Russ Steele
Anthony Watts writes this morning at Watts Up With That:
In doing problem analysis it always good to step back and look at the problem from a different point of view. The same it true of data analysis, something that Anthony Watts did and was surprised by the results. His path to insight is too long to post here, so let me share his conclusion in the hope you will take a longer look at Watts Up With That. The graphics tell the story, James Hansen and his team of temperature adjusters have distorted the data to match their view of the world, while the satellite data is more representative of the real world.
I was surprised to learn that only 5% of the GISS data-set was on the cool side of zero, while a whopping 95% was on the warm side. Even with a rising temperature trend, this seems excessive. When the distribution of data is so lopsided, it suggests that there may be problems with it, especially since there appears to be a 50% greater distribution on the cooler side in the HadCRUT data-set.
Interestingly, like with the satellite data sets use the same sensor on the spacecraft, both GISS and HadCRUT use many of the same temperature stations around the world. There is quite a bit of data source overlap between the two. But, to see such a difference suggests to me that in this case (unlike the satellite data) differences in preparation lead to significant differences in the final data-set.
It also suggests to me that satellite temperature data is a more representative global temperature metric than manually measured land-ocean temperature data-sets because there is a more unified and homogeneous measurement system, less potential bias, no urban heat island issues, no need of maintaining individual temperature stations, fewer final adjustments, and a must faster acquisition of the data.
I have been a strong advocate of using the satellite temperature data on this blog. This analysis coupled with my surface station survey experience strengthens my view that the satellite data is the currently the best estimate of the global temperature. But, it is just an estimate.
