Comments on: Temperature adjustments science or art?

By: Richard Treadgold

Richard Treadgold — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:08:17 +0000

NIWA have indeed repeatedly stated that the data and the methodology are “available” and have criticised the Coalition as troublemakers for asking for the adjustments instead of producing their own.

The CCG blog has constantly pointed out the various deficiencies in NIWA’s answers to us and in the Parliament, such as in Rodney Hide remains rightly honourable and many others.

In this guest post, Barry has gone further, by delving into the actual dataset and the adjustments newly made by Mullan and comparing them with published papers and with Salinger’s newly-available thesis. His work is outstanding and provides a direct denial of what David Wratt, James Renwick and their supporters have said, for what they said was the method was not the method.

It will be interesting to see if Hot Topic or Sciblogs make any response to his factual, well-reasoned demolition of NIWA’s latest work on the national temperature. I don’t expect NIWA will respond just now, but concentrate on the approaching legal suit.

By: Bob D

Bob D — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:55:06 +0000

Hi Quentin, I believe that's partly true, it seems to be a balancing act between precipitation at the centre and melting/ablation at the edges. Dr Cliff Collier (Univ. of WA) wrote a nice summary a few years back, not sure if you've seen it before. -Bob D

By: Quentin F

Quentin F — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:42:42 +0000

TVNZ CLOSEUP last night.
I see they (TVNZ) are firmly pushing the AGW agenda again. Pity the populace don’t seem to rate climate as very important by their own survey! maybe people are getting it now.

By: Quentin F

Quentin F — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:39:59 +0000

Surely the glaciers retreat or advance due to snowfall at higher altitudes. Therefore if theres a period beit a century or 2 where NZ has fewer cold fronts that produce snowfall at say above 2000m then there is less feed for the ice so it retreats and vise versa. Sounds like the circum antarctic current and PDO to me over the decades.

By: Clarence

Clarence — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:05:01 +0000

I understood the whole purpose of the Hokitika paper NIWA published in February was to show how the 7SS adjustments in the Salinger thesis worked.

NIWA said many times that the raw data was available in the Climate Database, and the methodology was fully described in the Salinger thesis, so anybody could put those two together and replicate all the adjustments. Finally, they published the Hokitika paper to illustrate how easy it all was.

And then we find that NIWA found it too hard. For the large 1912 adjustment, Mullan’s paper wasn’t able to reproduce Salinger’s method of comparing with Dunedin, Lincoln, Christchurch and Nelson, and compared with Auckland instead.

So will NIWA now offer another example which DOES apply Salinger methodology?

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:02:46 +0000

is not a methodology known to science

Beautiful understatement, Barry

By: (not so) Silent

(not so) Silent — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:37:13 +0000

Fantastic fisking of Mullan. Thank you for all your extensive research and effort.

By: Bob D

Bob D — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:59:12 +0000

A very good summary. Nicely done, Barry.