Has anybody else noticed any hooplah about how a Y2K bug has been found in the official US temperature numbers? The end result has been a change of the official top ten list.

From the first article that caught my eye about the bug:

Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data
Michael Asher (Blog) - August 9, 2007 11:49 AM

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.
...
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

Here are two more links with more information:

• Bombshell? NASA revises recent U.S. temperatures downward after Y2K bug fix Updated
• Breaking News: Recent US Temperature Numbers Revised Downwards Today

It makes little difference to global climate numbers and thus the global warming debate. Personally, I think the real issue is with how the information and the statistical algorithms aren't open to review or scrutiny.

The old and new US Temperatures top ten years aggregated from the Watts post:

Order	New	Old
1	1934	1998
2	1998	1934
3	1921	2006
4	2006	1921
5	1931	1931
6	1999	1999
7	1953	1953
8	1990	2001
9	1938	1990
10	1939	1938

*The order is all jumbled, but 2001 drops from the old list and is replaced by 1939 on the new.

Labels: academic review, climate, global warming, open source, science, temperatures, weather, Y2K