USHCN Adjustments In Kansas
By Paul Homewood
Following much recent discussion on USHCN temperature adjustments, I have had a chance to analyse what has been going across the state of Kansas.
Altogether there are 30 USHCN stations, currently listed as operational in Kansas, and I have compared the mean temperatures from the USHCN Final dataset for January 2013, with the actual station measurements as listed in the State Climatological Reports. (There is one station at Lawrence, which I have excluded as the file seems to be corrupted).
The results are below.
( I have included some screenshots in the Appendix, as examples)
- Nearly every station has had the actual temperatures adjusted upwards by about half a degree centigrade.
- There are 8, out of the 29 stations, which have “Estimated” temperatures on USHCN. This is a ratio of 28%, which seems to tie in with Steve Goddard’s country-wide assessment.
- Of these eight estimates, five are because of missing data, as listed at the bottom. Four of these are now shut.
- There seems to be no obvious reason why the other three estimates have been made , at Ellsworth, Liberal and Ottawa. The adjustments at these though don’t appear to be significantly different to the non estimated ones.
In addition to recent temperatures being adjusted upwards, we also find that historical ones have been adjusted down. So, for instance we find that the January 1934 mean temperature at Ashland has been adjusted from 3.78C to 3.10C, whilst at Columbus there is a reduction from 4.00C to 3.52C.
In total, therefore, there has been a warming trend of about 1C added since 1934. It has always been my understanding that the various adjustments made for TOBS, etc, have been made to the historic data, and that present temperatures were left unaltered. Certainly, the cooling adjustments of about half a degree in the 1930’s would seem to tally with what NOAA have been publishing.
But this leaves the question of just why there is a need to continually adjust current temperatures upwards.
Sources
1) USHCN V2.5 dataset
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/
2) Kansas State Climatological Reports
Appendix
Examples below show the V2.5 and State Climatological Reports for Anthony and Ashland, (USHCN station codes 140264 and 140365 respectively)
USHCN V2.5 Final Dataset
January temperatures are shown in the first column, after the year – e.g. Anthony is 2.53C.
State Climatological Reports
Trackbacks
- US temperature data is not real but “adjusted” | The k2p blog
- eating crow … all US NCDC weather data is proved a crock | pindanpost
- NOAA’s temperature control knob for the past, the present, and maybe the future – July 1936 now hottest month again | Watts Up With That?
- What is happening with USHCN temperature data? | The right-wing liberal
- What is happening with USHCN temperature data? | Virginia Virtucon
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“But this leaves the question of just why there is a need to continually adjust current temperatures upwards” <—– Hmmmm.
And also the question why older temperatures, already cooled, must be further adjusted downwards.
Old Soviet joke: “In the Soviet Union, the future is certain; only the past keeps changing.”
Paul,
Another great post. I do appreciate your hard work on this issue.
The whole process of continually cooling the past to warm the present smacks of scientific fraud. What else could one call it?
Paul,
Your work is excellent, and timely. Cooling the past creates an illusion that we are trending hotter. Why the data sets are being altered is a valid question. Is it really getting comparatively hotter?
See my comment here: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/28/my-rebuttal-to-politifact/#comment-378668
Simple, really…
When the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.
Hide the decline!
Reblogged this on Real Science and commented:
Paul’s work show exactly why you have to use absolute temperatures rather than anomalies for this type of analysis.
It is called FABRICATION! LOL
Big movement on WUWT see
IMO the past is being cooled in small steps so it is less noticeable from memory of the prior release.
But lets say for a moment these people are honestly trying to correct the data. The fact they keep doing it over and over again differently should indicate they don’t know what they are doing.
Furthermore doing it secretly to the data, instead of doing it as part of documented analysis violates the basic rules of science.
In the end we are supposed to change the way we live, drastically alter the economy, and submit to central management of every aspect of our lives based on work of people who are either deliberately trying to scam us or are extremely incompetent.
“In the end we are supposed to change the way we live, drastically alter the economy, and submit to central management of every aspect of our lives based on work of people who are either deliberately trying to scam us or are extremely incompetent.”
Both?
It is my gut feeling that science by government grant breeds incompetence and sets up scams. It’s easier to let errors slide/cook the data and then demand another grant to study it some more, to see if it needs to be fixed, than it is to find another job, once the original grant runs out.
Isn’t this just another in the endless series of “Golly, gee, TOBS adjustments are generally positive”? Positive in Kansas – you could write 48 posts on this, It gets stale.
Nick Stokes wrote, ” Positive in Kansas – you could write 48 posts on this, It gets stale.”
Glad to see a fraudster admit that all adjustments lead to the myth of warming. But I think that old Nick (St. Nick?) was trying to justify cheating by saying “everyone does it”.
No Nick. You are a despicable anti-science scammer.
Where have NCDC ever admitted that they are adding 1C for TOBS?
Thanks Paul. Isn’t it funny Nick “Race Horse” Stokes mentioning stale?
It raises the question, Why is the actual data available? Im sure there will be a quick end to any data, other than “approved” data being available.
Future Global temperature change will have to be beyond the wildest forecasts to offset past “adjustments”.
It appears the proselytizers of this “science” have doomed their mission to failure by the very methods used to create the “crisis”.
I originally looked at the same sort of thing for Kansas at
http://bittooth.blogspot.com/2011/02/kansas-combined-temperatures-revisited.html
Over time I looked at each of the states, which are given in alphabetical order down the right side of the posts at Bit Tooth Energy (http://bittooth.blogspot.com) – hopefully there is something of interest in them for you.
Dave