James Renwick was Speaking the Truth

It's Far Worse Than the Pollyannas Will Admit

When a storm broke around the blogosphere over the NZ temperature record being "massaged" by government climate scientists, the official climate science spokesman, Dr James Renwick protested that all the adjustments to NZ's temperature record were done following well-established, best-practice international procedures. We now know that he was speaking the truth. This revelation deserves official recognition: from now on international best-practice adjustments of raw temperature data will be designated as the Renwick Coefficient.

It has been revealed that this "international best-practice" has been employed building not just the CRU global temperature database in the UK, but also the two leading global temperature data bases in the US: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Before we dive down into some of the details, let us consider the odd fact that both NOAA and GISS have recently announced that 2009 was one of the warmest ever year on record, yet there was an odd discrepancy in play. GISS claimed 2009 was the second warmest year on record; NOAA reckoned it was the fifth warmest year on record. (We also note in passing that both NOAA and GISS temperature data is derived from land based temperature stations, whereas satellite temperature data shows 2009 as the 15th coldest in 31 years.)

Why the discrepancy between the two databases, and why the very divergent result from satellite data? Something clearly is not right.

It turns out that the discrepancy between NOAA and GISS is easily explainable. Both have applied the Renwick Co-efficient to the raw data; both have adjusted more recent temperature data upwards; both have guessed and interpolated the data; consequently both databases show different results. When scientists start massaging raw data, guess what? The data itself becomes guesswork and mere opinion and probably prejudiced opinion, at that. (Now, we are not objecting to scientists guessing when data has gaps, or is unavailable. What we strenuously object to is that the fact of guesswork is not disclosed. Every temperature pronouncement from GISS and NOAA should, by law, be required to disclose that the pronouncement is made on the basis of adjusted or interpolated data, not on the basis of actual temperature measurements.)

A recent article in American Thinker details how painstaking research upon the methodologies and employed guesswork of these two "institutions of science" shows that the Renwick Coefficient is alive and well.

Here is a summary what the forensic investigation of NOAA and GISS is tossing up. Firstly, NOAA:

1. Cherry Picking of Global Temperature Sites. There are 6,000 thermometers scattered over over the globe. NOAA has reduced the dataset to only 1,500. That represents a 75% reduction in the sampling population. And, as the article points out, all recent temperature records are derived from this significantly reduced dataset.

Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets. These are the same datasets, incidentally, which serve as primary sources of temperature data not only for climate researchers and universities worldwide, but also for the many international agencies using the data to create analytical temperature anomaly maps and charts.

2. Clear Selection Bias in Favour of Warmer Stations.

It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).

For example, Canada’s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. That’s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left “one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.” And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to its unusually moderate summers.

The Renwick Coefficient at work.

3. Earlier Temperature Stats Include the Colder Records. In the NOAA database, earlier temperatures include the colder (higher) temperature station data; the later, more recent temperature data do not. Voila. A warming trend immediately emerges.

. . . baseline [older] temperatures to which current readings are compared were a true averaging of both warmer and cooler locations. And comparing these historic true averages to contemporary false averages – which have had the lower end of their numbers intentionally stripped out – will always yield a warming trend, even when temperatures have actually dropped.

This is as unscrupulous and perverse as someone who claimed to show a warming temperature trend over seven days by recording the temperature in the household freezer for five days, then in a hot bath for the following two days. Amazing and hard to believe it might be--but that is precisely what NOAA has done. This is the Renwick Coefficient at work.

So much for NOAA. Now, a quick look at GISS and the magical tricks it performs upon the raw data. Remember that the global data set has now been reduced to 1500 temperature stations. But, in an effort to give the appearance of a true global temperature data set, GISS divides the entire surface of the globe up into an 8,000 box grid. Now, there are only 1,500 current readings that survive in the database: how do you get them to fit into 8,000 boxes? Well, you make one temperature reading cover an awful lot of territory, that's how--a 1,200 kilometer radius to be exact.

4. (Warmer) Temperature Stations are Used as Proxies for Colder Areas. Consider the following example with respect to Hawaii.

It seems that all of the Aloha State’s surviving stations reside in major airports. Nonetheless, this unrepresentative hot data is what’s used to “infill” the surrounding “empty” Grid Boxes up to 1200 km out to sea. So in effect, you have “jet airport tarmacs ‘standing in’ for temperature over water 1200 km closer to the North Pole.”

Maybe this is an isolated problem. Not at all. Consider Bolivia, a mountainous country--therefore cooler. But how does GISS record Bolivia's temperatures these days? By using proxy stations which just happen to be located in the Amazon jungle or at a beach in Peru 1,200km away. The actual Bolivian temperature data was excluded from the database from 1990 onwards (it was included before that time). This is the Renwick Coefficient at work. Upshot: the data appear to show that Bolivia is getting warmer--but it is pure chicanery and lies.

Those responsible for this fraud need to be exposed, named, and shamed.

On another related front, Climate Audit has now exposed the extraordinary lengths to which the charlatans at GISS will go to to cover over errors and mistakes. In around August 2007, the guys at Climate Audit noticed a mistake in GISS data in the January 2000 data series. They kindly pointed it out to the good, honest folk at NASA (which runs GISS). Rather than correcting the problem by removing the error from their post-2000 data, they decided to go back and adjust all their pre-2000 data, in effect blowing a smokescreen over their mistake. This literally meant adjusting (changing) millions of historical records in their database.

The Renwick Coefficient at work again.