Embarrassing that these people are just up the street.

Was Hansen using "canvas buckets" to measure US land temperatures, which also showed the same pattern?
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif

Or Arctic land temperatures?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

If the bucket stayed down long enough to reach equilibrium, the material is irrelevant.

Strange ........going thru all that effort without applying basic scientific procedures and standards to the process of water temperature taking ? ?

Either this practice was mandated, developed and applied by bureaucrats for the sole purpose of having something to do or this terribly weak source of data, and all subsequent analysis, should be totally thrown out as a result of pure incompetence !

Of course, a third option may exist ......... Thompson's study simply ignored the real problem and focused only on the symptom.

Lack of responsibility and accountability appears to have morphed into current day record taking AND keeping ...........but it's OK .......we'll just develop some home made algorithms and POOF!, the unwanted data will disappear !

Geeeez aren't models grand?

Revisionist history works when everyone is dead who remembers the events and circumstances as they happened.
Revisionist science hasn't prospects as sanguine since revisions will be revised as needed for the next granted study.

1978 was the coldest winter on record in the US, and came after two decades of worries about how we were headed into an ice age, including an (always reliable) CIA analysis.

Now we know that the cold weather and snow was a simple misunderstanding due to canvas buckets, and not the cold phase of the PDO.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1900/high-pass

The arrogance and ignorance of modern scientists seems to know no bounds.

This issue was taken up by Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre a year ago or so. Climate Models attempted to account for this "cooling" and now Phil Jones et als. admit that the mid 20th Century cooling was an artifact. I suppose everyone will have to "adjust upwards" the 40s through the 60s to account for the bathy changes. Too bad this wasn't brought out in the IPCC peer review process before the 2007 AR was released. It's not like this bit of info was secret. It calls into question the amount of GW that can be attributed to GHGs. It also begs the question as to why and how this was missed by the IPCC reviewers.

I am shocked by the shoddy scientific method of dr. thompson! it takes time for water to change temperature, and the length of time it takes to haul a bucket up from the sea surface to the deck of a ship is not long enough for the temperature to change. also, it is true that the engine room is hot, but the volume of water constantly flowing through the intakes on a ship assures that the temperature would not be affected by the heat within the engine room. the water is not 'within' the engine room long enough to start a rise in temperature. in fact, the pipes at the intake would be more likely near sea temperature, than engine room temperature, being cooled by the water inflow. also, the water temperature at the surface (via bucket) would be a different temperature than water taken from 10-20 feet below the surface (engine room intake level). the ramifications are that this amazing lack of standardization in methods throws ALL scientific 'measurements' into question!

More evidence of the failure of canvas submarine buckets, from Time Magazine 1974

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds - the so-called circumpolar vortex - that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms - the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

This was being looked at over a year ago at Climate Audit.

I recall some were ridiculing the effort.

Now vindicated.

What Bob Wallace said.

It seems quite possible that there were differences brought about by the two methods of sampling, but not the "hot" and "cold" biases as explained. To claim that the British method had a cold bias because of poor insullation of the bucket seems to presume that the air temperature was always colder than the water temperature.

More likely I think is the explanation Bob provided, where he pointed out that water intakes on a ship are located 3 meters or more below the surface and that bucket samples may have been taken directly from the surface. Day time? Night time? Wind? Are temps right at the surface colder due to evaporation?

There's still a lot here that goes unexplained.

Aaron

Brett:
In an effort to bring some sanity to this site wouldn't it be good if you had a position paper, that would explain Accuweathers position as to what you should expect from this blog. Perhaps this might diminish some of the trash talk that is so prevalent, and command a more Scientific approach. You have always been very open minded, so thank God for that!
KIPP

Reply: My own position paper? Is that what you mean, or AccuWeather.coms? AccuWeather.com does have a statement in the global warming center.

I agree with Bob. It may seem intuitive to some, but I'm not sure the bucket vs. engine intake makes a significant difference. A lot depends on where the intake is, the velocity of the water stream, the route the cooling water takes on its way to the engine, and exactly where in that system the sensor is. This probably varied a lot by vessel size and type as well. If the intake sensor is fixed at the point where the cooling water enters the engine, then it could very well introduce a warm bias. If the sensor was remote from the engine, then I don't see why it would not be accurate. Apparently they thought it was accurate at the time.

Has anyone actually tested the two methods and compared them to a reliable direct measurement at the same time and place? If not, then attributing part of the global temperature trend at the time to this change in measurement is sheer speculation.

Brett: your filters ate my post again.

Reply: I am sorry Bob. I will open it up and see if I can find them through the mounds of spam.

The Navy or the military in general has been gathering weather data for a long time. It doesn't surprise me that there would be inconsistencies in the methods of taking these measurements. Did each ship have a science officer? My guess is no, but please correct me if I am wrong. Would the US Navy collaborate with the British Navy to coordinate temperature gathering methodology? My guess is no, but again, correct me if I am wrong.

I am very skeptical that PH is a "real" scientist, as he is constantly spewing anti-scientist comments here. So PH, if Dr. Thompson had found that the US Navy's temps had a warm bias and that the cooler British Navy temps. were ok, you wouldn't be questioning his intelligence. Am I correct? Maybe you could offer a better way to interpret the data? Maybe you should be working for NASA? Since your google doctored charts are more accurate? Just asking. Have a great day! :)

Let's see if I really understand the "skeptic" mantra going on here.

Scientific analysis should based on ignoring all the different methods and instruments used data collection over a 60-year period of record and simply simply take the data as it was collected without applying any corrections and adjustments to correct for the apparent differences resulting from those obvious different data collection methods?

Scientific methods of measurement and analysis undergo periods of improvement in technology and accuracy over time. To simply suggest that we assume that data collected back in the 1940's has the same quality and reliability as data being collected today and any new methods of analysis should be ignored that may improve that older data set is simply being naiive. How do you assume a the current standardization of method for data collected over 60 years ago that used buckets to collect ocean water? I am sure instrument calibration methods weren't even close to what is being used today either, but how do you correct for that 60 years later?

Is this what the skeptics are claiming will give their preconceived conclusions credibility? I am sorry but I think even Joe D'Aleo of ICECAP.US performs adjustments on his data sets for long periods of record. For that I at least give him credit.

To put a little perspective on the ongoing "bias correction" being applied to historical sea surface temperatures since 1984, here is a Journal of Climate research paper that addressed this issue back in 2001:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(2002)015%3C0073%3ABCFHSS%3E2.0.CO%3B2

In that paper, the following quote spells out the types of bias adjustments that have been applied over the past 24 years:

"...the bias corrections include models of the evaporative cooling of canvas and wooden buckets. The modeled bias was affected by variables such as the marine air temperature and both ship and wind speed. To properly use the models, it was necessary to estimate how the relative number of canvas and wooden buckets changed with time, as well as how typical ship speeds and deck heights changed with time. These assumptions lead to a comprehensive model for estimating SST bias."

Figure 8 provides a nice graph on the noted temperature drop in the 1945 time frame. It is also the time when more observations were noted. What it appears to me from that graph is that the warmer temperatures prior to 1945 were based on 40% or less sampling coverage which may put into question the magnitude of the 1935-1940 temperature peak

The SST bias correction methods employed by Thompson, et. al. have been ongoing for over 24 years by other scientists. So it is not like scientists have all of a sudden decided to use this method just to simply correct the AGW curve as is being implied here. They just discovered information on how and when the old data collection methods were being used and found that corrections needed to be applied to the data after 1945. If they didn't do this, then someone on the skeptic side would surely jump all over them if the correction methods were not applied and the results showed the opposite effects.

We're predicting the future of the human race based on this?

Obviously we have solid science and rock hard facts to base GW on.....

Wow... Skewed results in a scientific study. Never heard of ANYTHING like that happening in such a completely chaotic and uncontrollable place like the sea. This is why real scientific studies are done in a completely controlled environment, to prevent skewing of results from conditions like that.

Which is also why studying something like the PLANETS warming is somewhere between incoclusive and flipping a coin.

Lets not forget, an astronomical stones throw away, there is a massive Nuclear reaction a million times the size of Earth. For all we know, the thing is just having a little sputter/spurt, considering its a titanically huge heat source, maybe is beating in and out, who knows? There just is no way to study that sort of power.

But that was interesting, Brett.

How many scientific studies have been performed to date using the faulty data? And how many are now worthless? Someone needs to be accountable for this.

Words of wisdom from the climate science geniuses at the Met, one year ago - right before it turned cold.

Rapid rise in global warming is forecast

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1805870.ece

Hi all - Steve commented on Climate Audit's year ago look & there is an update / revisit that Steve posted several days ago in response to Nature's recent discovery of what he had already documented.
If interested in this data quality problem it is an easy & worthwhile read irregardless of what your GW position is.

So the temperature dip is irrelevant since antique methods were used to measure this? However, if those same methods had shown increased temps, well then that would have been scientific fact? In the liberal playbook this is so. To manipulate these things is not only dishonest, but rails of communistic ideaology. 18 years ago Brett I was a veteran of observational weather. Long before politics took over your field. All of the computer models that have been quoted for the last 20 years have an accuracy rate of what?, 5 or 10%? or do we know? What say you Brett? Paul

Reply: Which computer models? Long range climate models or weather forecast models? One thing I know, a majority of them are a lot better than 5-10% accuracy.

Basically it seem Nature (Climate) is becoming a rag. As mentioned by many already on the net, this has been already described by Climate Audit and was therefore in the public domain. How dare they publish previous work of others

I was wondering what the 70's worry about the coming ice age was. According the that 1974 Time article, "Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years."

So they could still be right after all. Still, it sounded like the same alarmism, just with the opposite end of life as we know it worry.

I have always thought that the cooling during WWII might have had something to do with WWII itself. Surely a 5 year world war equals at last a fairly large volcano eruption in terms of aerosols injected into the atmosphere?

ClimateAudit looked at this last year. There is a current thread (climateaudit.org/?p=3116) that revisits the historical SST measurement mess that is reportedly 'resolved' in the Nature paper.

Steve M.'s summary-

"However, Thompson et al 2008 completely failed to grasp the significance of this graphic. The changeover to engine inlet measurements, previously attributed to a drop-dead date in 1941, actually took place AFTER 1970 (providing, of course, for a one-off WW2 adjustment ending in 1945). If the same ~0.3 deg C consistently used by Hadley Center is applied after 1970, as this information shows, this comes off the post-1970 SST trend (and has to be allocated much earlier, as proposed last year at Climate Audit, ) refuting the claims of Thompson et al that no substantial changes are required to the post-1965 record, a point that should be obvious to anyone thinking for 5 minutes about the problem.

Thompson et al 2008 observe that the 0.3 deg adjustment looms relatively large in 20th century terms. They observe:

'thus the amplitude of the drop is roughly 40% as large as the 0.75 deg C rise in [global temperature] from 1900 to 2006,'

If, as outlined here, this 0.3 deg C adjustment has to come off the post-1970 record, as implied by the information at hand, it is a very large proportion of the post-1970 temperature increase, which is much reduced and allocated earlier in the century. Because the effect is so large relative to observed changes, the knock-on impact for attribution and modeling will not be small - whatever way it goes."