How accurate do you think temperature data adjustments are?

Probably not very accurate. To counteract the urban heat island effect, instead of looking at the rural thermometers as best, they are using a technique that spreads extra heating in the cities to the countryside.

NOAA is also using a breakpoint method of splitting up station records that have an inhomogeneity, like a move to a nearby location. BEST did something similar. This tends to increase the warming trend, and is what this paper is saying. There is the additional problem that if you have a temperature that is getting warmer, you are more likely to detect a downward discontinuity than an upwards one. When you split these out, you are increasing your warming trend.

Pegminer, we have a paper here that is doing what you say. And Anthony Watts has a paper in progress with a correction you seek.

GraphicConception, Chiefio appears to have a handle on the GISTEMP calculations, though I think he overstates his case when he makes conclusions.

I had a concern about this as well, but when I looked into it, I really could find nothing that would cause more than a 0.05 degree difference across the time, even if it were done incorrectly.

Personally, I see no reason not to accept the temps as they are reported. We are talking about a 0.8 degree increase in the last 100 years. This is not a source of fear, but it is a source of a little bit of concern.

My problem have always been with the models. They are all overestimating the heating, which shows that they are wrong.

Further they hold two properties that I am ALWAYS loath to place into a model. One is that they have an increasing feedback loop which lead sot the second of the models being unstable. They model a world that with only a 0.01% change to the composition of the atmosphere, shoots off to infinity. History tells us that this is FALSE. Scientists believe that the CO2 concentration in the past has been as high as 7000 ppm. In the Jurassic period it was 2200 ppm and life flourished. They have 600 ppm causing mass extinction with many locations uninhabitable.

Simply put, without the fear of AGW, we are left with making intelligent decisions and balancing out effect of the environment with affect on mankind. With fear, however, you get stupid things like the greeners trying to stop African nations from having power plants.

Why do they need to be adjusted? Since we are always referring to a delta or difference anyway. I live five miles from an airport, the official weather station. Just yesterday I saw a 5 degree difference in temperature between my temperature sensors and the airport's. I am sure it was real. I have experienced this much difference when driving my automobile and reading my automobile's temperature readout between those two points. So if anyone would adjust the STANDARD, which is the airport's temperature sensors, they would render the airport's past and future data useless.

You would never do this in a laboratory and why should you do such outside? Once you establish a standard you never vary from that, even if you think the reasons are valid. This just opens the door for fraud.

Jeff M: "Do you find it hard to believe that every temperature measurement has shown a similar increase over the measured time period?" Not after James Hansen doctored the data. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You truly can't see it, can you?

Jeff M: "Sagebrush: You are aware Hansen only dealt with one temperature recording system right?" I don't know what you are referring to as 'system'. But this is a real demonstration of his corruptness. Kiss up to the crook if you want.

http://www.c3headlines.com/fabricating-fake-temper...

I was not aware that NASA GISS ever published their adjustments or the associated justifications. I know that revised figures appear every so often but the reasons for the adjustments are shrouded in mystery as far as I can tell. They don't advertise the revisions, either. It seems to be down to bloggers to keep a watchful eye on the websites.

If that is not the case, please let me know.

Also, is it really true that the raw data is available? Have CRU managed to find it? They lost it some time ago and only kept adjusted data anyway.

"They don't go further into it and look at the ENSO cycle ..." but neither do the models. Could that be why they don't get the right answers?

If there is something wrong with the objective analysis that goes into the global temperature, then why don't we see a "corrected" version that shows something different? The raw data is readily available, anyone could do it. I'll give you a reason, why we don't see one: because anyone that did it in a legitimate scientific fashion would get about the same answer, and people like the radio weatherman Anthony Watts or the fictional Steven Goddard get a lot more traction by claiming the extant global temperatures are wrong than they would by producing their own result and showing that it's not that different after all.

Kano's answer is funny "...there is now an ongoing investigation..." Right, an investigation by someone that uses a fake name to run a propaganda website. I wonder what's going to become of that?

We hear this nonsense from deniers all the time, how about John Coleman's lawsuit against Al Gore, where did that go?

Or Ken Cuccinelli's vendetta against Michael Mann, that went nowhere also. Has Cuccinelli been arrested for abuse of power yet?

Aren't you suppose to be belly aching about how global warming means it can be hot, cold or stay the same? Maybe you should go back to whining about that instead of displaying how ignorant you are?

Here's an idea. Instead of complaining about how you don't believe this or that or you don;t understand this how about actually attempting to learn why? We would not notice, no, but global ice, sea level, migratory habits of birds, phenological changes, and so on have all take notice. Merely because you choose to look ta a denialist blog and get your scientific information from there does not mean it is true right? Science is not a conspiracy.

http://www.cfbiodiv.org/userfiles/Science2010_Phen...

are you actually interested in the science? Do you find it hard to believe that every temperature measurement has shown a similar increase over the measured time period? Why would all the various people or groups, including one skeptic, make them all similar? I mean even people in this forum that question AGW have stated that all measurements show that the recent temperature trend is all within a small margin of one another. They don't go further into it and look at the ENSO cycle and realize that in the last decade the period began with El Nino and ended with a period of power La Ninas while temperatures haven;t really changed that much.

Kano: Apparently Stevengoddard is too stupid to realize that RSS and NCDC measure different things. One measures lower tropospheric measurements, the entire lower troposphere, and one measures surface measurements. Funny enough satellite temperature measurements are done in a way that measures the energy retained in the system and then comes to a conclusions about temperatures. Yet you do not accept the spectral frequency measurements, done in much the same way, that I have shown you showing the warming is due to CO2. Pick and choose eh?

Sagebrush: You are aware Hansen only dealt with one temperature recording system right?

Sagebrush: By 'system' I am only referring to one temperature record.

Not accurate at all, cooling the 30's to make that warming trend not look as significant as the current makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If you want to adjust for UHI you should cool the present not the past.

Kano and Ian.

Thank you very much for the information. They should make doctoring data like this criminal.

O wait... If they had or used any Federal or State funds then it would be criminal and perhaps raise to the level of faud especially if any documentation can be made available showing future grants, funding, maintaining or expanding of programs etc can be directly or indirectly linked to faking data.

I've seen people lose their jobs and some go to prison for it. Perhaps I should forward this to the OIG?

On the positive side, this perhaps demonstrates that the keepers of temperature data sets are unskilled or incompetent rather than malicious. Goody, goody.

Ask nearly every glacier on the planet.

Here is a little experiment for you to perform. Take all of the world's thermometers and stick them in freezers. See if this results in the ice around the planet to recover. Get back to us with your results.