Talk:Instrumental temperature record

Overlap with global average surface temperature Global surface temperature

I noticed an overlap with the article on global average surface temperature. To start with, they use exactly the same graph in the lead. The rest of that article also seems to be a wild mixture of content that is already in other articles. Any suggestions on improving this situation? Should anything be moved from there to here or vice versa? EMsmile (talk) 09:32, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Avoiding redirects, the correct article titles are: Global temperature record and Instrumental temperature record.

Factually, the two articles do not use the same lead graphic: File:20200324 Global average temperature - NASA-GISS HadCrut NOAA Japan BerkeleyE.svg versus File:2000+ year global temperature including Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age - Ed Hawkins.svg

As the hatnote to GTR implies: ITR is a ~170-year instrumental subset of GTR.

Looking at the GTR table of contents, it does not seem "wild", but is reasonably ordered by time periods involved. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:20, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the mixup: I wasn't referring to Global temperature record. I was referring to Global surface temperature, and they do have the same image in the lead. I saw it mentioned for the first time in this edit of yours. You added there [[Global surface temperature|global average surface temperatures]]. So you linked the words "global average surface temperatures" to Global surface temperature. These are two separate articles however:

• Global surface temperature
• global average surface temperature (i.e. it redirects to Global temperature record) EMsmile (talk) 09:24, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

User:RCraig09 just wondering if you have overlooked this or had decided to let it be for now. I'd like to see if we can resolve this as there seems to be overlap between Global surface temperature and Instrumental temperature record, e.g. they both use the same image in the lead. "Global average surface temperature" on the other hadn redirects to Global temperature record. I don't see how "Global average surface temperature" should be different to "Global surface temperature". Should I rather bring this up on the talk page of WikiProject Climate change? EMsmile (talk) 16:54, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

— I corrected the clearly wrong redirect so that it's now GAST --> GST=GMST=GAST.

— GST and ITR are distinct, though overlapping. GST is in principle the temperature itself, distinct from ways temperature is measured (viz., with instruments). Each article can be considered separately for its content, through ordinary editing.

— It's very much a secondary issue that GST and ITR happen to have the same lead graphic; it would be odd to show a picture of a record book in the lead of ITR. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:39, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, glad that redirect is fixed now. I'll start a conversation on WikiProject Climate Change because I think given our limited resources we should streamline this article with Global surface temperature to avoid overlap. EMsmile (talk) 08:20, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Funny how you like point out which of my suggestions are "primary" and "secondary" issues (you do this regularly when reacting to my comments). Yes, I agree, it is indeed a minor issue but so what? At the end of the day, it's the sum of improving "minor issues" on Wikipedia that makes it a high quality resource. If someone went around and only corrected typos ("a minor issue"), I would still be grateful to them as every little bit counts. - I do think that the image in the lead should be unique to the article. MOS:LEADIMAGE says the image in the lead is there "to give readers visual confirmation that they've arrived at the right page". EMsmile (talk) 08:20, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

The point in pointing out that the same-lead-graphic issue is secondary, is that it is apparently not based on any objective Wikipedia policy or guideline; MOS:LEADIMAGE does not state or imply that articles must or should have mutually distinct lead images. My comment was not personal. That you "think" lead images should be unique is not only your personal subjective belief, but is a idea that you admit is "a minor issue". Objectively, it's altogether reasonable—even expected—that "X" and "Record of X" might the same lead image. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:18, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Question about the first figure (correct base period to use?)

Five datasets over different time periods. . . . Update: changed on 2023-07-23 to six datasets normalized to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900 average)

Dear all, I'm not a climate expert, but an astronomer with keen interest in this topic. I struggled over the first figure in this article that gives the impression that global temperatures have "only" increased by less than 1 degree so far. This is of course due to the use of the very awkward base period 1950-1980 (see also point 13 of the expert review above). I would strongly suggest to use the same base period as the IPCC (and most other publications that I have seen on this topic), i.e. the "pre-industrial" time with instrumental temperature record, 1850-1900 (see. e.g. Fig. SPM-1 in the IPCC's AR6 report): https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf -- if you agree, I'd be happy to update the figure (or if the creator of that figure is still active, perhaps they can speak up). Regards, Ileo (talk) 10:32, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, seems like an important point you're making here. I copy here Point 13 from the expert review as I had moved your comment to the bottom of the page: "Either here, or in the 'Temperature anomaly' article, there needs to be a discussion of which baseline periods are in use, the purposes they serve, and why the choice of baseline has no impact on long-term trends." EMsmile (talk) 11:21, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Preliminarily: there is no "correct" base period for temperature anomalies; they are reference periods. More to the point here, only two of the five datasets go all the way back to 1850, so it's impossible to adjust all five datasets to the IPCC 1850-1900 "pre-industrial" reference period. Oddly, "pre-industrial", literally, is before 1850 anyway, so scientifically the IPCC reference period isn't that distinctly authoritative. A main purpose of this graphic is to convey the high correlation among numerous authoritative instrumental temperature record datasets, a purpose that would be thwarted if there were only two datasets. In any event, it's clear from the chart that the change isn't less than 1 °C. —RCraig09 (talk) 19:33, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

OK, fair enough but I think the expert reviewer was right when he said "Either here, or in the 'Temperature anomaly' article, there needs to be a discussion of which baseline periods are in use, the purposes they serve, and why the choice of baseline has no impact on long-term trends." Currently the word baseline appears only once in the entire article. I am not sure what the best reference would be to use to explain a bit about the issue of baselines. The article Temperature anomaly doesn't mention the word "baseline" at all. Pinging Ileo. EMsmile (talk) 07:41, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Temperature anomaly already recites "A temperature anomaly is measured against a reference value or long-term average.[1][2]" The NOAA reference explains anomalies quite thoroughly. —RCraig09 (talk) 14:55, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

P.S. In August 2022, I made substantial additions to the Temperature anomaly itself. I think more detail isn't warranted here. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I've made some small edits to the article and the caption of the lead image to clarify this issue of reference point. I think it's important so that it becomes clearer why the data in the graph starts off with negative values in 1850. EMsmile (talk) 09:04, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Update: This week I discovered the Met Office has collected six datasets and normalized them to the presumptive "pre-industrial" temperature, 1850-1900 average. The chart is now updated to be based on that cooler reference period, so the change of more than 1 °C is now evident. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:57, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

that's good but I think we should update the caption accordingly. Currently it says: "(In this chart, the "0" value is what is considered the "pre-industrial" temperature level.)" I don't think we can expect everyone to know what pre-industrial means (I would have guessed it means e.g. average of 1800-1850). Would you agree to change the caption to something like this: In this chart, the "0" value is what is considered the "pre-industrial" temperature level, which is the average of the years 1850 to 1900. or In this chart, the "0" value is the average of the years 1850 to 1900 which is commonly called the "pre-industrial" temperature level? EMsmile (talk) 07:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

 Done —RCraig09 (talk) 18:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikilink for global average temperature?

I've just added a wikilink to the caption of the image in the lead, and added "surface": Measured global average surface temperature data from several scientific organisations is highly correlated.. However, I noticed that we have two very similar articles, and I wonder which to link to. We have:

• Global surface temperature
• Global temperature record

I wonder if there is potential for merging or for improving the article titles. Pinging also User:InformationToKnowledge. EMsmile (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Update: We have decided to merge Global temperature record into Global surface temperature. See the talk page at Global surface temperature. EMsmile (talk) 21:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Change article title?

I know we have discussed this before around 2 years ago (see here in Archive 2). But I would like to revisit the question of article title. On the talk page of global temperature record (GTR) (in the meantime merged into global surface temperature (GST), RCraig09 pointed out on 2 August 2024 that "GST is the real-world concept. "Record" reflects human measurement, and is subordinate to the real-world concept."

My question now: which would be the real-world concept for "Instrumental temperature record"? Which temperature exactly are we talking about, isn't it also the global surface temperature but just for a more recent time span? Therefore a better title could be global surface temperature since 1660 or global surface temperature measured with instruments (too long, I know)? So this article become a sub-article to global surface temperature? EMsmile (talk) 07:57, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

P.S. I think I would even propose to merge Instrumental temperature record into global surface temperature. Both articles are actually sufficiently short so that this could work. Global surface temperature already uses several excerpts from Instrumental temperature record. If not, then it should be made clear that Global surface temperature is the parent article and that Instrumental temperature record is the sub-article. With regards to pageviews, they are pretty similar: quite low at around 120 pageviews per day. Pinging also User:Chidgk1 because he recently merged Global temperature record into Global surface temperature. EMsmile (talk) 08:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

— Upon my quick inspection, the article seems to be concerned with only surface temperature so a merge to Global surface temperature seems reasonable. However, the merge would triple the length of the GST article, so some of ITR's content might wisely be omitted from the merge. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:21, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Agree so long as the trimming is done after the merge not before - that way it is easier for inexperienced editors to get back any content they think has been wrongly deleted Chidgk1 (talk) 09:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

— This ITR article says very little about "instruments" per se, and "record" seems inappropriate. ITR's content, and possibly most editors' intention, is roughly consistent with an article titled Temperatures since the industrial revolution or Temperatures in the industrial age (if there is no merge). —RCraig09 (talk) 16:21, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, so based on the feedback by you two, I'd say the way forward is to merge ITR into GST, then afterwards do the necessary trimming. If, at a later stage, it is felt that a spin-off article ought to be created (for the former ITR content), this could still be done, and a better article title be found. For now, I think it'll be better and easier to maintain if we have just one article on this topic, not two. I'll do the merger next week, or if someone has time earlier please go ahead. EMsmile (talk) 16:54, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I've carried out the merger now. Further discussions on the post-merge tidying process are now on the talk page of global surface temperature. EMsmile (talk) 22:30, 23 August 2024 (UTC)