On 8/11/07, Michael Madigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The "Settled Science" of Global Warming isn't so > settled after all. > > And here in NJ, we will tie or break another all-time > low record temperature of 56 F for August 11.
And in other places there has been record highs. Like most of central Europe. > http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/08/revised_temp_data_reduces_glob.html This was posted on Slashdot which I think sums thing up nicely: --------------- It's not really a Y2K bug in the conventional sense, and it has nothing to do with Y2K software compliance. It's more like 2000 happened to be the year that the organization collecting the temperature data in the USA changed their procedures for correcting the data for the "time of day" that the temperature reading was taken. This meant a slight difference between the pre-2000 dataset and the 2000-and-later dataset, which is the inconsistency correctly recognized by the guy mentioned in the article. So, it's merely a coincidence that the change happened to occur in 2000. It could have happened any other year. Referring to this as a result of a "Y2K bug" is misleading. If it is, then anything that changed in 2000 could be called a "Y2K bug". I don't think demoting 1998 to the 2nd-highest US temperature in a century (barely -- by 0.01 annual average degree) is a big deal either. 1998 is an awfully close second. I also wouldn't ascribe much to the the claim that "half" the top ten years in the US were before WWII (1921, 1931, 1934, 1938). Last I checked, 4 is less than half of ten :-) Two others were in the 1950s (1953, 1954), and the rest were 1990, 1998, 1999, and 2006. Perhaps this is merely indicating that, in the US, lately it's been the hottest it's been since the "dust bowl" years. That's not a pleasant thought. The TOP 10 annual temperature years in the US are (celcius degrees from mean): year annual 5-year mean 1 1934 1.25 0.44 2 1998 1.23 0.51 3 1921 1.15 0.15 4 2006 1.13 5 1931 1.08 0.27 6 1999 0.93 0.69 7 1953 0.90 0.32 8 1990 0.87 0.40 9 1938 0.86 0.36 10 1954 0.85 0.47 If you look at the top ten ranking for the 5-year means, the pattern is pretty clear: 1 2000 0.52 0.79 2 1999 0.93 0.69 3 2004 0.44 0.66 4 2001 0.76 0.65 5 1932 0.00 0.63 6 1933 0.68 0.61 7 2003 0.50 0.58 8 2002 0.53 0.55 9 1998 1.23 0.51 10 1988 0.32 0.51 The 1930s are down at 5th and 6th place. 2005 and 2006 are left out because you can't calculate a 5-year window around them yet. Finally, the error changes the GLOBAL pattern insignificantly, and the global trend in the last couple of decades is greater than the USA trend. In all, it's a worthwhile error to catch for the US data, but it doesn't change much about the overall pattern. -- Paul _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
