NASA Quietly Fixes Global Warming Data Error

Global warming alarmists have been touting 1998 as the warmest year on record based on some temperature data provided by NASA. Upon further examination by outside experts, a Y2K bug was found in the data and when finally (and very quietly) corrected, suddenly 1998 was no longer the hottest year - 1934 is. DailyTech reports it this way:

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide [McIntyre ]with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

[McIntyre] notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the US global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

Then again– maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.

James Hansen has been a fly in the global warming ointment for some time, openly challenging President Bush on the issue. He's been quite the media hog...until, that is, there was a correction in his data. He's strangely quiet about that.

Just to show you this news hasn't gotten out yet, just look at this story from yesterday:

Natural weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years and will continue to keep temperatures flat through 2008, a study released Thursday said.

But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record to date, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said.