You're never gonna believe this, people, but just like Steven Goddard, Anthony Watts goes in for this "NASA-GISS is doing something spooky and secret to the data" crap, too. Back in 2012, Watts felt the need to uncritically mirror-blog an article by Randall Hoven, where he reveals himself to be an impatient, impetuous fool:
I thought I’d update that analysis to include July’s and August’s temperatures. To my surprise, NASA’s entire temperature record, going back to January 1880, changed between NASA’s June update and its August update. I could not just add two more numbers to my spreadsheet. The entire spreadsheet needed to be updated.
NASA does summarize its "updates to analysis," but the last update it describes was in February. The data I looked at changed sometime after early July.
In short, the data that NASA makes available to the public, temperatures over the last 130 years, can change at any time, without warning and without explanation. Yes, the global temperature of January 1880 changed some time between July and September 2012.
Well, no Obama mind control accusations this time, unlike with Goddard, which is a relief, but we still seem to be stuck with the now predictable denier wet diaper bellyaching about NASA changing things "without warning and without explanation," so let's investigate, shall we?
Looking at the GISS update announcement page that Hoven links to, and that I've linked to numerous times now myself while addressing Goddard's extreme paranoia, we do see an update in February, 2012, and then nothing until September, 2012.
February 17, 2012: The analysis was redone on Feb 17 after learning from NOAA/NCDC that the operational version of GHCN v3 was only made available that afternoon.
September 26, 2012: NOAA/NCDC replaced GHCN v3.1 by GHCN v3.2. Hence the GISS analysis is based on that product starting 9/14/2012. Version v3.2 differs from v3.1 by minor changes in the homogenization of the unadjusted data. A description of the modifications in the adjustment scheme and their effects are available here.
Well, gosh, Hoven is moaning and groaning about changes that happened from June to August, 2012, and that September GISS bullet says the analysis began using the GHCN v3.2 on Sept. 14th, 2012. That means he's onto something, right? Let's see where that "description of the modifications" link takes us...
The software used to perform operational updates and reprocessing of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to correct coding errors and to improve its run-time efficiency. In particular, coding errors were corrected in the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) that had been identified during the course of a project led by Mr. Daniel Rothenberg in July 2011...These software changes were combined with other minor changes to improve debugging and processing efficiency. A total of eight software modifications were made...With v3.1.0, the adjusted annual global land surface air temperature trend for 1901‐2011 was 0.94°C/Century. Using data from version 3.2.0 this trend is 1.07°C/Century.
OK, no timing indicators per se, though the error corrections apparently started in 2011 well before the public release date in September, 2012, but there is a "Where can I obtain additional information about the changes that were made and their impacts on global temperature trends?" section which takes us to a NOAA/NCDC technical report dated August 1, 2012, which again mentions software bug fixes for the September release of v3.2.0. Another dead end? Well, no, not really, because interestingly enough, with a little online digging, you can learn here that on the same day, August 1, 2012, NOAA released another technical report regarding fixes made and implemented in GHCN-M v3.1.0...
The software used to perform operational updates of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to improve its run-time efficiency...The impact on annual means resulted in a change in century-scale global and US trends of less than 0.002°C/Decade. The software modifications are incorporated into a new release of GHCN-M, version 3.1.0.
There ya have it. Nothing mysterious and secret taking place anywhere. There were ongoing code corrections since July 2011, some of which were applied to calculations in v3.1.0 before September, 2012, and some to v3.2.0 during and after September, 2012.
Hoven couldn't be bothered to research GHCN-M v3.1.0 technical reports, or wait ONE DAY for the helpful v3.2.0 mention to appear on the GISS update page (his article is dated 9/25/2012, and the v.3.2.0 explanation was posted on 9/26/2012), and, plain and simply, Watts and Goddard are nothing more than two paranoid peas in a pod.
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