I am appalled that objectivity has been so blatantly disregarded by our government and the world’s environmentalists who would use erroneous climate model results to justify their faulty AGW pronouncement which are injurious to humanity.
Gray’s View on AGW.
We AGW skeptics need to be able to offer two basic plausible physical explanations in order to negate the AGW hypothesis.
1. Why projected CO2 increases over the next 50-100 years will only be able to bring about very small amounts (0.2-0.4C) of global mean temperature rise.
2. Why there is natural climate change unrelated to CO2 variations? We need a believable physical explanation for the global climate changes over the last few thousand years (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, etc.) and in particular the apparent quite modest global warming of the last century. We also need an explanation of the shorter time-scale multi-decadal global warming periods (1910-1940, 1975-1999) and of the global cooling or neutral periods (1880-1910, 1940-1974, and 1999-2015).
Explanation #1 can be understood as a result of CO2 increases causing more global precipitation and associated increase in the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds. These CO2 induced precipitation increases bring about upper tropospheric drying which allows more infrared (IR) flux to space - a negative water-vapor feedback. This extra rainfall enhances surface evaporation cooling which acts to balance out most of the expected global warming resulting from CO2’s increasing blockage of IR to space (3.7 Wm-2 for a CO2 doubling). This prevents CO2 increases from bringing about any significant global warming. Only minimal warming (0.2-0.4C) is going to occur with a doubling of CO2. The main effect of CO2 increases will be an enhancement of global average precipitation of about 3 percent. This enhanced global rainfall will occur in regions where it is already raining and should be hardly noticed.
Explanation #2 can be explained by the multi-decadal and multi-century variations in the globe’s deep ocean circulations (or Meridional Overturning Circulation or MOC) which are primarily driven by space and time variations of oceanic salinity. Salinity changes occur in ocean areas where there are long period differences in surface evaporation minus precipitation. This is especially the situation of the Atlantic where ocean evaporation is 10-20 percent greater than precipitation. Salinity driven ocean changes bring about alterations in the strength of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation (THC), and through Pacific basin upwelling response variations to variation in the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation (PDO) as well. There is also salinity driven ocean subsidence around the Antarctic continent. All these factors influence the strength of the MOC.
Most of the globe’s last century weak global warming has, in my view, been a consequence of a modest slowdown of the global oceans MOC. This last century long MOC slowdown is also detected in an associated weak increase (in milliseconds) in the earth’s rate of rotation.
Lack of Ability of Other Suggested Non-ocean Climate Change Mechanisms to Rival or be Superior to Coming CO2 Influences. The many other non-ocean proposed physical ideas for climate change (where orbital parameters do not play a role) such as
1. Solar variability
2. Sun-spot changes
3. Cosmic ray variability
4. Aerosol changes
5. Human land use changes
6. Volcanic activity
may each play a minor role in some aspects of the globe’s climate alteration. But the individual physical influence of each of these suggested mechanisms is too small to be used as a dominant physical argument against the CO2 change hypothesis.
None of the above proposed climate change mechanisms well match the observed past changes in global temperature. In addition, the magnitude of potential energy change from these above non-ocean physical mechanisms does not have the power to come close to producing the climate changes which the variations of the deep ocean circulations are capable of bringing about.
We AGW skeptics who have proposed non-ocean climate change mechanisms as an alternate to CO2 induced climate changes will continue to have difficulty in rebutting the CO2 advocates. These alternate physical hypothesizes do not have enough supporting observational evidence to allow any one of them or a combination of them to be judged to be more dominant than the changes which future CO2 increases will be able to bring about.
We critics of the AGW CO2 warming hypothesis need a more dominant alternate physical hypothesis which is stronger and which better conforms in time with the global observations. Changes in the ocean’s deep circulation currents appears to be, by far, the best physical explanation for the observed global surface temperature changes (see Gray 2009, 2011, 2012, 2012). It seems ridiculous to me for both the AGW advocates and us skeptics to so closely monitor current weather and short-time climate change as indication of CO2’s influence on our climate. This assumes that the much more dominant natural climate changes that have always occurred are no longer in operation or have relevance.
Cumulus Convection Influences.
Most cumulus convection is organized in meso-scale cloud clusters containing 10 to 20 individual Cb convective elements which are typically concentrated in areas of 200-500 km wide. The individual deep Cb convective cells within these cloud-cluster systems are often arranged in lines and new convective elements are continuously being formed and dissipated. Each new Cb convective element goes through a typical lifecycles of an hour or so. The strong downdrafts from the late stages of these dying Cb elements typically contribute to the low-level mass forcing needed for the initiating of other new adjacent Cb clouds. This is why multiple Cb clouds tend to cluster together.
Cb clouds penetrate well into the middle and upper troposphere. The excess mass within the weakening upper-level Cb elements diverge and spread out as cirrus clouds. This higher level extra mass and cirrus cloudiness then begins to undergo sinking so as to make space and satisfy mass balance for the new emerging upper tropospheric Cb penetrating elements.
Subsidence Drying.
Cumulonimbus updraft elements have very high rainfall efficiency as they weaken and die in the very cold upper troposphere. The very cold air at these upper tropospheric levels can hold (even at saturation) very little water-vapor (only about 1% of the low-level moisture content by mass and 0.1 of 1% by volume) compared to the middle and lower tropospheric moisture contents. This very low water-vapor content air from the upper Cb outflow then sinks, evaporates its cloud particles, and arrives at lower levels where the saturated water-vapor contents are much higher. The original upper-level dry air then mixes with the lower level air. This mixture of air at the lower level becomes drier than the air at this level was before any of the upper-level air mixed into it.
A saturated air parcel from a dying Cb cloud which sinks from the 200 mb (12 km height) level to the lower pressure height of 300 mb (10 km ht.) will arrive at this lower-level with a RH of only 10-12 percent of the lower level air. These unusually large upper-level subsidence drying amounts are a consequence of the very large gradient of saturated vapor pressure in the upper troposphere. Vertical gradients of saturated vapor pressure at middle and lower tropospheric levels are, percentage wise, much smaller.
An increase in global deep convective (Cb) activity as a result of CO2 increases will thus bring drying (not moistening) to the upper troposphere, just the opposite of the climate models projections. This upper tropospheric drying acts to lower the infrared (IR) radiation emission level (EL) to a lower height and a warmer temperature where larger amounts of IR energy (σT4) are able to be fluxed to space. Increases in net global Cb convective activity results in higher amounts of IR energy being fluxed to space, not lower amounts as all the climate modelers and their fellow AGW advocates believe.
Our extensive analysis of the ISCCP data well shows the degree to which the broad upper-level sinking air from the global rain areas have had their RH reduced when an enhancement of the global rainfall rate (and accompanied increase in Cb convection) occurs. Please see the attached short write-up “Crux of AGWs Flawed Science” for more detailed discussion and clarifying figures and tables.
How Global Temperature Will Change as CO2 Increases.
The rise of CO2 gas occurs very slowly. By contrast, the troposphere’s hydrologic cycle and its energy dissipation cycle operate on a time-scale of only around 10 days. Any CO2 radiational induced warming will be quickly felt by the earth’s surface and will immediately act to enhance surface evaporation. The more surface evaporation, the less the surface will warm.
A doubling of CO2 gas in the atmosphere will cause an alteration of our global climate but not in the same way as envisioned by the climate modelers or by the majority of scientists studying this topic. Most researchers concentrate only on the direct radiation influences which CO2 increases bring about. They tend not to consider the other related feedback mechanisms which will be simultaneously activated as CO2 amounts increase. The increased global evaporation from CO2 increase will extract energy from the earth’s surface and enhance surface cooling. This will act to reduce the pure radiation assumed 1C warming through both enhanced IR energy flux to space and enhanced surface evaporation. The more evaporation from a doubling of CO2 will act to further reduce the 1C direct radiation only temperature response. As the CO2’s induced speed-up of the globe’s hydrologic cycle continues the cooling influences of the enhanced surface evaporation-precipitation will greatly suppress any pure radiation assumed rise of 1C. Doubling CO2 will thus be able to bring about only a quite modest global warming. The main influence of a doubling of CO2 will be to increase average global precipitation.
Basic Flaw of the AGW Hypothesis.
It is the climate models parameterization schemes for cumulus convection (particularly the deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) which are grossly unrealistic and which completely negates the global modeler’s projections of 2-5C warming for a doubling of CO2. This does not mean that the globe won’t be measurably influenced from CO2 doubling. But this CO2 influence will occur primarily as an enhancement of the global hydrologic cycle (precipitation) and only minimally from a rise in global surface temperature.
The AGW hypothesis that warming from increased CO2 will enhance global rainfall is correct. But the assumption that this added rainfall and added tropospheric condensation warming will greatly increase upper tropospheric temperature and water-vapor (through the assumption of constancy of relative humidity) is not at all valid. The opposite occurs. Increased deep Cb convection causes dryness to the upper troposphere. The climate modeler’s large increase in upper tropospheric water-vapor and temperature from added CO2 does not agree with the physics of how real-world deep Cb convection functions. And the additional positive feedback doubling of the upper troposphere warming and moistening which they add to the direct CO2 radiation blockage is completely bogus. This additional feedback assumption greatly increases the divergence of their model simulations from reality.
Summary
The global climate modelers assumed that CO2 enhanced global rainfall will bring about large upper-tropospheric water-vapor and temperature increases. These upper-level water-vapor increases are then projected to bring about even larger temperature increases and additional water-vapor (positive water-vapor feedback) amounts which add twice as much additional blockage of infrared (IR) energy to space than the initial influence of the CO2 blockage alone. Such large water-vapor and temperature increases are not at all realistic. This is the Achilles-heel of the whole AGW theory.
Comment.
None of the global climate modelers or other AGW advocates seem to know that the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection processes act, not to increase upper level water-vapor, but in an opposite sense to reduce the globe’s upper tropospheric water-vapor content. The global climate modelers live in a very isolated Ivory Tower world. Their positive water-vapor feedback schemes in their doubling of CO2 simulations shows that they know next to nothing about how the atmosphere’s cumulus convective and moisture processes really function.
Gray Research Project. I and my Colorado State University (CSU) research project have a long background in studying cumulus convection, and particularly deep and intense cumulonimbus (Cb) convection of the tropics associated with meso-scale rain systems and tropical cyclones. We have published a lot of material on this subject over many years. These convective studies appear to provide crucial background information fundamental to establishing the invalidity of the AGW hypothesis. My CSU project’s over 50 years of tropical meteorology research has, by necessity, had to make the study of cumulus cloud convection a priority item for the understanding of tropical circulations and tropical cyclones. Our information has been gained from my project’s extensive involvement in many field experiments and from rawinsonde compositing activities over many years and recently through extensive analysis of ISCCP and NOAA Reanalysis data. To my knowledge, none of the AGW proponents have ever referred to any of my project’s many published papers and project reports.
Any scientist having advanced and detailed knowledge and working level experience of the globe’s deep cumulus convection process can completely negate the scientific validity of the AGW hypothesis. This could have been done decades ago if there had been an open and honest debate and further research on how changes in cumulus convective dynamics are related to CO2 increase. This greatly needed open and objective debate on cumulus convection process began and was taking place during the late 1960s and 1970s. But these studies were discontinued during the 1980s-1990s when the global models began to show useful results which the politicians, environmentalists, and the world government advocates could use to back up their desired AGW hypothesis. They did not want any further tampering with the models and the earlier momentum build-up for cumulus-moist process research did not go forward. The AGW advocates needed to utilize the unrealistic CO2 doubling climate model warming results as a scare mechanism to advance their agendas. And the CO2 global climate modeling community was quite happy to provide this justification and be well rewarded for their efforts.
Please see the attached paper ”Crux of AGW’s Flawed Science” for full background discussion with figures and tables.
See also Michael Bastasch on the Daily Caller on Data Tampering.
The International Temperature Data Review Project
London, 26 April 2015; The London-based think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation is today launching a major inquiry into the integrity of the official global surface temperature records.
An international team of eminent climatologists, physicists and statisticians has been assembled under the chairmanship of Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. Questions have been raised about the reliability of the surface temperature data and the extent to which apparent warming trends may be artefacts of adjustments made after the data are collected. The inquiry will review the technical challenges in accurately measuring surface temperature, and will assess the extent of adjustments to the data, their integrity and whether they tend to increase or decrease the warming trend.
Launching the inquiry, Professor Kealey said:
“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising. While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from or less certain than has been suggested. We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”
To coincide with the inquiry launch Professor Kealey has issued a call for evidence:
“We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them. The team approaches the subject as open-minded scientists - we intend to let the science do the talking. Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the data, and whether they are justifiable or not.”
All submissions will be published.
Further details of the inquiry, its remit and the team involved can be seen on its website www.tempdatareview.org
The controversy
Climatologists have long been aware of the poor state of global surface temperature records and considerable effort has been put into adjusting the raw data to correct known errors and biases. These adjustments are not insignificant. For example it has been noted that in the temperature series prepared by NOAA for the USA, the adjusted data exhibits a much larger warming trend than the raw data.
Source: http://1.usa.gov/1gQRThX
It has also been noted that over the years changes to the data have often tended to cool the early part of the record and to warm more recent years, increasing the apparent warming trend.
Although the reasons for the adjustments that are made to the raw data are understood in broad terms, for many of the global temperature series the details are obscure and it has proved difficult for outsiders to determine whether they are valid and applied consistently. For all these reasons, the global surface temperature records have been the subject of considerable and ongoing controversy.
The panel
In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and report on these controversies.
The panel features experts in physics, climatology and statistics and will be chaired by Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
Terms of reference
Detailed terms of reference for the panel have been published.
Submissions of evidence
With four major surface temperature series to consider, each incorporating several layers of adjustment, the scope of the inquiry is very wide. The panel is therefore seeking to benefit from the considerable expertise that already exists on the surface records and is inviting interested parties to submit evidence.
After review by the panel, all submissions will be published and can be examined and commented upon by anyone who is interested.
The deadline for submitting evidence is 30 June 2015.
Report
No timetable has been set for the panel to report.
Contact
The International Temperature Data Review Project
Chairman Professor Terence Kealey
terence.kealey@buckingham.ac.uk
The International Temperature Data Review Project
http://www.tempdatareview.org/
EARTH DAY
See Alan Caruba’s essay on the Environmental Insane Asylum here.
Happy Earth Day...or Lenin’s birthday if you prefer. The demonstrators who claim to support that ‘respect nature’ message at a rally in DC for a clean earth and end of the use of fossil fuels proved hypocritical again, leaving the area trashed. This was near the Washington Monument.
Hollywood and politicans who push this agenda on the people live in estates that use as much energy as some small towns and fly their private jets around the world to give talks while their limos idle outside. Their agenda which causes energy, food, goods and service costs to rise which hurt the people most they claim to care about - the poor and middle class, all while the live the high life. Hypocrits everyone.
Go here for an excellent essay: Earth Month: 22 Ways to Think about the Climate-Change Debate
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ICECAP Update:
What happens when two heavyweights in the climate debate square off against one another?
It’s likely to provide quite a rollicking and informative time - and you can watch it live!
Friday evening, April 10th, long-time CFACT advisory board member Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, will face noted climate activist and author Bill McKibben, founder of the alarmist 350.org group.
They debated on “Christians, the Environment & Climate Change” as part of the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Also see the Sensible Environmentalist, Dr. Patrick Moore, co founder of Greeenpeace show the hypocrisy of the radical environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club in this hour interview with Canada’s Ezra Levant.
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Is it morally permissible to allow “climate deniers” to appear in print and televised media?
Columbia University journalism students wrestled with this question recently at a screening of the new documentary, “Merchants of Doubt.” “Merchants,” based on the 2010 book by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, endeavors to smear skeptics of anthropogenic global warming as the henchmen of the fossil-fuel industry. The film is light on evidence, as I show here, but heavy on verve. Director Robert Kenner ("Food, Inc.") traces the stories of sly 1950s tobacco reps who hired scientists to cast doubt on a growing consensus that smoking was unhealthy. The film’s implication, insinuated rather than demonstrated, is that global warming doubters are likewise mercenary.
If you buy that argument, then it makes some sense to keep “deniers” from deluding the public. In a room full of journalism students in training to ask tough questions and root out the truth, everyone bought it.
Global Warming Opposition Equals Propaganda
“It is a lie to say that global warming poses no danger,” New York Times reporter Justin Gillis told the crowd as part of a panel after the screening. He was responding to a question from the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, who had asked him whether news outlets present a “false balance” when they cite both proponents and skeptics of anthropogenic global warming. Since the science is “settled,” and “consensus” has been achieved, why not quote only the proponents? “Journalists care about the truth - that’s my only care in life, to find the truth,” Gillis added. “To act as if the evidence is half and half is to tell a lie. I refuse to perpetuate that lie.”
Wendell Potter from the Huffington Post recommended that newspapers create a new “propaganda beat” with reporters devoted solely to unmasking the “deniers” as frauds.
“Accurate information about climate change is a human right,” insisted Emily Southerd, campaign manager for the advocacy group Forecast the Facts. “Accurate information” in this case apparently means “consensus” information. Southerd shared that her organization is petitioning news stations to quit booking “deniers” like Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com, one of the “merchants” shown in the film.
It’s hard to take such caviling seriously when the New York Times is running beguiling hit pieces on respected (but climate-skeptic) astrophysicist Willie Soon and cheering a McCarthyite investigation into seven other professors who expressed skepticism towards the idea that global warming is dangerous and man-made. In the United Kingdom last summer, after global warming-skeptic Lord Nigel Lawson appeared on the BBC, the head of the BBC Complaints Unit announced that “minority opinions and sceptical views should not be treated on an equal footing with the scientific consensus.” Lawson has not been on the BBC since.
Skeptics are not exactly popular in the media. Gillis acknowledged a tacit pact among print journalists to stop giving credence to climate skeptics. He called this an “enlightenment” that began ten or 15 years ago. American television, he noted, still lets a few skeptics onto the air; broadcasters have yet to come out of the Dark Ages.
Denying the Deniers
The merits of the term “denier” also got some play among the panelists. Southerd cast a strong vote in favor of the term: “these people need to be labeled what they are: climate change deniers.” Gillis explained the need to maintain the appearance of impartiality. “This is much like the abortion wars: what term you use signals what side you are on.” His own preference was to describe the “deniers” as “people who oppose climate science.” He was adamant, though, that these opponents-of-climate-science should never be called “skeptics”; all scientists are professional skeptics, and it would be inappropriate to honor the climate-doubters with such a term.
Paper trails indicate that federal agencies solicited climate science research that supported their conclusions, cherry-picked peer reviewers known to be sympathetic to the pro-global warming cause, and overlooked conflicts of interest.
One member of the audience thought to ask about the funding for pro-anthropogenic global warming scientists. What if someone investigated the money that supports global warming research, and made a “Merchants of Doubt” sequel about the consensus scientists? An excellent question, especially since in the last 15 years pro-sustainability and global warming research has enjoyed nearly $400 million in funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); $3 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; $600 million from the National Institutes of Health; $1.7 billion from National Science Foundation; and even $2 million from the National Endowment for the Arts.
No worries about that, Gillis responded: “99.9 percent of climate science is funded by the government.” That means, he explained, that each grant is disclosed by number to the public, making every transaction transparent and trustworthy.
But Gillis neglected to explain that studies from two different organizations have uncovered in this federally-funded research cozenage and artifice of exactly the sort “Merchants” espies in climate change doubters. Paper trails indicate that the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other federal agencies solicited climate science research that supported their conclusions, cherry-picked peer reviewers known to be sympathetic to the pro-global warming cause, and overlooked conflicts of interest by assigning research papers to be reviewed by members of the same organizations that produced the research in the first place. In response to concerns such as these, the House of Representatives is considering the Secret Science Reform Act and the Science Advisory Board Reform Act to try to bring transparency to the research these federal agencies use as the basis for their environmental regulations.
But none of this was relevant, apparently, in an evening’s conversation about threats to the integrity of climate science. Perhaps such obstinate belief in the credibility of global warming research should itself be labeled a kind of doubt-denialism.
Rachelle Peterson is a research associate for the National Association of Scholars.
The Jack Rabbits in the southern intermountain west have enjoyed a warmer cold season. Yes our friends in the Pacific Northwest and California into the Rockies have gotten off easier thanks to the warm eastern Pacific, the driver for the warm (and dry) west and cold east much like the late 1970s and the 1916-1918 winters.
The late winter will only increase the negative anomalies in the northeast and Mid Atlantic including the eastern Lakes.
The dichotomy peaked in late winter with 6 states in the west under the ridge at or near warmest February while 23 states in the east and central had a top 10 coldest February and 9 states the 2nd coldest. Several cities in the Northeast had their coldest month of any month on record including Buffalo, New York where the monthly average temperature was 10.9F, dipping below the 11.6F observed in February 1934. Several additional cities, including Chicago, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio observed their coldest February on record.
The western U.S. was warmer than average, where eight states had a top 10 warm February. Arizona, California, Utah, and Washington each had their warmest February on record.
During February, there were 5,448 warm daily temperature records (2,866 daily warm maximum temperature records and 2,582 daily warm minimum temperature records) broken or tied while there were 8,281 cold daily temperature records (4,778 daily cold maximum temperature records and 3,503 daily cold minimum temperature records) broken or tied.
For the winter, thanks to a warmer December (that followed on the heels of a frigid November), the average was in the top 10% percent coldest east and near warmest west.
According to NOAA, the winter contiguous U.S. temperature was 34.3F, 2.1F above the 20th century average, the 19th warmest winter on record.
According to the data that goes into the models 4 times a day, the CONUS anomaly was only 0.2F above the 1981 to 2010 climatology. NOAAs (and NASA’s which starts with NOAA data) high rankings have been accomplished by significant cooling of the early century in the adjusted data. This lowers the average and increases the apparent warming.
Even so, the trend for temperatures for the winter for the United States the last 20 years has been down - at a cooling rate of 8.2F/century.
Satellite monthly CONUS temperatures do not show a significant trend since 1979. Outliers included the frigid early 1979 months and the 2012 spring spike.
You can explain all the lower troposphere global winter bumps and dips and trends with volcanoes and El Nino and La Nina (also the AMO was positive after the middle 1990s). Satellites tell us it was the 6th warmest ever not the first or second warmest as the surface temperature data sets (contaminated by UHI and land use changes and poor siting) suggest. If we had satellite temperatures going back to the 1895 data start, you would see the recent warming pale in comparison
to the 1930s to 1950s.
How can we know? The only unadjusted surface data set is the record highs and lows for the states. They show 23 of the 50 record highs from the 1930s and 38 before 1960. They show more all time records since the 1940s.
I have seen emails suggesting they would like to modify this inconvenient data set but they have no excuse to do it as the Time of Observation adjustment that does much of the adjustment (cooling early decades and warming later) is said to prevent double counting a high two straight days. For all-time records, this doesn’t matter. Homogenization, the other ‘blending’ trick also makes no sense when looking for record cold or warm records.
After March is done and available we will recap the entire cold season.
See stories like this daily on weatherbell.com.
See also how Gallup reports the public believes Climate Change is the lowest priority.
The historical seasonal fell short of last year but was above normal and second highest since 1995/96. Back to back years at this level is unprecedented in the record.
It is having its effect on navigation and cargo shipments again in the eastern lakes which were hardest hit.
I was updating a U.S. Corn Belt summer temperature and precipitation dataset from the NCDC website, and all of a sudden the no-warmng-trend-since-1900 turned into a significant warming trend. (Clarification: the new warming trend for 1900-2013 is still not significantly different from zero at the 90% confidence level. H/T, Pat Michaels)
As can be seen in the following chart, the largest adjustments were to earlier years in the dataset, which were made colder. The change in the linear trend goes from 0.2 deg F/century to 0.6 deg. F/century.
I know others have commented on the tendency of thermometer data adjustments by NOAA always leading to greater warming.
As Dick Lindzen has noted, it seems highly improbable that successive revisions to the very same data would lead to ever greater warming trends. Being the co-developer of a climate dataset (UAH satellite temperatures) I understand the need to make adjustments for known errors in the data...when you can quantitatively demonstrate an error exists.
But a variety of errors in data measurement and collection would typically have both positive and negative signs. For example, orbit decay causes a spurious cooling trend in the satellite lower tropospheric temperatures (discovered by RSS), while the instrument body temperature effect causes a spurious warming trend (discovered by us). The two effects approximately cancel out over the long term, but we (and RSS) make corrections for them anyway since they affect different years differently.
Also, the drift in satellite local observation time associated with orbit decay causes spurious cooling in the 1:30 satellites, but spurious warming in the 7:30 satellites. Again this shows that a variety of errors typically have positive and negative signs.
In contrast, the thermometer data apparently need to be adjusted in such a way that almost always leads to greater and greater warming trends.
How odd.
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Like Roy, I have been burnt. I downloaded data from NCDC Climate at a Glance a few years ago that showed no warming (actually a small not statistically significant cooling). I ws asked to resprise my presentation this year and despite the cooler weather in recent years, when I downloaded it, the chart showed a significant warming trend that the Portland Press Herald reported on, claiming that Maine was warming faster than any other state. The change involved a dramatic cooling of the past and of the average to make the recent data rank constantly among the warmest and turn no trend into a significant warming one. Each iteration in the USHCN produces more cooling of the past and greated apparent warming. We are now at least at version 3.2.
