Doctored Data, Not Real Temperatures, Set Records

As we hear in the media that yet another year is setting global warming temperature records, here's an article from Forbes that summarizes what I've been saying for years: the 'corrected' data is phony. Always look to raw thermometer readings in rural areas first if you are at all worried about global warming.

“Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday,” according to the May 15 Los Angeles Times.

Which begs the question, what does “recorded” mean?

To most people, the hottest temperatures ever “recorded” would imply that quality controlled thermometers registered higher readings during the past year than had ever occurred before. If you believe that this is what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) means by hottest temperatures ever “recorded,” then you are wrong.

Raw temperature data show that U.S. temperatures were significantly warmer during the 1930s than they are today. In fact, raw temperature data show an 80-year cooling trend. NOAA is only able to claim that we are experiencing the hottest temperatures on record by doctoring the raw temperature data.

Doctoring real-world temperature data is as much a part of the alarmist playbook as is calling skeptical scientists at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, NASA, NOAA, etc., “anti-science.” Faced with the embarrassing fact that real-world temperature readings don’t show any U.S. warming during the past 80 years, the alarmists who oversee the collection and reporting of the data simply erase the actual readings and substitute their own desired readings in their place. If this shocks you, you are not alone.

The bureaucracy at NOAA and NASA who report the U.S. temperature data undertake what they term “correcting” the raw data. These corrections are not just one-time affairs, either. As time goes by, older temperature readings are systematically and repeatedly made cooler, and then cooler still, and then cooler still, while more recent temperature readings are made warmer, and then warmer still, and then warmer still.
...
Ironically, the government overseers of raw temperature data are doing just the opposite. As Goddard shows here, they are doctoring older temperature readings (when urban heat island effects were minimal) in a manner that makes the older temperature readings seem colder than was reported in the real-world data. At the same time, they are doctoring more recent temperature readings (when urban heat islands are more pronounced) in a manner that makes the more recent temperature readings seem warmer than the real-world data report.
The real-world U.S. temperature data show a long-term cooling trend. Common sense indicates that if the real-world data need adjustment, the proper adjustment is to further reduce recent temperature readings. Yet the bureaucrats who oversee the data have instead doctored the data to show a false, long-term warming pattern.




http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/06/13/doctored-data-not-u-s-temperatures-set-a-record-this-year/

Here's a fun little anecdote. I happen to be reading the book "Unbroken" right now, about olympic runner and WWII hero Louie Zamperini. He went to New York in July, 1936 for the Olympic trials:

That week, which included the hottest three-day period in the nation's history, the heat would kill three thousand Americans. In Manhattan, where it would reach 106 degrees, forty people would die.
...
Sweating profusely day and night ... virtually every athlete lost a hugh amount of weight. By one estimate, no athlete dropped less than ten pounds. One was so desperate for relief that he moved into an air-conditioned theater, buying tickets to movies and sleeping through every showing. Louie was as miserable as everyone else. Chronically dehydrated, he dranks as much as he could; after an 880-meter run in 106-degree heat, he downed eight orangeades and a quart of beer... His weight fell precipitously. ...
All over the track, athletes were keeling over and being carted off to hospitals. ... The heat was suffocating. One runner dropped, and the others had no choice but to hurdle him. Then another went down, and they jumped him too. Louie could feel his feet cooking; the spikes on his shoes were conduction heat up from the track. Norman Bright's feet were burning particularly badly. In terrible pain, he took a staggering step off the track, twisted his ankle, and lurched back on.

It's a great book, and Louie goes on to the Berlin Olympics, shakes Hitler's hand, gets drafted into the AAF, and endures years of cruel heat and dust training in the U.S., fighting in the Pacific theater, and as a prisoner of war.

National Temperature Trends: The Science Behind the Calculations

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/hcntmptrends.php

The observations come from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), a network of 1221 climate observing stations in the continental United States. These data are extensively quality controlled for errors and for small biases that may have occurred through time due to artificial changes at each observing station. These artificial changes include station relocations, different instrumentation, and changes in the landscape surrounding the station (e.g. urbanization, removal or planting of vegetation, etc.). Some of these changes may result in "random" changes to the data. For example, even small station relocations can result in temperature readings that are either slightly cooler or slightly warmer than what would have occurred at the former site. Other changes, such changes in urbanization in the vicinity of the station or changes in observing times, can systematically affect temperatures, e.g., add an urban warming bias to the temperature trends. Research has shown that the data from these kinds of changes can be corrected to a large degree based on physical and statistical methods (e.g., see Peterson 2006).

Methods that have been used to correct temperature data are described in more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). A series of data corrections was developed to specifically address potential problems in trend estimation of the rates of warming or cooling in the USHCN.