Government-controlled surface datasets, the bedrock of climate thermogeddon fears promoting Net Zero, cannot possibly be accurate, and are only “an estimate with high uncertainty”. The claim comes from the noted U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, who has spent the last decade highlighting the numerous flaws built into global temperature monitoring systems. Data are collected by government bodies from a weather station network, “that was never intended to detect a ‘global warming signal’”, notes Watts. He goes on to call for a new independent global climate database. Given that governments are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on climate mitigation programmes, “doesn’t it make sense to get the most important thing – the actual temperature – as accurate as possible”, he asks.
To date, continues Watts, there is only one network of climate capable weather stations that is accurate enough to fully detect a climate change signal. This is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), started in 2005 as a state-of-the-art automated system designed specifically to accurately measure climate trends at the surface. It comprises 114 stations across North America sited well away from any non-climatic effects, such as urban heat caused by humans.
The USCRN graph above shows that there has been no significant warming trend over the last two decades in the United States. “Unfortunately, the data from the USCRN network are buried by the U.S. Government, and are not publicly reported in monthly or yearly global climate reports. [The network] has also not been deployed worldwide,” observed Watts.
Watts notes that past temperature records were collected to validate weather forecasting. Temperatures were rounded by volunteers to the nearest whole degree of Fahrenheit. When comparing such “coarsely recorded” data to claims of 1.8°F global warming since the late 1800s, “obvious questions” of accuracy arise. Referring to his own recent work, Watts says that even more concerning is the widespread corruption of data by urbanisation. Many stations are compromised by being placed next to air conditioners, jet exhausts and concrete, asphalt and nearby buildings. This happens not just in the USA but in many other territories, including the U.K.
In the U.K., the state-funded Met Office has become highly politicised in recent years as it relentlessly pushes the collectivist Net Zero project. Despite writing a paper on the temperature standstill between 2000-14, it removed the pause in later retrospective adjustments to its HadCRUT global database. In under 10 years it added 30% extra warming to the recent global record, at a time when accurate satellite measurements suggested global warming started running out of steam about 25 years ago. Last summer, the Met Office confirmed and promoted a new U.K. record temperature of 40.3°C at Coningsby. In fact the record was set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of Typhoon fighter jet squadrons, and lasted just 60 seconds. It was achieved with a sudden spike in temperature of 0.6°C followed by an almost immediate drop. To this day, the Met Office has refused to answer questions from the Daily Sceptic asking if jet aircraft movements were a contributing factor.
Watts is not the only scientist raising important concerns about the databases at the heart of the political campaign to promote panic about rising temperatures. Recent work by Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville found that up to a fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. The stations form part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are an important constituent of all global datasets. Interestingly, the two scientists noted that the U.S. weather service NOAA claims to remove urban heat distortions, but they found that on average it is “spuriously warming station temperature data trends when it should be cooling them”. The detailed reasons are given in a note published by Dr. Spencer, where he asks why NOAA adjustments are going in the wrong way. “To say the least, I find these results … curious”, he adds.
Lopping off chunks of recent warming at a time when very little ‘heating’ is occurring would be unwelcome in Net Zero extremist circles. Scientists such as Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen point out that the warming since the ending of the Baroque mini ice age is already tiny. Evidence continues to accumulate that recent periods were much warmer than the present. In February, a group of bio scientists (Brozova et al., 2023) presented evidence showing that the Arctic around Svalbard was 6°C warmer in the early Holocene around 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Further scientific evidence showing past warming can be found here, here and here.
Global surface temperatures recorded and compiled by government agencies are said by Watts to be a mishmash of rounded, adjusted and compromised readings, rather than being an accurate representation of Earth’s temperature. “Given the Government’s monopoly on use of corrupted temperature data, questionable accuracy, and a clear reticence to make highly accurate temperature data from the USCTN available to the public, it is time for a truly independent global temperature record to be produced,” Watts concludes.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Watts analysis of US weather stations is at surfacestations.org. In it, using only verified rural weather stations, he finds the USA has been cooling for some decades. The number of stations used has been shrunk hugely, and many more are now urban than used to be. It is therefore clear that UHI plays a far greater part in modern “warming” than the Climate maniacs claim.
Describing Antony Watts as a meteorologist is pushing it a bit. He studied meteorology at University but never graduated. However, that doesn’t mean he is wrong.
The USCRN
a) has a warming trend. The chart above is so busy it is hard to see it but see here. (first answer)
b) almost exactly matches the record for adjusted US climate record as a whole (actually it shows a slightly greater warming trend than the all stations record but the timescale is too short to read much into it)
In any case the US is only 2% of the earth’s surface area.
The point is that nothing much can be read into any climate records at the moment.
So the pursuit of ‘net zero’ seems to be being followed, very much like the eccentric young officer, simply out of idle curiosity.
And no cost benefit study has been done into the effects of pursuing ‘net zero’.
But, apart from that, political leadership the world over is going really well……not.
Good news. Warming suits humanity far better than cooling, no?
The heat death of the planet in one simple graph…
Interesting chart – it doesn’t actually say what it is measuring but whatever it was it varied between -70C and +70C around 1880. Do you have the source?
As it is cooling/warming per century it looks like they are adding up all the annual anomalies for each 100 year period (on a running annual basis). That is the only way I can get anything remotely sensible from the figures, but I suspect it really shows the Met Office doesn’t understand what it is doing.
Do we know the Met office created the chart?
The title refers to Met office data, so it seems a pretty fair conclusion.
Warming trend? Not according to the complex scientific reading instruments either side if my nose.
Ref UK Met Office forecasts. If you are looking for a long range weather forecast from the Met Office, you will generally get two things,
1, is an overview of what might occur, in which, you realise that you could get anything that would be applicable within the forthcoming time period, for that particular time of year. Rain, sun, wind etc.
2 generally there is a reference to the temperature expectation ie above average or below average. However the Met Office does not identify an average mean temperature, but the average high and low temperatures recorded for that particular time of year. So when the Met Office states above average temperatures possible, it means it could be above the low average temperature, not necessarily the high average temperature.
The data presented by the Met Office is not generally misleading in itself, but its presentation is.
Does anyone remember the predictions of snow and freezing temperatures over Easter a couple of months ago?
Some Easters it’s real shirtsleeves and ‘99 weather. This ain’t one of them. That’s data, my friends.
Indeed. Assisted by the fact that it moves up and down the calendar, with just under 4 minutes a day difference in daylength.
for exactly the reason of all the issues surrounding surface temperature weather station datasets, I only ever really look at the satellite records from Dr Roy Spencer at UAH which seem to be the best way of eliminating many of these issues.
Seems the most sensible for “global” data since no other dataset gives adequate coverage of the southern hemisphere.
You’re right. The only reliable source of global temperatures is the satellite data. I think even with these though there have been attempts to “adjust” it.
I’ve followed Watts over the years and it’s incredible how the placement of these weather stations doesn’t seem to be a problem to the so called experts. The same in this country where many are located near runways and other potential heat sources.
In 2015, there was also a whistle-blower, ex NOAA climate scientist John Bates, who reported to media that NOAA were trying to deny the halt in the warming trend.
Some may also remember, back in 2009, we had the ClimateGate scandal at East Anglia University. Where scientists were found out trying to remove the inconvenient medieval warm period. Can we ever trust these climate scientists.
An article posted here 6 months ago was also interesting. Where Professor Nicola Scafetta was using the satellite data to assess the accuracy, well lack of, of climate models.
Satellite Temperature Data Show Almost All Climate Model Forecasts Over the Last 40 Years Were Wrong – The Daily Sceptic
Climate Scientists Manipulated Temperature Data to Fool Politicians and Public, Claims ‘Whistleblower’ (reason.com)
Latest Global Temps – Roy Spencer, PhD. (drroyspencer.com)
The climate system has warmed up from around zero to present day over about 12 000 years. It is non-linear with periods of sudden increase, sudden downturns, flatline.
The overall increase is so slow, so slight it cannot be observed or measured in real time. It can only be calculated retrospectively over periods of thousands of years. Any short-term analysis, decades or centuries, is meaningless.
This is why they invented the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly in the 1980s as ‘the only way to show global warming’. It purports to be able to show temperature changes of tenths and hundredths of a degree, using manipulated, averaged, whole number data of no such accuracy.
So.
Nobody knows what the Earth’s temperature or temperatures should be at the moment.
We have no way of measuring what it or they actually are.
Therefore it is impossible to say whether it or they are too high, or too low or just right.
It’s just junk science, filled with lies and corruption like the CoVid Fakedemic ‘science’. It’s all ideology and politics and money and evil.
The truth always “outs” in the end, eh, Greta?
The humanity-caused Climate Change industry is very lucrative and they will not give up their power, control and riches without a fight.
I believe our government fund and direct the UK Met Office, so like they did during Covid’s reign they are lying to us and providing false or distorted information. It’s time we cleared them all out and found politicians who can form an honest government – if there are any.