http://tinyurl.com/2f4k8d

The ice under Hansen’s feet is getting very thin.

The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) is a high quality, moderate-sized data set of daily and monthly records of basic meteorological … (emphasis added)

The gold speck seems to be that uncertainty over time is not, Not, NOT necessarily a constant.
So not only is the data that much fuzzier, but it’s also a moving target (even if moving into less fuzz). The problem being when we unconsciously assume the end-fuzz is as fuzzy and the at-start-fuzz.

(And how acurate can one get if one oversamples a 0.2C MoE? What’s the curve on that?)

And I thought liberal arts would suffice. That and a modicum of wargame-level stats. Obviously it won’t do. I shall have to work on that.

Bingo. (Sorry about the typo.)

John Hekman, that Freep post was very confused. If you look at the JPL press release, things should become more clear. Unsurprisingly, the pattern of warming in California is complex. If you want a free copy of the paper itself, email the corresponding author (LaDochy) and I’m confident he’ll send you one (as he would have done for the Freep guy).

That’s the old Groucho Marx song!

(I haven’t rewritten song lyrics in years. This one’s tempting)

The “adjust it” mindset is beginning to get picked up across the Internet in places other than climate blogs. The American Thinker had a great article yesterday that was easy for a layman like me to follow.

Sensors need to have a high enough degree of resolution to track temperatures to .01 C

Sensors need to be regularly calibrated.

Sensors need to be shielded from wind, snow, rain, dust, and heat, and from possible human or animal interference or general damage.

Shields need to not heat or cool the air or otherwise disrupt the free mixing of the surface’s thermal characteristics with the air.

Sensors need to all be at a uniform height (5 feet?) consistent with measuring the Atmospheric Boundry Layer (ie not so low they measure the surface itself only directly under the sensor and not so high they’re not in the surface layer of the ABL.)

Sensors need to be far enough away (100 feet?) from obstructions and other materials that might interact with or influence the surface/air mix.

Sensors need to be located in a place indicative of the majority of the area being sampled (adjusting that size to fit the situation, as needed).

The area being sampled needs to be large enough to be meaningful, but not so large there are too many varied conditions in the area. (eg 5×5 is too big IMHO)

The area being sampled needs to be of a known size, so the sensor’s contribution to the whole can be weighted properly. (Why compare 10×10 to .5x.5?)

The location of the sensor has to be of a known altitude and there needs to be 1 hygrometer at the site to also track humidity.

There will be a minimum of 3 sensors at least 10 feet apart. (YMMV)

Sensors will take frequent samples and report them via radio, IR, satellite, wireless Internet or burried cable to a recording station.

Humidity readings will be transmitted at the same time as temperature.

Recording stations will collect the temperature and humidity information and in conjunction with altitude, generate an additional figure of effective temperature (or to normalize to some standard humidity and altitude?).

There will be 1 recording station per 5 sites, which will correlate the data from the sites with each other to ensure nothing abnormal is going on (and/or perform calculations on them?).

There will be an automated process to collect the data from the recording stations at 1 or more locations, where any further needed processing will take place at as many levels and to the degrees required.