Do the robins know they’re changing their migration and nesting based on this faulty data?

And how do the insurance companies get hoodwinked into following the data and paying out more money for weather disasters made more dramatic due to warming? Shouldn’t they know that the damage isn’t as bad as their paid adjusters see?

Are they? It seems like both in the summer and in the winter the AC/heaters give off heat, thus raising the nearby temperatures. It should push the winter month’s lows up higher and the hottest summer months even hotter.

for the other months of the year they probably aren’t in use so it shouldn’t affect the temp in the spring or fall.

But one must also consider that the US government–ALL governments, for that matter–from the 1880 era were so incredibly corrupt that it defies modern imagination. (Agnew, for example, is a paragon of virtue–by the 1880 standard.)

So the corruption factor may somehow have had an impact on the original sitings.

And, as far as value of these photographs and the ongoing data debate, I have the following logic exam:
1. Can we assume (hope) that these stations were originally properly sited back in ancient history?
I submit there are only two possible answers, yes or no.

If yes, then these gross deviations from acceptable siting negates the value of current data, back to some undefinable previous time.

OTOH, if no is the answer, then NOAA, NWS, and all the apologists have no leg to stand on regarding any data credibility.

Right. Of course it may not be a bias at all; it may have just been warmer. However your question about when the AC was installed on the roof seems relevant.

(I’ve been running around like an idiot, placing my hands near handy street-level AC exhaust, and yes, I can feel the hot air very plainly.)

“incompetence, indifference, or intentional”

One wonders. I’d like to think the former two. Yet one also wonders why anyone would have the nerve object to your survey. (And why, oh, why are the Spacehounds of the IPCC not falling all over themselves to correct for bad NOAA data?)

Anyone who would object to what you are doing immediately becomes an object of my suspicion.

The date given is anecdotal, based on a person’s memory. In absence of a document showing when the A/C were moved, that recollection provided to us may be faulty.

Again it illustrates the random nature of the observing environment.

Evan, we can quibble (I still like my estimate of 2C), but the net result is the same–spurious microclimate warming in the temperature data, I agree with you on that.

HOWEVER, when I look at the monthly data for Detroit Lakes, it appears to me that the warm bias starts BEFORE the reported move of the air conditioners. That’s all I am saying.

If you look at the Tucson site from Anthony’s previous post, the station move and the series cooling line up pretty well with the station move. That is not the case in the Detroit Lakes time series, for the change there appears to occur in the Fall-1998 time period. I’d look deeper for another explanation. When, for instance, were the air conditioners put ON the roof?

So we may have to adjust for two significant biases, not merely one.

***REPLY FROM MODERATOR***

The SENSOR was NEVER on the roof, only the air conditioners. They were removed from the roof and made ground based on 5/5/99 according to management at the radio station.

Hmm. It seems closer to 3 than 2.

Also, if 1/4 of the land stations are showing a 2-degree bias, that means overall land temp is biased 0.5C above normal.

Here is the GHCN land data:

————————–

Time series: Temperature January-December , 1880 – 2006
GHCN Land Surface Data Set
Selected Region: Longitude: -170 to -20 Latitude: 87 to 18

Trend: 0.06°C/decade Significance: 100.0%

—————————

Note that a -0.5C adjustment would change everything.

The answer lies in the site survey form taken by the volunteer, which can be read here (PDF):

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=15458

According to the station manager, they moved the air conditioners off the roof and to the current location in 1999, and that clearly lines up with the graph. Even more disturbing, the NOAA MMS records indicate that the new MMTS electronic sensor (on the pole) was not placed until 2006. That is done by the local NWS COOP program manager. So that begs the question, how could they in good conscience place it next to A/C units? Is that incompetence, indifference, or intentional?