Blatant deception in NOAA percentiles graph

If you go to this NCDC NOAA page there are a couple of graphs on it:

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/1

 

One has actual numbers for temperatures on it:

 

 

 

The other uses undefined percentile bins:

 

 

 

Look at the white coloured bin labelled "Near Average". It gives the reader the impression that it is centred about a zero temperature anomaly -- that it's neutral. But when you compare the second graph above to the first it shows that the white colour is not centred on zero at all but only consists of blue, below average data.

 

Meanwhile light red areas that are 0C - 0.5C above average are coloured red as warmer than average, even though it's just as "Near Average" as the light blue data 0C to minus 0.5C.  It's a mislabelling that amounts to deception, designed to make the red areas seems more prominent and scary, and minimizing the blue.

 

NOAA and NASA do not do real science: they are in the business of deception.

=============

Update 6/3/2014:

Actually I see that the two maps aren't quite comparable, as the temp anomaly map is from direct measurements, while the percentiles map is a proxy for temp via the 500mb height, which they've only been measuring by satellite since 1979. Still doesn't correlate well though..


=============

Update 19/3/2014:
The Feb 2014 NOAA data looks suspect too, as Harold Ambler points out. My new post on that here:

http://planetaryvision.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/more-noaa-trickery-in-us-feb-2014-temps.html