19 December 2010
For immediate release
Call on NIWA to admit latest temperature review is not valid
A call has been made on the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to admit that that there is no
valid statistical justification for its claims of a 0.91 degree C rise in New Zealand’s average temperature last
century. The call comes from Bryan Leyland, a spokesman for the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC), following
the release this week by NIWA of its revised Seven Station Series (7SS), which the agency claimed has been vindicated in
a peer review by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).
Mr Leyland has also called on the Minister of Science and Technology, Hon Dr Wayne Mapp to ask the chairman of NIWA to
discipline the general manager, John Morgan, for misleading the government and public. “Mr Morgan has misled New
Zealanders about the robustness of the latest 7SS review. In his media release this week, Mr Morgan wrote that NIWA had
asked the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to conduct the peer review to ‘ensure a thorough examination by an
independent, internationally respected, climate science organisation. Mr Morgan confirmed that the scientists from the
Bureau’s National Climate Centre concluded that the results and underlying methodology used by NIWA were sound.’”
Mr Leyland said Mr Morgan’s interpretation was at odds with what the BoM had actually said in its peer review: “The
review does not constitute a reanalysis of the New Zealand ‘seven station’ temperature record. Such a reanalysis would
be required to independently determine the sensitivity of, for example, New Zealand temperature trends to the choice of
the underlying network, or the analysis methodology. Such a task would require full access to the raw and modified
temperature data and metadata, and would be a major scientific undertaking. As such, the review will constrain itself to
comment on the appropriateness of the methods used to undertake the ‘seven station’ temperature analysis, in accordance
with the level of the information supplied.”
Mr Leyland said that when in December 2009, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the
Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for
the calculations”. NIWA responded on 29 January 2010, that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred
to the scientific literature. We leave it to the public to judge whether NIWA’s admission that it had lost the original
raw data was a convenient let-out or a failure to maintain proper records.
“Mr Morgan's press release also claimed that BoM's review ensured ‘the ideas, methods, and conclusions stood up in terms
of scientific accuracy, logic, and consistency’. This bears no relation to the extremely limited comment actually made
by BoM.”
Mr Leyland said Mr Morgan’s spin on what the BoM said in its peer review was another in a long line of misleading claims
by NIWA in response to a request by the Climate Science Coalition in February this year that the original 7SS was faulty
and should be removed from the NIWA website.
“Either Mr Morgan was misinformed by his own NIWA officials and is not sufficiently scientifically literate to know he
was being so misinformed, or he has deliberately misquoted what BoM has said. Either way, he is not a fit and proper
person to lead NIWA, and the Minister should take appropriate action,” said Mr Leyland.
“Another question the Minister needs to ask NIWA is why, in view of the BoM’s reference to analysis methodology, the 7SS
reassessment was not peer reviewed by someone appropriately qualified in the science of statistical analysis, given that
this latest 7SS, like its predecessor, now hurriedly removed from the NIWA website, is more of a statistical challenge
of balancing a range of temperatures from seven widely separated weather stations across the country, and trying to
arrive at an accurate and meaningful national average temperature, a figure that many climate and statistics scientists
around the world say is not possible.
Mr Leyland suggests that NIWA’s claim of vindication is premature, given that the complete 7SS review process is still a
work in progress. “In answer to a question in Parliament, the Minister, Dr Mapp, said: ‘NIWA's review of the
‘seven-station’ series will be supervised by Principal Climate Scientist Dr Brett Mullan. It will be peer reviewed
internally by NIWA Chief Climate Scientist Dr David Wratt and Principal Climate Scientist Dr James Renwick; and
externally by two respected non-NIWA climate scientists, who have yet to be appointed. In addition, NIWA’s intent,
during the 2010/11 financial year, is to submit the work described above as a paper to a scientific journal, where it
would be subject to the normal independent peer review process. This work has been incorporated into NIWA’s science
planning for 2010/11. NIWA expects the work to include calculation of the temperature trend and attaching statistical
confidence intervals for the resulting "seven-station series".
“Until that justification has been independently peer-reviewed and published, as promised, the new temperature record
should be termed ‘provisional’. Also, NIWA say that they are still working on the 'statistical confidence intervals'.
All the indications are that these margins of error will be large. Until these are calculated, the provisional
temperature record carries no credibility as a scientific document.
“In view of the fact that alleged warming of our country was one of the factors used to justify saddling New Zealanders
with extra costs of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), it is vital that any rising temperature claims by NIWA should be
able to withstand a high level of rigorous scrutiny that the BoM says is not possible,” said Mr Leyland.
“We find it intriguing that NIWA now tells us that most of the claimed warming occurred in the first half of last
century, whereas most of the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions did not become apparent until the second half of
last century, which bears out the assertions of climate skeptics that the minimal warming that ceased about 2002 was due
to natural cyclical changes, not GHG emissions and, that, therefore, there is no justification for ETS. The likely
continuation of the current cooling phase will make that increasingly evident during the next couple of years,” said Mr
Leyland.
He added that NZCSC will conduct its own detailed analysis of the latest NIWA 7SS as early as possible in the New Year,
and that it has been promised support from climate and statistics scientists at home and overseas whose qualifications
are impeccable. “If NIWA can’t get it right, we will”, Mr Leyland concluded.
ENDS