Blue Planet News

U.S. temperature data compiled and reported by NASA since 2000 contained errors that caused the organization to falsely claim a number of recent years were the hottest or among the hottest on record, scientists have discovered.
High-Profile Scare Stories

During recent years, the early January news cycle has been dominated by high-profile stories claiming U.S. temperatures during the preceding year ranked at or near the top of the warmest years on record.

The Washington Post, for example, published a front-page article on January 10, 2007 titled “Climate Experts Worry as 2006 is Hottest Year on Record in U.S.” The article began, “Last year was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years–capping a nine-year warming streak ‘unprecedented in the historical record.’”

The Associated Press, USA Today, and other media outlets published similar stories. A January 9, 2007 news release from the Union of Concerned Scientists argued, “No one should be surprised that 2006 is the hottest year on record for the U.S.”

NASA Admits Errors

However, climate expert Steve McIntyre–one of the “deniers” alarmists claim should be ignored in the ongoing global warming debate–noticed irregularities in the U.S. temperature data compiled since 2000.

A thorough review of the raw data revealed that beginning in 2000 NASA applied a new formula to its methods of smoothing out and averaging raw temperature data. The new formula, McIntyre proved, resulted in NASA unjustifiably adding 0.15