Thursday, June 04, 2015

Problems with Wood for Trees data

UPDATE:  problem seems fixed, for now anyway. See comments.

David Appel says Wood for Trees, a fun site for us amateurs to play with climate data, has wrong data and unclear sources. Too bad, but worth passing along.

Maybe they'll fix things.

9 comments:

  1. NOAA and HADCRUT change their URL with each new version. WFT hasn't kept up. The data that is there is fine, but updating isn't working.

    There is up to date data here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Commenter in the followup at Appel's blog says WoodForTrees has updated its links now and the numbers are correct.

    Also there's a Mallet hyping an alternative source of, you know, stuff.

    WoodForTrees is just one guy doing the work for no money except donations to the woodland trust.

    Sad seeing Appel spread mistrust of "it" rather than ask the guy to poke his links.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, this is unfortunate. In the past, when making heavier use of WFT, I emailed the site owner directly and asked if he would be kind enough to update data links. He did, and I made a donation to the Woodland Trust.

    Perhaps DA will now do the same.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Psst, could you revise the title of this thread?

    "Problem fixed ...."?

    Because, you know, Google will find Appel's heading and yours forever.

    ReplyDelete
  5. P.S., http://woodfortrees.org/notes#trends should always be mentioned whenever discussing someone's use of his site -- to nail those who misuse the trend calculation.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks folks, I've included an update at the start of the post. I think the note at DA's site wasn't there when I read it, so I'm not sure how long the problem persisted.

    I like the trends chart at WFT that Hank points out.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I emailed Paul June 3rd giving some links to updated data. He replied by the 5th saying he'd updated UAH to 5.6 and will switch to 6.0 when it becomes official, has updated HADCRUT4 version, and has noted that HADCRUT3 and HADSS2 aren't being updated any more. He added that he would look into updating BEST later (and that it is a bit more complex).

    This is my second time updating with him and he takes the pointers with thanks. Anyone could do the same.

    barry.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Folks,

    Just to let you know WFT now uses HADCRUT4.4 (Hadley changed the filename so needed a manual update my side) so it is up to date again.

    Cheers

    Paul
    WoodForTrees.org

    ReplyDelete

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