I suppose most here have read/heard about Steve McIntyre. He's one of the authors who audited Mann's reconstruction of past global temperatures - the infamous "hockey stick" . McIntyre showed that the algorithm that Mann used would generate a similar shape, no matter what data was input, even if it was input random noise, with no trend.

Well, he's found another oopsie. This time it is in the GISS temperature dataset. It seems there has been an error in the "adjustment" of the raw data (of course they won't release the details of the "adjustments") - which has resulted in the calculated anomalies for the US to be approximately 0.15 C higher than they should be for the years 2000-2006. NASA has confirmed this error, and has released corrected values.

To put the 0.15C upwards shift into perspective - the trend for the US is 0.8C per century.

The warmest years in the US are now as follows

1. 1934
2. 1998
3. 2006
4. 1921
5. 1931

It will be interesting to see if NOAA retracts this PR - any bets?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2772.htm

For the details - read Steve's blog entry
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1868

Actually, from Steve's article, "[Steve's] estimate of the impact on the US temperature series was about 0.18-0.19 deg C."

I was being generous and quoting the number that NASA used