VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada - January 25, 2010 - Call it the mystery of the missing thermometers. Two months after “climategate” cast doubt on some of the science behind global warming, new questions are being raised about the reliability of a key temperature database, used by the United Nations and climate change scientists as proof of recent planetary warming.
Two Amerikan researchers allege that U.S. government scientists have skewed global temperature trends by ignoring readings from thousands of local weather stations around the world, particularly those in colder altitudes and more northerly latitudes, such as Canada.
In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.
Worse, only one station - at Eureka on Ellesmere Island - is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
Meanwhile, the Canadian government operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada.
Two Amerikan researchers allege that U.S. government scientists have skewed global temperature trends by ignoring readings from thousands of local weather stations around the world, particularly those in colder altitudes and more northerly latitudes, such as Canada.
In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada.
Worse, only one station - at Eureka on Ellesmere Island - is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.
Meanwhile, the Canadian government operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada.