So we are left to wonder (and RAT isn't going to like this): What the hell is NASA doing ?
Previously (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/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. Here, we'll be looking at current NASA data and why their temperature maps appear hot-red, even when others are cool-blue.
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. NASA's published data is largely based on data from the US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), which derives its data from thermometer readings across the country.
Here we see that the the organization which collects temps for NASA is "directly affiliated" with an organization which would definately see it in its own best interests to make sure temps are going up and promoting the CO2 myth as to why. I'm sure there wouldn't be any biases though, right? A government organization "fudging" things, just a bit perhaps, to make sure the grant moeny keeps 'za coming in? Surely not...
No credibility problem here...move along...
Temperature image; raw data, prior to "adjustment" - lots of "blue"
Temperature image; raw data, post "adjustment" - lots of "red"
Here's where it gets interesting...
In 1998 (left side of the graph below) NASA and the satellite data sources RSS and UAH all agreed quite closely - within one-tenth of a degree. Ten years later - in March 2008 - NASA is reporting temperature anomalies more than 0.5 degrees warmer than UAH. The divergence between NASA and UAH has increased at a rate of 0.13 degrees per decade (red lines below.) In contrast, RSS has converged with UAH over the period and is now within 0.02 degrees (blue lines below.)
Differences between reported temperature anomalies, NASA, RSS and UAH - with UAH as the baseline.
Here's the part which will really get your goat...
Viewing the NASA 250-mile map for March below, what immediately grabs the attention is that NASA has essentially no data (gray areas) in most of Canada, most of Africa, the Greenland ice sheet, and most of Antarctica. This begs the question, how can one calculate an accurate "global temperature" while lacking any data from large contiguous regions of three continents?
So what was NASA missing?
NASA Temperatures March, 2008 - 250-mile smoothing radius - looks hot
We can find NASA's lost continents in the UAH satellite data for March below.
UAH Satellite Temperatures March, 2008 - looks cool
Not surprisingly, the missing areas in Canada and Africa were cold. The NASA data thus becomes disproportionately weighted towards warm areas - particularly in the northern hemisphere. As can be seen in the UAH satellite map above, the warm areas actually made up a relatively small percentage of the planet. The vast majority of the earth had normal temperatures or below. Given that NASA has lost track of a number of large cold regions, it is understandable that their averages are on the high side.
Additionally, NASA reports their global temperature measurements within one one-hundredth of a degree. This is a classic mathematics error, since they have no data from 20 per cent of the earth's land area. The reported precision is much greater than the error bar - a mistake which has caused many a high school student to fail their exams.
Read the rest of this research
here. Read also about more of NASA and NOAA cherry picking other climate data favoring a higher temperature bias at the previous link.
I guess those satellites up there must have been funded, constructed, launched, and monitored by Karl Rove? Perhaps the Joooos? Maybe it's some grand conspiracy by the faculty at the University of Alabama (Go Tide!) to kill all of us through rising global temperatures so they will be able to corner the mint julep market? Maybe the alien invaders from "Independence Day" decided against a frontal assault, having seen the movie and realizing their mistake and are secretly manipulating those same satellites with their "hidden signal" fooling us all into destroying ourselves, thereby saving themselves the trouble?
Or maybe the less than biased James Hansen - advisor to Al Gore, funded by George Soros, who has absolutely ZERO stake in keeping his own hypothesis alive (thereby continuing to pay his bills - green as they may be), is just doing us all a favor? Maybe he doesn't see the problem with passing off "global" temperature readings as such when you aren't collecting readings from over 1/3 of that same "globe".
Seriously - honest mistake? Or agenda driven bias?
You be the judge.