Satellite-Gate

US Government admits global warming satellite sensors "degraded" - temperatures may be out by 10-15 degrees. Now five satellites in controversy.

The automatic readings had been contaminated by hundreds, if not thousands, of false and absurdly high temperature readings, some as high as 612 degrees Fahrenheit (boiling point of water is 212 F.). We now know NOAA was aware of these outrageous anomalies at least since 2006 but they were not remedied ( see below).

automated numbers were sold throughout the world and it's readings of land and ocean temperatures have been used by climate scientists in their models since the satellite's launch in September 2000. As a consequence and without full disclosure by NOAA, it is feared innumerable scientific studies about rising global temperatures are now rendered entirely invalid.

From analysis of the bogus online temperature data before NOAA removed it from view, it may be determined that almost all the false temperature readings were far in excess of expected averages—many by a factor of four or five - almost none of the bogus temperatures were lower than average.

Landsat 7 (currently in orbit) is broken leaving data gaps. Scientists do not get all the information they should.
NPOESS (National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite) will not have any sensors that measure the sun's energy output on the 2nd and 4th satellites.
GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series) has had 14 sensors cancelled. No data for cloud base height, ozone layer, ocean color, ocean turbidity and cloud imagery, snow cover, etc. Effectively neutered.
No sensor for movement of greenhouse gases and pollutants. No sensor to monitor temperature changes on Earth over time. (NOAA didn't even bother to try to get the funding to keep the eliminated sensors!).
The sensor to measure how Earth's temperature reacts to changes in Solar energy was cancelled by the Obama Administration at the end of June 2010.

Questions NOAA Refuses to Answer

In light of concerns that NOAA has officially admitted to only withdrawing "images" from its archives without confirming all bogus data has also been dumped, I posed the following and yet unanswered questions to NOAA's Dr. Jane Lubchenco:

What steps have you taken to ascertain the scope and extent of this data error and what action will be taken to avoid further recurrence?

Have you identified whether these temperature anomalies impact other data sets and findings; in particular does this undermine in any way the credibility of official government statements already made about climatic changes, and if so by how much?

Palle Miliam skrev:
Som Frank i anden tråd var inde på, så er den nu også gal med Satellit-målingerne af jordens temperatur.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data.

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: "This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought."

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

"The story is the same for each one," he said. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

Jeg har sendt en mail til Anthony Watts, hvor jeg spørger ham om, hvorfor han har sådan en reklame på sit sted, og om han er klar over, hvordan det kan virke (på en fra Danmark i hvert fald)

Altså, vi sammenligner det ene sæt opskruede tempeaturmålinger med det andet - nogen højere???!

Jeg har selv svært ved at se, hvor dette ender

Time to look at the thermometer on the wall at home a bit more closely? And at the plants outside, to see what they think about it all?

Merry Christmas all. Including to many friends out in the Pacific Islands. Maybe the climate is just fine, this Christmas. And will be for the rest of your life. Just be nice to the parrotfish, as they are our brothers and sisters.

Peter Ravenscroft.

First, Climategate is worse than we thought, as the data appears to have been deliberately skewed, in the standard global temperature dataset against which all the others we have are calibrated

In other words, Siberia and Canada and the Antarctic Peninsula may not have warmed up nearly as much as the satellite maps say they have, or in fact at all. We now should be very unsure.

So I hope the instrument are reading reality, but now have serious doubts. It's called science, I believe. Admit you may have screwed up, and don't try hide the decline of your model.

Ja, det hele virker temmelig sørgeligt og især mediernes tavshed

The National Academy of Sciences, in its 2007 455-page report concluded that because of degradation in the U.S. satellite network, the country's ability to monitor the climate and severe weather was "at great risk."

Dr. Anderson sums up saying; "It is now perfectly clear that there are no reliable worldwide temperature records and that we have little more than anecdotal information on the temperature history of the Earth."

"Both higher altitudes and higher latitudes have been systematically removed from the measured temperature record with very poor and biased interpolated results taking their place."

I had proven that the website operated by the Michigan State University had published ridiculously high surface water temperatures widely distributed over the lake many indicating super-boiling conditions. The fear is that these anomalies have been fed across the entire satellite dataset

The U.S. physicist agrees there may now be thousands of temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally identified.

Charles Pistis, Program Coordinator of the Michigan Sea Grant project, tried to pass off the dodgy data as being an accidental product of the satellite's malfunction sensors taking readings off the top of clouds rather than the surface temperatures.

Pistis admitted, all such satellite data is fed automatically into records and apparently as long as it showed high enough temperatures to satisfy the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates of those numbers were not going to make careful scrutiny for at least half a decade.

"One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us."

Aben er nu hos NOAA, så vi må nok væbne os med tålmodighed, før vi forhåbentligt får svar på tiltale.

NOAA's Chuck Phistis said after NOAA first denied any problems existed:

I just relooked and (sic) the image again AND IT IS in my archive. I do not know why the temperatures were so inaccurate (sic). It appears to have been a malfunction in the satellite. WE have posted thousands if (sic) images since the inauguration of our Coatwatch (sic) service in 1994. I have never seen one like this."

But the spokesman for the Michigan Sea Grant Extension, a 'Coastwatch' partner with NOAA screening the offending data, then confessed that its hastily hidden web pages had, indeed, showed dozens of temperature recordings three or four times higher than seasonal norms.

"There are a variety of rumors floating around the "skeptic" blogosphere involving claimed problems with satellite temperature measurements. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion on this point. While a lengthy analysis of this topic would be useful, for now we will just briefly hit the main points"

Dear Roy,

I was very interested to read your latest article about how the satellite records are adjusted.

I am a blog scientist. Me and my commenters are interested in determining why the satellite records show too much warming over the last 30 years. You mention you adjust the raw data using some FORTRAN programs. Is this source code available online so we might replicate this process?

Thanks,
Inferno

The cited examples of temperature errors in the Great Lakes region are not incorporated in any of the global mean temperature records. In particular, there is no connection to the satellite microwave temperature analyses by RSS (Figure 1) and UAH, which use entirely different sensors operating in a quite different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Technology fails with age. It's normal. Just like an automobile losing a battery after 3 years, or needing a new water pump, spacecraft also have failures. Unlike your car, sometimes redundant sensors and systems keep its mission going. Also unlike a car, you just can't bring it into the shop and ask them to swap in a new AMSU unit in an afternoon."

"Despite many requests to carry this story on WUWT, I refused to, because it's wrongly presented with the cover up angle. There is no fraud here, only simple and expected technological failure compounded by people not catching data errors soon enough."

Thus the claim of "Official: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtful" is simply false, especially since the well respected UAH global temperature anomaly satellite data set doesn't even use this satellite.

The controversy over 'Satellitegate' heats up as NOAA faces a court appearance for refusing to release evidence that would show whether one or more US satellites exaggerated global warming temperatures.