I’ve been in this part of the world, and during summer they can be used heaps (tourist traffic). It’s also military, just north of the Kurdish area of Turkey, which has been of concern to the government for decades. The area is not sparsely populated at all – like most of these areas in Europe and Asia there is just heaps of stuff going on.

Some detail. That airport is mixed military/civilian, and there are 21 towns within a 5nm radius. The closest one is Gezkoy 2.1nm to the south, population about 4300. (Reference: http://www.fallingrain.com/icao/LTCE.html)

So this statement from section 2 of the paper “There are no buildings or human activities around the station except for the cultivated area which is 4 km from the station”

is flat out wrong. Check out Google Maps, apart from planes (which I count as human activity, but the author doesn’t), the place is surrounded by villages, small towns and at least one national highway (that’s the E80 to the south) and a railway line.

Here (http://www.farecompare.com/flights/Erzurum-ERZ/city.html) there’s a little more data on the airbase itself. Over 28 flights (scheduled) a week and 4500 passengers. In summer that could be higher due to charters (and there are a lot of charters in this part of the world during summer. Often they outnumber the scheduled flights, but I don’t know if that happens here). Don’t know how many private flights, but maybe not many.

I can’t get military data, but in this part of the world military activity is frequent and continuous. The Kurdistan area is just to the south where the Turks have been suppressing a revolt for years, and just south of there is Iraq. It’s got two runways so I’d expect a fair bit of activity.

By comparison, Santorini, an extremely popular Greek Island destination has only one even though it is big enough to have two.

If you’re unfamiliar with European package tours you also may not have realized that the beaches to the north are plenty accessible from here for charter flights, and Turkey is a popular destination right across Europe. It’s much cheaper than Greece and very similar in culture and beaches.

Another point, the mixing effect could very well be small, last para Sec 2 ” calm (windless or less than 2 m/s daily) [days]“. This airport is also in a valley surrounded by hills about 10km away on all sides.

The guy who did this is a landscape architect, not a scientist so maybe the quality of his work isn’t all that good.

I’ll put my money on turbine exhausts.

REPLY: I’m glad you agree that we should throw out airport weather station observations due to such influences as turbine exhausts. Many USHNC stations are now located in taxiway areas of airports.

Radiation vs. convection experimentation should be done, too.

Also to be considered is altitude (c. 2000m) and that Yilmaz measures 2m from the ground while surface stations are at 1.5m.

The Rev usually rates airport stations as CRN3, not CRN5, btw.

So far, LeRoy, Yilmaz , and the Lampasas and Baltimore observations all seem to be singing the same basic tune. Lampasas and Baltimore both used hooded stations.

Also, the new CRN station is wonderfully sited and will be running in tandem with the old USHCN stations, so we’ll have that comparison too, before long.

I will be willing to wait for further study. Since this is a “hot topic”, I am confident we’ll have a lot more to look at Real Soon Now.

It’s at the end of the runway! That thermometer is going to get regular blasts of hot air.

The grass one is directly between the two runways (which are not close together) ie. at the side of both away from direct exhaust blasts.

Secondly, your measurement site here is dealing with radiated heat, not convected heat. Thermometers are protected from radiation but open to convection.

And he’s an architect. Since when do architects get training in experimental design?

Jet exhaust effect would cover both concrete and nearby grass. This would not exaggerte the effects. If anything it would minimize them. Assuming he chose active areas of the airport (which I doubt).

I am happy to wait until further results are in. (I also guess the effects would be even greater at sea level.)

And, of course, there is LeRoy (1999) which is where NOAA got those estimates.

The gold speck in what LaDochy shows is that a constant sink exaggerates not only the offset but the actual trend. I repeat, the trend.

Aren’t we talking about microclimate? An airport runway is a pretty hot microclimate. I agree differences would be masked – by engine exhaust – and this study doesn’t compensate for it. Rather than smaller, the differences would be larger. (In fact, given the heat and volume of air from turbine exhausts the differences shown are more likely to be somewhere around 100% due to engine exhaust IMHO)

I can’t see the energy being radiated by a few square meters of concrete being anything like the same as required to get a plane in the air, it’s just silly.

What you have over the little slab is a small volume of air being heated and mixing with the much larger volume in the surrounding environment. No doubt you’ve been in front of a bar radiator? You’ll know then that you get very little convective heating, it’s all radiation, which the thermometer is shielded from.

I just don’t buy it. But if you want to prove me wrong, by inferring the installation date of the path and the magnitude of the “bias” from the data record – be my guest. How long before Anthony gets the data? A few days or will it be in June?

ps – LaDochy is looking at different regions and locations, not surfaces – at least as far as I can make out from the abstract, so I don’t think it’s that relevant to this particular site.

LaDochy, Medina, Patzert. 2007. Recent California climate variability: spatial and temporal patterns in temperature trends. Climate Research, 33
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v33/n2/p159-169/

Yes, which I noted earlier. it makes me more likely to believe it, not less, as it is not tied up in AGW politics.

Also, if it was conducted under typical airport UHI, the differences would be masked and made to appear smaller than they actually were.

But Yilmaz is merely in support of the LeRoy estimates from 1999, which are included in the NOAA/CRN handbook.

(Rev: You could have included the “HOT-L Baltimore” observations.)

You’ve also pointed out that stations are frequently resited, presumably because the old site is no longer compliant but the new site is.
. . .
Resiting most probably introduces negative “bias”

Your presumption, while not unreasonable, as such, turns out, on closer examination, to be not correct (or even close). Don’t blame yourself. Blame (grossly) inadequate SHAP on the part of the NOAA.

The MMTS switchover was the main reason for resiting. And that is the main reason there are so many CRN4 violations. Cable issues drew them right next to their housing. Result: massive numbers of violations. (Not adjusted for.)

I think you missed my point here. The data extends over 30 years (or even longer), and I don’t think very many stations would have been installed initially in violation of those standards. So the siting issues must come from changes that occurred in the surrounding environment *after* installation. On average those would have occurred at the half way point.

That means that only about half the data exhibits the “bias” you’re referring to.

You’ve also pointed out that stations are frequently resited, presumably because the old site is no longer compliant but the new site is.

So while I can accept that there is probably some positive skew, I can’t accept that it is all positive. Resiting most probably introduces negative “bias”

REPLY: No worries, Evan Jones posted it here oroginally.

Concrete: Right next to the runway. Jet engines are hot you know
Grass: Between 2 runways, but not that close to either
Soil: Quite some distance away in what looks like it might be a service area

Do the exercise for this site please. If the effect is there, you’ll be able to find it.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. You’re driving round the country doing free site surveys for them (that they probably haven’t had the money for) and basically making a business case to get that money. Money they need to improve their service and fulfill their mission.

You should be congratulated, it’s a public service.

It still doesn’t mean that noise is a signal.

Firstly, I don’t accept your estimate of 87%. Let’s assume that over 30 years 87% of the stations had an environmental change that positively affected them. On average that change would occur at the 15 year point. Therefore only 43% of the data has “bias issues”

Secondly, in nearly every scientific experiment there are what you call “bias issues”. They can be filtered and controlled for, and they are.

Thirdly as I said to you before, I can’t see radiative energy in this case having much of an effect.

And I’m also perfectly ready to accept that there are problems with this data. It’s called noise, and analysis can still recover the signal. I do not believe that the noise is the signal itself.

But I can be persuaded otherwise if there is sufficient evidence. Do the exercise with this site and tell me the magnitude of the “bias” and the date on which that concrete was placed. If your argument is correct, you should be able to find it in the daily record (it can’t have taken more than a day to lay that concrete).

REPLY: Well I guess for now, until I can get the daily data in ASCII form we’ll have to agree to disagree. At least you aren’t calling the project “stupid or doomed” anymore. NCDC does not publish daily in ASCII form, only monthly. I have asked them for several data sets, when and if they provide it I’ll be able to d an analysis.

“It’s called noise, and analysis can still recover the signal. I do not believe that the noise is the signal itself.” Ok fair enough for now, but we still differ in opinion. But here’s the thing. Prior to now, (and still pending for network wide use) NCDC was not doing an analysis to remove this type of noise aka “step functions”. I have test case sites already where we know when the change was made and we’ll be able to run that and see if the new USHCN2 catches them.

In the meantime, see the Yilmaz paper which shows 7.5C for over concrete exposure compared to grass if you don’t believe “radiative” effects. Both Lampasas,TX and Miami, AZ show effects of placement change also.

Finally, ‘Firstly, I don’t accept your estimate of 87%.” Its not an estimate, it’s a measurement from survey data of station siting now. Right now 87% of the USHCN network has siting issues by either the older NOAA 100 foot rule or the CRN rating system. NCDC accepts it, and one of the USHCN2 authors used it in a study he presented to me there, which is good enough for me.

How do you know that when you don’t even know the magnitude of the “bias”?

Take this site. Your argument is that the thermometer is being heated by concrete right? Concrete that can be as much as 4-5 degrees hotter than the air? Is that right?

How does that radiative heat reach the thermometer (which is in vented box)? It has to heat the air above it which by your own account here was about 5C less.

And that’s a large mass of open air for that concrete to heat, any hotter air would mix pretty quickly. A radiator 5 degrees hotter than the ambient temperature is not much of a radiator.

Now since you disagree with on this, I’ll give you a challenge. Take the record from this site, and find the bias. See if you can identify when the concrete went in. You won’t be able to find it. I betcha.

And if you can’t do that, find out what this station recorded as the temperature for the time you were there. I’d bet on pretty close to the 14.5C you measured yourself (perhaps less as I presume your thermometer was both hand held and exposed to direct sunlight)

I (generously) estimate that the one-directional noise exaggerates the trend by a factor of two since 1980.

“So concrete appears and disappears from day to day does it? Interesting property. I wasn’t aware of it.”

Sure it does. On sunny days it has a huge effect. On cloudy days it has a small effect. On sunny days in June (especially northern US) it has a bigger effect than sunny days in December. When it gets cold and snowy enough to be under a couple feet of snow it has no effect.

Hey, how about if we specify some standard for placement of weather stations such that the data may not quite measure what people experience in their daily activities but that the data is the least corrupted by variables that are being mostly ignored. Better yet, let’s use the standard you want to discard.

Hey, I got another idea – how about if climate researchers looking at ground stations pay more attention to wind, clouds, snow cover and use it all to come up with an order of magnitude more questionable studies. That should keep the dialog frothing.

Seriously – there ought to be some interesting statistics lurking in some of that data. Not much point in digging into it given how much controversy we have with just temperature data. Still, there are a lot of good reasons to keep raw unadulterated data around for future use.

Once that’s done, I’ll respond to your reply to my (18:58:49) comment.

REPLY: Pushy aren’t you? You don’t even give a guy time to type it out. Done

Consider that a sort of “positive reinforcement” of warming bias.

“[REPLY: No I'm not, I don't know where you get this from.]”

Your posting here is basically a recommendation that concrete paths not be built under weather stations. So what I get from that is that you *are* saying that the site should be rebuilt.

I got my comment directly from the implication of this posting. The only alternative is that you’re saying something along the lines of “measurements from this site are rubbish and should be ignored, but let’s not do anything to correct the problem”

So should this site be rebuilt or not?

REPLY: Well its a moot point because NOAA is abandoning all these older USHCN sites for the reasons I’ve specified, undocumented biases, and setting up new ones. See the press release from my day 2 visit to NCDC. My goal was to find the best sites of the USHCN network so that a bias free signal could be examined. That is still the case. The issue is finding the one that are uncontaminated so that the best record can be extracted from them. NOAA has no adjustments to properly account for microsite bias in USHCN1 algorithms. The new USHCN2 algorithms may fix some of these issues but may not catch them all.