False Precision for Claims 2016 Hottest Evah'

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA- GISS) and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) claim 2016 was the hottest year since instrument measurements began in 1880.

Both organizations focus on surface data -- and roughly half the Earth has no measurements, so wild guesses are used for those areas.

According to NOAA-NCEI, 2016 was +0.07 degrees F. warmer than 2015.

But reporting data in hundredths of a degree F. is BS.

The announcement is BS because the usual claim for the margin of error (grossly overoptimistic BS),  is +/- 0.1 degree C. !

The British Met Office Hadley Centre said a particularly strong El Nino event contributed about +0.2°C [about +0.4 degree F.] to the annual average for 2016.
 
An El Niño is a natural, cyclical, temporary weather event unrelated to carbon dioxide -- it was responsible for warming about five times larger than the reported increase in the global average temperature from 2015 to 2016.

The NOAA-NCEI press release had the 2016 surface temperature +0.07 F. warmer than 2015, but with no estimate of statistical significance or error in measurement.

The NASA-GISS press release had no estimate of error in measurement.

The most widely used instrument in US airports and other locations for temperature measurement is the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS).

The user’s guide for ASOS states the specifications for accuracy of the temperature measuring instruments in the form of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Maximum (MAX) Error.

For an ambient temperature range of -58 degrees F. to +122 degrees F., the RMSE is 0.9 degrees F. and the Maximum Error is plus or minus 1.8 degrees  F.

In the press releases, the year-to-year changes are far less than the designed-in error of the instruments taking the measurements.