NOAA Climate Scientists Gone Wild: Bizarro Temperature Data Fabrication Continues

The embarrassing outright fabrication of the global temperature dataset continues at NOAA / NCDC - Obama's anti-science regime not challenged by the mainstream press

How bizarre is changing historical temperatures, all the way back to 1880, on a monthly basis? Recently, we wrote about NOAA's monthly temperature revisionism and the political, anti-science agenda that's driving it, global warming alarmism. [Ed: part III here]

Well, it's definitely bizarre science since other major climate agencies are not doing the same.

Amazingly though, the NOAA / NCDC agencies are now seemingly dissatisfied with just monthly fabrications. They apparently have now embraced almost daily revisionism of historical temperatures.

Although we did not check the NOAA / NCDC dataset on a daily basis during the month of December, we did check six times, downloading six different historical datasets. Did we say bizarro? (image source)

There is no rational explanation for continuously fabricating a new historical temperature dataset multiple times during a month, let alone a year. [Note: You can download the six December 2012 revisions of historical data by Obama's "science" team here.]

Of course, the mainstream press (e.g. NYT, WaPo, CNN, LA Times, BBC, Newsweek, CBS, MSNBC, etc.) refuses to report on the actual bogus and fraud Bernie Madoff-like science that is being perpetrated by their comrades in the climate science bureaucracy. Obviously, for the left / liberal / progressive / Democrat anti-science mindset, fabricating empirical evidence is not bizarro.....

• From Wikipedia: "...introduced the strange speech patterns that became synonymous with the character, with all of Bizarro's comments meaning the opposite (e.g.. "bad" means "good")."

[Editor's special note: The NOAA/NCDC revisions this post is about are entire historical temperature dataset revisions being done multiple times per year and even multiple times per month (December 2011). We are not referring to the common practice of revising the temperatures of a few recent months that is done by all climate agencies frequently.]

Comments

[C3 Editor]

Thank you. (Note: John, you're welcome to respond, but please refrain from misstating what I said and, for goodness sakes, don't call me a 'liar' again. Anymore name-calling and I will remove all your comments, which I would really prefer not doing.)

Sorry. I never said other climate agencies did not revise their temperature dataset (you best re-read carefully what I have said). You say I'm "lying" but the facts don't lie. I am exclusively speaking to monthly revisions of the entire historical temperature dataset that NOAA/NCDC performs, not just a few month's corrections/adjustments that other climate groups may do.

How many times has NOAA/NCDC revised their *entire* published historical dataset during 2011, prior to December? (12? 18? 24? Greater?)

How many times has GISS revised their *entire* published historical dataset during 2011, prior to December? (Zero?)

How many times has UAH revised their *entire* historical dataset during 2011, prior to December? (once in January 2011?) For RSS? (Zero?) For HadCRUT? (Zero?)

And, let's not forget, NOAA did it 6 times (maybe more) in December alone. They didn't just revise (correct) a few month's data each time in December, they revised the entire historical dataset back to 1880 - 6 times!

The empirical evidence clearly shows that NOAA/NCDC performs monthly revisions. No other agency does that. Why? Because it's data fabrication (manipulation?) overkill and it's obviously highly unprofessional, that leaves the impression of scientific fraud at play. There is not a professional scientist alive that would advocate changing year-1880 temperatures 6 times in December alone (gee, let's just forget all the previous changes done by NOAA to 1880 during 2011 to make this problem manageable).

In fact, NOAA's bizarre treatment of historical evidence is unmatched by probably any other government agency. If that statement sounds outlandish, name another government agency's "scientists" that continuously, on a monthly basis, changes historical empirical evidence going back to 1880? Please, go ahead and name the agencies that do this on regular monthly basis - I'm sure 'C3' readers would be interested in other government bureaucrats that constantly fabricate new historical data.

Since NOAA/NCDC believes their techniques are correct, and in light of their constant revisionist history-making, they should request an outside audit of all the temperature datasets they have published to confirm the validity of their revisionist temperature history. Or instead, maybe they should maintain on their public web site all the individual historical datasets they have published over the last 10 years.

And what would this prove? All those "small corrections" you mention add up over time, in a large, non-random fashion. What non-random fabricated fashion? How about the fabricated "global cooling" prior to the 1950's that NOAA increases every single month; and, of course, the fabricated "global warming" post-1950 that NOAA increases a tiny bit, month by month. Bogus science by keystroke, bit-by-bit every month, plain and simple. The quality control meme is a red herring of bogus nature, nothing more.

Of course, you and I both know that NOAA would never allow a 3rd party audit, nor do they seem inclined to set the record straight by hosting on their site all the historical datasets they have published. I would imagine that is way too much transparency and accountability for those at NOAA/NCDC.

We disagree and there is no resolving our differences of opinion until NOAA/NCDC does what I suggest - come clean.

[john]

For starters, you're wrong about other organizations not revising their data. We can go one-by-one:

UAH/RSS - These groups have absolutely revised their datasets. Even Wikipedia has a table detailing the major revisions which have been made to UAH (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset#Corrections_made). These are edge cases from the surface temperature record, though - they aren't actual temperature measurements. Satellite retrievals are *models* of temperature based on outgoing radiation. The models are static; if one needed to be seriously changed or re-built, an entirely new product would be developed. But the instruments retrieving the data do suffer from problems, as outlined in the link above, and corrections are made when necessary as part of quality control.

GISS/HadCRUT - These groups produce separate types of datasets from NCDC and the USHCN. Yet they still *regularly* issue corrections. GISS even has a website detailing the major corrections to the dataset (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/).

The point behind corrections is quality control and scientific improvement. Archived temperature records are absolutely vast in size, and it has taken many long-term, significant programs to quality control them (NCDC's CDMP is one good example). You should seriously consider traveling to Asheville, NC, and visiting the NCDC. You can take a tour which stops at the room which stores the paper archives of temperature records - it's the size of several city blocks, about 15 feet tall, and literally *filled to overflowing* with records.

The NCDC goes to absurd lengths to ensure the quality of the product that they provide *for free* to the general public and to businesses alike. Part of that length is rigorous and continuous quality control.

A large part of that quality control is algorithmic and automatic. The USHCNv2 is recompiled daily as new data comes in and historical data has been quality controlled. Many algorithms - such as the homogenization algorithm - are sensitive to different types of quality-control corrections in the data and to the endpoints at the end of the dataseries, and often tweak adjusted and derived values slightly.

The bottom line is that quality control isn't "bogus", and you are dramatically over-selling the magnitude of the small corrections which constantly show up in the NCDC datasets, as well as outright lying about other agencies not correcting their datasets.

Sorry!

[C3 Editor]

Thank you for your comment.

Obviously, you have not read my previous posts on data fabrication. NOAA is the only agency that continuously changes their historical dataset, multiple times per year, and even multiple times per month it now appears.

The scientists producing the temp datasets the GISS, HadCRUT, UAH and RSS don't do the same. How do I know this? I actually download their datasets each month and examine them.

It is one thing to change a few recent months worth of temperature data a few times per year. It's an entirely a different thing when changing, for example, the January-1880 temperature every single month. NOAA's fabricating entirely new historical evidence to meet their political needs amounts to empirical data corruption in my opinion.

If you disagree, please explain why other agencies don't do the same continuous fabrication? Also, tell us the rational, scientific reason why historical data, such as the temperature for January-1880, is being changed almost every month? (Please refrain from the bogus "quality control" meme as even NOAA admits that is not the reason - or, even they aren't that stupid to admit to that.)

When NOAA needs "global warming," they just fabricate it, plain and simple - http://www.c3headlines.com/fabricating-fake-temperatures.html

BTW, when they stop changing the historical data, the charge of 'temperature fabrication' would not apply, would it? So...if it quacks like a duck.....

[john]

"There is no rational explanation for continuously fabricating a new historical temperature dataset multiple times during a month, let alone a year. "

Of course there are reasons for revising a dataset. In the real world, do you think that all data arrives neatly and pristinely packaged in perfect quality on the first day in every month at 9:00 AM EST? Of course not. Instead, there are real issues of quality control, delays in assimilating and processing records (especially from other world meteorological agencies).

Instead of attacking NOAA/NCDC for allegedly "fabricating" data (a *very* serious accusation, and one which could be easily misconstrued as libelous), you should be hesitantly praising them for installing a procedure and infrastructure which lets them fluidly and quickly correct mistakes and errors in the datasets that they freely publish for any end user to consume or use for any purpose, even their own private, commercial ventures.