Global Temperature measurement – Use Due Diligence on… Climate

There are problems with the temperature data used to measure current warming and to establish a baseline for today’s increases. The earth encompasses 96,000,000 square miles, yet the temperatures used in climate change research come from only 6,000 weather stations, thousands of them located in urban heat islands. That leaves 80% of the planets surface temperatures unmeasured.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced that according to their calculations, July 2015 was the hottest month since instrumental records began in 1880. NOAA says that the record was set by eight one-hundredths of a degree Celsius over that set in July 1998. NASA calculates that July 2015 beat what they assert was the previous warmest month (July 2011) by two one-hundredths (0.02) of a degree.

But government spokespeople rarely mention the inconvenient fact that these records are being set by less than the uncertainty in the statistics. NOAA claims an uncertainty of 14 one-hundredths of a degree in its temperature averages, or near twice the amount by which they say the record was set. NASA says that their data is typically accurate to one tenth of a degree, five times the amount by which their new record was set.

So, the new temperature records are meaningless. Neither agency knows whether a record was set or not.

It’s just statistical nonsense.

And please show me an instrument from the 1880s or even 1960s capable of recording 0.01 °C .

Modern instruments measure to 1/10th of a degree. Older instruments only measured to 1°C.
Now, throw in the fact that most of the instruments have to deal with both documented and undocumented micro site contaminations as well as varying degrees of UHI.
Then throw in the fact that older instruments only measured the high and low for each day. (Anyone who thinks you can calculate a daily average from that is probably a climate scientist.)
& then the fact that less than 5% of the world’s surface comes close to adequate coverage by climate stations.

The idea that we can use this system to determine the current temperature of the entire planet within 0.5°C or even 5°C is ludicrous.
The idea that we can use data from the instrumental system in place 100 years ago to accurately measure the temperature of the entire planet to within 0.01°C to compare with modern results… is delusional.

Much of the coverage is so sparse that NASA is forced to make the ridiculous claim that regions are adequately covered if there is just one temperature-sensing station within nearly 750 miles !! That is the distance between Geneva Switzerland & Tunis in North Africa, places with very different climates.
Yet, according to NASA, only one temperature sensing station is necessary for the two locations and the vast area between them to be adequately represented in their network. Now that’s real junk science.

We have only been capable of approximate Global Temperature measurements since the first satellites were launched in the 1970s, so only ~ 40yrs (out of 4.5 billion) of global data !!

UAH and RSS are the two satellite datasets that measure temperatures in the lower troposphere, from the surface up to about 8000 metres. The HADCRUT and GISS datasets measure surface temperatures.

Almost all temperatures are presented as anomalies, i.e. the difference, measured against a baseline, but that baseline is different across all four sets (This means that the anomalies are not directly comparable between sets), that’s an additional source of confusion & obfuscation; & yet another example of junk science.

The baselines used are: RSS – 1979-98: UAH – 1981-2010: HADCRUT – 1961-90: GISS – 1951-80:

GISS: is run by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.
HADCRUT: is maintained by the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre in conjunction with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
RSS: is an independent scientific research company, Remote Sensing Systems.
UAH: is the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and their dataset is part of an ongoing joint operation with NOAA and NASA.

Global temperature anomaly (it’s NOT actual global temperatures) for any month in any year since 1979.
Click on target mth/yr in RH side panel; read average global anomaly (above Greenland on map)
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/cfsr_monthly.php Data source – NCEP CFSR, NASA, NOAA

Sources

From – http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/global-temperature-report-april-2014/