Earth Surface Temperature Data Too Scant, No Certainty. Southern Hemisphere Stations Show Cooling Since 1880!

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

It is a fact that land surface temperature records going back before 1900 globally are very few and sparse. Worldwide there are only 116 stations Version 3, unadjusted datasets that go all the way back to January 1880 – most of them are located in USA and Europe (northern hemisphere).

1 dataset per 3 million sq km

That’s just 116 stations for measuring the earth’s 510.1 million km². Obviously the data are nowhere near sufficient to allow any conclusions that have any degree of certainty.

Only a dozen for the entire southern hemisphere

What is astonishing is that of these 116 stations, less than a dozen are located in the southern hemisphere. Yes, 10 stations for 250 million sq km of earth surface. Discerning a hemispheric mean temperature from them would be something like counting the number of people living in Greenland and then extrapolating the earth’s population from it. In other words, the result is just a meaningless guess.

Former NASA researcher: Data too scarce, no certainty

So statements claiming that the Earth’s mean temperature for the time around 1880 is known are in truth fraught with huge uncertainty.

“This is nothing new,” wrote Japanese climate expert Dr. Mototaka Nakamura in an email to NTZ on the topic of earlier surface coverage.

“We simply did not have many observing stations in the 1800s and early 1900s. They can produce ‘new data sets’ and claim that they have ‘better data sets’ all day long, but they just can’t make any meaningful difference for periods up to 1980,” said the former NASA researcher.

Southern hemisphere

For the southern hemisphere we do have from NASA ten long-term, Version 3 unadjusted temperature datasets, going back to 1880. Today we will examine them to look at what they tell us.

4 of 7 Australia charts show cooling

Let’s begin with Australia. Here the large country down under has 7 such datasets going back to 1880, at the locations depicted by the following chart:

Note how the entire western part of the country is totally void of data.

To put it in perspective, Australia’s vast 7,692,024 square kilometers have been covered long-term by only 7 stations, which means an average of one station for every 1.1 million sq. km. – an area that is 3 times larger than Germany! By comparison today, the German DWD national weather service uses about 2000 stations to monitor the country’s weather conditions.

Plotting the data available from these 7 long-term stations, we get the following result:

Here we see in fact that 4 of the 7 stations have a cooling trend, not something we’d expect amid all the alarmist talk of warming.

South Africa: Capetown shows no warming trend

The lone southern hemisphere Version 3 unadjusted dataset coming from Africa was produced by a station Capetown, South Africa. What follows is a plot of the data:

Here as well we see no warming since 1880. And notice the cyclic nature of the temperature changes. And it’s remarkable to see how strongly Capetown temperature behavior lines up with the AMO:

Of course the scientists at NASA altered the V3 unadjusted data and created a V4 “unadjusted” dataset, one whose plot is very different today and obscures the potential link to the AMO.

Argentina showed no warming

Like Africa, South America also has only one single Version 3, unadjusted dataset going back to 1880, located at Bahia Blanca, Argentina:

This data set also shows no warming since 1880, and warming only appears after NASA scientists when back and changed the data, as shown above.

Antarctica

Though the South Pole has no stations going back to 1880, a number of stations were set up starting in the mid 20th century by a variety of countries. Here’s what these datasets show since 1979:

The East Antarctic stations show a lot of cooling and very little warming, according to a 2018 publication by Clem et al.

And at the Antarctic Peninsula, which we hear is supposed to be melting down:

Here as well we see more cooling than warming. Clearly scientists would have an easier time supporting cooling.

Take-aways:

1. The global surface temperature data going back to 1880 is far to scarce to allow any trend conclusions with any certainty.
2. Data on the temperature history of the southern  hemisphere before 1900 is practically non-existent.
3. The data that are available support cooling more than warming.
4. NASA finds warming only by altering the data.
5. The data from the South Pole also support cooling more than warming.

Globally, the surface temperature data is inadequate in volume, and what we do have have been altered to fit a political agenda. The best we have are satellite data, and they go back only 40 years.