Journalist Greg Roberts at Australia’s national daily newspaper has started asking the Australian Bureau of Meteorology some hard questions – and now he is even asking to see the actual temperature data for Antarctica. Bravo Mr Roberts! Read more here.
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About Me
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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Oh what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to decieve. What a disgrace our scientific bodies have become, these non massaged records should be made public before they undergo the full GISSION treatment.
One of the pillars of democracy is that citizens have a fundamental right to be informed. When Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology plays the Tarzan-of-the-Temperatures game, they’re undermining democracy. In my country, NOAA and NASA are pulling the same shenanigan with respect to RAW U.S. data from individual temperature stations.
We’re not talking proprietary Coca-Cola secret recipe here. And we’re not talking about national security secrets, like the details of nuclear weapon design. We’re talking about the science that’s supposed to be behind environmental policy. And more to the point, we’re talking about the institution of democracy itself.
Welcome to the club – BOM!
Michael Mann sends his regards, NASA’s GISS says welcome. Raj Pachauri says keep spreading the lie that the last 10/11/12 years of the last 12/13/14 are the warmest of all time. Jimmy Hansen says well done.
Here’s NASA’s take on things, Jennifer, of which you would be well aware:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8239
NASA’s 2007 chart of satellite-measured Antarctic surface temperature change 1981-2007 shows a few red spots (including most obviously the now missing Wilkins Ice Shelf – because the ocean is warmer than the now absent ice shelf) and some faintly blue areas, but almost all of it is in the white area indicating less than 0.05 degrees change in 26 years.
However before saying that it incontrovertibly shows a general warming, it is worth reading NASA’s fine print:
“… the team checked the satellite records against ground-based weather station data to inter-calibrate them and make the 26-year satellite record. The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.”
Right, so they didn’t actually use the raw data, and the -0.1 to +0.1 temperature extremes amount to one-fifteenth (!!!) of the built-in uncertainty of the readings, even after they have been manually massaged … sorry, “inter-calibrated!”
Whether or not it was actually their agenda to do so, NASA has therefore supplied a pretty visual aid to those who wish to argue that Antarctica is warming, even though their own scientific measurement will neither sustain nor dismiss any such assertion. Expect to see this chart bandied about with blithe disregard for NASA’s own disclaimers. Given the global cooling of the past decade, it will be interesting to see the 2012 version of this chart.