BREAKING: NZ’s NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking

UPDATE 15:49 NZDT - NIWA's news release in response to this story appears to have been delayed, and according to a radio news report a few minutes ago Rodney Hide, leader of the minority Act Party and a minister in the National Government, is now calling on his Cabinet colleague, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith, to "please explain" [normal transmission now resumes]

The New Zealand Government's chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn't there.

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain's CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand's case, the figures published on NIWA's [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:

 

The caption to the photo on the NiWA site reads:

From NIWA's web site — Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on

between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the

1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909

to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:

 

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:

Straight away you can see there's no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Why does NIWA's graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA's web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger's colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

Proof of man-made warming

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there's no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It's a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

NIWA's David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.

"Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?"

"No, no," replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of "misleading" people about the temperature adjustments.

Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU's Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were "destroyed" or "lost", meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.

UPDATE: NIWA has finally responded:

NIWA Media Release                        26 November 2009

 Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.

 NIWA's analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.

 Such site differences are significant and must be accounted for when analysing long-term changes in temperature. The Climate Science Coalition has not done this.

 NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA's Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he's very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.

 NIWA scientists are committed to providing robust information to help all New Zealanders make good decisions.

 For more information, contact:

 Dr David Wratt
 Chief Scientist (Climate)
 NIWA, Private Bag 14-901
 Wellington, New Zealand
 Phone: +64 4 386 xxxx
 Cellphone + 64 021 xxxxxx

 Renwick, James
 Science Leader - Principal Scientist Climate NIWA, Private Bag 14-901
 Wellington, New Zealand
 Phone: + 64 4-xxxxxxx

UPDATE 3:

NIWA chief scientist David Wratt says he has no plans to release data backing up claims of different temperature adjustments between historial weather station sites.

Wratt told Investigate tonight that some studies existed which contained "overlapping" periods which allowed NIWA to compare the temperatures at both locations.

He said NIWA intendeds to release data regarding the Kelburn weather station tonight, but will not release other data.

"There are various other sites that will be affected by a change in location"

"Have you done a 12 or 24 month study comparing both locations simultaneously?"

"There’s been a whole lot of work behind this in terms of things like having overlaps between particular stations when they’ve moved. There’s a whole methodology, internationally accepted, where you actually work out how to correct for these sorts of site changes and so on.”

“But you’ll be providing all that shortly?”

“Well, we’re not going to run around in circles just because somebody has put out a press release. We will continue to put out what is reasonable to provide.”

“Wouldn’t it be important –“

“No!”

“…for people to see the comparison studies between both sites?”

“Look, we’re talking about scientific studies here. I’ve told you we’ll put out information about Wellington. Basically it’s not up to us to justify ourselves to a whole lot of people that come out with truly unfounded allegations. We work through the scientific process, we publish stuff through the literature, that’s the way that we deal with this stuff and I can’t have my staff running around in circles over something which is not a justified allegation. The fact that the Climate Science Coalition are making allegations about my staff who have the utmost integrity really really pisses me off.

“That’s all I’ve got to say to you now – [click]”

 MY COMMENT AS BLOGGER: Without the baseline comparisons between the weather sensors at one site and then the other, the public and researchers remain in the dark as to whether the adjustments fairly reflect the changed locations. We don't even know when the adjustments were finally applied. There is nothing wrong with making adjustments, but without transparency it is largely meaningless and unable to be peer reviewed

FINAL UPDATE: New post on NIWA's Wellington data here

Comments

[NikFromNYC]

What has happened to many areas is astonishing. The "adjustments for urban heating have been just that: adjustments that ADD urban upswings!!!

They just figured this out for NYC. Wait for this news to break. They reverse engineered this adjustment using an equation for urban heating that uses population. And it spit out a graph that said that NYC had suddenly been wiped out of almost all its people over the last 7 years. Great way to "hide the decline"!

[Gary Hladik]

"Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data."

Will they also provide the database(s) and computer code used to "alter" the data? Transparency is the best defense against accusations of impropriety.

[Nick]

And more and more of this will come out of the wood work.

Drip Drip Drip and the political consensus will go.

Just like Expenses fraud with Politicians in the UK, the same will happen with global warming.

Since all the models have been replicating the fake inputs, the models are also fake

[AcidComments]

"The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain's CRU climate research centre. "

Yep,

They're all a pack of deceitful crooks.

Anyone whose been able to do partial audits of some of NOAA data finds the same.

NASA was caught out deliberately faking its Ocean temperature data by ignoring the cold Ocean anomolies and replacing the data with a nearby landbased temperature readings to 'artificially' pump the data up.

[Kevin]

Love to hear from Nick Smith, who told Larry Williams, the other day, that he relied on NIWA for his information regarding ETS and AGW and other such "CARBOLLOCKS"!

[Bob Tisdale]

Just posted the following on the WUWT version:

If we look at the SST anomalies (HADISST) for the Southwest Pacific Surrounding New Zealand (50S-30S, 160E-170W), there is much less of a long-term rise.
http://i46.tinypic.com/1174mtg.png

In fact, for comparison, the linear trend for that dataset from 1909 to 2008 is 0.076 deg C/decade. Looks like the folks at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research slipped a decimal place.
http://i48.tinypic.com/nx2tk.png

[Ayrdale]

Someone with access to all our daily papers may like to let us know when the MSM start to report on this objectively. At the moment it's "hold your nose, it's a leak" material. How long before the scandal really breaks ?

[John Blake]

Massive fraud, of course; but more than that, a concerted decades-long disinformation campaign similar to that conducted by the Soviet KGB from 1945 - 1991, as revealed by the so-called Venona Transcripts throughout the 1990s.

Climate Cultists, Warmists, are first-and-foremost propagandists with a collectivist Statist agenda at war with entrepreneurial, free-market innovation and prosperity. Without exception they are nihilistic Luddite sociopaths, homicidal "death-eaters" bent on reducing humanity's global population by willful destruction of post-Enlightenment industiral civilization.

Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Peter Singer et al. will stop at nothing to promote their literally murderous ends. Delusive post-War Baby Boomers mouthing "Save the Planet" for decades are about to fall victim en masse to a species of Commissars, Gauleiters never seen before in history: Self-loathing, suicidal narcissists who in facing their personal mortality seek only to drag everyone and all else with them to Abyss.

[George]

"We work through the scientific process, we publish stuff through the literature, that’s the way that we deal with this stuff"

That's wonderful! Now, which journal will be publishing the information that is being asked for (and apparently has been asked for repeatedly over time)?

How do they claim "peer review" on one hand while preventing any review whatsoever of the core of their "science"?

Imagine if the scientists who claimed "cold fusion" could have simply denied anyone having access to their data and methods yet tried to use that data to enact policy decisions affecting billions in spending?

If "climate" is not really a crisis, what impact will that have on the research grants for climate scientists? And if it turns out to be false, how will that impact the reputations of the institutions and journals that have hosted much of the work?

I believe there is a strong incentive to "deny, deny, deny" and maybe toss out an occasional "peer-review" and "we are SCIENTISTS" just to keep people off balance.

[Ross Nixon]

They definitely *did* have to adjust the Wellington temperature record, following the move of the station. I remember this being discussed at climateaudit.org about 2 years ago.

Here we are, I still had it bookmarked. www.climateaudit.org/?p=2107

I have no idea about the validity of any adjustments at the other 6(?) stations.

[steve]

They did make an adjustment of 0.8 in 1928. But why the adjustments between 1900-1920 and post 1970. Coincidently the trend line selected by NIWA starts and ends in these periods and the difference (about 0.7 degrees) is wholly due to adjustments during these periods.

[David White]

Challenge to NIWA:

1. Since you are a taxpayer-funded organisation, we have already paid for the data, and the adjustments, and the analysis, and the papers.

2. You hypothesize that the planet is warming, and that NZ businesses and taxpayers should spend billions of $ in "penance", on the basis of your measurements and analysis.

On the basis of these facts, the onus is on NIWA to make available ALL
- raw data
- adjusted data (with justifications for adjustments)
- analysis (with code for transforming data)
- papers.

Anything less than full disclosure will be interpreted as collusion and secrecy, and treated with the disdain it deserves.

Your unprofessionalism is debasing the science profession as a whole!

[George]

In my opinion, the moved station explanation doesn't explain the differences between the two curves. If a station were moved in 1928 to a location that is 0.8C cooler, I would expect the adjustment to step up the raw data at 1928. Instead, they have some unexplained adjustment that adds a huge slope to the raw data. His explanation is inadequate.

[Alexa]

If you bother to go to the NIWA data yourself, you'll see that there are temperature readings from many stations. If Dunleavy wants to compare readings from multiple stations at the same time, THE DATA IS THERE.

Go on, look it up. If you take the longer strings of data from the same station, they CLEARLY show warming. This is not voodoo science or fraud.

What's fraudulent is for someone to take raw data, analyse it incorrectly, and then claim it's all a scam. Denialists demand raw data, and when they get it, they pull this sh*t... and you wonder why the guy's angry?

[anonymous]

The next obvious question is how much do we, the taxpayer, give NIWA in funding?

[Christopher Byrne]

Alexa, I really don't care whether he's angry or not. His whole profession is losing credibility by the minute and whether or not it's justified, it's happening. Now is really not the time to be closing ranks. And as for the data, we're actually more interested in the justification for the station corrections and the methodologies used to perform those corrections. I'll ignore your use of the term denialist, as I am sure you have no idea what you are talking about.

[Alec Rawls]

For sites that have not moved, it is well known that they tend to show INCREASING temperatures due to increasing urban heat island effects that have nothing to do with global warming. The correct adjustment in these cases is downward. Further, if the U.S. is any guide, most station moves are to MORE urbanized environments (for convenience). Given that NZ's raw temperature record shows so little increase, it is almost certain that the properly adjusted record would show cooling, not warming, since 1850.

[maksimovich]

Wellington Airport Met station reported data series is here

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/wgtntemeraturetrend.jpg

1960 to sept 2009 annual means,there does not seem to be a great deal to worry about.

Invercargill Airport is a worry with negative trend of -0.022c per year since 1980.

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/Invercargilltemperature.jpg

[Spam]

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.climateaudit.org&q=wellington&sitesearch=www.climateaudit.org&sa=Google+Search&client=pub-3495138952800993&forid=1&channel=7265431255&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en>Link to Climate AUdit Searc

At one point, they were using the chatham islands to estimate the temperature in wellington, IIRC.

[R2D2]

Strange that only 1 of the adjustments was down David....

I will wait to make judgement, not all the information seems to be out on this yet, but it doesn't look good for NIWA at this stage.