While we’ve taken some detours looking at some of the amazing things that have happened globally for temperature in January, with another detour to the sun, our www.surfacestations.org volunteers continue their mission.
This NOAA USHCN climate station of record #415018 in Lampasas, TX was found to be tucked between a building, and two parking lots, one with nearby vehicles. According to the surveyor, it is right next to the ACE Hardware store on the main street of town. While likely representative of the temperature for downtown Lampasas, one wonders how well it measures the climate of the region.
View looking NE
In her survey, volunteer surveyor Julie K. Stacy noted the proximity to the building and parking, which will certainly affect Tmin at night due to IR radiance. Daytime Tmax is likely affected by the large amount of asphalt and concrete in the area around the sensor. The main street of the town (28 ft from US 183) and the ACE Hardware parking lot are visible in this photo below:
View looking south
Google Earth shows just how much asphalt and buildings there are around the sensor.
According to NCDC’s MMS database, the Lampasas climate station has been at this location since 10-01-2000.Previous location was an observer residence, which appears to have been a park-like location according to MMS location map. The sensor was apparently converted to the MMTS style seen in the photo in 1986, so the move did not include an equipment change. See the complete survey album here.
But the big surprise of just how bad this location is came from the NASA GISS plot of temperature. It clearly showed the results of the move to this location, causing a jump in temperature almost off the current graph scale. Note that before the move, the temperature trend of Lampasas was nearly flat from 1980-2000.
Click to see the full sized GISS record
Given the entropy of the measurement environment, I have sincere doubts that anyone can create an adjustment that will ascertain an accurate trend from temperature data as badly polluted as this. In my opinion, this station’s post 2000 data needs to be removed from the climate record.
UPDATE:
Since there has been some discussion about how well “adjustments” take care of such problems, I thought I’d show you just how well the GISS homogeneity adjustment works with this station.
Here is the GISS plot for Lampasas, TX with the GISS homogeneity applied, I’ve changed the color to red and labeled it to keep them visually separate from the raw data shown in the plot above.
click the plot to see the original plot from GISS
Now here is the GISS raw data plot with the homogeneity plot overlaid on it:
The effect is quite clear. The recent “spurious” measurement remains unchanged, and the past gets colder.
The result? An artificial warming trend for this station that is created by GISS adjustments.
ROTFL! We should compare temp fluctutations with Ace special sales events.
As a software engineer… yeah, right.
[…] the poor climate change reparations?) burning in the contemporary mind and so many false observers (How not to measure temperature, Part 51) providing data, what’s a guy to do but look for a publicly traded manufacturer of […]
Why should Hansen and Schmidt care about such trivialities? As the latter has explained, ad nauseam, temperature readings from individual stations are not used in climate models. Why is this difficult to understand?
REPLY: Au Contraire, Hansen and Schmidt created GISTEMP to use as a way to tune the model. Otherwise, they wouldn’t need to keep a surface database at all, and simply rely on NOAA. The fact that they expend so much effort to maintain GISTEMP is an indication of the importance of their own brand of surface data.
So this is the data that is supposed to be adujusted, huh?
So let’s compare it with our tempest in a teapot over CRN violation bias.
Now this has got to be at least a CRN-4 violation. We know when the violation ococcurred.
If we presume the previous location was a CRN-1 or 2 with no bias ( which is itself an assumption), from the looks of it, it is clearly showing a =>2C trend that sharply increases since 2000, thus showing how heat sink dramatizes a slight increase into a large one. Note that we don’t have a one-year offset, then a flat reading, rather we have a series of upsteps that exggerate the slight warming trend since 2000.
This would seem to illustrate very nicely the acuracy of the CRN effect estimates from their handbook. It’s only one example, but it’s a “hot” one.
Rev, somethng has got to be done about this. Think about what I proposed earlier. (I am quite serious about it and we should discuss the possibility.)
“To remedy the problem of incomplete station histories, the Version 2 homogenization algorithm addresses both documented and undocumented discontinuities.”
(As a former software engineer who worked on military systems that had to do things like that in realtime when infra-red data momentarily stopped): Hmmm, so their algorithm can detect jumps in temperature caused by jumps in CO2, and magically removes any jumps (up or down) from discontinuities that they are not even aware of?
Or are they talking about actual breaks in data where data is missing for a year (for example)?
REPLY: The graph above is their output, so I’d say it’s effectiveness speaks for itself.
“…do Dr.’s Schmidt and Hansen of GISS know just how bad some of the stations in their database are?”
I’m sure they do. And they were probably quite proud of themselves – until people like you and McIntyre showed up.
What rough correction factor should we apply to state the temperature increase over the last 100 years? 0.5°C instead of 0.7°C? Maybe 0.4°C?
Beyond the scope of the study, I expect, but has anyone wondered if there is method to the madness of station moves like this. Already, I’m sorry I’ve asked.
=====================================
on the plus side – no barbeque pit!
I’m beginning to be rather concerned about the rest of the world. If this is how bad things can be with US measurements – after all a country rich and prosperous, dedicating more money to science and monitoring than any other country. So how do things look in Mali, Azerbaijan and Tuvalu? In Poland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia?
It is definitely time to switch the basis of diagnostics of the climate system to satellites in the atmosphere and ARGO in the sea.
And by all means, GISS and HAD should encourage global monitoring such as done by surfacestations.org to weed out the poor sited stations and discontinued series.
I’ve followed this series with great interest, but have yet to have read any account of a faulty measurement station being relocated to conform with the required standards. Is remedial action being taken or are these valuable revelations simply being ignored in the interests of continuing to mislead the public ?
Nice touch with the little bench and coffee table under the satellite dish. The MMTS maintenance crew can relax for a moment after cleaning the unit.
“So how do things look in Mali, Azerbaijan and Tuvalu? In Poland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia?”
The US system is far superior. Only Australia is comparable.
And yes, witness all the problems with the US system. Violations with a demonstrable margin of error far in excess of the increases they purport to measure.
The RoW is reported to be–much–worse. Including Western Europe.
REPLY: “The US system is far superior.” I don’t know that we know that, not having much in the way of weather station photos in the RoW. This may simply be a cultural bias on our part.
“What rough correction factor should we apply to state the temperature increase over the last 100 years? 0.5°C instead of 0.7°C? Maybe 0.4°C?”
That looks like a reasonable ballpark estimate.
About half the recorded warming (at a complete guess). One would have to consider only the changes in violation (most occurring since the 80’s with Stevenson Station-to-MMTS switchover, which created massive CRN4 violations.)
We then have to consider that while waste heat or a heat sink creates a direct offset, what a heat sink does is exaggerate a small warming trend. So one would presume that there was SOME warming in order for it to have been exaggerated in the first place.
But the only way to find this out is to, well, find this out. Empirically.
Boy, does your updated graph smoke!
==================
How about this for an experiment?
If someone can get ahold of one of these MMTS thermometers why not set it up next to a Stevenson screen located in a CRN 1 location for a period of, say, 2 weeks and record the variances between the MMTS and Stevenson Screen.
After that, move the MMTS to a nearby CRN 4 style environment (with or without a barbecue pit) and then record the variances between the MMTS and Stevenson screen.
Might this give a rough estimate of how much moving the thermometer from a “good” area to a “bad” area affects the variance?
The Stevenson screen would provide the control and moving the MMTS around might create variances.
I grew up in Lampasas. This on the main street through town. Highways 183, 190, and 281 all converge on this road and it sees a lot of traffic. There are no trees nearby, just concrete and asphalt, so its no wonder that the temperatures have spiked. The building also houses the local radio station. I guess they relocated the station for maximum convenience.
Andrew…What about this: Llano some 35 miles SW of Lampasas 1999: 19.27C
2001 17.65………….Lampasas 1999 18.61C , 2001 18.68C Let’s see …makes
a difference of 2 global warmings in 2 years…Texas not being completely
flat in this region I also checked Blanco, 55 miles SSE of Llano and 70 miles
SSW of Lampasas…Guess what: 1999: 19.47C … 2001: 18.18C…As this is
Wacko-science…I also checked Waco (pop. 120.000): 1999: 20.39C … 2001:
19.09C Lampasas pop. 5-6000, Llano some 3000, Blanco some 1500…
Any more witnesses needed??
Looks like the corrections reduced the temperatures long ago (when the area was less urbanized), but not at all recently (when the area is the most urbanized). The correction versus time seems pretty linear. The net result is to increase the amount of reported global warming since the records began.
Not jumping to a conclusion. Just making an observation.
“Now here is the GISS raw data plot with the homogeneity plot overlaid on it:”
This is too funny. This is a regular riot.
And we were ALL upset about how GISS wouldn’t release its adjustment methods. Well, we needn’t have been, need we have?
Here is the GISS homogeniety adjustment method:
LADEEZ AND GENTLEMEN.
PRESENTING: Without the requirement of a single line of Fortran. (Pulling back sleeves.)
(Drumroll.)
Lights, please.
THE GISS ADJUSTMENT
Recipe:
1.) Take NOAA adjusted data.
2.) Apply the following benchmarks and smooooooothe in.
3.) Conclude.
1880: -0.8C
1910: -0.7C
1930: -0.6C
1940: -0.5C
1950: -0.4C
1960: -0.3C
1970: -0.2C
1980: -0.1C
1990: -0.05C
2000+: -0.0C
The above should prove conclusively that the US temperatures have indeed risen 0.7C.
Thank you, thank you for attending our consensus. It has been our pleasure.
This Tradgedy (The King’s Camelopard), after its successful engagement of fully 1221 performances will be embarking upon its Grand European tour, forthwith. Thank you again for your kind cooperation.
Kindly shut up as you follow the sign to the Egress.
Hey, at least there is a Toyota Prius (hybrid) sitting next to it!
Maybe that explains the small adjustments. I mean, lots of hybrids in the area are surely going to be correlated with lower temperatures.
Questions.
1 – Is the room A/C in the photo close enough and a large enough heat source to influence this station?
2 – Can the solar heat collected and released by the big black satellite dish influence this station?
3 – Evan Jones – in your comment above with the non-Fortran version of the algorithm… Are you serious, or just having a joke? It’s sad that I have to ask this question.
Thanks for the great work.
-b
REPLY:
1. Not likely, it is 8-10 feet above the sensor, waste heat would rise.
2. Maybe a small amount, but the mass of the dish is low (for mounting and wind loading) and has mesh. It would likely dissipate IR quickly and most of it upwards…when winds occur, it might have an effect, but I think the greater urban enviornment swamps it.
3. He’s having a joke…nobody (that I know of) has been able to get the FORTRAN code released by GISS last year to run.
Let the people say duh!
Great job!
Perhaps we need a daily meter to gauge ‘”the feelings”
about global warming. I guess we could post the government
grant money handed out daily and correlate it to the daily opinions
about temperature change.
Don’t let up brother!
Finally, this photo shows clear proof that the Toyota Prius contributes to Global Warming.