## Thursday, December 10, 2009

### There's something seriously odd about "NAPIER NELSON PK"

If you are messing with the Met Office temperature data there's one file which is really odd: 93/933710. It has temperature data for NAPIER NELSON PK at (-39.5, -176.8) There is actually a Napier Nelson Park in New Zealand but not quite at those coordinates. And I can't find a reference to a WMO station with the number 933710.

But leave that aside.

The really odd thing is the data in the file. There's a mismatch between the 1961-1990 data (which is present and complete) and the Normals (i.e. the averages for 1961-1990). According to the file the Normals come from the data itself, but they are off: almost consistently by 1C.

Here are the differences (Normals as is reported; Calculated is my calculation from the file):
Month    Normals    Calculated   DifferenceJan      19.5       18.31        -1.19Feb      19.0       17.94        -1.06Mar      17.8       16.68        -1.12Apr      14.8       13.85        -0.95May      12.0       10.87        -1.13Jun       9.7        8.55        -1.15Jul       9.0        8.05        -0.95Sep      11.9       10.88        -1.02Oct      14.1       13.04        -1.06Nov      16.2       15.05        -1.15Dec      18.2       16.94        -1.26

So the normal temperature for this station is 1C higher than the observations indicate. That would end up meaning that any trend is actually lower than the real figures.

Very odd. And very odd that's almost exactly 1C off. Why? Some systematic error? Human intervention?

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Phil said...

I haven't had the time to dig deep into any NZ data, but there's a debate raging over there, hotly (sorry!) defended by the scientists.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/nz-temps-warming-real-record-robust-sceptics-wrong/

http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/nz-temperature-rise-clear

Maybe somewhere in the NIWA's papers there's an explanation for this anomaly.

Phil

11:29 AM