So - July 2012 Was NOT Hottest Month In US History

Anthony Watts (WUWT) has done a bit of detective work!  On the surface, it appears NOAA keeps two sets of books.  One book is kept by the National Climate Data Centre and the other with data fed to the press is kept by State of the Climate (SOTC) See below:

“Climate Highlights — July
The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the warmest July and all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of record that dates back to 1895. The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F.”

NCDC’s record shows 76.9 deg.F for July, 2012 but the SOTC figure released to the press and an unsuspecting public was 77.6 deg.F.

Anthony Watts found not one discrepancy but many.

Surely, there has to be a simple explanation for SOTC's creative inflation of the figures.  Right?

There are accusations that the British Met Office plays loosely with the truth and we suspect BOM may very well behave in the same vein.

You would expect common decency would override fraudulent behaviour to support a cause, but then again we are dealing with group-think, snouts and deep troughs – and taxpayers footing the bills!  Not one of us should lose sight of the billions upon billions wasted propping green planet-saving schemes plus useless taxes that simply drive every product out of the reach of just about everyone.  Look at our electricity hikes, with another 10% increase due this month!  It's ridiculous.  So few having so much global influence based on absolutely suspect data spewed out of suspect computer models.

What disturbs me is this story of the hottest US July on record was reported widely across the globe with the usual hyperventilating and finger-pointing.  From memory, I think it was used by some of our own High Priests to hammer home the gospel according to the Church of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Here’s the direct link to Anthony Watts’ post as it is long, containing graphs, charts and varification links.  I hope he takes his findings to the highest level and makes good use of the US Data Quality Act.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/06/does-noaas-national-climatic-data-center-ncdc-keep-two-separate-sets-of-climate-books-for-the-usa/