NASA Alters Iceland Temperature Record to Produce Warming

Steven Goddard at Real Science has an interesting post that provides the changes by NASA in the temperature records for Reykjavik, Iceland.

Apparently, NASA is convinced that Icelanders misread their thermometers by as much as 2.4 C in 1940 and 1941 and subtracted that huge correction to those years.  From 1955 to 1963 NASA subtracted about 1.2 C from the temperature record.  Since 1993 they added to the temperatures.

One might think a correction to the temperature record for the purposes of gaining a better sense of the change in global temperatures generally would be appropriate.  This change would be a correction for urban heat island effects.  The correction that NASA made would be of the correct sense if the population of Reykjavik, Iceland had decreased greatly since the start of this record in 1901.  If the population had increased, then the correction should be to subtract from the measured temperature as the population increased.

Surprise!  The population of Reykjavik did not shrink greatly from 1901 until now!  No, it actually increased by a factor of 18.8.  Since 1940, the population increased by a factor of 3.1.  Throughout this time, the population of Reykjavik increased except for the loss of a few hundred people since 2008.  So, NASA did not make these corrections to correct for the urban heat island effect.

The net effect is to create the illusion of a rise in temperatures in recent years to comply with the catastrophic AGW agenda due to man's emissions of CO2.  This appears to be why the temperature corrections were made.  If not, it sure would be great to learn what the reason was.