The 1978–1997 warming trend is an artifact of imperfect instrumentation

American Thinker ^ | 02/07/2019 | S. Fred Singer

[SeekAndFind]

Now we tackle, using newly available data, what may have caused the fictitious temperature trend in the latter decades of the 20th century.

We first look at ocean data. There was a great shift, after 1980, in the way Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) were measured (see Goretzki and Kennedy et al. JGR 2011, Fig. 2), "Sources of SST data." Note the drastic changes between 1980 and 2000 as global floating drifter buoys geographic changes increasingly replaced opportunities for sampling SST with buckets.

Data taken from floating drifter buoys increased from zero to 60% between 1980 and 2000. But such buoys are heated directly by the sun, with the unheated engine inlet water in lower ocean layers. This combination leads to a spurious rise in SST when the data are mixed together.

In merging them, we must note that buoy data are global, while bucket and inlet temperatures are (perforce) confined to (mostly commercial) shipping routes. Nor do we know the ocean depths that buckets sample; inlet depths depend on ship type and degree of loading.

Disentangling this mess requires data details that are not available. About all we might demonstrate is the possibility of a distinct diurnal variation in the buoy temperatures.

The land data have problems of their own. During these same decades, quite independently, by coincidence, there was a severe reduction in "superfluous" (mostly) rural stations – unless they were located at airports. As seen from Fig. 4, the number of stations decreased drastically in the 1990s, but the fraction of airport stations increased sharply...

[SeekAndFind]

...from ~35% to ~80%, in the fraction of "airport" weather stations, producing a spurious temperature increase from all the construction of runways and buildings. These are hard to calculate in detail. About all we can claim is a general increase in air traffic, about 5% per year worldwide

[Cold Heart]

I was one of those people taking and sending shipboard weather data for 30 years. This article is spot on.

[SgtHooper]

The engineering was clearly shoddy. These guys need to be publicly humiliated for such lousy work.

[minnesota_bound]

Weather station thermometers next to a/c vents, on gravel, asphalt, at airports, next to buildings, on rooftops. not calibrated etc.

Now add in lying.
No wonder the weather report is not accurate at anytime.

[I want the USA back]

The oceans are deep. Do they take the temperature at various depths? no. The oceans are vast. Do they take the temperature at least every square mile? (there are 140 million square miles.) no.

Unless there are about a billion temperature probes, the numbers are useless. The oceans have currents. The currents move water. It’s not the same temperature everywhere? cabeesh?

[pas]

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia

But did he ever wear black face? That is what is really important. /s

[VTenigma]

Thank you, I’ve been saying this for years.