NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has declared 2007 the second-warmest year on record, tying with 1998 for the title. 2005 remains the hottest, according to the agency. Researchers said, to no one's surprise, that the greatest warming occurred in the Arctic. "As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases," said James Hansen, director of GISS. But in case you're not comfortable with second-warmest, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came out with its own analysis concluding 2007 was the fifth-warmest year on record.
We've Got to Do Something About That, Stat!
NASA declares 2007 second-warmest year on record, NOAA says it’s fifth-warmest 4
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17 Jan 2008 11:37 AM
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:13 am
18 Jan 2008
They can't even agree on the temperature.
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Boyscientist Posted 2:22 am
18 Jan 2008
NASA and NOAA (nor anybody) can say which year was the second warmest, or the fifth warmest planet-wide. Such differing results are only useful to statisticians or mathematicians.
They are reporting a different "ranking" of the top years according to the record as they have calculated it. Read the entire article and you are reminded that the error variance among the top years is sometimes 10X the differences! Good grief!
They can just barely claim that 2007 is "among" the hottest five years of record. Nobody can say that 2007 is the second or fifth "hottest". The data simply doesn't support it.
It's fair and good to report results. It's unwise to avoid using the term "not significant" earlier in the report. And maybe a little dishonest.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 2:45 am
18 Jan 2008
Shouldn't the fact that it was among the top 5 at all (forget whether it was second, third, or whatnot), be concern enough?
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Boyscientist Posted 5:15 am
18 Jan 2008
I haven't actually read anything more than the standard press releases, and the media echo-box. If we look deeper we will conclude......
Two major science agencies rank the hottest years. They get slightly different results which are not significant. Nothing changes whatsoever. Two different great big piles of calculations result in a small meaningless difference. Not bad really.
I give 2:1 odds in favor of NOAA. It's true NASA sent men to the moon 20 years ago with computers less sophisticated than our wrist watches, but NOAA got heap more atmospheric scientists, and more "stat" guys.
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