The Guardian Exposed in Climate Science Fake News
More fake news from the Guardian:
Spring is arriving ever earlier in the northern hemisphere. One sedge species in Greenland is springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the US, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC.
The evidence comes from those silent witnesses, the natural things that respond to climate signals. The relatively new science of phenology – the calendar record of first bud, first flower, first nesting behaviour and first migrant arrivals – has over the last three decades repeatedly confirmed meteorological fears of global warming as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels.
Researchers say the evidence from the plant world is consistent with the instrumental record: 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, and it was the third record-breaking year in succession. Sixteen of the hottest years ever recorded have happened in the 21st century.
Of course, when we consider the facts we get a totally different story. Take Greenland, for instance. The article refers to a study in West Greenland, which looks at 12 years of observations.
When we look at the official DMI data for SW Greenland, we find that spring temperatures have indeed risen since 2000, but have simply returned to the levels seen in the 1920s to 1940s. In fact, spring temperatures were unusually low in the 1980s and 90s. There is also a similar pattern with winter temperatures.
http://www.dmi.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Rapporter/TR/2014/tr14-06.pdf
As for Washington DC, the claim is based on using a 1981-2010 baseline. If we look at daily temperature records in spring at the long running USHCN station of Oakland, MD, we find that the hottest days occurred in the 1940s.
Night time temperatures were also higher in the 1940s and 50s.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=prog.select_d9k.sas&_SERVICE=default&id=186620
Being a decadal study, this analysis from CDIAC only runs to 2010. But statewide spring temperatures show no upward trend since 2001. Indeed three of the last four years have been below average.
We find the same pattern with spring mean temperatures at Oakland:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_425724170070_1_0/station.txt
And for good measure, temperatures in February there. Unfortunately, GISS have no data for 2016, but February 2015 was one of the coldest on record.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_425724170070_1_0/station.txt
According to Weather Underground, mean temperatures at Oakland last month were 2C. While it was certainly mild, it was not as warm as years such as 1925, 1932 and 1949, which all got close to 4C.
In February 1932, for instance, temperatures reached 76F, compared to a top temperature of 70F last month. Such temperatures nowadays would send Guardian readers into apoplexy!
From start to finish, the Guardian report is fraudulent fake news, based in turn on junk science and cherry picked, dodgy data.
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