Long Term Temperature Records Contradict GISS Temperature Record

by Mark Fife, November 30, 2018 in WUWT


Conclusions:

We have looked at quality, long term records from three different regions. Two of these are on opposite sides of the North Atlantic, one is in the South Pacific. The two regions bordered by the North Atlantic are similar, but not identical. The record from Australia is only similar in that temperature has varied over time and has warmed in the recent past.

In all three regions there is no evidence of any strong correlation to CO2. There is ample evidence to support a conjecture of little to no influence.

There is ample evidence, widely shown in other studies, of localized influence due to development and population growth. The CET record has a correlation of temperature to CO2 of 0.54, which is the highest correlation of any individual record in this study. This area is also the most highly developed. While this does not constitute proof, it does tend to support the supposition the weak CO2 signal is enhanced by a coincidence between rising CO2 and rising development and population.

The efficacy of combining US records with those records from Greenland, Iceland, and the UK may be subject to opinion. However, there is little doubt combining records from Australia would create an extremely misleading record. Like averaging a sine curve and a cosine curve.

It appears the GISS data set does a poor job of estimating the history of temperature in all three regions. It shows a near perfect correlation to CO2 levels which is simply not reflected in any of the individual or regional records. There are probably numerous reasons for this. I would conjecture the reasons would include the influence of short-term temperature record bias, development and population growth bias, and data estimation bias. However, a major source of error could be attributed to the simple mistake of averaging regions where the records simply are too dissimilar for an average to yield useful information.