I had been admiring Steve McIntyre’s demolition of the Steig et al 2009 claims (much promoted in the Australian media) that Antarctic was “warming after all”. I think this is the first article on Climate Audit, then several others followed into February. Try not to miss, When Harry Met Gill

It turns out there were errors in Automatic Weather Station (AWS) data, surprise, surprise.

Also enjoying reading of the discomfort from UnRealClimate as their paradigm unraveled on the world stage. While digging around in Antarctic data to check on the claims of Steig et al 2009 to have found a West Antarctic “Hot Spot”, I thought I would check first what UAH satellite lower troposphere trends showed for the region from 180 west to 60 west and south of 60 south, also what GISS land data showed for that region. Using data from the KNMI Climate Explorer.

Both GISS and UAH MSU lower troposphere agree there is no trend 1979-2008 for that region which includes the Steig et al “hot spot”, see maps at Climate Audit. You can try the sector from 70 south too, still great agreement between GISS and UAH that there is no warming.

Clearly Steig et al should have checked their data against other datasets and they might have been lead to discover the errors in their AWS data and could have saved taxpayers the trouble of paying to publish their dubious claims.

Then I was curious what SST data showed for the 120 degree sector from 180 west to 60 west and south of 60 south, which includes the Steig et al “hot spot”; I came across these odd aberrations in the latest HadISST1 data.

HadSST2 which has been around for years showed just scraps of data in the same sector. Fair enough, I guess not much shipping ventures down there without good reason.

Getting curious I checked HadISST1 for the remaining 240 degree sector south of 60S, from 60W to 180E (Int. Date Line), you can see the aberrations in this sector partly cancel out the non-climatic errors in the Steig et al sector.

Getting too much for me.

So how on earth has the latest HadISST1 data got to be so complete and display these various non-climatic trends ? What was discovered between HadSST2 and the construction of HadISST1?

Checking HadISST1 for some other latitude bands in the Southern Hemisphere.

First, south of 70S, are all these flat line trends some sort of data padding ?

Next 70S to 60S, we are starting to get accustomed to strange.

60S to 50S, whole new trend emerges, never before been seen.

Gets a bit more normal looking near the equator.

It looks obvious to me that questionable WWII period corrections have inadvertently found their way into far southern ocean data to produce these surreal results over a very large area of ocean. Just backs up what I have said for years that much SST data has little integrity and longer term trends using SST’s can be dubious. One thing is for sure, we will never know exactly how this taxpayer funded shambles came about.

One last plot, this time in the far north, from 80N to 85N, more data padding ?

Oh, and remember when policymakers say, “the science is settled”.