... " ... alterations to past officially-reported government climate data to create an impression of warming that did not exist in the data as originally reported.
... NOAA is the main bureaucracy where the principal climate data are compiled, and is a part of the Department of Commerce.
(Another agency, NASA, is also involved in these efforts.).
... (This) deals with the temperature records of the US, not the entire world. The temperature records of the US and of the rest of the world present very different issues for researchers trying to assess the accuracy of government-reported warming trends.
For the rest of the world, no contemporaneously-generated data exist for most of the surface area and for most of the time period between the late nineteenth century and now.
Before the recent years, there just were no (or very few) measurement stations or instruments for vast regions like the oceans, the Southern Hemisphere, Africa, Siberia, and so forth.
Therefore, for those and other areas, much of what passes for historical temperature data, particularly from about 1880 to 1960, has actually been created or interpolated after the fact by computer algorithms, which then just so happen to show the trend that the programmers and their bosses would like to see.
But for the US, the situation is different. For the entire period back to the late
nineteenth century, there has existed a dense network of ground thermometers to record temperatures throughout this country.
Therefore, if prior reported data showed cooling trends, and now you want to report a warming trend, that necessarily requires changing prior reported data.
The US temperature is very important, because the vast majority of stations, which NOAA has long-term daily temperature data for, are located in the
US.
So, have prior officially-reported US temperatures been altered to create and enhance warming trends?
The answer is absolutely, clearly, yes.
... NOAA, and its co-bureaucracy NASA, do not deny that they have altered the data, and don’t even make serious efforts to hide the fact.
... Reality is that the data alterations are no secret, and that NOAA and NASA acknowledge that they do it.
It’s not that the alterations are secret, but rather that the bureaucrats make it as difficult as possible to track the alterations, to learn the basis for the alterations, and to figure out what has changed and by how much.
Periodically, new versions of data sets are issued, with no detailed documentation of what has changed or on what basis.
When NOAA and NASA come out with their latest breathless press release about the “hottest year ever,” and so forth, there is no mention of prior officially-reported data that would contradict the claim.
Often earlier data have simply been written over as new, altered data are substituted, making it impossible to track the changes unless you happen to be fortunate enough to have captured a screenshot of the old data before it got modified.
... I’ll give you here what is undoubtedly the most notable and shocking example.
In 1999, then NASA/GISS head James Hansen, a noted climate alarmist, came out with a big research paper titled “GISS analysis of surface temperature change.”
... The paper was part of the then growing climate alarm movement at the time, and contained a collection of claims designed to scare you out of your wits about impending climate change apocalypse.
... The rate of temperature change was higher in the past 25 years than at any previous time in the period of instrumental data.
The warmth of 1998 was too large and pervasive to be fully accounted for by the recent El Nino ...
... Hansen made the mistake of including in the paper a graph of the official NASA temperature data for the US from 1880 to 1999, as it existed at that time.
You can find that graph as Exhibit 6 to the 1999 paper. Here it is:
... 1934 is the warmest year, approximately 0.6 deg C (or one full degree F) warmer than 1998, which in fact is only the fifth warmest year on this chart, also trailing 1921, 1931, and 1953.
... NASA has a new chart up on its website, with data through 2019, supposedly generated out of the same data base, but just a new and improved “version” of same.
truncating this 2019 chart at 2000 to emphasize the comparison to NASA’s prior chart that went to 1999.
Here is the 2019 NASA chart truncated to 2000:
Now 1998 is notably warmer than 1934, and for that matter, also warmer than 1921, 1931 and 1953. How did that happen?
What is the basis for the alterations?
You will never get that answer out of NOAA or NASA.
The data have been altered to fit the hypothesis.
... The American people deserve to have an honest accounting of what is going on. ... "
"There is no money - NONE in stable or declining temperatures anywhere on earth, so the professors, scientists and bureaucrats will make sure that it hotter now than 10, 20 , 50 and 100 years ago."
"It doesn't matter anymore, belief in climate change has become a religion so no amount of data will change the leftists minds."
"The new definition of the scientific method is that you alter your data until it conforms to your hypothesis."
"One day scientists will understand the mechanisms that shape climate; they are nowhere near that point today. For them to claim this is simply a lie, a fraud."
" ... if all the warming since the mid-19th century took place over the next five minutes, you would be unlikely to notice the difference.
The real scandal here is the attempt to stampede society into a wholesale rejection of its most successful economic and political arrangements, using the pretext of natural phenomena that may or may not be happening to a significant degree but in any case, have thus far been benign and arguably beneficial."
" ... while that adjustment might seem small, it is quite large in relation to underlying temperature variations over the same time period, and sufficient to turn a cooling trend into a manufactured warming trend. So the adjustments are large (call them "huge" if you want) relative to the underlying changes, which are themselves small."
" ... I do not think China, India or any developing country trying to move its population into the middle class is likely to forego using coal or oil or natural gas to provide electricity for air-conditioning and the other comforts of middle-class life. India is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants.
I look at the Paris Climate Accords as having the same level of compliance as the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 to outlaw war. Many nations signed it and then disregarded it. The same will be true of the Paris Climate Accords, whether the US rejoins it or not."
"The simple fact of the matter is that the historic global temperature record is a mess.
For a whole host of reasons, not limited to the lack of historic global coverage prior to the advent of satellite records in 1979, the methods employed in measurement, compilation, calculation, the contamination caused by urbanization, the urban heat island effect, the numerous measurement site relocations and, yes, NOAA/GISS "adjustments", the historic global temperature record is completely unreliable."
"Manhattan Contrarian is absolutely accurate and correct to label this travesty and farce "The Greatest Scientific Fraud of All Time." "
"Last time I looked on Wikipedia (about 2 years ago), the State by State record high temperatures showed that 38 of the 50 states had their record high temperatures set over 75 years ago (most during the 1930’s; which fits the original, unaltered NASA graph).
That is as good of an argument that one can make for the evidence of the current altered data....”If its really getting warmer, and the recent years are the warmest on record, why are the high temperature records for most US states over 75 years old?”.
... "I would call the justifications given by NASA and NOAA for their alterations of past temperatures the opposite of "well documented." "Well documented" would mean full release of the computer code that made the adjustments, plus a full record of the previous and current temperature records for each station in the record. I cannot find that anywhere ..."
"Why NASA thinks the thermometers changed their behavior in 1970 is not explained."
"I am a long term weather buff- I was one of The Weather Channel's original watchers when it started up on satellite/cable. I also have a very, very good memory for heat waves and cold snaps that I lived through during my life from about age 9 to the present day when I am 54 years old. I have had a long term "project" of searching the various online databases for record high temperature days I have personally experienced. These obviously were all Summer heat waves- it is what made them most memorable, and I started looking at the data online in the early oughts to see what was recorded during those heat waves. They were a fairly narrow set of values from July and August of 1980 and June, July, and August 1988 in Pikeville, Kentucky where I grew up, and then another set from July 1995 and July and August of 1999 in Danbury, Connecticut where I lived at the time.
When I first checked the weather stations in around 2000 or so, the data reported matched my memories on the dates involved. In particular, the Summer of 1988 was a remarkably hot one in Pikeville, Kentucky - there were several record highs set in June, July, and August at or well above 100 F, including what was recorded as the all time record high for the town of 106 in July and again in August of the same year. Additionally, I was also in Danbury, CT when that town set the all time record for the state of Connecticut of 105 in July of 1995- part of and a day or so after the great Chicago heatwave that killed hundreds of people in 1995. That value was still in the weather station for the Danbury Airport in the early oughts. Also, western Connecticut had a brutally hot Summer in 1999 where there were several days of 100+F days recorded from early July right into August - those temperatures were still recorded there in the early oughts.
However, over time, all those record highs have either disappeared from the records I can find online - mostly replaced by highs in the upper 90s."
I am now watching the record highs set here in Oak Ridge, TN in the Summer of 2012. I suspect, as the need to continue to show warming trend in the US, the temperatures from 2005-the present day will also have to be lowered.
That is the problem with fixing the trends this way- you can't easily lie about the temperatures in the present - to get warming trend when the present temperatures don't agree with it, you have to start cooling the recent past."