GISS temperature figures now a mere 'outlier'.

[Stephen Wilde]

It seems that GISS has been producing numbers increasingly out of line with other sources and which are now becoming somewhat discredited :

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/la ... ss/last:12

I'm sure the issue will run for a while. Many will be on the case to identify the reason.

[questioner]

It seems that Giss has been producing numbers increasingly out of line with other sources and which are now becoming somewhat discredited :

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/la ... ss/last:12

I'm sure the issue will run for a while. Many will be on the case to identify the reason.

Global temperature anomaly for October 2008 is 78 according to GISS. This seems to be a record warm month.
It will be interesting to see how the other data bases stack up and if there are real discrepancies what they are.

[questioner]

According to Watts, the Oct 2008 figures are in error as a result of Russian stations duplicating Sept data instead of recording new data from October.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/giss-releases-october-2008-data/#comments
If this is true, this should be corrected soon.

[questioner]

On the other hand there is this News Story about Arctic temperatures:
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/081017210427.67iuf9r6.html
Arctic autumn temperature hits record high
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (AFP) Oct 17, 2008
Autumn temperatures in the Arctic region are a record 5.0 degree Celsius (9.0 Fahrenheit) higher than normal due the melting of the ice cap, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report said Friday.
Here is a link to the report:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/ArcticReportCard_full_report.pdf
So with those high temperatures in the Arctic, it may be that the story on Wattsupwith that about the error in the Russian data set is wrong.
The Noaa data is from Hadley. The Hadley anomaly for 60-90North latitude for for 2007 was 1.2C, a record.

Hadley and GISS use the same data, but process it a little differently. GISS includes regions of the Arctic in their data, where stations are missing by interpolation, and Hadley leaves out those areas. Since the Arctic is warming rapidly as a result of melting ice allowing the Oceans to absorb more heat, the temperatures at the end of the ice melting season will be higher in the Arctic. The GISS average is more heavily weighted with Arctic temperatures so the NOrthern Hemisphere temperatures will be higher than Hadley as a result.

[questioner]

The NSIDC explains the high October temperatures that were measured. The are a result of the release of latent heat of fusion to the atmosphere by the formation of the skin of ice on top of the water.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Higher-than-average air temperatures

Over much of the Arctic, especially over the Arctic Ocean, air temperatures were unusually high. Near-surface air temperatures in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska were more than 7 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal and the warming extended well into higher levels of the atmosphere. These warm conditions are consistent with rapid ice growth.

The freezing temperature of saline water is slightly lower than it is for fresh water, about –2 degrees Celsius (28 degrees Fahrenheit). While surface air temperatures in the Beaufort Sea region are well below freezing by late September, before sea ice can start to grow, the ocean must lose the heat it gained during the summer. One way the ocean does this is by transferring its heat to the atmosphere. This heat transfer is largely responsible for the anomalously high (but still below freezing) air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean seen in Figure 3. Only after the ocean loses its heat and cools to the freezing point, can ice begin to form. The process of ice formation also releases heat to the atmosphere. Part of the anomalous temperature pattern seen in Figure 3 is an expression of this process, which is generally called the latent heat of fusion.

In the past five years, the Arctic has shown a pattern of strong low-level atmospheric warming over the Arctic Ocean in autumn because of heat loss from the ocean back to the atmosphere. Climate models project that this atmospheric warming, known as Arctic amplification, will become more prominent in coming decades and extend into the winter season. As larger expanses of open water are left at the end of each melt season, the ocean will continue to hand off heat to the atmosphere.

[johnbickley]

With the passing of Michael Crichton, who besides being a famous author was a Harvard medical graduate and academic, I suggest those who genuinely believe in the scientific method read his Cal Tech lecture from 2003. It expresses most chillingly the sorry mess that science has become, corrupted as it is by politics and advocacy groups:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-a ... rming.html

[questioner]

With the passing of Michael Crichton, who besides being a famous author was a Harvard medical graduate and academic, I suggest those who genuinely believe in the scientific method read his Cal Tech lecture from 2003. It expresses most chillingly the sorry mess that science has become, corrupted as it is by politics and advocacy groups:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-a ... rming.html

I think it is an overstatement to call Michael Crichton an academic. He spent 1 year as a postdoctoral fellow in medicine after getting his MD degree. He spent his life writing fiction.

[questioner]

Mr. Anderson.
The graph of monthly global average temperatures, showing the 4 different data bases, demonstrates the opposite of what is claimed by your thread title. There is little significant difference between GISS and the other 3 data bases.

The differences are due to different measurement techniques between the satellite data bases, and the earth based temperature stations, and the differences in processing of remote sensor data between satellite data bases, RSS versus UAH, and the different methods of accounting for areas where earth based temperature measurement stations are sparse used by Hadley and GISS. From the graphs it usually doesn't amount to much differences, despite the conspiracy theories posited by AGW sceptics.

[ceyda]

I think it is an overstatement to call Michael Crichton an academic. He spent 1 year as a postdoctoral fellow in medicine after getting his MD degree. He spent his life writing fiction.

From Wiki-pedia:

He attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude with an anthropology degree in 1964.[5] Crichton was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970.

summa cum laude = With highest praise; an honor added to diplomas and degrees for work that is considered to be of the highest quality.

Sounds like Mr Chrichton was very well educated to me. Show some respect Questioner.

With the passing of Michael Crichton, who besides being a famous author was a Harvard medical graduate and academic, I suggest those who genuinely believe in the scientific method read his Cal Tech lecture from 2003. It expresses most chillingly the sorry mess that science has become, corrupted as it is by politics and advocacy groups:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-a ... rming.html

Mr Bickley

I agree this an excellent article, my favourite part being:

'Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.'

[questioner]

Ceyda,
I didn't deny that Crichton was smart and distinguished himself as a student. I only claimed it was a stretch to call him an academic. He spent only one year doing scientific research after getting an MD degree. I doubt that he would claim he had a career as an academic.

He did very well as a writer and entertained a lot of people including me.