Temperature Measurements are Manipulated.

After the climategate files were revealed, critics started looking at temperature measurements, and everywhere they looked they found fabrication to show a temperature increase where raw data showed little or none. So Joseph D'Aleo, Anthony Watts and E. Michael Smith did a study which is described below.

The most significant fact of temperature measurements, and therefore global warming, is that surface measurements by thermometers cannot produce a scientifically justifiable measure of global warming. Such measurements weren't designed for that; they were designed for localized weather. There is no uniform methodology of reading, no uniform physical requirements and no proper maintenance for the stations. There are very few stations in impoverished countries, very few in extreme latitudes (cold areas) and none over the oceans.
Then the concept of surface means nothing in the three dimensional atmosphere. Ocean air near the surface equilibrates with water temperature, but how far up? Vertical mixing varies over land due to mountains and hot spots.
Surface temperature has no meaning; so how could it be measured? Fakes call it surface temperature in disregard for scientific legitimacy, because the measuring devices are located at the surface of the earth. There is no real number to be acquired, which is why frauds tailored their results from the beginning.

It's important for nonscientists to realize that this is what always happens in science. Outcome directed science doesn't work. You can't get any result you want. In modern science, you start with a new method of measurement and take whatever result occurs. Surprising results always occur with new methods of measurement. In other words, real science would require that legitimate procedures for measuring temperature be developed first.

Journalists and nonscientists will often say that it's ok to adjust temperature measurements due to their limitations, as long as it is done properly. That's politics not science.

The whole purpose of science is to remove the human element from questions about nature. Otherwise, who decides whether the adjustments are proper or not? CRU said they adjusted properly; others say they did it wrong. See Harry Read Me Files

Real science says such faulty thermometer measurements are not useable in science, period. If the public wants adjusted thermometer measurements, it needs to be called something other than science.
Lawrence Solomon Arcticle

This subject is the essence of the climategate files, because the CRU was in the temperature measuring business. And, temperature measurements create the underlying basis for the so-called settled science. This is because the settled science is nothing more than a fudge factor for calculating how much heat will result from an increase in CO2. The fudge factor is explained on the page titled Fake Equations. Christopher Monckton has a detailed review of the fabrication of temperature data here.

Satellites are much more reliable in measuring temperatures than thermometers, because they can cover large areas, while thermometers are located in few areas and are much influenced by their environment. Then maintenance of land based weather stations is a mess.

Thermometer measurements would be a scientific fraud for the study of climate even if they were totally accurate. First, they do not exist over the 70% of the earth covered by oceans. Then there are very few in the impoverished countries. So something like 10% of the earth's surface is actually measured. Then localized effects are highly variable for unknown reasons. Why was there a severe drought in the US state of Georgia for several years while nearby states were flooding? No one knows. Much of the variation is obvious due to changing environments which human activity creates.

A few years ago, satellite measurements were showing no significant increase in global temperatures, while thermometers showed a small increase. So satellite data was adjusted to conform to thermometer measurements.

One of the explanations given for altering the satellite measurements was that near-earth satellites gradually slow down over time due to thin atmosphere which they pass through. Slowing down would move them closer to the earth and create a higher read. So the satellite data would have needed to be lowered; but it was increased. The adjustment was in the opposite direction of the explanation. The frauds obviously did no analysis of satellite motion; they just faked the data and lied about it.

The net result of the fake temperature measurements was to show a 0.6°C average, global temperature increase over the past 150 years, of which 0.2°C was attributed to the primary effect by CO2 and 0.4°C was attributed to a multiplier effect from water vapor. Notice that the claimed 0.2°C effect by CO2 over 150 years is equal to 0.0013°C per year or 0.00011°C per month. Such miniscule "climate change" could not cause anything noticeable to happen on a yearly or monthly basis.

Here's how the contriving is done. This graph shows raw data in blue, adjusted data in red, for Kremsmuenster, Austria. The earlier the data, the more it was adjusted downward. After 1970, upward adjustment begins. The contrived result shows a sharp increase, where the raw data shows no increase.

Located at American Thinker

Here's how it was done for Scandinavia: "Scandinavian temperatures when represented by IPCC cannot be recognized in the real data from the Scandinavian temperature stations:"

Located at Hide the Decline

Here's another method of showing an increase: First do a correction, which shows low; and toward the end shift to the uncorrected, which shows high. These variations in method show deliberate and concerted effort to contrive a false increase.

For Stockholm, at Hide The Decline

Harry_Read_Me Files — notes by a programmer trying to handle temperature measurements at CRU

New Report on Corruption of Surface Temperture Records
By Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts
January 23, 2010

"Authors veteran meteorologists Joe d’Aleo and Anthony Watts analyzed temperature records from all around the world for a major SPPI paper, Surface Temperature Records – Policy-driven Deception? The startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant “global warming” at all in the 20th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”.

That is to say, leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century."

Summary for Policy Makers:
(found at Heliogenic Climate Change)

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.
2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.
3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.
4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.
5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.
7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.
8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.
9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.
10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.
11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.
12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.
13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.
14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”
15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.”

Full Report at Science and Public Policy Org

External Links:

New Zealand Temperature Measurements Faked - New Zealand Climate Science Coalition , April 26, 2010

Junkscience: Climategate Distortion of Temperature Data - S. Fred Singer, Canada Free Press, January 25, 2010

Investigation of Fake Temperature Measurements - Reported by KUSI January 14, 2010

The manipulation of numbers is discussed by Patrick Michaels here:
Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess
The Wall Street Journal. April 18, 2008

Hansen's standard of manipulating numbers is discussed here:
Dissing Hansen - by Peter Glover

More on Hansen's manipulation of numbers:
Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler? A tale of two thermometers
Steven Goddard, The Register, May 2, 2008

The mess of weather stations is discussed by Anthony Watts here:
Where Thermometers Go To Die - How Not to Measure Temperature

John Christy compares land based measurements with satellite data:
What if global-warming fears are overblown?

PatricK Michaels describes how the thermometer data disappeared:
The Dog Ate Global Warming
September 23, 2009

A study by New Zealand Climate Science Coalition checked temperature data for New Zealand and found fraudulent adjustments to show an increase where there was none.
New Zealand Temperature Fraud — pdf, 487Kb
November 25, 2009

Antarctica temperature based on one station out on tip of warm peninsula.
Antarctica Temperature Fraud
Jeff Id, Air Vent, December 13, 2009

CRU cherry-picked Rusian temperature data to show increase.
Russian temperature data falsified by CRU
James Delingpole, The Telegraph, UK, December 16, 2009

Survey of surface stations show a mess.
surfacestations.org
Anthony Watts and Volunteers