NASA Confirms Temperature Data is Suspect

Bogus Science a Tarnished Jewel

We blogged earlier this year on Freedom of Information requests that had been submitted to NASA in an effort to get to the bottom of whether its global temperature data was kosher. Readers will recall that there are four major "sources" for global temperature data. All the three databases "show" global temperatures rising over the last one hundred years.

Now, according to a report filed by Fox, NASA has come clean, or more accurately has disclosed its dirty linen in public.
Now, a defence of the data series has been made by global warming advocates. The defence amounts to claiming that the data is robust because all four databases show the same thing. Which seems fine, until it is understood that all the databases actually share data--that is, they rely on each other.

Global warming critics call this a crucial blow to advocates' arguments that minor flaws in the "Climate-gate" data are unimportant, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion -- that the Earth is getting warmer. But there's a good reason for that, the skeptics say: They all use the same data.

"There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other's results," says James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute.

"The different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise," said Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the same 2007 e-mail thread. Earlier this month, in an updated analysis of the surface temperature data, GISS restated that the separate analyses by the different agencies "are not independent, as they must use much of the same input observations."

There has long been an argument run by Anthony Watts that the temperature stations are systematically biased to show rising temperatures over time because of the "Urban Heat Inversion" effect. As urbanisation takes place, temperature stations end up having heat producing buildings and industries located near them.

Watts has been ridiculed by the global warming advocates. Now, however, NASA has admitted the obvious, and is changing its database, yet again.

But NASA is somewhat less confident, having quietly decided to tweak its corrections to the climate data earlier this month.

In an updated analysis of the surface temperature data released on March 19, NASA adjusted the raw temperature station data to account for inaccurate readings caused by heat-absorbing paved surfaces and buildings in a slightly different way. NASA determines which stations are urban with nighttime satellite photos, looking for stations near light sources as seen from space.

Of course, this doesn't solve problems with NASA's data, as the newest paper admits: "Much higher resolution would be needed to check for local problems with the placement of thermometers relative to possible building obstructions," a problem repeatedly underscored by meteorologist Anthony Watts on his SurfaceStations.org Web site. Last month, Watts told FoxNews.com that "90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

Once again, when people assert that the world has got warmer over the past one hundred years, they need to be challenged. "How do you know?" is the really apt and appropriate objection. Those who cite the global temperature databases need to be politely asked, "And which modified and adjusted version of the data are we talking about?"

Meanwhile, the Arctic ice cover has returned to its long term normal levels. Just saying. The shrinking Arctic ice cover, of course, was the trumpeted "evidence of global warming happening before our eyes." Now, its just climate, nothing to do with global warming at all.