re: #911 Walter L. Newton

The dataset itself.

And… as new, updated temperature data was inserted in the 5 degrees by 5 degrees grid for any certain month/year of the Hadcrut3 database, did they…

1) Keep records of what the last temperature was.
2) Keep records of the actual location of where the temperature was recorded.

The 5 degree by 5 degree grids that divided the planet in the Hadcrut3 dataset are about the size of Nevada. It is very important to know the actual location, the source and the time/date of the temperature reading.

Do they have that information for all the grids, for all the months, for all the years from 1850 until 1999?

Tell you what Walter, as a matter of fact they do.

Here is the actual paper… Try to read it sometime.

The historical surface temperature dataset HadCRUT provides a record of surface temperature trends and variability since 1850. A new version of this dataset, HadCRUT3, has been produced; benefiting from recent improvements to the sea-surface temperature dataset which forms its marine component, and from improvements to the station records which provide the land data. A comprehensive set of uncertainty estimates has been derived to accompany the data: estimates of measurement and sampling error, temperature bias effects, and the effect of limited observational coverage on large-scale averages have all been made. Since the mid-20th century the uncertainties in global and hemispheric mean temperatures are small and the temperature increase greatly exceeds its uncertainty. In earlier periods the uncertainties are larger, but the temperature increase over the 20th century is still significantly larger than its uncertainty.

Now the point is, that we have very very reliable data on the increase in global temperatures. If you read this paper it goes into all of the gory details.

Actually read it for once and stop wasting my time.