NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who has come under fire for being more activist than scientist, sent out a tweet yesterday predicting that 2016 would be the hottest year on record and said he was 99 percent sure of that claim. According to land-and-sea-based temperature stations, July 2016 was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1950 to 1980 timeframe. But when compared to the 1930s, July still is not a record breaker. But only if you don’t rely on an adjusted temperature dataset.
Schmidt, a director for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), is disseminating a chart on Twitter from a dataset that has been heavily adjusted to show a much larger warming trend than is actually occurring.
July data are out, and what do you know, still 99% chance of a new annual record in 2016. pic.twitter.com/ndSsbYuedA
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) August 15, 2016
The adjustment bureau
The adjustments have also come under heavy criticism because it uses a temperature dataset that wiped away the strong 1998 El Niño:
NASA Successfully Eliminates the 1998 El Nino https://t.co/T9AQhsyULY pic.twitter.com/wMBbcBznyC
— Climate Dispatch (@ccdeditor) August 16, 2016
Most of the world’s top meteorological organizations rely on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA for data prior to 1982. According to Tony Heller at Real Climate #Science, the 1930s will still go down as the hottest decade in U.S. history, long before carbon dioxide (CO2) levels started to rise. Temperatures across the country were over 100 degrees F across the country the week of July 25, 1936. And July 9, 1936, is still one of the hottest days in U.S. history.
