Controversy over flawed NASA climate data changes little

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Controversy over flawed NASA climate data changes little
mongabay.com editorial
August 10, 2007 [corrected Aug 12]

NASA corrected an error on its U.S. air temperature data after a blogger, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, discovered a discrepancy for the years 2000-2006. The revised figures show that 1934, not 1998, was America's hottest year on record. The change has little effect on global temperature records and the average temperatures for 2002-2006 (at 0.66 ºC) is still warmer than 1930-1934 (0.63 ºC) in the United States.

Nevertheless climate change skeptics seized the opportunity to claim that the data is further "proof" that global warming is not occurring.

"The new numbers also show that four of the country's 10 warmest years were in the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939. Five of the hottest 10 occurred before World War II. The past 10 years are not as well represented: Only three years from the past decade are among the 10 warmest: 1998, 1999 and 2006," stated an editorial in the Investors Business Daily. "None of this is good news for the global warming faithful, who argue that the burning of fossil fuel is warming the planet because the carbon dioxide emissions are creating a greenhouse effect. Because man's CO2 emissions in the hot 1930s are nowhere as large as they have been in the past 10 years, their theory doesn't hold up well."

"It suggests that a government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation," wrote Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters.

Despite these comments, mean global temperature data still show the 2005 is the warmest year on record. Further, the 5-year mean temperatures in the U.S. continue to show a warming trend.

U.S. data

Global data

Top ten annual temperature years in the US (Celsius degrees from mean):

rank	year	degrees from mean	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	N/A
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

Top ten ranking for the 5-year means

rank	year	degrees from mean	annual 5-year mean
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

Related

Global warming will slow during the next few years but then accelerate with at least half of the years after 2009 warmer than 1998, the warmest year on record, reports a new study that is the first to incorporate information about the actual state of the ocean and the atmosphere, rather than the approximate ones most models use. The research, published by a team of scientists from the Hadley Center in the United Kingdom, appears in the current issue of the journal Science.

Industrial pollution has caused Arctic warming since 1880s -- 08/09/2007
Industrial soot emissions have been warming the Arctic since at the least the 1880s, reports a new study that examined "black carbon" levels in the Greenland ice sheet over the past 215 years. The research is published in current issue of the journal Science.

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