I am writing in response to the AP article, “New fed data show no stopping or slowing of global warming,” published in the Sun Journal on June 5.
The statements by Washington’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are likely in response to a controversy taking place right here in the Lewiston area. I have unfiltered temperature data going back to 1893, from Lewiston-Auburn. In 2013 and 2015, I compared this to NOAA’s data for Maine’s southern interior region. I discovered that NOAA had rewritten local climate history to lower historic temperatures, on average about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit per year since 1895.
When challenged on this, NOAA wrote on May 6, 2015: “… improvements in the dataset, and brings our value much more in line with what was observed at the time. The new method used stations in neighboring Canada to inform estimates for data-sparse areas within Maine (a great improvement).”
Are we experiencing warming or cooling locally? It depends on whose historical climate data are being examining. Mother Nature’s raw data shows a cooling trend since 1999 for Lewiston. Continually revised NOAA data for the southern interior region of Maine shows a warming trend since the early 1900s and that the southern region is colder than Maine as a whole.
NOAA has replaced common-sense facts with computer algorithms. Are decisions worth trillions of dollars being made based on “improved” climate data?
Mike Brakey, New Gloucester
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