Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Altered climate temperature data

One of the issues I've brought up repeatedly here is the adjustments made to the historical temperature data.  The data is actually classified as "raw" (original, as read at the weather station) and "adjusted" (what is used to compute global temperature anomalies.  Someone asked the question just how easy is it to get the raw temperature data? After all, it would be nice to check if the adjustments make sense.

The answer seems to be not very easy at all:
I experienced a lack of will from the national meteorological institutes to freely share the tax paid data I asked for. I even had assistance from a large Danish Newspaper to ask the questions for me, send mails etc. I asked for raw data from datasets beginning before 1950, especially the non-coastal stations:



In my analysis of the Czech Republic today I use around 50 stations. The national Czech meteorological institute wanted 3450 EUR for 10 longer datasets (just yearly values).
You could expect fewer requests for raw data if it costs $5000 per request.  But everything is totally above boards at the national (tax supported) weather bureaus.

But kudos to the German Meteorological Bureau for a rapid (and free) response.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

One oh how many??? And people still believe what they read???