HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved.
Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.
Surely its time for heads to roll!
Some background: Near Rutherglen, a small town in a wine-growing region of NE Victoria, temperatures have been measured at a research station since November 1912. There are no documented site moves. An automatic weather station was installed on 29th January 1998.
Temperatures measured at the weather station form part of the ACORN-SAT network, so the information from this station is checked for discontinuities before inclusion into the official record that is used to calculate temperature trends for Victoria, Australia, and also the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The unhomogenized/raw mean annual minimum temperature trend for Rutherglen for the 100-year period from January 1913 through to December 2013 shows a slight cooling trend of 0.35 degree C per 100 years. After homogenization there is a warming trend of 1.73 degree C per 100 years. This warming trend is essentially achieved by progressively dropping down the temperatures from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year of 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.
There is absolutely no justification for doing this.
This cooling of past temperatures is a new trick* that the mainstream climate science community has endorsed over recent years to ensure next year is always hotter than last year – at least for Australia.
There is an extensive literature that provides reasons why homogenization is sometimes necessary, for example, to create continuous records when weather stations move locations within the same general area i.e. from a post office to an airport. But the way the method has been implemented at Rutherglen is not consistent with the original principle which is that changes should only be made to correct for non-climatic factors.
In the case of Rutherglen the Bureau has just let the algorithms keep jumping down the temperatures from 1973. To repeat the biggest change between the raw and the new values is in 1913 when the temperature has been jumped down a massive 1.8 degree C.
In doing this homogenization a warming trend is created when none previously existed.
The Bureau has tried to justify all of this to Graham Lloyd at The Australian newspaper by stating that there must have been a site move, its flagging the years 1966 and 1974. But the biggest adjustment was made in 1913! In fact as Bill Johnston explains in today’s newspaper, the site never has moved.
Surely someone should be sacked for this blatant corruption of what was a perfectly good temperature record.
———-
Climate records contradict Bureau of Meteorology by Graham Lloyd, 27th August
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-records-contradict-bureau-of-meteorology/story-e6frg6xf-1227037936046
The story is behind a paywall. But if you don’t already have a subscription perhaps its time… this could just be the biggest story of the year.
** There are a lot of tricks that climate science managers have implemented over the years to fix the temperature record; that is fix it so it shows global warming. “Trick” was the word Phil Jones, a leading United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientist, used to explain to his peers that, when constructing very long global temperature series using proxy data based on tree ring measurements that can extend back thousands of years, it was best to substitute thermometer data for this proxy data from about 1960 because the proxy data started to show cooling from about then. Indeed from about 1960 until 2002 the thermometer data mostly did show warming. But now even this instrumental record is starting to show cooling. Enter the relatively new trick of homogenization.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
No one will be fired.They will be moved sidewards or retired.BTW congratulations for getting this out. WE hope Steven Goddard will be taken notice of in the USA and others in NZ.
Jennifer, we just got notice here in Tennessee that the EPA is forcing the power company (TVA) to shut down coal fired plants without sufficient back up. Those who can least afford it will be hurt the most as utility rates will “necessarily skyrocket”. Thank you for helping get the word out.
Jennifer– Thank you and then Thank you again.
I have been following and have been involved with the temp record homogenization in the United States.
Gradually, honesty, integrity and persistence will prevail, but it will take awhile and a few bloody noses.
I am a retired instructor in physics and advanced placement chemistry.
How are out boys Cook and Dana N. doing? 🙂
— er ah that was suppose to read ‘How are our boys Cook and—
Yes, it’s well past time, but no – it won’t happen. The BOM has relied for too long on the funding stream from climate change research. So much so, that the climatologists gained influence, then power, then higher positions in the heirachy. Now ensconced as the decision-makers, they will protect their own, and the meteorologists be damned!
The same thing happened in the USA. Before James Hansen, the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Institute for Space Studies used to do actual science, relating to space – including science satellites. After Hansen, all they do is climate change research, modelling and fiddling with the thermometer data set. A “Space Studies” body, they even now ignore the satellite temperature record, because it doesn’t support the prevailing credo of their employees. A more complete takeover and diversion of the original organisation’s design has rarely been seen.
Yeah, good question, Jen. [hope you had a great birthday BTW]
But in spite of all the wasted billions that have been squandered on this CAGW scam, generated considerably by this world wide practice of cooking the books, ideology has now taken the place of science and religion rules.
I doubt a jihad, let alone a few sackings, would change things.
Someone needs to take responsibility for changing the temperatures at Rutherglen. Someone needs to take responsibility for telling Graham Lloyd there was a site move, when clearly there was none.
There has clearly been an attempted cover-up. But they’ve been busted. Busted by Bill Johnston.
Jo Nova gets it… there are questions that absolutely must be answered… http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/bom-claims-rutherglen-data-was-adjusted-because-of-site-move-but-it-didnt-happen/
Anthony Watt’s gets it… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/australian-scientist-calls-for-heads-to-roll-over-adjusted-temperature-data/
Someone needs to take responsibility!
Dr Dennis Jensen MP, and other politicians who are across this issue, should also be calling for heads to roll? Who’s the head of BOM? Who’s the Minister ultimately responsible? Will Greg Hunt take the fall for this one?
Sackings would be a good start. How about criminal charges against them?
Thank you for your work.
Abbot will eventually get ear of this don’t worry. Heads will not roll but be moved (we all know how the Australian Gov works)..Already comments in mainstream US are using this info http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/panel-global-warming-human-caused-dangerous-25133004 thank you again J. (My father was an atmospheric physicist studied with Einstein in 1935-37 at the Max Planck Institut Fur Physic in Leipzig and a WMO expert.and published 3 papers in Nature about trans-evaporation and particle physics) He told me in 1997 it was a scam to get money he did not even bother to explain why.(The Science) as I was still very young and not interested LOL
Letters in the Oz today:
Challengers to altered climate data deserve respect
TALKING POINT THE AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 27, 2014 12:00AM
DAVID Karoly’s ad hominem dismissal of a serious challenge to the official reconstruction of Australia’s temperature record is pathetic (“Amateurs challenging bureau climate figures’’, 26/8). Readers will appreciate that when observational data do not conform to theory, then some, without good reason, dismiss the data.
There are few long homogeneous records of meteorological observations for Australian sites despite colonial governments having commenced systematic observations in many parts during the 1860s.
For a variety of reasons, the original sites have been closed and others opened. Mathematical techniques have been developed in an attempt to reconstruct a representative climate history using the available records of limited length from the different sites.
At issue, as Jennifer Marohasy identified, is that for a number of locations where long records are available, the long-term trends in the original observations are significantly different from the trends of the reconstructed data. Whether there are continental-wide or regional trends is an important component of the global warming debate.
In challenging the validity of the BOM methodology, surely Dr Marohasy is entitled to respect from her peers; it is also behoven of the government to rationalise and publicly explain why the “official” reconstructed temperature trends depart so much from original observations available on the BOM website.
William Kininmonth, Kew, Vic
THE Bureau of Meteorology’s homogenisation of temperature records reminds me of an old statistician’s joke. If you put one foot in a bucket of iced water and the other on a red hot stove, on average you’ll be comfortable.
Helen J Wilson, Fernleigh, NSW
BY demanding that all criticism of climate alarmism be subjected to peer review, David Karoly implies that only those initiated into the scientific priesthood be allowed to speak and everyone else is dismissed as ignorant.
His case would be stronger if the initiated had not made so many alarmist predictions despite peer review. Good science should produce good predictions, yet two decades of bad peer-reviewed predictions tell us we are not dealing with good science.
It is increasingly clear that unexceptional minor climate change was blown out of proportion and a frantic scramble to protect reputations and funding is now under way.
Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT
DAVID Karoly claims criticism of BOM methodology to homogenise temperature recordings published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences is amateurish. Karoly mentioned his own article supporting BOM methodology that he published in the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal. However, Karoly omitted to mention he is editor-in-chief of AMOJ.
Ian Edmonds, Kenmore, Qld
THE massive, Greens-driven expenditure world wide in recent years to “reduce the impact of anthropogenic global warming” created a huge international cohort of scientists who will do anything to defend funding for their patch. Jennifer Marohasy has challenged them and must be congratulated for doing so
Robin Claxton, Hillwood, Tas
JENNIFER Marohasy (“Heat is on over weather bureau revising records’’, 23-24/8) has revealed some questionable practice by the BOM. It seems fair enough to adjust temperature data when some gauges are housed in a variety of non-standard environments. Apples should be compared with apples — or Stevenson boxes. But to “adjust’’ a trend from cooling to warming as done in Amberley or Rutherglen and elsewhere smacks of adjusting to accommodate an ideology.
B. Tranter, Beaumaris, Vic
SIMPLE solutions are best, with clear communication. On the question of homogenisation of temperature data, Dr Marohasy says she can’t find any peer-reviewed publications that specifically “outline and justify’’ the methodology currently used.
Professor Karoly should settle the matter by sending copies of such publications to both Dr Marohasy and to The Australian, so we can all see who is right.
If he and the BOM decline to send them, we can draw our own conclusions.
Mike O’Brian, Mandurah, WA
****
Thanks to each of these people for caring.
Those responsible do need to be moved on.
They are unlikely to fix the problem and will just become more defensive.
They may be talented, they could be really nice people with nice families and nice pets. . .but quite clearly. . there is a lack of transparency a lack of accountability and therefore a lack of trust.
Using weasel words and using PR avoiding tactics. . . just because you can. . . is NOT a good look. . .and smacks of monopolistic behaviour.
These people are rapidly losing the plot!
They will need to be moved on mostly because they won’t be able to get over this. . .we should not be paying public servants to be ‘apologists’
If they were beholden to the rules of normal business practice . . .they would have been moved on already due mostly to their revisionist mindsets.
Jen asks who is the head of the BOM?
A forest hydrologist from CSIRO:
http://greenhouse2013.com/program/speakers/dr-rob-vertessy/
Former Heads:
Greg Ayers (2009-12) was an atmospheric scientist
Neville Smith (2008-9) climate modeller
Geoff Love (2003-8) atmospheric physicist
John Zillman (1978-2003) meteorologist
William Gibbs (1962-78) meteorologist
Leonard Dwyer (1955-62) meterologist
Edward Timcke (1950-55) meterologist
Norman Warren (1940-50) bureaucrat
William Watt (1931-40) meteorologist
Henry Hunt (1908-31) meteorologist
“Homogenization” needs to be replaced by a more appropriate word, immediately understandable to the average voter.
What comes to mind are manipulate, massage, maneuver, steer, rig, alter, juggle, tinker with, falsify, doctor, mislead, pervert, warp, misstate, and adulterate
Don B.
Sometimes it is appropriate to apply an homogenisation to temperature data. For example, when a weather station is moved from a post office to an airport there may be a discontinuity in the temperatures series created. This should be corrected for, and homogenisation may be appropriate.
However, what has been done to the temperature series for Rutherglen can not be justified. In this case the temperature record has been corrupted.
Jennifer
I was aware that adjustments are justifiable when appropriate. You have documented that is not the situation in this case. I was using justifiable bombast.
Jen said “sometimes necessary, for example, to create continuous records when weather stations move locations within the same general area i.e. from a post office to an airport.”
No it’s not.
Treat them separately first and compare!>:D
Creation of continuous temperature records
Actually, Jennifer is right. It depends why you want a continuous record. For example, you may want a continuous record for the purpose of input to a statistical model to predict rainfall.
While it may be sensible to compare individual records rather than synthetic continuous temperature records for some purposes, there are other purposes for which it is necessary.
In respect of Dave Karoly’s comments in the Australian yesterday, I have to wonder why Jen and her colleagues should submit a peer reviewed paper on the mathematical rendition of the data. All we are talking about is empirical data of recorded temperatures,and all that has been done is to add them up and find the mean. I wasn’t aware that adding one and one together and then dividing by the whole required any peer review to determine if it was undertaken accurately. What I suspect is that Karoly is so ignorant of the scientific method that he would not know that empirical data does not require per review. The results are what they are and no assumptions or conclusions were involved in gaining this outcome.
It appears we now have a generation of scientists who aren’t.
Good point Charles.
It’s not complicated . . .nor is it ‘rocket science’.
Adding up and dividing to determine a mean is easily checked by a majority % of Australians. . .we are after all a well educated bunch.
A peer reviewed paper is not necessary. . .most of us are perfectly capable of calculating a mean.
Karoly has sidestepped the actual question that has been asked. . .which you correctly point out is NOT scientific behaviour.
The justification for the adjustments & the homogenisation is what is being questioned by Jen and many others, not the fact that homogenisation can serve a useful purpose.
As someone pointed out at an earlier thread, there is no point in polishing a turd!
Who is going to be sacked?
Almost certainly no-one.
In my view, even information as damaging as this to the reputation of a pillar of scientific integrity , will not make a difference unless it filters through to the average Joe Blow and he/she understands the significance.
It’s only when Joe Blows, that politicians listen and act.
With the exception of The Australian which ostensibly holds to AGW theory but does publish dissenting opinions and a few individuals such as Bolt, Blair, Alan Jones and dedicated bloggers such as yourself, the mainstream media is still doggedly wedded to the principle of evil humanity personified by fossil fuel companies, destroying the world.
You recently made the point Jennifer, that major scientific theories are not disproven but displaced.
It’s difficult to see how AGW can be replaced when information such as this is filtered through the funnel of traditional journalism.
A classic case in point on the Insiders last Sunday.
Karen Middleton, whilst accepting that Joe Hockey’s comments on petrol excise had been dealt with unfairly by many journalists, still managed to blame Joe for the outcome because, as she put it, it is not so much what he said but what is heard.
What Karen misses completely is that what is heard, is the message shaped by her and people like her.
If the community misheard, then it is because journalists misrepresented.
Most journalists ( skewed to the political left according to the two most reliable surveys ) will never become part of a solution if it is contrary to a personally precious narrative.
Finally, an excellent quote from Andrew Klavan (a former US journalist) who said recently;
” It is not a journalist’s job to protect us from the ugly facts. Neither is it his job to protect the sensitive from the painful truth or anyone, really, from anything.
In fact, speaking more broadly, it is not a journalist’s job to make the world a better place, to ensure our right thinking, or to defend the virtuous politicians that sophisticates like himself voted for while excoriating the evildoers elected by those country rubes on the other side. “
Dr. Marohasy –
Congratulations and thanks for digging into the sub-rosa alterations and adjustments of various national and international temperature databases. The “adjusters” have been quite devious in disguising their ministrations. The bare fact that nearly all adjustments lead to perceived increases in warming trends is a major “red flag” signal that somebody has a thumb on the scales.
I thoroughly enjoyed your presentations at I-CCC 9 Las Vegas and the interesting application of neural networks to rainfall patterns.
I left a light-hearted comment on the Real Science website page (8/26/14) noting your challenge of BoM adjustments of temperature records in Australia. I made mention of your ability to command an audience with your analytical approach, but also with your presentation attributes, not to mention the lovely red dress.
I hope that you accept as a compliment that your obvious attractiveness gives you the potential to communicate more effectively to wide audiences.
Best wishes for success with your research and communication activities. You are a rare talent
Jennifer, can you provide the exact URLs and provenance for the before and after data. I located some data for Rutherglen here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/hqsites/data/temp/minT.082039.annual.txt. This seems to match the homogenized data. Where is the unhomogenized data from? The caption for your figure should also show minimum data – this is mentioned in the text but not in the caption. Regards, Steve McIntyre
Jennifer, you wrote:
“’Trick’ was the word Phil Jones, a leading United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientist, used to explain to his peers that, when constructing very long global temperature series using proxy data based on tree ring measurements that can extend back thousands of years, it was best to substitute thermometer data for this proxy data from about 1960 because the proxy data started to show cooling from about then.”
When the Climategate scandals broke, there was limited discussion of “Mikes Nature trick” — even in the usually somnolent MSM. Apologists for our favorite fraudster tried to get ahead of the story, by zeroing in on the word, “trick.” They explained that mathematicians and physical scientists use various clever tricks frequently, and in that sense, the word is morally neutral.
In the absense of context, they are correct. Without mathematical tricks, we’d still be living in mud huts. Here’s a link to an article that includes a mathematical trick of mine.
Larry’s Tetrahedron Puzzle
Can you find the distance from the base of a Regular Tetrahedron to its center, if you know the height of this figure?
http://larryfields.hubpages.com/hub/Larrys-Tetrahedron-Puzzle
HubPages prefers that their articles be medium to long; so I included some background information on tetrahedra, before getting down to the nitty-gritty later in the article.
Anyway, Mikey’s apologists conveniently neglected to mention the central point. “Mike’s Nature trick” was used to make an ‘end-run’ around the well-known Divergence Problem. “Mike’s Nature trick” was essentially a variation of the old Bait-and-Switch game long used by con artists. Alternatively, we could describe it as a Pig in a Poke.
Keep calling these political animals out.
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2014/02/man-made-temperatures/#more-18108
Well played Jennifer. And kudos to Ken at Ken’s Kingdom, Tony Heller at Steve Goddard and others who are calling to account the BOM, the USHCN and other official bodies who are using algorithms to corrupt data.
There may be some justification for TOBS adjustments in the US, or whatever it is that the BOM uses for justification in Australia, but it is clear that the application thereof is corrupting the data big time.
With this finally hitting the mainstream media (kudos to Graham Lloyd at the Australian), no-one is going to believe any “hottest year ever” claim, or warming trend as given by the BOM or USHCN, or GISS or etc.
The first step should be total transparency:
We have a few very disturbing before-after homogenization comparisions.
The BoM should be able to deliver them for all weather stations including the station metadata.for every year.
The BoM should be able to deliver documentation about the methods of homogenization they used.
By deliver i mean make every bit available as datasets, code (including excel-‘code’) and documents so that i can be put on a website to download.
If they generally can, BoM is at least the competent collector of the records and procedures and i would belay ‘cutting heads’. Instead we should revise the homogenization.
I suppose the ‘heads’ will nominate themselves in the revision, but looking at the list of heads of BoM i don’t think the right is still in reach, so don’t get too excited about it.
Sacked ?
This could be classed as ‘scientific fraud’, they should be put on trial.
BOM is not the only organization to have corrupted the Rutherglen data. The Berkeley Earth site shows two stations for Rutherglen – the first from 1903 to 1921 at Rutherglen P.O that supposedly has a trend of 0.77 C in the raw data over this period corrected for breakpoint analysis to 0.57 C and the second at Rutherglen Research Station from 1965 until the present showing a raw trend of 0.75C corrected after breakpoint analysis to 1.98 C. Yet the site record quoted by Steve McIntyre shows a continuous record from 1913 to 2013.
If your analysis is correct, and I have no doubt it is, then the BEST data is way out and one has to ask how many other BEST sites are distorted in this way, or for that matter those used by CRU, GISS and NOAA as they are based on GHCN data obtained from contributing countries by WMO. If this data manipulation pre submission to WMO extends to the whole GHCN record then none of the land surface temperature series are worth diddly squat.
Congratulations & thank you Ms. Jen et al.
What a sad situation for science that congratulations are needed.
Though reading newspaper clippings is no where near the quality of the work you have presented, these two highlight how low the BoM has sunk to cover it’s deadly failures.
I get very angry reading this, as it is like the BoM is wiping the memories of the 38 people that died in the 2011 Queensland floods.
The BoM should be offering abject apologies, promising to do better.
Instead, we get this:
February 17, 2009
Drought and fire here to stay with El Nino’s return
“David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.
“We are in the build-up to the next El Nino and already the drought is as bad as it has ever been — in terms of the drought, this may be as good as things get,” Dr Jones said.”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/drought-and-fire-here-to-stay-with-el-ninos-return-20090216-899u.html#ixzz1nrZUq1ik
March 13, 2012
La Nina brought flooding but climate change not off the hook
“Before both the last two summers, the Bureau of Meteorology predicted an increased chance of above-average rainfall, because the climate system was already in the middle of a strong La Nina event.””
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/la-nina-brought-flooding-but-climate-change-not-off-the-hook-20120312-1uwdd.html
Keep up the good work!
What we’re witnessing now from climate catastrophists is nothing less than desperation and we must keep the foot on the elected representatives to clean up the trough.
Hi Steve McIntyre
You can find the Rutherglen ‘raw’ data here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/
Station number is 08 20 39. Its the research station 6.6 kms out of town.
What I have been wanting to ask your help with, is working out how to spot ‘discontinuities’ in pre 1910 data… for locations like Bourke in NSW (station number 04 80 13).
We know there were equipments changes in November 1879 and August 1908… can you see any affect on the temp. series?
I was wondering if you might email me jennifermarohasy at gmail.com.
Cheers,
Good work Jennifer and nice to see McIntyre digging in the case.
I wonder if it would help to track back when the changes started and how.
One error is enough to question the whole process, but it might help to see if it was a gradual slope change, or more abrupt.
Cant help speculate about what happens if they repeatedly homogenise already homogenised temperatures.
A belated birthday wish for yesterday Jen.
Karoly and the BOM claim that peer reviewed papers show Acorn adjustments have no significant effect on national trends compared with raw data. What they don’t say is that there has been NO comparison of the effects of adjustment on raw data at the same Acorn stations- they use various other records, but not the ones that have been adjusted. No ‘apples with apples’ analysis at all. They did the same with the old HQ which died a miserable death. Let’s hope Acorn goes the same way.
Ken
Congratulations Jennifer and Ken Stewart. Ken I am astounded by the extent of your patient work on the BOM temperature records.
From a 2009 Climategate email:
“Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]”
Nobody was sacked – they were exonerated by whitewashes.
However, this is evidence that manipulation of the past record has been deliberate policy by some people at the very highest level of the climate industry.
With regard to Phil Jones and Climategate, I think “hide the decline” is the comment most relevant to temperature reconstructions. Most scientists use the word “Trick” as meaning something simple and clever rather than dishonest.
In calling for sackings you may be doing what you accuse others of, i.e. deciding the outcome in advance.
‘Their unbridled joy comes not in the wake of some key research published in the scientific literature but in the fact that a climate sceptic has got a mainstream newspaper to give their conspiracy theory another airing.
‘The sceptic in question is Dr Jennifer Marohasy, a long-time doubter of human-caused climate change whose research at Central Queensland University (CQU) is funded by another climate change sceptic.’
Readfearn / Guardian
More letters today:
Bureau should supply details of its data revision
TALKING POINT THE AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 28, 2014 12:00AM
GRAHAM Lloyd’s article (“Amateurs are challenging BOM warming data”, 26/8) on Jennifer Marohasy’s study of homogenised temperature records in Australia, notes a comment by my colleague David Karoly to the effect that poorly informed amateurs are at fault, and suggests they submit their re-analysis of the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature records for peer review.
I would prefer Karoly first offer comment on the extraordinary examples of two weather stations (Rutherglen in Victoria and Amberley in Queensland) where raw data shows annual average minimum temperatures to have a flat or slight decrease over the past 100 years, but the data shows significant increasing temperature trends after application of the BOM’s homogenisation process, a necessary step to gain estimates of continent-wide average temperature changes.
The logical demand on any inference or projection of a data set is that it must first be consistent with the original data, and Karoly as an expert might well ask, as does Marohasy, what confidence do we have in homogenised data which fails this test?
Our confidence will increase if and when BOM publishes or supplies its homogenisation algorithms, a step which would be quite consistent with existing requirements of the better peer-reviewed journals.
Michael Asten, School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Melbourne. Vic
DAVID Karoly’s response is a contradiction. He is a well-known climate activist and editor-in-chief of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal. Independent peer-review or not, he is quoting his own stuff, which he published in the journal he edits.
His claim about amateurs is both silly and frustrating. We live in a marketing age and everybody should question everything. Joining dots is not science.
In the article he referred to, Karoly stitched together two sets of data. He chose to end one set, which was relatively continuous, in 1950. The second set, from 1910 to 2010, was the heavily homogenised Australian Climate Observations Reference Network — Surface Air Temperature data. Most ACORN-SAT series were derived by stitching together data from, for instance, now closed post offices and airports to form a single series. For some, gaps were filled using more distant stations. Karoly knows this.
He should also know that for his 1910 to 1950 comparison, most of the compared data sets were identical. They were long-term post office, pilot station and lighthouse data. Irrespective of homogenisation, close agreement could therefore be expected for those years.
That period of agreement, however, was not a reason to believe that data from 1950 to 2010, which was highly homogenised, would remain comparable.
Confounding his methodology, was that 1947 was an important climate-shift year. The worst drought ever known in Australia ended with a an exhausted, overgrazed and burnt-out Murray-Darling Basin in 1948.
Bill Johnston, former NSW natural resources research scientist, Cook, ACT
DAVID Karoly calls for people who claim the BOM data adjustments are under suspicion should have their claims submitted to peer review. Would that be the same peer review process uncovered via the “climate-gate” emails? Unfortunately, since climate-gate, climate science, the peer review process and confidence in scientific experts has been damaged, possibly irreversibly.
I suggest BOM release all its data and adjustment methodologies to the amateurs out here in denier land so that they may review it for themselves.
Greg Buchanan, Niagara Park, NSW
THE cost of climate change could increase to around 20 per cent of global GDP by the end of the century if left unchecked, which is why the OECD, IMF and World Bank agree with the consensus of credible scientists.
If your correspondents think a Greens-Left conspiracy has taken control of these bastions of capitalism, Australia’s bid to reclaim the flat earth cup of global warming denial supremacy awaits them (Letters, 27/8).
Those who deal in empirical evidence and scientific facts are now putting overdue measures in place to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are driving extreme weather.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
Your work might be filling in a puzzle for me. How the official BOM record at Hamilton VIC shows a strong warming trend over time (they moved the weather station 10 km north from the Post Office to the airport in 1983), but the trend at the agricultural research station, situated 10 km south of Hamilton is flat since 1962 when they started recording there? Other sites have similar warming trends associated with a change in location.
Nova puts the boot into Karoly.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/uninformed-climate-amateurs-ask-professionals-to-explain-their-data-revision/
Good morning.
Hope you are enjoying your perks and funding from big petrogas co’s and PR machines. Here’s an idea, how about you write a paper and get it peer reviewed and published ? What’s that you say, it won’t stand up to scrutiny ? You’d prefer to just disseminate confusion and doubt because that’s what you’ve been instructed to do by your petro-lord and masters.
Peer review and publish or just p*** off.
Hey Mimi
No perks for me… no big PR machines… just get up early and work late.
On the subject of peer-review: unlike David Karoly I don’t have my own tax-payer funded journal from which I can pick and choose who shall be published.
But I’m published nevertheless… details here http://jennifermarohasy.com/publications/
Cheers,
Er, Mimi, you haven’t noticed what the likes of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Boone Pickens have been up to?
That’s right! Big Green is funded by the petro-lords. Hilarious, don’t you think?
I think Jen would be lucky to get a discount fuel docket from any of those guys.
errrrr Mimi?
Are you claiming some permutation of ‘conspiracist ideation’?
🙂
If you can’t explain what is WRONG with the information that has been recently released and reported, then your attempt to personally smear Jennifer just looks desperate and petty.
Jennifer has come across this information in the course of her research into seasonal forecasting. That’s one of her jobs. . . just like any other normal person, Jennifer works in her chosen career.
Where on earth did you get the idea that it has something to do with big petrogas or big PR machines?
Where is your EVIDENCE to support such a claim?
Jennifer has supplied the EVIDENCE for her claim that the underlying assumptions for applying the homogenisation algorithms look to be incorrect.
If that is the case then IMHO she is free to point out that the data may have been corrupted.
As I commented at Jonova’s , speculating WHY this has happened is another issue altogether.
If the data is corrupted by incorrect assumptions, then the data is corrupted!
Further, the incremental warming trend becomes merely a result of the applied homogenisation algorithms and nothing else.
Seriously. . .it isn’t rocket science. . .and it’s not that difficult to understand.
🙂
I don’t really give a rats what big petrogas or big PR machines have to say about it.
I am a farmer in the MDB, I’m interested in the FACTS and the veracity of the EVIDENCE because my livelihood depends on it being as good as it possibly can be.
Hi Jennifer,
When ever the dabs of Gavin Schmidt appear you know that there is as strong likelihood that foul play is nearby.
I naively believed such manipulation of figures would not occur in my Australia. How stupid of me, but that naive thought illustrates the immense fight that is ahead of us to turn the tide.
I recall many years ago Prof Lindzen and others saying that these guys (NASA, NOAA etc) keep changing the figures and typically the interviewer looked in a doubting way as if to say how could such august bodies be accused of such actions
Now the BoM is doing the same thing.
I mean these AGW devotees just trot this garbage out day by day and it is just sopped up by the media without scrutiny except when given a good lead such as yours.
Heads must roll!!!!!!
Hi Jennifer,
I tend to agree with Mimi when she says “Peer review and publish” because I think it’s the only way forward. Please note i’m not talking about publishing with the IPA, i’m talking about credible scientific journals such as nature etc.
You are claiming to have evidence of what essentially amounts to a large conspiracy, but you don’t publish that evidence in a credible journal? That is something I find odd because if you can get it peer reviewed and published in a credible journal then they have to listen.
Thanks for your time.
Mimi August 28, 2014 at 9:58 am #
“You’d prefer to just disseminate confusion and doubt because that’s what you’ve been instructed to do by your petro-lord and masters.”
Have you been smoking something? Your tin god, His Goreness, made an estimated $100 million for his share of Current TV, which was sold to Al Jazeera. We’re not just talking Big Oil here, we’re talking Big Arab Oil.
Glenn
I have never used the word ‘conspiracy’.
Its a fact that the Bureau changes the temperatures series.
I’ve published in the best climate science journals, and I detail how I construct the temperature series that I input into my computer model in the same journals.
I will provide the link again, http://jennifermarohasy.com/publications/
My work with John Abbot on rainfall forecastings is also very relevant and should also be reported by the ABC.
But you see, whether I publish on this blog, or in the best climate science journals, Tony Jones seems to take not one bit of interest… perhaps because my evidence does not accord with the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Glenn, the invitation to publish is, so often, an invitation to be silent. The person making the suggestion knows that much time and effort will likely just slip away, since the consensus flag is fluttering high and proud over most publications.
Whether Jen publishes or not (she has), she can still speak out. Suggesting that she should publish INSTEAD of speaking out is a stunt.
And stunts are wearing thin, Glenn.
Mimi, you write rubbish. Why not do a little research yourself before spouting your bile?
Once again!
The question is about calculating a mean using recorded data and the REASONS why this simple approach has been ditched in favour of homogenising the recorded data.
WHY DO WE NEED TO HAVE A PEER REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED PAPER TO ANSWER SUCH A SIMPLE QUESTION????????
It is NOT(!) rocket science.
If a recording site has been moved to a different altitude and/or climate then of course homogenisation would serve a useful purpose.
Apparently, there is no evidence to support this underlying assumption?
THEREFORE!!!!
There is a very distinct possibility that the data has been corrupted due to an incorrect assumption.
It is not the fault of the algorithm, nor is homogenisation a bad thing. They don’t have a political opinion.
If there is a problem with a faulty assumption it just needs to be corrected.
Comments about conspiracies and questioning people’s motives are at best irrelevant.
Or to put it even more simply:
Just answer the very simple question and stop answering a question that nobody asked.
Thanks for your reply Jennifer.
It seems to me that whether you use the word conspiracy or not is irrelevant. The implication of the claims is obviously some kind of conspiracy.
Again, I submit to you that you should at least attempt to get published in journals such as “nature” and document what happens. Your previous publications may give you some credibility but wouldn’t a major journal like nature be the next logical step? Or am I missing something here?
Also don’t worry about Tony Jones may or may not think, I suggest you keep publishing on your blog and at least attempt to get peer review at a major journal.
Kind Regards
Robert,
Please don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not interested in dishonest straw-man attacks.
At no point have I suggested that Jennifer cease speaking out. I simply suggested the next logical step as I understand it, peer review in a major publication.
Kind Regards
Glenn, it’s very pleasing if you are not one of the many who use the “publish” challenge to silence or slow down skepticism. Just as well I never accused you of it, any more than Jen used the word “conspiracy”. (You thought my critique applied to you? Oh well.)
Nature, of course, is a notorious dead end for skeptics. Challenging a skeptic to publish in Nature is a bit like inviting someone to a competitive round of golf then handing them a ball made from soft putty. One knows perfectly well that their best swing won’t make the green. Oh, bad luck, chap!
Really, you’d be amazed what a common stunt this is, Glenn. And, my god, aren’t these GetUp-style stunts wearing thin!
More to the point …
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/bureau-should-supply-details-of-its-data-revision/story-fn558imw-1227039108627
Jennifer,
Methinks that you’ve hit a nerve. Mindless trolls, like Mimi and Glenn, who don’t have anything substantive to contribute to the discussion, are coming out of the woodwork. They’re even worse than luke! This is one indication that you’re on the right track. Please persevere.
It also appears that Moderator Ray has come on board at just the right time.
People like Mimi and Glenn who are a little short on rationality but really “understand” the problem always want sceptics to go through the CAGW gatekeepers of cli sci because they know they will only pass if they are thoroughly homogenised.
They, like these same gatekeepers, just FEEL so convinced the end of the world is nigh that the science and reality is only secondary:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/scientists-reveal-how-they-feel-about-climate-change-in-handwritten-letters-and-photos/story-fni0fiyv-1227038964297
Judith Curry puts it very well in a recent interview:
“The more insidious way for a majority group to marginalize dissenting scientific arguments is through the gatekeeping associated with the peer review process. This is a particular concern of mine since professional societies have been writing issue advocacy statements that ‘legitimizes’ the gatekeeping.”
The same publish in PR or perish mantra from a couple of shoe-ins. How tedious.
Here’s an idea; Jennifer and the team get a paper together and submit it to Karoly while simultaneously giving it to the media.
Let’s see how independent Karoly and his PR is.
We have to be careful in just dismissing Glenn and Mimi as mindless trolls because they are probably well meaning people who have adopted the 97% consensus rubbish. We need to educate them and start by pointing them in the right direction.
Jennifer you are so spot on with the comment “rebuttals don’t overthrow established paradigms” and boy oh boy there is so much work to do in this regard. The AGW fans have hijacked the whole debate and still stick by the mantra. All they do now is fake data and change the playing field by introducing new and conflicting reasons as to why their predictions have been proven dead wrong as of evendate. They still command the media attention they always have.
Thank you Jennifer for giving an Australian perspective to this. I have written to Greg Hunt and we all should to either expose this data manipulation, or at least get a reasonable scientifically based reason for the homogenisation.
Go for it Jennifer!!!
It is clear to me that this is an obvious case of experimenter bias. We saw it in medical studies for years which is why we have double blind studies now. The researchers CANNOT know who is in the study and who is being given a placebo. It is well known that if you want a result scientists will find a way consciously and even subconsciously to get the result they wish. A simple example of this is the constant errors made in simple transcription of temperatures in the record. A few years ago the entire country of Russia had its data from september copied into october. NOAA reported that world temperatures were highest ever breaking new records in October 2008. Nobody in the “scientific community” of accepted climate scientists seemed to notice the entire country of Russia had this incredible anomaly. They don’t notice things when they are HOTTER than they expected. Nobody goes to look for any error if it is warmer. They only look when it is colder. Then they think hard, really hard and amazingly come up with “reasonable sounding” rationale for why things must be adjusted. Then they argue that since it would be difficult to adjust each “temperatures” they will come up with an algorithm to correct all the temperatures which makes someplace look 1.8C colder! when there is no possible way that could be. Everybody nods their head, doesn’t question the results. They won’t even look into their data to see these problems because possibly subconsciously they know that the result will be a problem. That is the generous way to say it. One could imagine some purposely do this but to see the reason for this bias doesn’t require that the scientists be evil. It’s simply a matter that they don’t look into things that confirm what they think. When a common unaffiliated person looks at the data and sees that Russia was amazingly the same exact temperate in October as September and sends a note they then embarrassedly fix it and pull the story that October was the hottest ever. Russia is such a big country and the error so egregious that it moved the entire world temperature down significantly. They didn’t see it. They didn’t see that Russia was inexplicably 10 degrees warmer than it should have been in october. How amazing is that? It proves experimenter bias is rampant. There have been dozens of cases like this but they never look at themselves and say: “I wonder if we are biased?” Instead they see all kinds of reasons to lower high temperatures in the past and explain why they need to do that but they never find a reason to raise temperatures in the past because they never look for any such reason. This is how experimenter bias allows scientists to frequently come up with data, answers that look exactly like they expected. It happens in every scientific discipline. It’s the reason double-blind studies are done. The problem is that if the entire community of “allowed” peers to review something are all aligned in a belief then there is not much peer review at least on things that might question the unified belief system. The russian incident should have been enough to alert scientists they had a problem. This should similarly alert real scientists that there is a systematic bias in their thinking process which could be corrupting their theories and the data.
This has been an interesting experience to say the least.
I came here with what I thought were legitimate questions (which remain unanswered) and all I’ve received is accusations of being a mindless troll, being part of a Get-Up stunt, being short on rationality, a gatekeeper (apparently being skeptical and asking questions is now a sign of gate-keeping)! What was it that Orwell said, Ignorance is Strength, that would apply to a few commentators on here.
This behavior from the other posters is indicative of the kind of group think and conformity that I presumed this site was against (at least I assumed Jennifer was against it, obviously the other posters not so much).
Top if off with a whole slathering of unproven conspiracy insinuations about the peer review method and disdain for the scientific method (I wonder if the other posters are so against the scientific method when it comes to medicine or evolution?) and it has become fairly obvious that most posters are nothing more than trolls, using the old psychological projection trick to comfort themselves and divert attention onto other posters.
Glenn, I merely took the trouble to inform you that inviting skeptics to publish in alarmist flagships like Nature smacks of a GetUp-style stunt. The kind “suggester”, initially polite and concerned, knows perfectly well that the skeptic he is “helping’ is being guided to a certain dead-end with brick walls on all sides.
You’ll note that I was merely alerting you to the existence of such GetUp-style stunts. At no point did I accuse you of being part of one of those stunts.
I was just making helpful suggestions, showing you a logical next step etc. I hope you don’t think I was being coy because I thought you were being coy!
Glenn August 29, 2014 at 10:57 am #
Oh, just in case you’re really interested, Jennifer did provide a list of her peer-reviwed scientific publications. This answers one of Mimi’s questions, at least.
FWIW, I have an M.S. in Analytical Chemistry, and a publication in the top journal in my field. (No, the article is not about climate; it’s about compression of tabular data.) Does that make me “anti-science?” BTW in my experience, people who use that expression are usually mindless trolls, who do not understand what real science is.
Your turn! What is your academic background? Let me guess. It’s either Critical Theory or Underwater Basketweaving.
About your deficient reading comprehension skills . . . The key phrase in the title is, “making up global warming at Rutherglen.” Do you have any idea what that means? If so, how do your fortune-cookie inputs contribute to our understanding of the topic at hand? Can you pass a Turing Test?
What we have here is an open-and-shut case of scientific f***d, which may or may not be actionable under Australian law. The official ‘adjusted’ results from the first 5 or 6 decades of the Rutherglen station are a classic dry-lab. The opinions of empty suit ‘experts’ are not relevant. It’s a common sense matter, on which a jury of lay persons is competent to pass judgment. As Debbie has pointed out, we’re not talking rocket science here.
Are your histrionics an indication that you’ll be picking up your marbles, going home, and getting back on your meds? Sorry Bubba, we’re way out of your league.
This issue of temperature series goes right to the heart of what is wrong with the AGW theory, but lets not call it a FRAUD.
In Australia, nothing short of a Royal Commission is likely to get to the truth of how the homogenisation process has been stuffed up, and only after such an examination of the facts would prosecutors even consider if a crime has been committed.
It is entirely possible that the algorithms used to create the series from raw data were written by people who did not realise the effects generated when processing perfectly good data. Were the programmers also statisticians? – probably not. Did they do enough testing to eliminate errors in their logic? – obviously not. Did they simply copy the work of others who they assumed knew what they were doing? – most likely. Was their work vetted by suitably qualified statisticians? – I doubt it. Never forget we are talking about bureaucrats whose whole career is invested in this work, and they are unlikely to admit to be wrong.
So, we can vent our spleen as much as we like in private conversation, but when you come on this blog you are in a public space, and if you wish your comments to help sway public opinion, then you will avoid inflammatory statements and name-calling. This is not a parliamentary bear-pit where anything goes, it is a platform for discussion of important issues in the sphere of science and public policy.
Please think carefully about what you have typed before clicking on the big blue button!!
Moderator Ray August 29, 2014 at 2:39 pm #
“In Australia, nothing short of a Royal Commission is likely to get to the truth of how the homogenisation process has been stuffed up, and only after such an examination of the facts would prosecutors even consider if a crime has been committed.”
In this respect, Australia must be very different from the USA. On my side of the Pacific Pond, ‘blue ribbon’ commissions are white-washes 90% of the time.
The goobermint investigates itself. Surprise, surprise! It finds that there is some room for improvement, but that there was no wrongdoing. (Example: the Warren Commission, in the wake of the JFK assassination.) That would be the foregone conclusion if the Rutherglen fiasco had happened in the USA, and were investigated by an American ‘blue ribbon’ commission.
I have a keen interest in the weather and have pondered for many years the information we have been ‘fed’, as most of the data is for such a small time in the history of the earth, which we know has warmed and cooled many times. If the ‘powers that be’ were genuine, surely they would not allow concrete jungle blocks of flats/units without any trees or shrubs to be built, or not jetting across the world to talk fests.
Thank you Jennifer for your dedication to try and expose the manipulation of these figures. I feel for the people that spent their time and dedication recording the figures for the BOM for many years for it to then be manipulated years down the track, unfortunately this will happen more nowadays as Government Departments do not want paper records anymore, so things will be open to more manipulation.
There are several things going on here. According to the US methodology which is almost certainly what the Australian government is doing there are several aspects to this “adjustment” business.
1) when a station reports results inconsistent with that they think it should report it is cutoff and its data homogenized.
2) when a station is different than its peers it is cutoff and data homogenized.
3) if a station is reporting temperatures not at midnight in the past then it is told to start reporting midnight temps. Then all data in the past is “TOD” adjusted so the temperature was as if it had reported temps at midnight. This adjustment is frequently very large dominating the whole of the entire global warming for the century yet they make these adjustments as if they were 100% certain they were exact.
Also, Interestingly these adjustments 95% of the time result in an enhancement of the greenhouse response. Fully more than 50% of the entire US rise in temperatures are the result of adjustments. Without those adjustments the temperatures would have barely gone up last century across the US. They don’t seem to have a problem with the idea their adjustments are of the same magnitude as the entire warming they are saying has occurred. If nothing else the error bars because of introducing these adjustments must be magnified tremendously.
Each of these techniques results in massive changes and disregarding of data. Before any systematic adjustment is made to a station they should verify that there is actually good cause for the adjustment. Somebody should go out and verify that these adjustments actually make sense since the entire amount of global warming in the last century is being adjusted in there should be solid proof that these adjustments are justified. Of course this is just my opinion.