Temperature Tampering At Amberley
By Paul Homewood
WUWT has picked up on the analysis that Jennifer Marohasy has done, which shows how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been adjusting raw temperature data to produce an artificial warming trend.
One station she has picked on is Amberley.
I thought I would double check what GISS/GHCN have done with the Amberley temperature record.
Figure 1 is taken from the raw data, which was produced via GHCN V2, and was used by GISS until Oct 2011. This database, though no longer used for GISS current products, is still available here.
Figure 1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=501945680000&dt=1&ds=1
Now contrast with the latest version, which is based on GHCN V3 temperatures.
Figure 2
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=501945680000&dt=1&ds=12
The GISS data confirms that Jennifer Marohasy is quite correct in her analysis, and that substantial adjustments have been made to create an artificial warming trend.
Trackbacks
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yes, “The GISS data confirms that Jennifer Marohasy is quite correct in her analysis, and that substantial adjustments have been made to create an artificial warming trend.”
This proves that man-made global warming is real and is happening now.
/sarc
finally somebody speaking up! kudos for her. if it ain’t warming, we’ll make it so.. lol… The problem is that at some point it will be very hard to explain why the (tampered) temperature records show it is +20C, whereas you’re actually outside in a parka freezing your “youknowwhat” off…. Only then will people realize they’ve been manipulated and lied at (albeit many will still not get it by then because of their cognitive dissonance).
CAGW is simply the largest psychological experiment every conducted.
I am a stock trader so I see this whole CAGW thing like this:
Assume I bought Google shares. I buy them because I THINK price will go up so I make some money. But, after I buy the stock, its price starts to go down. I am loosing money… Ouch… The problem is that I can’t change a thing about it. I can scream and do all I want, even turn my screen upside down so it looks like its price goes up, but whatever I do it doesn’t matter. Price goes down. Now I can do two things; ignore it, and THINK I am right and (hope) it will some day go back up. This is called cognitive dissonance: my mind can’t accept the fact I was wrong and will try to trick me into believing I was right all along.
Or I simply accept the fact that I was wrong, and I sell my shares. By selling I ensure I minimize my losses. Because who knows, price may well go to $0.00 (it won’t, for many reasons, but that’s a whole other discussion). So after I sold, I have no anxiety anymore. I have accepted my mistake, acted upon it, learned from it, and moved on. In the end, becoming a better trader and person.
Problem with CAGWers is that they are in the cognitive dissonance phase/mode (also called self-justification). Since the truth and reality will always catch up, and since ignoring and lying about it requires more and more elaborate lies and getting yourself only deeper into corner you can’t ever get out off, CAGWers need to embrace they are wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. It is actually good to be wrong and admitting it. It is very liberating. One can only truly learn from ones mistakes. Never admit a mistake: never learn. Never improve, never become better.
Sorry for the rant, but such is life. I recommend many people trying to trade stocks for a few weeks. It will teach you a lot about yourself. And trust me, if you are wrong, and see your hard earned $$$s become less and less, it really hurts.
Jennifer proposes also the idea of replacement of the “old paradigm” of AGW (based on Global Circulation Models) by a new one based on a new methodology or approach to climate forecast, that she proposes could be based on artificial neural networks (ANN),
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/07/the-need-for-a-new-paradigm-including-for-rainfall-forecasting/
I believe that despite the fact that she acknowledges the existence of data tampering, like GISS, she also seems not very disturbed by this fact, as if it was only an aspect of an old “already defeated” point of view and, when the new paradigm emerges, even if it’s not necessarily ANN, it’d naturally clean the mess that data tempering is presently doing.
I think that her optimism is based on the fact that the raw, like the RSS data for example, is *still there*, and once the new approach is defined it can be reanalyzed to establish the new (and improved) history of climate.
I’ve downloaded the Amberley Aero raw temperature data using the BEST site, as this provides a continuous monthly record from Aug 1941 to Nov 2013: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Text/152217-TAVG-Data.txt
This raw series shows a cooling trend of -0.1 C/century. That’s about 10 times smaller than the cooling trend quoted on the first chart above. Can anyone provide a link to the source of the ‘raw’ data used in this chart, which is attributed to BOM? It appears to stop significantly earlier than the ‘adjusted’ data (some time in the mid 1990s?).
Obviously if the raw and adjusted series cover different time spans, then this alone would affect the trend irrespective of adjustments.
Like BOM and GISS, the BEST adjustment process also found a warming trend in the Amberley Aero temperature record (about +1.2 C/century). The adjustments are described in the link below. They include adjustment for a strong warming mean bias between the early 1950s and 1980.
Temperatures from Amberley were found to be significantly higher than those from adjacent stations during that period, presumably the result of some local artificial warming influence. On the other hand a cooling influence was identified between 1980 and 2010.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/152217
David
You can dial up the “raw” GHCN V2 data at GISS, up to 2011.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v2/
Thanks Paul. I’ll have a look at those now.
Paul,
The ‘raw’ GISS data stops in late 1992 then picks up again in Jan 2006.
From the graph at the top of your post, the blue (raw) line seems to stop around 1995/96.
I still can’t find a source for the raw data as depicted on that chart. It’s certainly not the GISS data.
Thanks for the link in any case.
The issue of “missing chunks” seems to be a common one. I found the same with some Icelandic stations.
Clearly, the original (or at least adjusted!) data exists at BOM. I have found it myself, with no missing years. And of course, the GHCN V3 also shows it.
So why was it missing on V2?
I have also found the same happening the other way round, in V2, but missing from V3.
The next question is what GISS do about infilling.
What is frustrating is that those carrying out these adjustments are unable or unwilling to give a clear scientific reason for them. And yet this has never, as far as I know, lead to a serious debate or discussion on television or even in the parliamentary committee that scrutinises climate change matters.
BOM said the adjustment to the minimums at Amberley was identified through “neighbour comparisons”. It said the level of confidence was very high because of the large number of stations in the region. There were examples where homogenisation had resulted in a weaker warming trend.
Why does a “neighbour comparisons” process always end up with an warming trend?
It’s a fair question, though I don’t think ‘always’ is exactly right.
I know that in the case of airports/aerodromes, the old non-automated screens were often located close to buildings/roads for the convenience of the readers.
Airport temperature stations were mostly designed to give a rough idea of local conditions affecting aviation, rather than to be interrogated, as they are now, as long term records of changing temperatures. Sometimes cant attention was paid to the location of the screen.
Absorbent surfaces at airports such as buildings, roads, taxiways, car parks etc can easily bias local readings warm. It looks like something of that sort may have happened at Amberley between the early 1950s and 1980. At least that appears to be the conclusion reached, independently as far as I know, by BOM, GISS and BEST.
David from Berkeley,
Some years ago Mosh sent me extensive data that might have been heading for the BEST exercise.
Much of what I sent back after a tidy was data as raw as we can get here in Australia.
If BEST used other data for input, then the result would be questionable.
As to why adjustment more commonly results in cooling becoming warming, this is probably a consequence of data mining with bias. If adjusters seek sites with large native cooling (while failing to seek sites with excessive warming), then adjust the former to or towards warming, the overall result will be biased.
Jennifer Marohasy used data I helped prepare. There are more examples of stations with cooling adjusted to less severe that she chose not to include for now. One adjusted, official BOM set is ACORN-SAT, released in March 2012. The quest to adjust continues.
…………
There are some types of science that use adjustment never or with reluctance.
In my minerals career we seldom used it. Adjusting data was not seen as a way to improve discovery rates, or estimation of ore grades from drill holes. In the latter case, adjustment can be illegal.
People in the Climate world have yet to learn to reject poor data instead of adjusting it.
……….
Then, bodies like BOM have yet to learn that data are collected on behalf of a paying public. The data are not there as a plaything to manipulate for any purpose, let alone for a political purpose or to promote private dreams.
That is why we are calling for a separate, sterile record to be kept by a separate body such as Bureau of Statistics. Officialdom is resisting this prudent change.