1998 was not the hottest US year ever.  Nor was 2006 the runner up.Sure, had you checked NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) website just days ago, you would have thought so, but not today.  You see, thanks to the efforts of Steve McIntyre over at http://www.climateaudit.org/, the Surface Air Temperature Anomaly charts for those and many other years have been revised - predominately down.Why?It's a wild and technical story of compromised weather stations and hack computer algorithms (including, get this - a latent Y2K bug) and those wishing to read the fascinating details should follow ALL of the links I've provided.  But, simply stated, McIntyre not only proved the error of the calculations used to interpret the data from the 1000 plus US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) weather stations feeding GISS, but also the cascading effect of that error on past data.You see, as Warren Meyer over at Coyoteblog.com (whose recent email expressed a delight we...(Read Full Post)