Bishop Hill Met Office to review its temperature series
Dec 5, 2009 Climate: MetOffice Climate: Surface The news that the Met Office is going to review its global temperature series is welcome, although certain aspects to the Times' story are questionable.
For example, I would take issue with the Met Office's claim that they need to go to the national met offices to get permission to use the raw data. When CRU was questioned on their claims that the data was not distributable, it was subsequently found that there were only two (IIRC) of the raw series that had any sort of restrictions on reuse and that neither of these were significant in scope. The CRU has now taken down its page about these alleged restrictions, so this is harder to show, but much of the story can be seen on the pages of Climate Audit. It's fair to conclude that this is disinformation.
Other caveats also apply:
- Will the Met Office be examining the reliability of the individual weather stations in terms of maintenance, and consistency of the record? We know this is highly problematic, so to avoid addressing the issue would draw a great deal of criticism.
- What about the way the stations are selected? Will we see rational selection critieria, or will the Met Office leave themselves open to accusations of cherrypicking?
- Will we see the code as well as the data?
The answers to these questions are critical and it may well be worth following them up with the Met Office. That of course presupposes that the planned review actually takes place. As the Times explains, Gordon Brown isn't keen that it should:
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
Reader Comments (9)
Bish
I'd really like them (well CRU) to publish the sites they currently use. All their claims of openness and transparency are worthless if they won't (or maybe can't) even do that.
The AGW talking heads that I have seen recently on TV commenting on the Climategate scandal seem to be falling back to a (very thin) skirmish line that is based on the argument that all the temperature data available supports the CRU data and proves a warming trend.
That MET office 160 year data would take us back to 1850, this is the year that is often cited as the start of the last temperature minima. What's the betting that the MET office simply publish the raw data in graph form, plonk a trend line through it and proclaim that the "warming" hypothesis proven...and that this will be more than sufficient to convince the supine MSM of the AGW hypothosis?
December 5, 2009 | Fed_Up
safe bet I would say !!
DOH! 1850 is, of course, often cited as the END of the last temperature minima. Of course, using this year as the data start point, the upward temperature trend will be much more "convincing". Isn't it an amazing coincidence that the MET data will start in exactly the year that we emerged from the last LIA?
The signs are that the AGW lobby are going to change tactics and move to a KISS approach, the obfuscation and deceit of their previous approach will give way to sophistry. They will simply point to crude test tube experiments that will "prove" CO2 is a temperature driver, then use the temperature increase since the last LIA as further proof of the AGW hypothesis.
On R4 News this evening they were at pains to point out that the data released would be the *raw* data from thousands of weather stations. I'm no expert, but isn't it the case that urban heat island effect has a massive effect on many of these, so it's the raw data especially that will show a large rise in the 20th century?
This is a remarkable thing: there exists the political will to pass global agreements introducing (supposedly) binding carbon-emissions limits, but apparently not to pass a global agreement to share weather data. Similarly, despite all the money for climate science, and the readiness to make momentous changes based on climate science, somehow there's nothing left over to preserve or mend the global network of surface stations. Obviously the Met Office can bring all this about single-handed, but one can't blame only the politicians for these oddly distorted priorities.
When this data is released, albeit in *raw* form, will it be sufficient to confirm/deny the Yamal records covering the same period?
Eminence,
The key element here is the last part of your Post concerning the government attempt to prevent this review. This is quite telling for two reasons.
Firstly it illustrates how desperate the government is to get a deal in Copenhagen. Brown is not doing well in the polls and needs something (anything) as an "acheivement" to make it happen. They also desperately need anything which may result in additional tax income.
Secondly it also illustrates how powerless the government is that the Met Office decided to go ahead anyway. We have had reports that the civil service have been delaying on the introduction of the government's more radical policies in anticipation of a change of regime. Looks like they want to appear to the right thing for any future leadership.
Whilst tapping though I have a third - it also moves this into the long grass, so any publication would be post Copenhagen and possibly post election too.
Needs to be monitored.
Further confirmation that the motley CRU cooked the books.