Climate Change: Staggering 92 Percent of USHCN Temperatures are Estimated Values

Most scientists agree that climate change is occurring as more and more greenhouse gases enter our planet's atmosphere. But Did you know that most of the measurements that are taken are actually estimated? A new analysis of the U.S. Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) shows that only about 8 to 1 percent of the data survives in the climate record as unaltered data.

Adjustment models applied to GHCN data produce estimated values for about 66 percent of the information to the consumers of the data. However, there are differences between GHCN and USHCN data.

The USHCN process produces unique output that shows the time-of-observation estimate for each station. In addition, it attempts to estimate values for missing data, a process known as infilling. This infilled data isn't used by the GHCN. The third difference is that homogenized data for the U.S. stations produced by USHCN differs from the adjusted data for the same U.S. stations produced by the GHCN.

So what does this all mean? According to John Goetz, who analyzed the data in an article on WUWT, about 92 percent of U.S. surface temperature data consists of estimated or altered values. In fact, very little raw data finds its way into climate models.

Due to the incomplete data, most climate models actually show an increase in temperatures that's more drastic than what is actually occurring. Needless to say, climate skeptics are quick to jump on this particular fact.

While there is some issues with the data, most scientists still state that rising temperatures are still occurring. With that said, it remains to be seen whether this recent examination of this data is looked at a bit more closely by researchers.

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