Cooling The Past In California
By Paul Homewood
When we consider drought, we need to take account of temperatures as well as precipitation, and it is claimed that rising temperatures in California are making the drought worse there.
But how much are temperatures rising there?
Out of 54 USHCN stations in the State, CDIAC list three, which have long and nearly complete data records, and which are truly rural according to the GHCN Brightness Index.
These are:
Cuyamaca
Lemon Cove
Orleans
Using the adjusted temperature data ( i.e.not the raw) we can compare the trends.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn_map_interface.html
I again emphasise, these are not the raw temperatures, but are the adjusted dataset after allowing for TOBS and other homogenisation. (Please note that these are only available up to 2013 at the moment, so please bear this in mind when comparing with the California graph at the top, with the spike in 2014.)
While Lemon Cove and Orleans show little trend since the 1930’s, there is a marked and steady rise at Cuyamaca. In comparison, the State graph seems to sit somewhere in the middle.
Is it conceivable that there should be such a big difference between three sites, so close together? For instance, Lemon Cove is only about 270 miles from Cuyamaca.
The answer seems to be maybe not. Take a look at what the raw temperature dataset adjusted for TOBS, but before homogenisation, looks like.
All of a sudden, we find the trend is very similar to the other two sites, with the 1930’s much warmer than now, and little in the way of long term trends.
The scale of the adjustment can be seen on the GHCN website. The top right graph is raw, middle is after adjustments, and bottom shows the actual adjustments.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/products/stnplots/4/42500042239.gif
Cuyamaca is in San Diego County, and it is hard not to see the similarity between Cuyamaca’s adjusted trend and San Diego’s UHI affected record.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=425722900000&dt=1&ds=14
Station metadata shows there have been no station moves since at least 1931.
So once again we find that the past has been cooled for no apparent reason. How many other stations have been affected in this way, and what is the overall effect on California’s temperature record?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Paul, you are a very naughty boy. You know you are not supposed to write “expose’s”, oops I mean nasty unproven attacks on NCDC/NOAA like that.
You will have Steve Mc telling you off again.
They will literally do anything to prove their case, all in the name of the public good (or money) of course.
Darn “I woulda got away with it if it wasnt for you pesky kids !”
…… or is it “if it weren’t for you meddling kids I’d have gotten away with it” ?
The AGW lobby is the most powerful political and economic lobby ever to be based on belief and the ignoring of facts. Europe is carrying most of the truly massive penalties of following this belief.
The basis of global warming was a computer model based on over-simplified gaseous radiation theory. The supporters then claimed that its predictions matched historical trends of temperatures, and for a few years the curves looked very impressive: it is now clear from the checks that Paul has made on a number of stations that temperatures have been adjusted to suit the model rather than the model matching the measurements.
Adjusting data that is measured is a scientifically dubious practice. It is acceptable, and common, to correct data to allow for external factors; but then one clarifies how and why one has treated the data so that others can question / check this, even at school level the raw data are always tabulated before any adjustment. It is never acceptable to adjust data before the analysis and present these as fact while ignoring the actual measurements.
How have so many eminent scientists been conned by the clear abuses of established scientific method? I think that mathematical models impress people who have not developed models and seen the limitations of these: and many pure scientists do not normally use large complex computer models. This coupled with an over-simplified view of the “Greenhouse effect” seem to me to be at the root of the religion of global warming.
Thanks, we will get on Lemon Cove and Orleans, we forgot to adjust them. Director of the Bureau of Adjustments.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that the “homogenization” algorithms have the effect of adjusting the few uncorrupted stations to match the trends of the more numerous corrupted stations.