Accuracy… Not so much…
LiG Metrology, Correlated Error, and the Integrity of the Global Surface Air-Temperature Record
The published 95% uncertainty of the global surface air-temperature anomaly (GSATA) record through 1980 is impossibly less than the 2σ = ±0.25 °C lower limit of laboratory resolution of 1 °C/division liquid-in-glass (LiG) thermometers. The ~0.7 °C/century Joule-drift of lead- and soft-glass thermometer bulbs renders unreliable the entire historical air-temperature record through the 19th century. A circa 1900 Baudin meteorological spirit thermometer bulb exhibited intense Pb X-ray emission lines (10.55, 12.66, and 14.76 keV). Uncorrected LiG thermometer non-linearity leaves 1σ = ±0.27 °C uncertainty in land-surface air temperatures prior to 1981. The 2σ = ±0.43 °C from LiG resolution and non-linearity obscures most of the 20th century GSATA trend. Systematic sensor-measurement errors are highly pair-wise correlated, possibly across hundreds of km. Non-normal distributions of bucket and engine-intake difference SSTs disconfirm the assumption of random measurement error. Semivariogram analysis of ship SST measurements yields half the error difference mean, ±½Δε1,2, not the error mean. Transfer-function adjustment following a change of land station air-temperature sensor eliminates measurement independence and forward-propagates the antecedent uncertainty. LiG resolution limits, non-linearity, and sensor field calibrations yield GSATA mean ±2σ RMS uncertainties of, 1900–1945, ±1.7 °C; 1946–1980, ±2.1 °C; 1981–2004, ±2.0 °C; and 2005–2010, ±1.6 °C. Finally, the 20th century (1900–1999) GSATA, 0.74 ± 1.94 °C, does not convey any information about rate or magnitude of temperature change.
Full document, HERE from MDPI and the Sensors group.
Once again…Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.
Off topic rant removed.
I am probably less bothered by the reading of sensors than by the bias in placing them. Cities that are paved or concrete covered should show higher temperatures. The fact that cities are over represented in the data is more troubling. According to the UN, cities account for 0.2% of the Earth’s surface. Less than 3% of the land mass is urbanized. So right off the bat, the data is skewed. We forget that ocean surface temps are extremely limited over the last 100 years which make up 75% of the planet.
Add in that there seems no one is taught what a significant digit is anymore and what it means in the real world it is distressing. Statisticians will tell you that that the average family has 2.5 children, but they can never show you that half child.
I got volentold to be on an OIML committee that wrote two international recommendations and guidance documents on measuring pollution and it was a significant learning experience.
It would be a lot easier for me to look at OTHER data re: global warming (not this stuff, it’s too umm, intense for me) if they would only talk about one thing.
For example, if the subject is the amount of arctic ice, it’s pretty clear that 2012 was a record minimum since satellite data has been available, and that there has been significant recovery since then. Okay. I can get that.
What I can’t get behind is a link to the gasoline my Suburban uses to dead polar bears, penguins, narwhals, and other cute photo ops.
Last year was supposed to be the hottest recorded summer according to national official records in Spain EVAR!!!!!!
Funny thing, national records of temperatures and rainfalls and other weathery things weren’t kept until 1968.
And Spain isn’t the only country that wasn’t keeping ‘official’ records until the late 1960’s or 70’s or even 80’s.
Lies, damned lies and meteorologists.
Dan- Always…
Gerry- All true! And they never take into account the ‘addition’ of concrete/etc. in cities over the generations!
Pat- Good points!
Beans- Yeah, right…
Read an article that record keeping of temperatures coincidentally started at the same time as the end of the Little Ice Age.
WSF- Interesting…
Having once collected part of the surface temperature record for a few years (civilian meteorologist on Royal Australian Air Force base) I can tell you that analysis is the best case. The errors are likely larger.
BTW, knew a guy who flew RAAF P-3’s as Captain. You may even have run into him as he had a certain degree of notoriety.
Eyrie- Thanks for the backup. It wouldn’t happen to be Budgie would it? 🙂
Not Budgie, Sambo.
“Well, yes, we know that climate has varied a lot in the past, but THIS TIME, we are 100% SURE that THIS variation is 100% man-made….”
I became a sceptic when I first noticed that they were writing historical warm periods out of history.
Yeah. I don’t want to hear anything from these “warmist” clowns until Greenland once again has farms and cattle and northern Canada has wild vineyards in evidence.
Yeah, I am inclined to suspect that AGW is unreal, and find the temperature error combination stuff similar to what seen from other sources when it comes to non-climate measurements of temperature.
Though, this guy goes into detail that would have been way beyond me when I was learning basic temperature measurement.
Caveat I noticed, this could be understood as an attempt to drum up business for the ASPE, American Society of Precision Engineering.
Folks trained in the methods of engineering have often had questions, based in those methods, about climatology. Climatology is a field of science, and engineering is broken up into engineering disciplines.
Lot of engineering models are initial value boundary condition problems. These are useful for designing a machine, because you can plan to only operate a machine in certain conditions.
These are also pretty useless in meteorology. You do not have enough control of or information about the boundaries of your modeling volume. So meteorologists ensemble, they have a bunch of less specific models that they average to predict what the weather will do. It is not obvious to all engineers that the climatologists properly followed the rules of statistics when they took the meteorologist ensemble, and operated on it to develop the climate modeling methodology.
The human impact of the policies based on climate models kinda makes the combination of policy and model an engineering matter. Whether engineers would be satisfied with the ethics and the techniques is unclear to me.
The journal Remote Sensing previously published a paper critical of climate science status quo, and then retracted it, and had an editor resign.
I’m kinda impressed that this guy was willing to publish, but seems to be retired.
Dude is a chemist, and his retirement work seems to be aimed in more than one direction that might be contentious.