Australia's BOM admits temperature adjustments are secret

[IanC]

three years of inconvenient questions and the backing of more and more politicians and reporters finally forced the BOM to call in some semi-independent statisticians to form a technical forum on BOM data and methodologies. it convened for a whole day back in March, and the report is now out. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/documents/2015_TAF_report.pdf

while it is the usual whitewash that we are so accustomed to seeing in climate science Inquiries, it seems to actually leak out some confirmation of the problems documented by 'unsolicited submissions from members of the public', 'which fall outside the scope of the Terms of Reference'.

specifically it admits that there is no way to replicate the BOM dataset because of the 'choices within the adjustment process remain a matter of expert judgment'. hmmm. when people ask questions the BOM, (GISS,BEST, etc) say read our methodologies. but that doesnt cover the discretionary decisions being made outside of the general method. or the order of adjustments for that matter. matrix math shows the large differences a slight reordering makes, wholesaler multiple discounts also show how multiple steps produce different outcomes.

anyway, here are a coupla links from down under.

If it can t be replicated it isn t science BOM admits temperature adjustments are secret JoNova

Remember Rutherglen Whoever has Honor Follow Me - Jennifer Marohasy

background on the forum. BoM forum been gone. Rejoice Invisible problems being solved behind closed doors JoNova

 

[flacaltenn]

It's that sticky widget part about NOT making the original data set available that makes this less about science and more about criminality.. Definitely ain't science. But it MIGHT be illegal. That's the question that should be asked. Does the Govt of Australia CONCUR in sequestering this set of thermometer readings behind closed doors? Can they DO that?

I know here in this country -- potential legislation is now locked up behind closed doors. No way to debate it -- but the media ATTEMPTS to speculate. Maybe they WANT speculation. Makes the deniers out to be the conspiracy hawkers.. MOST conspiracies start because a govt LOCKS UP something without an adequate explanation..

 

[Billy_Bob]

Looks like the jail house needs a few new rooms for these people.. The problem however is now global and its infection severe. I would say we need to remove some people and jail them for their deceptions and deprivation of basic necessities for life. I'm sure of the 3,000 elderly that died last year in England due to this type of forced deprivation of basic necessities due to policies built on deceptions would get the attention of the whole world.

 

[IanC]

It's that sticky widget part about NOT making the original data set available that makes this less about science and more about criminality.. Definitely ain't science. But it MIGHT be illegal. That's the question that should be asked. Does the Govt of Australia CONCUR in sequestering this set of thermometer readings behind closed doors? Can they DO that?

I know here in this country -- potential legislation is now locked up behind closed doors. No way to debate it -- but the media ATTEMPTS to speculate. Maybe they WANT speculation. Makes the deniers out to be the conspiracy hawkers.. MOST conspiracies start because a govt LOCKS UP something without an adequate explanation..

From reading the report, I think most of the data actually is available. One of their recommendations is to make access much easier than the easter egg hunt presently necessary now.

The shocking admission, at least to me, is that they acknowledge that it would be impossible to reconstruct the final dataset without access to the 'expert' decisions made arbitrarily on the metadata and flagged breakpoints. The code in the program is only a suggestion of what to look at and then human decisions are made to deal with the situation. That is why no explanations are forthcoming on individual station complaints. And why the supposed explanation of methodology in a set of contentious stations raised more questions than answers when they all disagreed with each other.

It is quite possible that all the global datasets have these human element decisions in them, such as BEST's determination of reliability or the amount of iterations needed when 'correcting' a station record.

As usual the warmers will build a straw man saying skeptics want only raw data used, with no QC, whereas what we want is an explanation of the huge arbitrary changes at the end of the calculations.

 

[flacaltenn]

Problem is Ian -- you kinda NEED "expert decisions" to do all that extrapolation between station readings. I used the Lake Tahoe/ Reno example where you thousands of sq miles between stations at varying elevations and weather changes and even (possibly) slightly different daylight hours.

 

[IanC]

I agree that expert interpretation is needed. I just have serious problems with how decisions seem to be made that always increase the trend. Or to support a certain point of view, or a particular need at the time. Karl2015 being the latest in a long line of arbitrary methodologies designed to support a preconceived perception of what may be happening.

 

[Crick]

I agree that expert interpretation is needed. I just have serious problems with how decisions seem to be made that always increase the trend. Or to support a certain point of view, or a particular need at the time. Karl2015 being the latest in a long line of arbitrary methodologies designed to support a preconceived perception of what may be happening.

Karl 2015 was most certainly not arbitrary.

 

[mamooth]

JoNova conspiracy theories? That's really scraping bottom. It ranks even below WUWT and Breitbart.

 

[IanC]

I agree that expert interpretation is needed. I just have serious problems with how decisions seem to be made that always increase the trend. Or to support a certain point of view, or a particular need at the time. Karl2015 being the latest in a long line of arbitrary methodologies designed to support a preconceived perception of what may be happening.

Karl 2015 was most certainly not arbitrary.

Really? Adjusting the buoy data up 0.15C to match the engine intake data wasn't arbitrary? Why would you adjust the good data to match the bad data? Have you bothered to read any of the criticisms of Karl2015?

 

[Crick]

From Karl et al 2015

First, several studies have examined the differences between buoy- and ship-based data, noting that the ship data are systematically warmer than the buoy data (15–17). This is particularly important, as much of the sea surface is now sampled by both observing systems, and surface-drifting and moored buoys have increased the overall global coverage by up to 15% (see supplemental material for details). These changes have resulted in a time-dependent bias in the global SST record, and various corrections have been developed to account for the bias (18). Recently, a new correction (13) was developed and applied in the Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature dataset version 4, which we use in our analysis. In essence, the bias correction involved calculating the average difference between collocated buoy and ship SSTs. The average difference globally was −0.12°C, a correction which is applied to the buoy SSTs at every grid cell in ERSST version 4. [Notably, IPCC (1) used a global analysis from the UK Met Office that found the same average shipbuoy difference globally, although the corrections in that analysis were constrained by differences observed within each ocean basin (18).] More generally, buoy data have been proven to be more accurate and reliable than ship data, with better known instrument characteristics and automated sampling (16). Therefore, ERSST version 4 also considers this smaller buoy uncertainty in the reconstruction (13)
********************************************************************************************************

I don't wonder that you wonder. I'd guess that the buoy data was made to match the engine intake data in order to eliminate the "time-dependent bias" without having to alter data going back to the invention of the thermometer. But that's just a guess.

Do you agree that starting an analysis - as you folks love to do, with an enormous el Nino like 1998's will affect the observed trends?

Do you agree that coverage has been poor at the poles and that increased coverage there will show increased warming?

 

[IanC]

Are land surface stations adjusted to match the present, or are recent readings adjusted to match the past? Obviously the complaints over the last two decades have been over the distortions of past data to match 'expectations'.

Removing ENSO from the equation doesn't fix the models.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Looks like the jail house needs a few new rooms for these people.. The problem however is now global and its infection severe. I would say we need to remove some people and jail them for their deceptions and deprivation of basic necessities for life. I'm sure of the 3,000 elderly that died last year in England due to this type of forced deprivation of basic necessities due to policies built on deceptions would get the attention of the whole world.

It's not actually a crime.

 

[Crick]

Are land surface stations adjusted to match the present, or are recent readings adjusted to match the past? Obviously the complaints over the last two decades have been over the distortions of past data to match 'expectations'.

Removing ENSO from the equation doesn't fix the models.

Is this a comparison between average global temperatures (ie, land, sea and air) and sea surface temperatures? If so, did you expect them to line up?

And even so, the SST are undeniably rising during this period, even after the huge 1998 el Nino.

What was the source of this composite?

 

[IanC]

still havent figured out that right click thing, eh?

 

[Crick]

Still haven't caught on to common manners, eh?

 

[IanC]

Well I certainly wouldn't have learned them from you, would I? I find it hypocritical of you to whine for a link when I have repeatedly told you how to get the address off ANY graph, not just this one in particular.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Looks like the jail house needs a few new rooms for these people.. The problem however is now global and its infection severe. I would say we need to remove some people and jail them for their deceptions and deprivation of basic necessities for life. I'm sure of the 3,000 elderly that died last year in England due to this type of forced deprivation of basic necessities due to policies built on deceptions would get the attention of the whole world.

It's not actually a crime.

Theft by Deception most certainly is...

 

[Crick]

Looks like the jail house needs a few new rooms for these people.. The problem however is now global and its infection severe. I would say we need to remove some people and jail them for their deceptions and deprivation of basic necessities for life. I'm sure of the 3,000 elderly that died last year in England due to this type of forced deprivation of basic necessities due to policies built on deceptions would get the attention of the whole world.

Of what 3,000 English, dead of deprivation, do you speak?

 

[IanC]

Alice Springs Automatic Weather Station Inflated Temperature By 4.5 C Producing False Record High NoTricksZone



A spurious 4.5C reading leads to another 'hottest evahhhh' claim. At least this time it was recinded. How many others just get accepted into the record book? Eg. will the Heathrow record stand? A minute long spike not found in the surrounding stations. Real, jet exhaust, or what?

 

[flacaltenn]

Alice Springs Automatic Weather Station Inflated Temperature By 4.5 C Producing False Record High NoTricksZone



A spurious 4.5C reading leads to another 'hottest evahhhh' claim. At least this time it was recinded. How many others just get accepted into the record book? Eg. will the Heathrow record stand? A minute long spike not found in the surrounding stations. Real, jet exhaust, or what?

I'm telling you --- GISS and East Anglia are hacking into the reporting systems on nights, weekends and holidays..



Seriously tho... I'm not surprised. I'm appalled every day at what passes for engineering in this world since the only important products became telephones and tablets. You can't even design the type of accurate instrumentation signal conditioning that we used to have. Because semiconductor companies are only responding to CONSUMER markets, not scientific ones. Pretty soon, it's gonna be just be just like IdioCracy predicted. (see the damn movie)