GISS Inventing Temperatures In Africa–Part II

By Paul Homewood

 

 

In an earlier post, GISS Inventing Temperatures In Africa , we discovered there was only one, (yes one), rural station in the whole GISS Temp Database for Africa that met these two conditions :-

1) A record from 1941 or earlier up to 2011. ( There are many stations with gaps in their record, but I have not excluded these).

2) No more than 20% missing data between 2001 and 2011.

Further analysis suggested that even for the few rural stations still operational, most seemed to have very short lifespans, making them useless for assessing climatic trends. Furthermore, the readings in the last few years were extremely sparse, with typically 10 months each year with no temperature logged at all.

All of this seemed to cast great doubt on the accuracy of the GISS temperature record, which claims that Africa is one of the fastest warming places in the world, second only to polar regions.

So how does the GISS surface record compare with the satellite record?

Using the tool at CO2 Science , we can plot temperature trends for specific areas of the planet by longitude and latitude. GISS data is not available in such detail, but GHCN data is, and as we have seen already, GISS temperature trends are essentially based on GHCN data.

So, first of all, let us look at the area – [10E to 40E] by [20S to 20N]. This covers most of the Southern part of the Continent from Botswana up past the equator and up to Sudan and Niger. (I have tried as far as possible to keep sea area to a minimum, hence the omission of South Africa). GHCN and UAH (MSU) temperatures for this area are shown below.

The trend increase for GHCN is 0.79C, while for UAH it is only 0.26C.

The second area to look at is – [20N to 30N] by [10W to 30E]. This covers most of North Africa from Mauritania in the West to Egypt in the East. (This area shows the highest temperature anomaly on the GISS map, indicating that 2011 is between 1C and 2C warmer than the 1951-80 baseline).

In this case, the trend increase is 1.27C for GHCN and 0.33C for UAH. Although the GHCN record is incomplete in the 1990’s, the GHCN trend is consistent with the GISS claim of an anomaly of up to 2C. In the first area, too, the GHCN figures correlated well with the GISS map which showed a mixture of areas ranging from 0.2C in the South to 1.0C in the North.

The UAH figures do pick up the fact that the Northern band is very slightly warmer than the Southern section, but seem to indicate that the GISS/GHCN surface temperature in Africa is so grossly overestimated as to be worthless. We already know that GISS temperature anomalies in the Arctic, which again are not based on anything remotely resembling a proper temperature record, are much higher than what are shown by UAH satellites. It is beginning to appear that the whole GISS Surface Temperature Record is now utterly unfit for purpose and irretrievably damaged.