Victor Venema Had Died

And Then There's Physics reports that Victor Venema had died. 

That's sad and a loss for the climate community, and decency in general. Victor was a scientist at the University of Bonn who worked on the homogenization of climate data*, and very active on social media. I corresponded with him several times, asking question about temperature data. He was always kind and thoughtful and pleasant. I'm sorry to hear he has passed.  

* homogenization is the science of bringing data from different time periods and locations into a common baseline. For example, how do records of temperature in the past need to be adjusted, if at all, in order to be compared to temperatures taken today -- given changes in instrumentation, weather station moves, changes in the time of day the thermometers are read, incomplete data, etc. Yes, adjustments are necessary, and doing them correctly is a complicated science. 

Here's an excellent article about these adjustments.

"Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data: How thermometer and satellite data is adjusted and why it must be done," Scott K. Johnson @SJOnEarth, Ars Technica 1/21/16.

More:

"Understanding adjustments to temperature data," Zeke Hausfather, Climate Etc., 7/7/2014.

 

"Berkeley Earth: raw versus adjusted temperature data," Robert Rohde, Zeke Hausfather, Steve Mosher, Climate Etc., 2/9/2015.

"Understanding Time of Observation Bias," Zeke Hausfather, Climate Etc., 2/22/2015.