GWPF | 26 April 2015
Top Scientists Start To Examine Adjusted Global Warming Figures
The London-based think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation is today launching a major inquiry into the integrity of the official global surface temperature records. Questions have been raised about the reliability of the surface temperature data and the extent to which apparent warming trends may be artefacts of adjustments made after the data are collected. The inquiry will review the technical challenges in accurately measuring surface temperature, and will assess the extent of adjustments to the data, their integrity and whether they tend to increase or decrease the warming trend. —Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 April 2015
Climatologists have long been aware of the poor state of global surface temperature records and considerable effort has been put into adjusting the raw data to correct known errors and biases. The global surface temperature records have been the subject of considerable and ongoing controversy. In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and report on these controversies. —The International Temperature Data Review Project
1) Inquiry Launched Into Global Temperature Data Integrity – Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 April 2015
2) The International Temperature Data Review Project – http://www.tempdatareview.org/
3) Top Scientists Start To Examine Adjusted Global Warming Figures – The Sunday Telegraph, 26 April 2015
4) Scientists To Investigate Whether ‘Adjusted’ Temperature Data Exaggerated Global Warming – Mail on Sunday, 26 April 2015
Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising. While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested. We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open. The team approaches the subject as open-minded scientists – we intend to let the science do the talking. Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the data, and whether they are justifiable or not. –Terence Kealey, Chairman of the International Temperature Data Review Project, 26 April 2015
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures. Their inquiry’s central aim will be to establish a comprehensive view of just how far the original data has been “adjusted” by the three main surface records: those published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), the US National Climate Data Center and Hadcrut, that compiled by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (Cru), in conjunction with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction. All of them are run by committed believers in man-made global warming. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 26 April 2015
Panel member Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist and climate expert from York University in Toronto, said he had been concerned about the records’ quality for many years, after noticing that when you examined an individual station ‘you’ll see a sudden jump’. Such jumps, he said, were not natural, but the product of adjustments. ‘Sometimes you get “corrected” data without knowing exactly how it has been changed. I’m a scientist. I’m not going into this with any preconceptions. But if some of the corrections have not been properly made, then we’ll find out. We want to see all the actual station data.’ –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 26 April 2015
1) Inquiry Launched Into Global Temperature Data Integrity
Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 April 2015
London, 26 April 2015 – The London-based think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation is today launching a major inquiry into the integrity of the official global surface temperature records.
An international team of eminent climatologists, physicists and statisticians has been assembled under the chairmanship of Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
Questions have been raised about the reliability of the surface temperature data and the extent to which apparent warming trends may be artefacts of adjustments made after the data are collected. The inquiry will review the technical challenges in accurately measuring surface temperature, and will assess the extent of adjustments to the data, their integrity and whether they tend to increase or decrease the warming trend.
Launching the inquiry, Professor Kealey said:
“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising. While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested. We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”
To coincide with the inquiry launch Professor Kealey has issued a call for evidence:
“We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them. The team approaches the subject as open-minded scientists – we intend to let the science do the talking. Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the data, and whether they are justifiable or not.”
All submissions will be published.
Further details of the inquiry, its remit and the team involved can be seen on its website www.tempdatareview.org
Contact
The International Temperature Data Review Project
Chairman
Professor Terence Kealey
[email protected]
2) The International Temperature Data Review Project
http://www.tempdatareview.org/
The controversy
Climatologists have long been aware of the poor state of global surface temperature records and considerable effort has been put into adjusting the raw data to correct known errors and biases.
These adjustments are not insignificant. For example it has been noted that in the temperature series prepared by NOAA for the USA, the adjusted data exhibits a much larger warming trend than the raw data.
It has also been noted that over the years changes to the data have often tended to cool the early part of the record and to warm more recent years, increasing the apparent warming trend.
Although the reasons for the adjustments that are made to the raw data are understood in broad terms, for many of the global temperature series the details are obscure and it has proved difficult for outsiders to determine whether they are valid and applied consistently.
For all these reasons, the global surface temperature records have been the subject of considerable and ongoing controversy.
The panel
In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and report on these controversies.
The panel features experts in physics, climatology and statistics and will be chaired by Professor Terence Kealey, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
Terms of reference
Detailed terms of reference for the panel have been published.
Submissions of evidence
With four major surface temperature series to consider, each incorporating several layers of adjustment, the scope of the inquiry is very wide. The panel is therefore seeking to benefit from the considerable expertise that already exists on the surface records and is inviting interested parties to submit evidence.
After review by the panel, all submissions will be published and can be examined and commented upon by anyone who is interested.
Report
No timetable has been set for the panel to report.
Call for evidence
The Panel invites submission of evidence on any matters related to the inquiry. Please send text in PDF format via email to [email protected]
If you wish to submit an accompanying data set please send it in CSV format. Please note that all submissions will be considered as potentially publishable. If you want your submission to be treated as confidential please indicate that clearly in the document itself.
Individuals may make multiple submissions if they wish. We encourage you to keep each submission brief and focused. If your submission exceeds ten pages you might consider breaking it into shorter documents.
The deadline for submitting evidence is 30 June 2015.
3) Top Scientists Start To Examine Adjusted Global Warming Figures
The Sunday Telegraph, 26 April 2015
Christopher Booker
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry
Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.
An adjusted graph from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were “Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming” and “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal”.
My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA’s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.
So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.
The panel is chaired by Terence Kealey, until recently vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. His team, all respected experts in their field with many peer-reviewed papers to their name, includes Dr Peter Chylek, a physicist from the National Los Alamos Laboratory; Richard McNider, an emeritus professor who founded the Atmospheric Sciences Programme at the University of Alabama; Professor Roman Mureika from Canada, an expert in identifying errors in statistical methodology; Professor Roger Pielke Sr, a noted climatologist from the University of Colorado, and Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist whose many papers on climatology have included studies in the use of “homogenisation” in data records.
Their inquiry’s central aim will be to establish a comprehensive view of just how far the original data has been “adjusted” by the three main surface records: those published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), the US National Climate Data Center and Hadcrut, that compiled by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (Cru), in conjunction with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction. All of them are run by committed believers in man-made global warming.
Below, the raw data in graph form
For this the GWPF panel is initially inviting input from all those analysts across the world who have already shown their expertise in comparing the originally recorded data with that finally published. In particular, they will be wanting to establish a full and accurate picture of just how much of the published record has been adjusted in a way which gives the impression that temperatures have been rising faster and further than was indicated by the raw measured data.
Already studies based on the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic and South America have suggested that this is far too often the case.
But only when the full picture is in will it be possible to see just how far the scare over global warming has been driven by manipulation of figures accepted as reliable by the politicians who shape our energy policy, and much else besides. If the panel’s findings eventually confirm what we have seen so far, this really will be the “smoking gun”, in a scandal the scale and significance of which for all of us can scarcely be exaggerated.
More details of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s International Temperature Data Review Project are available on the inquiry panel’s website www.tempdatareview.org
4) Scientists To Investigate Whether ‘Adjusted’ Temperature Data Exaggerated Global Warming
Mail on Sunday, 26 April 2015
David Rose
An international panel of scientists will today launch a major inquiry to discover whether official world temperature records have exaggerated the extent of global warming.
The panel, convened by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the ‘climate sceptic’ think-tank led by the former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson, will focus on thousands of ‘adjustments’ that have been made to temperature records kept at individual weather stations around the world.
Sceptics have argued that the effect of such adjustments – made when instruments are replaced or recalibrated, or heat-producing buildings are erected close to weather station sites – has skewed the records.
The panel will also examine ‘extrapolations’ – when the records include virtual figures from places where there is no actual measuring station, instead basing them on the figures of other stations in the same region. In some areas, such as the Arctic, these may be hundreds of miles away. Sceptics claim that the effect of the adjustments is usually to revise temperatures from decades ago downwards, and to increase recent readings, so that the warming trend of the past 150 years looks larger than it really is.
The panel has been drawn from leading universities around the world, and includes scientists with widely differing views on climate change.
Panel member Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist and climate expert from York University in Toronto, said he had been concerned about the records’ quality for many years, after noticing that when you examined an individual station ‘you’ll see a sudden jump’.
Such jumps, he said, were not natural, but the product of adjustments.
‘Sometimes you get “corrected” data without knowing exactly how it has been changed. I’m a scientist. I’m not going into this with any preconceptions. But if some of the corrections have not been properly made, then we’ll find out. We want to see all the actual station data.’
Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF director, said the panel would try to look at all the thousands of stations whose data goes into the three main world temperature records – those kept by the Met Office, Nasa, and the US government agency that deals with weather.
‘The question is, do the adjustments balance each other out?’ he asked. ‘Do they make half the stations a little warmer, and half a little cooler, or is there evidence of bias?
‘It may turn out there is no problem. It may that there is.’
He said the panel’s work would be ‘transparent’, with all data made available though a public website.
The panel’s chairman is Professor Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. He said: ‘While we believe that the 20th Century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested.
‘We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.
‘We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them.’
