Massive Tampering With South African Temperatures
November 26, 2015
tags: south africa, Temperature Adjustments
By Paul Homewood
There are only ten GHCN stations currently operating in South Africa, and only one of these, Calvinia, is classified by GISS as rural. It has a population of 9000, and is situated inland in the Northern Cape province.
| Airport Y/N? | Pop K | | Calvinia | N | 9 | | Capetown | Y | | | George | Y | | | Pietersberg | Y | | | Upington | Y | | | De Aar | N | 18 | | Port Elizabeth | Y | | | East London | Y | | | Kimberley | Y | | | Bloemfontein | N | 256 |
This is the actual temperature trend at Calvinia, based on GHCN V2 raw data in 2011.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=141686180000&dt=1&ds=1
There has been no warming since the start of the record. Yet the current version of GISS, which is based on adjusted GHCN data, has miraculously morphed into a sharply rising trend.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=141686180000&dt=1&ds=12
Temperatures prior to 1989 have been marked down by around 0.7C, and those 1940’s ones by even more.
Ridiculous that people can defend this.
So, what about the other nine sites? We have three with long, and pretty much continuous, records back to the 19thC.
First raw, and then adjusted.
There was a large drop in temperatures at Port Elizabeth between 1950 and 1951, but there also large drops at that time at Capetown, Kimberley and other sites, including East London, which is nearby. There is no evidence that the change was due to anything but natural factors.
All the graphs have one thing in common – that tell tale peaking of temperatures around 1940, which we see so often. There is even a glimpse of this at Calvinia, where the warmest year on record was 1945.
All of these stations will, of course, have been heavily affected by UHI effects since the 1940’s.
For instance, much of the warming at Port Elizabeth in recent decades is likely due to the siting of sensors in the middle of the runways at the airport there.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/homr/#ncdcstnid=30095751&tab=LOCATIONS
Out of the ten stations mentioned above, there has been marked warming trends introduced by adjustments at eight. One, De Aar shows little change, but Upington, oddly enough, bucks the trend with a cooling trend added. However, when the adjustments at all ten are averaged together, the overall effect is obvious.
One oddity is the 1990’s period, when seemingly temperatures were over adjusted up, only to be adjusted down since. It is one thing questioning whether temperature measurements taken in the 1880’s were accurate, but the 1990’s? Are we seriously saying they were understated by half a degree? This is clearly a nonsense, and it goes to the heart of how adjustments have corrupted the temperature dataset.
No reputable scientists would go near this garbage with a barge pole.
Sources
1) GHCN V2 raw data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v2/
2) GHCN V3 adjusted data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ (Select “GHCN” under dataset)
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/massive-tampering-with-south-african-temperatures/ |
