It appears that the Federal Government (surprise surprise) is up to it's armpits in another climate data scandal. From John Coleman at TV station KUSI in San Diego:
PRIMARY UNITED STATES CLIMATE CENTERS NOW CAUGHT IN DATA MANIPULATION
NEW REVELATIONS HEADLINED ON TV CLIMATE SPECIAL
It has been revealed that a "sleight of hand" was used in the computer program that rated 2005 as "THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD." Skeptical climate researchers have discovered extensive manipulation of the data within the U.S. Government's two primary climate centers: the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City. These centers are being accused of creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based.