1998 was NOT the warmest year on record

[steevo]

Since the BBC also touted 1998 as being the warmest year on record, which GW advocates confidently proclaim as proof of man-made cause, I hope its OK to post this recent revelation and correction by NASA. Granted, what the Beeb has stated up till this point concerning this 'fact' cannot be judged intentional bias but this new info is so very important in helping to refute the side they've clearly chosen on this debate and doubtful they will reconsider.

Michael Asher at the DailyTech

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.

[ascendinglark]

I wonder when the BBC will report the following fact - the point in the late 80's and early 90's at which average temperatures seemed to slope upwards dramatically coincides perfectly with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the closure of hundreds of their measuring stations in the cold north.

[steevo]

Very interesting Al considering a compilation is taken of all station readings to analyze their data. There is a lot of factual evidence directly related GW advocates either do not discuses or place in a predisposed framework to discredit. I'm kinda wondering if Teddy should have just left this category for GW discussion BBC or not?

BTW, I've read the overwhelming majority of meteorologists in our country don't believe in man-made GW. They are well aware of the nature and history of temperature variation.

[Teddy Bear]

I agree with you Steevo that the above article you posted IS pertinent in this category, both to educate us and to provide something to measure the way the BBC covers slants it.

I do want to keep a BBC dedicated topic for this particular bias, but I would welcome discussion or postings of non specific BBC items of interest or relevance. As well as those that already exist, perhaps the Don't Have Your Say area sould be used. It's those facts that the BBC would rather not know or hear about that it was set up for.