From Anthony Watts:
There’s a new paper out by Dr. Edward Long that does some interesting comparisons to NCDC’s raw data (prior to adjustments) that compares rural and urban station data, both raw and adjusted in the CONUS.
The paper is titled Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets. In it, Dr. Edward Long states:
“The problem would seem to be the methodologies engendered in treatment for a mix of urban and rural locations; that the ‘adjustment’ protocol appears to accent to a warming effect rather than eliminate it. This, if correct, leaves serious doubt for whether the rate of increase in temperature found from the adjusted data is due to natural warming trends or warming because of another reason, such as erroneous consideration of the effects of urban warming.”
He then displays this striking graph of the raw (i.e. not corrected adjusted by scientists) temperatures:
Of course the first thing to notice is that the urban temperatures show most of the warming since ~1970 and the rural temperatures are mostly flat. Of course it's well known that cities are generally hotter than rural areas because the buildings and concrete trap heat.
But what's truly, truly amazing is the next graph, which shows the corrected adjusted version:
One would've thought that the correction adjustment would've been to remove this urban heat island effect, but instead, it has been to assume the rural areas are somehow artificially cold in recent times and therefore need to be adjusted upwards.
I don't know if the paper is at all valid, but if it is, it's just incredible.
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