The D’Aleo-Watts Report on Surface Station Records
The most important climate realist report written to date is now posted on the Internet.
SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION? by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts, Science and Public Policy Institute Original Paper, January 26, 2010 is available for downloading [here or here] (6.2MB)
The report is a blockbuster. It is bigger than Climategate and bigger than the recent revelations that the IPCC is corrupt. The authors reveal that the temperature record from U.S. surface stations is unreliable and that NOAA and NASA have conspired to manipulate global temperature records to give the impression that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than they really did.
The AGW (anthropogenic global warming) scare is kaput. From this point forward Al Gore’s hoax, carbon credit markets, and other climate alarmist responses to a non-existent problem will wither and die.
There has been no significant global warming over the last century — at least not enough to be measurable beyond statistical noise. Atmospheric carbon dioxide does not appear to be a significant driver of global temperatures, much less “climate change”.
The burden of proof of purported CO2-driven climate change is on the alarmist community, and they have failed to make the case despite perpetrating extensive corruption and fraud in the effort. This report seals that coffin.
This is an historic day, a victory for rational inquiry and the scientific method, and a huge relief to an unecessarily frightened public around the world.
Some excerpts from Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?:
A QUESTION OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE
Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did.
This has inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. This report compiles some of the initial alarming findings.
There has clearly been some cyclical warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998. However, the global surface-station data is seriously compromised. First, there is a major station dropout and increase in missing data in stations that remained which occurred suddenly around 1990; about the time the global warming issue was being elevated to importance in political and environmental circles. A clear bias was found towards removing cooler higher elevation, higher latitude, and rural stations during this culling process though leaving their data in the base periods from which ‘averages’ and anomalies are computed.
The data also suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes and improper siting. There are uncertainties in ocean temperatures; no small issue, as oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface.
These factors all lead to significant uncertainty and a tendency for overestimation of century-scale temperature trends. A conclusion from all findings suggest that global data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts. And, consequently, such surface data should be ignored for decision making.
SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS
1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.
2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.
3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.
4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.
5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.
7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.
8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.
9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.
10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.
11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.
12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.
13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.
14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”
15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.
THE AUTHORS
Joseph D’Aleo (BS, MS Meteorology, University of Wisconsin, Doctoral Program at NYU, CCM, AMS Fellow) has over 35 years experience in professional meteorology. He was the first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the cable TV Weather Channel. Mr. D’Aleo was Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International Corporation and Senior Editor for WSI’s popular Intellicast.com web site. He is a former college professor of Meteorology/ Climatology at Lyndon State College. He is the author of a Resource Guide on El Nino and La Nina. Mr. D’Aleo has frequently written about and made presentations on how research into ENSO and other atmospheric and oceanic phenomena has made skillful long-range forecasts possible and has helped develop statistical models using these global teleconnections which he and others use in forecasting for energy and agriculture traders. He has also studied, written and presented on the roles these cycles in the sun and oceans have played in multidecadal climate change. He is currently Executive Director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project [here].
Anthony Watts is a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently a meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio, formerly with KHSL-TV also in Chico where he was chief meteorologist from 1987 to 2002. In 2007 Watts founded SurfaceStations.org [here], a Web site devoted to photographing and documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S. He also founded the very popular Watts Up With That [here], winner of the 2008 Weblogs Award for Best Science Blog, and rated #2 in Wikio’s sciences category. He is author of Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? [here].
