The following is submitted without comment on the global warming debate. It is intended as a tool to evaluate the data, not to take a side.
|
Data Source/Type
|
Advantages
|
Problems
|
| Satellite measurements / Global | Very accurate, though some correction must be made for cloud cover. | Limited Data (<40y) |
| Ground measurements / Global | More than a century of data (although the author is uncertain if this is really long enough to be considered an advantage). | Inconsistent siting practices produces noise that reduces the sensitivity of the data. (i.e. in the US a survey of 948 of the 1221 stations found that only 10% of sites met the National Weather Services siting criteria [see surfacestations.org]) |
| Antarctic glacial melting and buildup / Southern Hemispheric | Proper ice coring can produce data going back on the order of 100,000 years. | Size and distribution of ice sheet makes calculating thermal lag difficult. |
| Arctic ice cover / Northern Hemispheric | Can be estimated from naval observations for almost 400 years. | Is almost entirely over water so thermal lag is large (author estimates it yields a three to five year average of northern hemisphere temperatures). |
| Greenland glacial melting and buildup / Northern Hemispheric |
Proper ice coring can produce data going back several thousand years. Thermal lag is low; yields a nearly real time annual measurement. |
Longitudinally biased. There is some data distortion during ice ages due to surrounding ice on the water. |
Karl Barber 3/6/2010
Believe it or not I woke up to this this morning. Feel free to replicate this page.