NOAA "Measures" 604ºF Water Temperature in Lake Michigan

By Daniel Foty

I'm not quite sure what to think about this one quite yet.  But the story has been circulating, and several people have pointed it out to me - so I'd like to at least share it with the readership.

Recently, someone noticed that the collaborative NOAA/Michigan-State Great Lakes "Coastal Watch" environmental program had produced some interesting maps of water temperature data for Lake Michigan.  This was pointed out to John O'Sullivan, the very able British-American journalist who set up the "Climate Change Fraud" web site in the wake of the Climategate scandal.

Interestingly, as soon as John wrote about this topic, the map disappeared off the Michigan State web site that had been hosting it.

But fortunately, someone had the presence of mind to save a copy of the file - and you can find it here.

If you open that map and zoom in, you'll immediately be struck by the very bizarre water temperatures reported therein.

More below the fold.

Yes, those are supposedly measured water temperatures - and yes, they are supposedly in degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, I don't happen to have a state diagram for water handy (and see no real need to waste time chasing one down), and I don't happen to know what impurities (and in what dissolved concentrations) one finds in Lake Michigan water; however, I'm quite confident that the air pressure over Lake Michigan is about one atmosphere - and therefore that the boiling point of Lake Michigan water (if, say, one were to draw a pot of water, put it on the stove, bring the water to boiling, and measure its temperature) is pretty close to the usual 212ºF.

Scanning around the map, you'll note that most of the supposedly-"measured" readings are considerably above that value.

In fact, if you look closely down in the lower left - near the little peninsula that contains the small town of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin - the reported measured water temperature is an eyebrow-raising 604ºF.

Remarkable.

Now is this just a one-off screw-up?  Very possibly.  But as you'll find if you follow the link above, this wasn't the only data map with such temperatures.  The time-series maps show all sorts of bizarre "measured results" for Lake Michigan water temperatures around the Fourth of July:

Further analysis of the web pages shows that the incredibly wide temperature swings were occurring in remarkably short 10-hour periods-and sometimes in less than 5 hours.

Now, why might this matter?

There was a bit of a media feeding-frenzy earlier in the summer - that "new data" had found that "average water temperatures" in the Great Lakes had supposedly risen by an alarming 10 - 15 degrees Fahrenheit.  (Three guesses for the thusly-fingered "cause" - and the first two don't count.)

Of course, if "data" like these are fed into the averaging, the "average" result will be pulled upward by a large amount - which is basically what was reported.

And the further question is whether or not things like this are feeding into (supposedly) "measured" air temperatures - since things like that would (once again) produce "alarming" results if included in any "averaging" over a much wider spatial area.

(And.... since I am cursed with a strong background and experience in mathematics and statistics, I've long understood that anything involving "averaging" is a terrible way to try gain insight into an underlying system such as this one.)

And whether this is due to very sloppy (and unchecked) work, or outright number-upmakenment.... I wouldn't care to even try to judge at this time.  One thing we learned from Climategate is that "climate science" is rife with both phenomena.

But this is indeed becoming more and more remarkable.  In the real world, climate and weather continue their stochastic space-time dance - with a crushing heatwave in Russia offset by unprecedentedly-harsh winter weather in South America.

Perhaps the continued attempt to paint a continually-alarming narrative - of virtually (it seems) monthly screeching that "last month was THE WARMEST ON RECORD" - is now running into the same difficulties that always confront efforts to perpetuate a long-running accounting fraud.  Having started with a little number-diddling to make things look better, a new (phony) scenario is created - one which requires continued regular number-diddling to keep the illusion going.  Eventually, the number-diddling pushes the phony narrative so far from reality that it becomes indefensible.

So if 600+ºF water temperatures in Lake Michigan are required to keep the "climate change" narrative going.... then perhaps we are reaching that point....

Comments

[GreggB]

No worries unicorns prefer swimming in warm water.

[Cheshire Cat]

Methinks the humidity levels would be perfect for birthing rainbows which as everyone knows are necessary for the health of unicorns.

[Vladimir]

The Edmund Fitzgerald was actually carrying uranium rods from a reactor core.

"Fellas, it's been good to know ya..."

[AM]

My perception is that very few people who talk about climate data have never collected data in the field. (I was Geology major in college.)

It's a tricky business where much error is a given, even if the equipment is more accurate digital variety. Why *so* much belief has been poured in to global warming (especially by some geologists I know)is a big mystery to me. The average geologist would probably bore to you to death with stories of how difficult data collection has been for their own work.

So I guess, like Jane Goodall, I lived long enough around the scientists long that "Climategate" really wasn't a surprise to me.

Earth science in all it's forms is not and never will be clean "knowable" science. We can surmise, make some ball park predictions (we're good at oil fields particularly) but hard and fast, "this is going to happen on x date" is way, way beyond our understanding.

[ExPat]

@Cheshire Cat:
A good one, but the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior.

[Gadfly]

@ExPat:
Yes, indeed. Have you checked the surface temperature of Lake Superior lately?

[MichSassafrasTea]

Thank you ExPat... I was going to point out the error of the Edmund Fitzgerald, but you beat me to it!

As far as a 604 degree reading... it is definitely a mistake... since the waters of Lake Michigan average (I know, that word again!) in the mid-60's in the mid- to late-summer months... and I just spent the entire day in that great lake on August 10th... specifically, Oval Beach in beautiful Saugatuck, MI (where the women are tough and the men are pretty!)... Saw that saying on a t-shirt in one of the shops in town!

[Buzz]

Yah, shure. Now dat it's sommer and ve gott lots of whitefish jest yumpin' in dah boats, ve're shure glad duh lake hass kooled down to 604 so vee can have our saunas and fish boils, tooo. Youuuu betcha. And tanks fer dat post. I'll forvard it to my cousins Ole 'n' Lena, fer shure.

[AlbuquerqueJB]

?Fourth of July weekend?
?High humidity?
How would shooting large fireworks displays out over the lake affect the readings of the temperature sensing satellite cameras reporting this data?
Just wondering...