The National Climatic Data Center wrongly declared July 2012 as America‘s hottest July ever — and hasn‘t corrected itself.
Frontier Center for Public Policy advisers Tom Harris, the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, and Tim Ball, a former University of Winnipeg climatology professor, give ample reasons to doubt that NCDC claim and its ranking of 2012 as the warmest year on record and one of the top two years for extreme U.S. weather.
Writing in The Washington Times, they note:
• Recording many temperatures only to the closest whole degree means its claim that July 2012‘s average exceeded July 1936‘s record by 0.2 degrees is within the data‘s margin of error and therefore “not meaningful.”
• Simply averaging just daily maximums and minimums, it ignores temperature variations throughout days. July 2012 nights were a bit warmer; July 1936 days, much hotter.
• The NCDC issues monthly reports before its temperature database is complete. Including data filed on paper, July 2012‘s average was almost 0.7 degrees lower than initially claimed — and almost 0.5 degrees cooler than July 1936‘s record.
Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks 2012 as the 10th hottest year globally, with an average temperature 0.2 degrees cooler than 2010‘s record.
With such inconvenient truths, the NCDC will have to twist science even more brazenly to support the jobs-killing, anti-growth political agenda of the cluster-clucking global warming alarmists.
