In March I bought a high precision thermometer to measure the outside temperature in the front yard of my Michigan home.
In April I sent an e-mail "press release" to neighbors informing them April was the warmest month on record.
My May press release announced another new monthly warm weather record.
June was a monthly warm weather record too.
My neighbor asked if I had started keeping records when I moved into the neighborhood in 1987.
I confessed that I purchased the thermometer in March 2016 ... but no one would care about my press release if I told them that.
I was just following the NASA press release strategy.
This simple fictional story resembles the global warming scaremongering by NASA !
Here we go again: The "warmunists" at NASA are trying to scare everyone about the climate again.
They claim June 2016 is the hottest June in a record which goes back to 1880, breaking the previous record in 2015, by +0.02 degrees C.
NASA always fails to mention that data for 99.999% of Earth's climate history are not available for comparison.
NASA also fails to mention they claim accuracy of +/- 0.1 degrees C., so should not be reporting an average temperature number in hundredths of a degree C. !
And NASA's accuracy claim is nonsense -- no one can estimate the average surface temperature of the oceans -- 70% of the planet -- with an accuracy better than +/- 1.0 degrees C..
That's why stating the average temperature of our planet in hundredths of a degree is scientific illiteracy (even if you blindly agree with NASA's claim of a +/- 0.1 degree C. margin of error).
NASA is trying to deceive people,
and here's how:
(1) NASA ignores satellite temperature data, which do not show a record, and
(2) NASA fails to explain many basic facts about climate history that would make their press release almost meaningless -- most important is NASA only has data compiled during ONE warming trend -- so of course there will be new warm records set ... until the warming trend ends and a cooling trend begins!
Earth's average temperature is ALWAYS changing.
In the past one million years, for example, there had been hundreds of warming / cooling cycles, that last hundreds of years each.
NASA's temperature data compilations start in 1880.
The year 1880 was a few decades AFTER a warming trend started (about 1850).
We are still in that mild warming trend.
So far the 165-year warming trend is up a mere +1 degree C. -- such a small change that it's possible the change was nothing more than measurement error.
NASA has no real time measurements during the prior cooling trend,
Temperature proxy studies strongly suggest the centuries from 1300 to 1800 were unusually cool -- especially in the late 1600s.
Having a new temperature record every year is to be expected during the uptrend (warming) half of a full average temperature cycle (warming + cooling).
Not having a new temperature record every year would be news.
If your primary goal is scaring people about global warming, a scary press release is what you issue -- you do not educate people about Earth's climate history.
NASA's primary goal under Obama appears to be scaring people about CO2.
Here's some climate history:
(1) Earth's average temperature and CO2 level have significantly declined in the 4.5 billion years of our planet's existence.
NASA doesn't think you need to know that.
(2) Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels have moderately increased since peak glaciation about 20,000 years ago (when my Bingham Farms, Michigan property was under perhaps a mile of ice.)
NASA doesn't think you need to know that either.
I guarantee that SUVs and coal power plants did not cause the warming in the past 20,000 years !
Surface temperature station data details:
Late 20th century surface temperature station data show more warming than data from the weather satellites that NASA ignores, and the gap is growing.
The "warmunists" at NASA ignore satellite data because the surface station data are warmer.
One possible cause of surface station error, beyond sparse coverage and "infilled" (wild guess) data, is a huge drop in the number of reporting surface weather stations in the 1990s -- particularly in the Soviet Union after their economy collapsed.
In the US there was a large shift toward re-locating surface stations to airports.
With so much pavement at airports, there is a 'heat island effect' that may raise both daytime and nighttime temperatures ... especially if there was no heat island effect at the prior non-airport temperature station location.
In addition, the areas surrounding many airports have had strong economic development -- more buildings and pavement -- gradually increasing the heat island effect over time.
An 8.5 year side-by-side test conducted by German veteran meteorologist Klaus Hager compared traditional glass mercury thermometers to the new electronic measurement system.
Electronic measurement devices replaced glass thermometers in Germany from 1985 to 2000.
Hager’s test results showed that on average the new electronic measurement system produced warmer temperature readings: a whopping mean of +0.93°C warmer.
Do we see a temperature jump in Germany from 1985 to 2000 ?
We sure do !
Surface data are sparse, especially for the oceans, which cover 70% of our planet.
Most land temperature stations are in advanced nations, in temperate regions – Europe and the US.
There are few surface stations in South America, Africa, and Asia.
There are few surface stations north or south of 40 degrees latitude, except in Western Europe and Alaska (Northern Hemisphere), and Australia (Southern Hemisphere).
Areas with no temperature measurement data in a given month -- adding up to almost half the surface of our planet -- are "infilled" with wild guesses ... and NASA has the nerve to call this --"climate science" !
Weather satellite details:
Microwave sounding units are on weather satellites that have orbited the Earth since the late 1970s.
Their data allow scientists to calculate the temperatures of the atmosphere at various heights above sea level (lower troposphere, mid-troposphere, tropopause and lower stratosphere).
Data come from a series of satellites with overlapping coverage, not from a single satellite.
Almost the entire surface of the Earth is covered -- this is the only source of global data -- and NASA ignores it.