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In particular, a few computers at NASA's Goddard Institute seem to be having a disproportionate effect on global warming. Anthony Watt takes a cut at an analysis I have tried myself several times, comparing raw USHCN temperature data to the final adjusted values delivered from that data by the NASA computers. My attempt at this compared the USHCN adjusted to raw for the entire US: Anthony Watt does this analysis from USHCN raw all the way through to the GISS adjusted number (the USHCN adjusts the number, and then the GISS adds their own adjustments on top of these adjustments)....

Previously (A Tale of Two Thermometers) we looked at how US temperature data sets have been adjusted - with more recent versions of historical data sets showing a steeper rise in temperature than they used to. To recap the earlier article, the graph below shows additional adjustments to the data set since the big "correction" in 2000 We observe that the data has been consistently adjusted towards a bias of greater warming. The years prior to the 1970s have again been adjusted to lower temperatures, and recent years have been adjusted towards higher temperatures. DivergenceSo how does NASA's data compare...

In the “good old days” (August 25, 2007: after they had corrected their Y2K error), I downloaded Hansen’s “combined” version (his dset=1).

Its interesting how NASA has been able to justify keeping their codes "top secret" in relation to "climate change" and Glo-bull Warm-ing

I've been thinking about my criticism of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) study of tornadoes and hail in the previous post. I realize now that I was far too leniet on those who conducted the study. The study should never have been funded. It should never have passed the peer review process and it should never have been pubished in any scientific journal. The authors apparently are ignorant of the fact temperatures in most of the U.S. change drastically over a year's time. Seasonal changes are particularly drastic in "tornado alley" in the central U.S.. A mere...

Hansen Frees the Code By Steve McIntyre Hansen has just released what is said to be the source code for their temperature analysis. The release was announced in a shall-we-say ungracious email to his email distribution list and a link is now present at the NASA webpage. Hansen says resentfully that they would have liked a “week or two” to make a “simplified version” of the program and that it is this version that “people interested in science” will want, as opposed to the version that actually generated their results.

Steve McIntyre says: September 4th, 2007 at 6:08 pm I’ve posted an update to the post, setting out what I believe to be the most plausible answers. Thanks to everyone who participated and particularly to John Goetz for framing the problem and then solving the calculation of the delta. The next puzzle, as John G articulated, is to figure out how Hansen calculated seasonal and annual averages when there is missing data. However, even without solving this puzzle, the present evidence is sufficient to establish that Hansen’s method of combining different scribal versions is erroneous and has corrupted his entire...

Was 1998 the hottest year in United States history, as most reporting on climate change has presumed? Or was that record set back in 1934 before "global warming" became a scary household phrase? A corrective tweak to National Aeronautics and Space Administration's formulation shows that the hottest year on record in the United States indeed was back during the Dust Bowl days. But does this mean that all the concern about global warming being a relatively recent phenomenon tied to carbon-belching power plants and hulking SUVs is a bunch of Al Gore hooey? Climate change skeptics and their cheering section...

James Hansen, NASA's True Believer in the global warming credo, has just been quoted by the Globe & Mail of Canada as follows: "Prof. Hansen and his colleagues argue that rapidly melting ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland could cause oceans to swell several metres by 2100 - or maybe even as much as 25 metres, which is how much higher the oceans sat about three million years ago." In an email to the Globe and Mail, Hansen writes "If we follow 'business-as-usual' growth of greenhouse gas emissions... I think that we will lock in a guaranteed sea-level rise of...

I believe that most here are now aware of the NASA GISS temperature data that was corrected by a Canadian researcher, Steven McIntyre, now shows the hottest year in the USA is not 1998, but rather the year 1934. This post is just to point out two things: 1) the order of the hottest years and 2) the media coverage of this hugely important data correction to US yearly temperatures. From the corrected data posted by NASA, it now shows the correct hottest years as follows, beginning with hottest:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt 1934 1998 1921 2006 1931 1999 1953 1990 1938 1939 1954...

The recent disclosure of a critical temperature data revision by NASA climate experts under cover-of-darkness poses as many questions as it answers. With worried alarmists scurrying to either dismiss the restatement’s relevance or ignore it altogether, and NASA itself descending to CYOA tactics, the paramount issue remains that of credibility – both the agency’s and the big green scare machine’s. Hastily responding to the media-subdued mini-furor his amendment sparked, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) chief James Hansen reflexively complained that “deniers” were "making a mountain of a molehill” about the “insignificant” revision. The overruled head eco-doomer mulishly denied...

Some alarming global-warming data reconsidered. While Americans were being stampeded at great cost and inconvenience into combating the presumed horrors of manmade global warming – be it in Newsweek or by the California Attorney General's Office – some news largely went unnoticed last week. Instead of 1998 being the "hottest year" since 1880 in the continental United States, as some global warming alarmists claimed, it turns out that 1934 was. Instead of nine of the 10 hottest years since 1880 occurring after 1995, it turns out that four of the hottest years were in the 1930s, and the third-hottest was...

... Last week, Hansen, NASA's lead scientist on global warming, penned a rather strange ad hominem attack against critics that questioned the validity of his work in the wake of corrections prompted by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit http://www.climateaudit.org/ Under most circumstances, it is inappropriate for a Federal Agency Administrator to pen such a highly policitical polemic, although Hansen has a long history of doing just that. Rather than respond with a proper full acknowledgement of his error and a promise to uncover other potential flaws which may be lurking in his data and analyis, his technical explanation is interspersed...

In retrospect, you knew there would be trouble when you put the people responsible for the Space Shuttle program in charge of tracking U.S. temperatures. So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise when it was revealed that NASA committed a bit of an oopsie regarding data constantly used by the mainstream media and other global warming proponents.

Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math. After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review. Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998. More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by...

.... "I object to the fact that I’m not able to freely communicate via the media," says Hansen. "National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn’t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don’t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science." Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he’s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time...

I've done some digging into the recent scandal over how GISS has quietly changed its data to reflect the fact that 1998 is no longer the warmest year on American record. However, thanks to the resources of the Wayback Machine of WebArchive, I've discovered that the 1998 data has not been quite so high for a while. This is the Wayback Machine archive of GISS's data page, home to the climate data that's been the subject of the recent controversy. Let's recall that the newly reevaluted figures are as follows:Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (C) ------------------------------------------------------ year Annual_Mean...

1998 was not the hottest US year ever.  Nor was 2006 the runner up. Sure, had you checked NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) website just days ago, you would have thought so, but not today.  You see, thanks to the efforts of Steve McIntyre over at http://www.climateaudit.org/, the Surface Air Temperature Anomaly charts for those and many other years have been revised - predominately down. Why? It's a wild and technical story of compromised weather stations and hack computer algorithms (including, get this - a latent Y2K bug) and those wishing to read the fascinating details should follow...

A change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday. For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995. McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified...

According to David Rind from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), 2005 is going to set the all-time record for global warmth. He told Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post (October 13, 2005) only a major volcanic eruption could intervene. But Eilperin also interviewed Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, who told her that Goddard's findings were "mighty preliminary." That's because there's more than one history of global temperature. Three receive the most citations. NASA's record begins in 1880, as does another history from the U.S. Department of Commerce, developed at the Department's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). But the...