat island (UHI) affected stations in global data sets.  A few months ago I told David and Chris Folland that their Central England Temperature (CET) trend contained serious UHI bias when compared to the S.W.  Ireland  Valentia Observatory.  The same David Parker told me that SST numbers supported the CET  trend  !!

In a related email  David  told me that Gatwick Airport data was not suitable to include in compilations of global temperature trends.

David, I KNOW THAT !!

How about telling other people, for example Phillip Jones who uses Gatwick AP and thousands like it to do just what you say not to do.



Pasted below is the article from some UK "Telegraph" site.
Several other articles with whining pro-warming attitude, as if writers would rather be writing for the "New Scientist".

                                    Global warming
                                    claims 'based on
                                    false data'

                                    By Robert Matthews

                                           Research should not be dismissed by sceptics
                                           Scientists' discoveries give lie to doom-monger
                                         predictions

                                    FRESH doubt has been cast on evidence for global
                                    warming following the discovery that a key method of
                                    measuring temperature change has exaggerated the
                                    warming rate by almost 40 per cent.

                                    Studies of temperature records dating back more than a
                                    century have seemed to indicate a rise in global
                                    temperature of around 0.5ĄC, with much of it occurring
                                    since the late 1970s. This has led many scientists to
                                    believe that global warming is under way, with the finger
                                    of blame usually pointed at man-made pollution such as
                                    carbon dioxide.

                                    Now an international team of scientists, including
                                    researchers from the Met Office in Bracknell, Berkshire,
                                    has found serious discrepancies in these temperature
                                    measurements, suggesting that the amount of global
                                    warming is much less than previously believed.

                                    The concern focuses on the temperature of the
                                    atmosphere over the sea, which covers almost three
                                    quarters of the Earth's surface. While scientists use
                                    standard weather station instruments to detect warming
                                    on land, they have been forced to rely on the crews of
                                    ships to make measurements over the vast ocean
                                    regions.

                                    Crews have taken the temperature by dipping buckets
                                    into the sea or using water flowing into the engine
                                    intakes. Scientists have assumed that there is a simple
                                    link between the temperature of seawater and that of the
                                    air above it.

                                    However, after analysing years of data from scientific
                                    buoys in the Pacific that measure sea and air
                                    temperatures simultaneously, the team has found no
                                    evidence of a simple link. Instead, the seawater
                                    measurements have exaggerated the amount of global
                                    warming over the seas, with the real temperature having
                                    risen less than half as fast during the 1970s than the
                                    standard measurements suggest.

                                    Reporting their findings in the influential journal
                                    Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say that the
                                    exact cause of the discrepancy is not known. One
                                    possibility is that the atmosphere responded faster than
                                    the sea to cooling events such as volcanic eruptions.

                                    The findings have major implications for the climate
                                    change debate because the sea temperature
                                    measurements are a key part of global warming
                                    calculations. According to the team, replacing the
                                    standard seawater data with the appropriate air data
                                    produces a big cut in the overall global warming rate
                                    during the last 20 years, from around 0.18ĄC per
                                    decade to 0.13ĄC.

                                    This suggests that the widely-quoted global warming
                                    figure used to persuade governments to take action over
                                    greenhouse gases exaggerates the true warming rate by
                                    almost 40 per cent. The team is now calling for climate
                                    experts to switch from seawater data to sea-air
                                    temperature measurements.

                                    One member of the team, David Parker, of the Hadley
                                    Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Met
                                    Office, said that the discovery of the discrepancy
                                    "shows we don't understand everything, and that we
                                    need better observations - all branches of science are
                                    like that". Yet according to Mr Parker, the new results
                                    do not undermine the case for global warming: "It is
                                    raising questions about the interpretation of the
                                    sea-surface data."

                                    Even so, the findings will be seized on by sceptics as
                                    more evidence that scientists have little idea about the
                                    current rate of global warming, let alone its future rate.
                                    Climate experts are still trying to explain why satellites
                                    measuring the temperature of the Earth have detected
                                    little sign of global warming - despite taking
                                    measurements during supposedly the warmest period on
                                    record.

                                    Some researchers suspect that the fault may again lie
                                    with the ground-based temperature measurements. They
                                    say that many of the data come from stations
                                    surrounded by growing urban sprawl, whose warmth
                                    could give a misleading figure. A study of data taken
                                    around Vienna, Austria, between 1951 and 1996 found
                                    that the air temperature rose by anything from zero to
                                    0.6ĄC, depending on precisely where the measurements
                                    were made.

You read it first here.

Posted   20, January, 2001.

© Warwick Hughes, 2001
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