SEWilco's Journal: NASA fixes proprietary Y2K climate bug; 1934 warmest in USA

NASA's GISS climate group fixed their calculations and now 1934 was the warmest year in the USA. This graph shows the new data, from this page. Steve McIntyre found and explained GISS' error, despite GISS refusing to make available their software.

Two air conditioners in Minnesota were moved near a temperature sensor. But something didn't look right about the data. (When the NOAA's NCDC learned of examination of its network, it briefly removed information from the Internet.) McIntyre, a statistician, found that NASA does not make available the computer code and corrections used to "correct" its data. He had to reverse-engineer their calculations and found a year 2000 bug. GISS fixed their data and thanked McIntyre. It has been separately noted that 1934 was also warm in northern Europe too.

How significant are such "corrections"? To the 0.1C measured temperature increase, the NOAA adds 0.5C of adjustments.

Does this mean

[Orion Blastar]

that the global warming alarmists were wrong? That 1934 was the hottest year, and somehow since then things have cooled off? That due to Y2k errors and having heat sources near temp probes, that estimate of 1 degree rising in heat over the past 100 years was in error?

Does this mean that anti-global warming people will do the "Happy Dance"?

I think we should still try to control our carbon emissions and ween ourselves off of oil and gas, because they are the right things to do. Not just for the environment, b

Not completely new

[loudmax]

Here's a paper from 1999 which also mentions 1934 as the hottest year in the United States:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07 / [nasa.gov]

The data they use shows global temperatures rising, while US temperatures are relatively flat over the past 100 years. So this doesn't seem to be completely new data. Kudos to McIntyre for finding and correcting an error in official data, but this isn't the refutation of carbon-driven climate change that some may make it out to be.

Some corrections; lessons

[FleaPlus]

The submission (which might be correct by the time you read this) currently says "1934 was the warmest year in the USA", when it should probably say something like "1934 was the warmest year in the USA since official temperature recordings began, rather than 1998, as was previously believed and widely reported."

In any case, this episode shows how important it is for scientists to be more open about their data and code, instead of trying to keep those things secret to maintain a competitive edge.