How NOAA Deceive–Claims Of Record Temperatures Not What They Seem

By Paul Homewood

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13/supplemental/page-6/

In their National State Of The Climate Report for 2012, NOAA highlighted a list of all-time temperature records that had been tied or broken during the year. Altogether, the list ran to 355 records, which would leave the innocent observer believing that many places had been hotter than “ever before”, or, at least, since official records began in 1895.

But is that really the case? We have already seen that top temperatures in Kansas during, the summers of 1934 & 1936, were much higher than 2012 at nearly every location, despite NOAA claiming 22 new records last year. Let’s now take a look at Ohio.

According to NOAA, six new records were set in Ohio last year, as listed below.

Airport Record Temp Fahrenheit Date Set Year Opened Dayton Y 102 June 28 1943 Dayton Y 102 July 6 1943 Dayton Y 102 July 7 1943 Akron Canton Y 101 July 7 1948 Wilmington Y 101 July 7 1943 Hannibal Locks 101 July 8 1975

So, straightaway, we see two problems:-

Out of the four sites, three are airports.

No station have records earlier than 1943.

We all know that temperature measurements taken at airports can be significantly biased, but does it matter that records only go back to the 1940’s? One look at NOAA’s chart of summer temperatures shows just relevant this is.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/

Both 1934 and 1936 were much hotter summers in Ohio. The following analysis of USHCN stations shows just how much hotter.

There are 26 USHCN stations listed for Ohio, which are described by CDIAC as “a high quality data set of daily and monthly records of basic meteorological variables from 1218 observing stations across the 48 contiguous United States.” Of these, 20 are currently operating, and have data back to 1934.

Below is a list comparing the top temperatures set at each site for the three years. I have subdivided into the three climatic divisions used in Ohio, which illustrates that, geographically, the whole State has been pretty much covered.

Top Temperatures – Degree Fahrenheit

Division/Station 1934 1936 2012 Northern Bucyrus 105 105 99 Defiance n/a 106 104 Findlay n/a 104 100 Hiram 97 101 96 Millport 98 101 100 Norwalk 108 107 100 Upper Sandusky 104 104 98 Warren 100 105 97 Wauseon 106 109 105 Wooster 100 105 99 Middle Coshocton 104 105 99 Greenville 105 103 100 Kenton 105 106 99 Millersburg 103 101 100 Philo 105 104 100 Urbana 107 110 101 Southern Circleville 108 109 101 Hillsboro 101 102 100 Portsmouth 106 105 102 Waverley 108 104 104

As can be seen, there is not a single site that set a new record last year, or even tied one. Indeed, in most cases, top temperatures, set in 2012, were several degrees lower than those of the 1930’s.

NOAA’s claim, that “All-Time Records” have been set in Ohio last year, is highly misleading, not to mention downright dishonest. Given that similar claims made about Kansas have also been shown to be nothing more than deception, it must call into question the validity of the entire list.

It is inconceivable that nobody at NOAA was aware of these facts, which raises the question, why did they publish their table? It seems to be all part of an agenda designed to paint last year as “extreme”, an agenda already uncovered in other parts of the report.

Of course, I might be totally wrong, and it may be all down to utter incompetence. If so, it is quite easy for NOAA to put matters right, and do what they should have done in the first place, by taking out the original list and replacing it with one which:-

Only uses USHCN stations, given that they are regarded as high quality.

Excludes all stations based at airports.

Excludes all sites that do not have data going back to 1900.

Shows the number of genuine new records set as a percentage of the total number of sites.

Shows the number of records set across the full USHCN dataset by year and/or decade.

As matters stand, though, people could be forgiven for regarding the whole business as a case of outright fraud.

References

1) NOAA State of The Climate Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13#over

2) USHCN dataset

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn_map_interface.html

3) Original State Climatological Reports

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/cd/cd.html

4) Station metadata

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/lcd/lcd.html?_page=0&state=OH&_target1=Next+%3E

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html;jsessionid=B7A45E4457C85015B9ADC5AD84315457?foreign=false&_page=0&jsessionid=B7A45E4457C85015B9ADC5AD84315457&state=OH&_target1=Next+%3E

https://mi3.ncdc.noaa.gov/mi3qry/login.cfm?forced=true