Report: Switzerland Caught ‘Adjusting’ Climate Change Data to Show Warming

Steam and smoke is seen over the coal burning power plant in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Yet another country has joined a growing list of nations caught “adjusting” climate change data to show global warming trends across the world. Global warming skeptics argue global warming, or climate change, is more a man-made scam than a man-made problem, but alarmists contend the evidence in conclusive and debate is over.

Initially reported historical weather data, however, is apparently being altered by countries across the world, including the United States.

Dr. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute says that Switzerland has joined Australia, Paraguay, and the United States in “adjusting” their weather data in an effort to prove global warming is real.

“Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments,” Burnett wrote. “In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly, I reported weather bureaus in Australia and Paraguay were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.”

Burnett focused on a report from Swiss Science journalist Markus Schär, which shows a “doubling of the temperature trend.”

“For example, in Sion and Zurich, [the Swiss Meteorological Service] adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend,” Burnett writes. “Schär notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data-tampering. As a result, Schär calls the adjustments a ‘propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.'”

In February, PPD reported that oft-cited climate data are being systematically “adjusted” or “revised” to show global warming trends. In fact, while fact-checking the work of Telegraph journalist Christopher Booker on the research of Paul Homewood, we found official temperatures published by governmental agencies in South America and the United States, which are the very data sets used by climate change alarmists to argue global warming trends, did not match the initial reported temperatures from weather stations.

PPD found — and illustrated the juxtaposition in a graph — suspicious one-way “adjustments” of originally recorded temperatures first by the U.S. government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN), whose data were then amplified by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).

Now, with the latest adjustments out of Switzerland and other nations being revealed, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is apparently launching an investigation to determine whether data adjustments by government meteorological bureaus are justified, and whether they have been carried out using “sound scientific methods.”

“Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists,” Burnett wrote.

In truth, this is not the first time the so-called scientific community, which politicians would have us believe make up a consensus, have been caught manipulating temperature data. In 2012, it was revealed that the average state temperature records used in current trend analysis from the NCDC, which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), do not reflect the actual published paper records from the past. Temperatures published in Monthly Weather Reviews and Climatological Data Summaries from 1920s & 1930s have been “revised” to reflect “cooling.”