Missing Temperature Data: The Canada Connection

Because Canada contains a large swath of the arctic, temperature measurements in Canada are critical to the global archive. Too bad they've been compromised:

Most of the warming in the global data analyses is in higher latitude areas like Russia and Canada and in higher mountainous regions. These areas have seen significant dropout of stations. The warming comes from interpolations from regions further south, at lower elevations and more urbanized.

* Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change had probably tampered with Russian climate data. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory and that the Hadley Center had used data from only 25% of such stations in its reports so over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global temperature calculations. The data of stations located in areas not used in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

* In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING. Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to the flora and fauna abundant around the Eureka area, more so than anywhere else in the High Arctic. Winters are frigid but summers are slightly warmer than at other places in the Canadian Arctic.