The users of this data such as GISS (presumably) report output “information” in hundredths or thousandths of a deg C; but that is based on the numbers that presumably some thermometer says ITS temperature is.

So just who has done any studies to show just how well any of those thermometers reports what the surrounding area temperature really is.

The reading on the thermometer is presumably no greater than what the mean temperature of the outside surface of the box is; I would hope those boxes contain no source of heating energy. But just how does the surface absorbtance of those boxes represent say the air temperature, or the ground temperature, or just whatever it is supposed to represent.

I’m quite happy if the box tells the local TV news weather guy the local temperature was 73 deg F give or take a degree or so; but it seems a little bit hokey to input into global data bases.

If there was a standard kit, sold everywhere for $100 or so, then everyone interested in this could put their money where their mouth is. Picture it: one internet appliance. Temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, precipitation, GPS, and a webcam so visitors could evaluate the siting. If there were tens of thousands, or millions, globally, all could feed into a massive server that averaged “weather”. On installation, the owner could accurately define the level of urbanization at the site, and that cross-referenced with the GPS position and standard maps would eliminate all of the guesswork.

And if I had the financing, I would have started building these years ago. Each site could have a nice LCD display mounted inside so it was also a useful personal weather station. I know it would be possible to get a retail price of $100 on these, and in cases of pristine siting the government, OR a weather agency, could subsidize the installation and operating costs.

But I much prefer a standard instead of having local people look at an instruction sheet and assemble the stations from a kit.

Two thousand such stations around the world would be $80M and probably more. Uplinks and a central collection station. I’m guessing $15M to build and staff the first year. Perhaps $4M to staff and operate per year thereafter.

Other topic. At first I looked upon CO2 sequestration as a “possible.” Geologic surveys showed much more capacity than I would have guessed. But it has been in testing several years and not much is reported. Silence often speaks for itself. Perhaps it was a bad idea whose time did not come.

I’ve seen you mention “Bottom up economics” in a couple of comments. I think you mean “Bend Over” economics and tax policies.

Anyways, taking Bryan’s concerns into account one could always adopt the GISS methodology and compare ‘anomalies’ by subtracting away the mean for each station. That would turn an intriguing 2 F difference between Reno AP and NWSFO into an alarming 3 F difference, a trend that established itself in a short 4 years.

If it were not for the internet and sites like this, we would be well on our way to living in mud huts and eating berries, grubs and roots.

You’d be lucky to have the mud hut, since that would be raping the Earth of mud, and Mud Skippers might die.

Great post! You ended it with this comment:

Maybe they could find a few hundred million to upgrade, relocate, and standardize a few thousand surface stations. And to make all data available to anyone without adjustments by anyone.

That is an entirely reasonable proposal. And I doubt that it would require anywhere near that amount of money. Also, there is no credible rationale for not publicly archiving the raw data in addition to their “adjusted” data.

The reason they refuse to provide taxpayer funded transparency is clear: the truth would drastically undermine their hypothesis that CO2 is the evil culprit that requires $billions in tax money, and gigantic alterations in our present standard of living, in order to implement the alarmists’ New World Order.

If it were not for the internet and sites like this, we would be well on our way to living in mud huts and eating berries, grubs and roots.

My personal bugaboo is “carbon sequestration,” which is the most astonishingly stupid idea that has ever been proposed in the history of modern civilization. Carbon [dioxide] sequestration is the equivalent of employing millions of government bureaucrats to dig 10X10X10 foot deep holes in the ground, and then moving those holes twenty feet away every six months. That would be equally effective; in fact, it would be more effective that carbon sequestration, because beneficial CO2 promotes increased food crops, with no downside…

Proving once again that globaloney is a political, and not a scientific issue.

Now, from what I understand (could be lacking…) the people who say that UHI is not an issue in global warming generally studied large cities compared to rural areas (or at least tried to, and failed in some cases). But when you look at downtown Manhatten for example, the population increase and development has been pretty stale since the 50ies. It was already a highly populated and largely concrete island in 1950 and still is. Compare this to a rural site with no development since the 50ies, and I’m sure the trends will be quite similar (if there are no micro-site issues). So they conclude UHI is not affecting trends, and considering what they looked at, you could argue they are right.

But the real issue, of course, is not UHI per se, but urbanisation, ie. the process of transforming from rural area into urban area. Add a site with virtually no population or concrete in 1950 and a couple of thousand people with streets, buildings and driveways in 2007 to the above comparison, and you’ll see a much larger trend than in either the big city or the stable rural location, despite the fact that its still only a very small city and would probably qualify as rural in most analyses.

So, in the Reno example above, it would be more interesting to compare 1950-2007 trends for the three sites than the absolute values since 1992.

Comparisons of actual temperature will fool you if you dont take into account the lapse rate. One way around this is to compare the trends at the sites. FWIW hansen uses a lapse rate of 6C per km when he adjusts sites whose altitude has changed