I found an “article in the BBC about weather balloon-based temperature readings from the 1970s”:http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/4152576.stm rather amusing. As a scientist, I am daily faced with revelations about new understanding of the behavior of my experiment. This is no different; however, the data taken by these weather balloons is often used to shed skepticism on the otherwise overwhelming body of evidence for global warming.<\/p>\n
\nApparently, the thermometers used on these balloons in the 1970s were unshielded, allowing them to be exposed to the sun’s rays. As my wife will tell you, when you hang a thermometer you hang it in the **shade** to get an accurate reading of the ambient air temperature. Oh, how many times she’s reminded me of that!<\/p>\n
\nSounds like these scientists in the ’70s could have used Jodi’s insight. The measurements from these balloons were skewed high, suggesting that atmospheric temperatures would have *peaked* in the 1970s and have dropped since. However, correcting for this skew one finds a steady warming trend of 0.4F per decade, according to the article.<\/p>\n
\nDoh! Now that’s an excellent demonstration of “systematic error” in an experiment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found an “article in the BBC about weather balloon-based temperature readings from the 1970s”:http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/4152576.stm rather amusing. As a scientist, I am daily faced with revelations about new understanding of the behavior of my experiment. This is no different; however, the data taken by these weather balloons is often used to shed skepticism on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-science","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}