Was Last Year Really The Hottest Ever In The US?

By Paul Homewood

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

 

As we have known for some time, the NCDC have duly declared last year as the hottest on record for the CONUS, 1.0F warmer than 1998, and 1.19F hotter than than 1934.

 

Steve Goddard has documented how both NCDC and GISS have systematically adjusted the original temperature records, so as to cool the past.

We don’t, however, have to rely simply on the data that NCDC gives us. For instance, UAH and RSS both provide satellite measured temperature data for the CONUS. When we examine the UAH data, and compare with NCDC,  we find the following:-

 

Year	NCDC – Fahrenheit	NCDC – Centigrade	UAH – Centigrade
1998	54.32	12.40	0.55
2012	55.32	12.95	0.87
Diff	1.00	0.55	0.32

[UAH temperatures are anomalies , not absolute]

 

So already we see a discrepancy of 0.23C between the two datasets since 1998, with NCDC showing more warming over that period. RSS figures also give a similar picture to UAH – see here.

But that is not all. In 1999, GISS issued a paper, written by James Hansen, which contained the following graph.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20110519113817/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/

 

Note that the temperature in 1934 was approximately 0.6C higher than 1998. Now fast forward to the graph that GISS now claim to be the true record for the US.

 

 

The graph does not include 2012, but shows, at that stage, 1998 to be the hottest year, beating 1934 by about 0.1C. In other words, the adjustments made by GISS/GHCN have cooled the past/warmed the present by something of the order of 0.7C.

Let’s see then what difference all this makes to the “hottest year” claims.

 

Year	Degree Centigrade
1934	13.00
1998	12.40
2012	12.72

 

 

Let’s run through the calculation:-

1) According to NCDC now, the US temperature in 1998 was 12.40C.

2) If 1934 was 0.60 warmer, this gives 13.00C for that year.

3) According to UAH, the 2012 temperature for the US was 0.32C than 1998, giving a figure for 2012 of 12.72C.

 

So rather than 2012 being 1.19F warmer than 1934, or 0.66C, using the original Hansen numbers up to 1998, and UAH figures since, it would appear that 1934 was 0.28C warmer. The adjustments made by GISS/NCDC have together added a warming trend of 0.94C, or 1.69F.

But I very much doubt if you will hear that from any official sources.

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