One of the surfacestations.org intrepid traveling volunteers, Eric Gamberg, has been traveling through Nebraska as of late, picking up stations as he goes.
He recently visited the USHCN station of record, COOP # 256040, in North Loup, NE, not to be confused with Loup City, which he also visited. Records describe this station as being in a rural area, which is true. As some might say, it is surrounded by a “whole lotta nothing”. See the map. According to the Nebraska Home Town Locator website: “North Loup had a population of 339 with 192 housing units; a land area land area of 0.41 sq.” Seems quite small.
At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much wrong with this station.
Looking South – Click for a larger image
No obvious heat sources or asphalt/concrete nearby. But let’s take a look at another angle:
Looking West – Click for a larger image
Notice all the shadows and the trees? Unlike many stations I’ve pointed out in the past, this station has an uncertain cooling bias from all the shade around it. The bias is variable, with seasons, with tree growth, tree pruning, and with windstorms that may remove leaves or whole branches from the trees.
Other angles of this station are visible in the surfacestations.org gallery for this USHCN station. This is a new submission, and the surveyor hasn’t submitted his written report yet, so I decided to look closer at some of the photos and screencaps he submitted.
One of the pictures caught my eye. It was a single picture of a Stevenson Screen with the name: “NE_North_Loup_CRS_now_at_Neighbors”
Click for a larger image
The neighbors location also has a significant shading issue with trees around the station. Since it appeared from that description that the station had been moved, I wondered if NOAA had logged the change, so I consulted the NOAA MMS database.
The station map showed only two locations as being recorded for this station even though data goes back to 1892 and is used by GISS in their data plots.
It seems sloppy to me that NCDC doesn’t have any location records any further back than 1948. This lack of historical metadata is becoming increasingly common.
The location tab of the MMS database gave a hint of what might have changed recently though:
1995-08-04
41.500000 (41°30’00″N) -98.766670 (98°46’00″W)
Location Description: RESIDENCE WITHIN AND 0.2 MI SSW OF PO AT NORTH LOUP, NE
1996-11-06
41.493330 (41°29’35″N) -98.774720 (98°46’28″W)
Location Description: RESIDENCE WITHIN & 0.2 MI SSW OF PO AT NORTH LOUP, NE
Topographic Details: TOPO-FLAT TO GENTLY ROLLING FARMLAND OF THE NORTH LOUP RIVER VALLEY. OBSERVERS YARD HAS CONSIDERABLE SHADY AREAS.
Obviously, NOAA is aware of the shade issue.
Looking at the equipment tab in the NCDC MMS database I found that it appeared the station had been converted in 1986 to MMTS from mercury max-min thermometers:
1986-06-11 | 1988-01-25 | MMTS ELECTRONIC SENSOR
0001-01-01 | 1986-06-11 | MAX-MIN THERMOMETERS
But this still didn’t answer the question of how did the Stevenson Screen end up “at the neighbors”? I guess I’ll have to wait until Eric Gamberg submits his survey report to find out, or perhaps he’ll chime in here to tell us the story.
I thought maybe I’d try looking at the GISTEMP record to see if I could find any obvious shifts in the data that might provide clues for a relocation. Here is the raw USHCN data plot from GISTEMP:
Click image to see source file at GISTEMP
While it might look like there’s a jump coinciding with relocation, other stations in the area, within 100 KM had similar jumps around that time. Click on the names below to see those plots from GISTEMP:
| Loup City 30 km | Saint Paul 36 km | Albion 68 km | Grand Island/ 72 km | Broken Bow 2w 76 km |
So it appears the jump was natural, likely due to our rising El Nino year peaking in 1998, or we have another one of those data splicing errors like what was found back in August of 2007.
As a final check, I decided to look at the GISS Homogenized data plot for the North Loup station, and here is where the surprise came, the scales of the two graphs didn’t match. There was a .5 degree C difference in the Y scale. The Raw GISS plot topped at 12.5°C while the Homogenized GISS plot topped at 12.0°C :
Click image to see source file at GISTEMP
This was perplexing, so I thought I’d try a data overlay to see what had changed, and what I found was another one of those counter-intuitive downward homogenization adjustments which used the present as a hinge point and made the past cooler:
Click for a larger image
So this begs the question: Why is a station that is classified as rural, with an apparent cooling bias due to tree cover, with a long history containing only a few moves, in a small agricultural town with little growth in the last century get an adjustment like this that causes the past to get colder, and create an artificially enhanced positive slope of temperature trend?
The nearest “large” city is Grand Island, NE, seen in this map, over 40 miles away. There is nothing but farmland all around North Loup, NE. I don’t care how you try to reason it, an adjustment for a station of this type wouldn’t need to be done for UHI. So what’s going on? Is this another one of those situation where other stations that have UHI that are within a larger radius are affecting this station and forcing an adjustment?
This is why I have trouble trusting GISS data. We keep finding instances like this one where the historical temperature record has been adjusted for no discernible or apparently logical reason. Cedarville, CA, which I previously highlighted is another prime example of a rural station with a long history, little growth, no UHI, but with an artificially enhanced positive temperature trend .
This question needs to be answered.
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It is interesting and valuable work. Whether, after you correct all the errors, it makes much or any difference to the overall trend is another issue. It all may cancel out.
But what is being shown again and again is that the stations are being maintained (and their data reported) to standards well below the standards which the taxpayer is entitled to expect for his/her money.
And why on earth it should take a team of volunteers to travel around documenting this stuff? And why the project should attract so much abuse? Extraordinary.
Those are good questions.
What do the officials at GISS offer as an answer?
If they were honest, they’d take a closer look and adjust the data accordingly.
Off subject: (via JunkScience)
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/v-print/story/375112.html
Another Hansen trick exposed.
This investigation is turning up a massive fraud by NASA. It is also turning my stomach. Isn’t there anyone, anywhere that can bring this fraud into the light of day?
Does someone have to bring a lawsuit against GISS?
What is the appropriate course of action to take now that Anthony has the goods on these creeps?
Any lawyers or judges in the audience?
REPLY: I don’t know that it is fraud. There is a difference between in and simple lack of due diligence. It may be the latter. Clearly nobody has visited these sites to determine the validity of any adjustment methods.
Anthony, as always this is great stuff! But what is the end point? From all the work you and your surface team have done together with the work Steve at CA has done, it seems painfully obvious that the GISS temp system is broken. The surface stations are not capable of reporting a temp accuracy needed to resolve tenths of a degree that we are deciding public policy on. Steve has shown the algorithms used to splice station data have corrupted the GISS temp record, rendering it useless. The gate keeper of the GISS temp system (Hansen) is a hopeless AGW activist and in my opinion not to be trusted. So how can it be changed?
A petition from thousands of people to NASA asking for a change?
A publication from you and Steve in a journal proving the GISS system hopelessly flawed?
Organized petitions and letters to Congress asking for an investigation?
A lawsuit?
This is an old but recurrent problem; ironically GISS methodology has been used to establish problematic temperature trends by BoM in Australia; the issue with the BoM conclusions was also based on their allowance for UHI effects;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/gissbom.htm
Antony,
a question not fully on topic.
You are concerned about shadows and an “uncertain cooling” bias.
My concern is about IR shielding by trees or something else.
What is it more important, shadows during daytime with a well mixed air mass, or IR shielding in the nocturnal stratified and stable boundary layer?
I know that a non-aspirated station has a larger bias with Tmax than Tmin, but what is the effect of a tree (one with leaves all year around)?
REPLY: True, Pine trees might has a constant bias effect, but I didn’t see any that would cast shadows here/
Talk about a tricky situation. This station is generating normal values during winter when the foliage is gone and cooler values during summer when the foliage is present. This is ridiculous.
I don’t really care if the “global” temperature is going up or down, but I do care when scientists use bad data for important studies or when they make claims about their data sets that cannot be substantiated in reality.
Garbage in plus garbage adjustments still equals garbage out.
AAARGH!
Yes, Rev, it’s all about the slope.
GAAAAH!
(Must be calm.)
And you can forget UHI anyway. The overall adjustment by NOAA for UHI over the last century-plus is -0.1°F. Sic. As in, “Yes, I said ‘F’.”
And we know from CA that almost half of NASA UHI adjustments are UP (the famous urban cool park effect).
Just one red-hot “adjusted” minute, here!
This is NOT adding up. Let’s look at the “known factors”.
A.) We are assured the satellite data matches ground data (more or less).
B.) We are assured that satellite data is done utterly independent of surface measurement.
Thus, it would seem to be proof that the ground stations are totally accurate. Slam-dunk, Hanseatic League for sainthood. End of argument. Shut up. Go away, you flat-earther, you. See you at the upcoming Climate Nuremberg.
Yet . . .
1.) We know darn well that a vast majority of the stations are in serious violation.
2.) These violations average out to +2.0°C warm bias for observed stations using the minimum estimated effects as per the NOAA/CRN handbook, as I have posted earlier (calculations included).
3.) It is patently obvious from the station records that these violations are NOT being adjusted for.
3.) We also know these violations occurred mostly since 1980 (exurban creep, waste heat, MMTS conversion scandal).
4.) We also know that the main problem (heat sinks) not only offset the temperatures, they increase the CHANGE in temperatures over time (LaDochy, Dec. 2007). This is a–vitally–important point.
5.) We know that overall NOAA adjustments for SHAP and FILENET do not adjust the past much and adjust the present readings UP. And that the UHI adjustment is laughably small. (As Gore would put it, “Everything that is supposed to be UP is DOWN and everything that is supposed to be DOWN is UP!”)
It is therefore quite reasonable to conclude that temperature rise since 1980 has been exaggerated by some undetermined amount. Indeed, it is difficult to see how one can possibly escape such a conclusion, try as one may.
So the first set of observations (points A & B) does NOT reconcile with the second set of observations (points 1 – 5).
And, to be honest, I suspect there is a probem with set A/B more than I suspect the same of set 1 – 5.
And furthermore, I find the conversation in general has drifted away from this discrepancy. I think said discrepancy VITAL to both the scientific and political debate to reconcile these two paradigms.
So, what about it, then? Watts Up With That?
I think the main reason we have seen a continuing downward revision of past temperatures is because all the models say we should have already had more warming. Since they can’t change the current temperature (there are more people who are recording the current temperature) they are forced to change the past temperature to artificially create proof of global warming. If all of their models turn out to be wrong (which they have so far) then they will have no leg to stand on and they will stop receiving the billions of dollars of funding that they are receiving now. Money which could have been much better spent elsewhere, on bootstrapping developing countries or forcing china to reduce its harmful pollution emissions- SO2 and such.
I think we should let McDonalds (the hamburger chain) run the weather stations… nice, clean and up to standards. Also all the numbers would add up.
“This is why I have trouble trusting GISS data.”
Indeed.
Anthony you mention a cooling bias from being in the shade of the trees. But can’t the trees also produce a warming effect by blocking infra-red, especially at night?
Also the sensor is not in the shade in the photo. Depending on the spread of the tree branches and the angle of the sun it might or might not be in the shade at other times.
REPLY: It’s winter, so no leaves, and low sun angle. Mentally extrapolate to what that would look like in summer. NOAA notes a shade issue in their MMS database.
And you are correct, a warm bias would exist at night. The point is the station is affected by many biases that changes with time (trre growth), seasons, and tree health/wind damage/pruning Untangling them to find the true temperature is the issue.
While it is unfortunate that the MMS system doesn’t contain station move information prior to 1948, there is a station history file that goes along with the USHCN data that provides station move information back to the late 1800’s and up to 1995.
It can be downloaded: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ushcn_monthly/station_history
I’m not certain, but I believe NCDC had a goal to digitize all weather records including metadata from 1948 to present and I believe their next goal is to go back to 1935.
I’ve also recently discovered that some of the monthly climate summaries published back in the 1950’s (not sure on the exact span yet) contained station move data that is not available in the MMS database.
Indeed.
Yes. Indeed.
Well, what about it, then? The GISS anomaly does not diverge much from satellite data from 1980. We have the recent evidence from the surface station observations.
And it doesn’t seem that the stations from middle of the country are faring much better than the edges, so far. The procedure seems to be to carefully seek out the needles of bad sities from amongst the haystacks of bad sites and go for the former.
Alright, then.
So what are we to conclude; and/or what do we need to check out? let us not be coy about this. It does not add up. Where is the discrepancy?
This is a vital point that needs to be forced. Forgive me if I must . . . persist.
This is really interesting stuff. It is pretty amazing to see how the relatively simple task of surveying the stations has branched off into numerous sub-categories such as the MMTS cable length issue, poor NOAA record keeping, inexplicable homegnization adjustments, etc. What is even more amazing is that the NCDC never undertook this study themselves, particularly in light of how the data was being used.
BTW – this may be obvious but the 1996-11-06 “move” was probably not a move at all but an updating of the lat-long coordinates. Prior to the mid 1990’s the NWS appears to have only used degree-minute coordinates probably obtained by by locating the site on USGS topo maps. In the mid-1990s the site coordinates were updated to degree-minute-second coordinates using GPS. This is noted as a “GPS update” in the site comments in the MMS database tied to the date of the update.
It is quite confusing as virtually every site has an apparent move in the 1990s that probably isn’t real. To complicate things more, when the coordinates are displayed on the map in decimal format (e.g. 41.500000, -98.766670) it’s not as obvious as when they are dispayed in the dd-mm-ss format (41°30′00″N, 98°46′00″W).
I persist.
Why would we trust satellite data if it agrees with surfce data that we know darn well we can’t rely on?
I persist.
Why the similarity between surface and satellite data when we know how badly the surface sites have been compromised and how the adjustments are all the wrong way?
Well?
We can’t assume surface data is correct, so what about satellite data?
Why can’t GISS send out a letter to all weather stations demanding compliance within 30 days?
REPLY:
1) GISS doesn’t administer them, NOAA does
2) Many of these are private volunteer observers, you can’t just send out a “mandate”
3) It won’t change the past records, what is entangled and flummoxed will stay that way.
4) The new cliamte reference network (CRN) handles the siting issues for records of the future.
Another imponderable has surfaced in these comments, the “correction” of the satellite measurements. I find it highly implausible that measurements taken by two different methods which agreed with each other remarkably well were suddenly found to both be in error by just the amount which differed from the terrestrial data under discussion, such as it is. Does no one else find this fishy?
I posted some info on the adjustments to North Loup and neighboring sites over at Climate Audit.
Anthony,
I know you begin projects with the end in mind. I realize that you have already begun this difficult task, and I believe I can already see some of the intermediate steps, but what will the successful conclusion of this tremendous effort look like?
Mike Bryant
REPLY: It will be whatever the data says it is.
Evan,
What do you conclude?
All analyses is dependant on good data collection whether from ground or satellite.