Rodney Hide (courtesy ACT Party, NZ)
Skeptical climate scientists--and now some New Zealand members of parliament--are not satisfied with NIWA's explanation, released yesterday, of its alarming temperature-trend graph that does not appear to conform to the raw data.
New Zealand MP Rodney Hide, ACT Party leader, stated today in an open letter to Climate Change Minister Nick Smith that, while he accepted Smith's earlier promise to question NIWA lead climatologist David Wratt about the controversy, the country needed to see all the data, and all the particulars on why and how the data were adjusted to produce NIWA's official graph.
David Wratt at a 2007 conference
(from Flickr user davesag)
NIWA stated yesterday, in response to a challenge to them by the Climate Science Coalition, that the raw data that showed apparently stable temperatures for the last 156 years required adjustment on account of the movement of several weather stations to higher elevations, where the air would be expected to be colder. Dr. Wratt cited as an example the station histories of Wellington, and specifically the closure in 1927-8 of the Thorndon station and the opening of a new station in Kelburn, which is 120 meters higher in elevation. As Dr. Wratt admitted, no temperature records exist from the Thorndon and Kelburn stations in the same year, so NIWA had to estimate the amount of adjustment that needed to be made. They selected the station at the Wellington Airport, which opened in 1960, and adjusted the Wellington trend by the difference between the Kelburn and Airport stations. (The AGW advocacy blog Hot Topic repeated this assertion and discussed it at slightly greater length.)
Ian Wishart, of The Briefing Room, rejected that claim today. His chief ground was that the comparison between the Thorndon station and a station at an international airport, which would be an obvious heat island, is inherently unfair. More to the point, NIWA released an adjustment rationale for only one station, when in fact many stations were subject to similar adjustment. Without all the relevant station-adjustment information, says Wishart, no one would be able to replicate the official NIWA graph or determine what the graph should actually look like.
NIWA weather station, near an A/C vent
Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat identifies an additional problem: some of the weather stations are in less-than-optimal locations, such as next to air-conditioning compressors. Watts has noted similar problems with weather-station siting in the UK.
UPDATE: The Climate Change Examiner has been able to communicate directly with David Wratt, and filed this report.
Like this article? Want to be notified about more? Click Subscribe, above.
Comments
Why do we work so hard trying to believe that death by CO2 is legitimate when there is practically an “admition” in ClimateGate that the planet is not dying after all? It’s like we wish for this misery to happen. Are we off the rails here or what? We are losing sight of our goals and doubling our efforts anyways and history will not be kind to us wishing for doom for every human on the planet. I’m seeing now that motivating by fear could have been excusable at some point but when we started promising “death” of the planet, we set ourselves up for this big fall we are experiencing. The longer we wait to abandon this CO2 mistake turned outright criminal, the less that fall will hurt environmentalism.Admitting we were wrong has a price as we would have to turn our backs on some climate scientists and politicians and possibly fellow environmentalists with the distinct possibility of two opposing groups forming post CO2 era. And the CO2 faction can’t possibly be sustainable because don’t fo
So they're no longer rejecting the fact of adjustments due to location change, just the formulas used in those adjustments? Figures. Eventually, when all this is explained away, we'll get to the little green men or vast liberal conspiracy.
All - I traded emails with Dr. David Wratt, Chief Climate Scientist for NIWA, about this issue. You can read more here:
www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d27-Debate-continues-about-New-Zealand-climate-records
AGW proponents are nothing more than "Data Molesters", and they are in denial that this is immoral because their closest friends and associates all do it as well.
Having escaped New Zealand, I can tell the world that Kiwis are mentally retarded yet try to play the morally superior card all the time. They don't like to admit that their best and brightest leave the country for good every generation... one fifth of the population have left the country. It is no surprise that NIWA are staffed by second rate scientists that believe the end justifies the means.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!