There’s been a lot of interest in this station from my post on “pipes”. Finding it from Google Earth has been a challenge since the lat/lon provided by meteorological agencies is rather coarse.
A number of commenters, especially Jeff C. and George M. have zeroed in with the help of land photos they’d discovered, such as this one from a travel company that offers trips to the “pole of cold”:
Another image of the brown wood slat covered building which houses the office is here:
Click for larger image
Note the two pole barns in the distance from the Stevenson Screen photo and the field of view. It seems that we have located the station in the far northeast side of town at 67.565°N 133.413°E Here is the corresponding Google Earth image with my addition of the field of view lines:
Click for a larger image
A live Google Earth for this image is here
It appears that the original meteo station office, seen below with the quad Yagi satellite antenna on it, has been replaced with the newer one above that has a dish antenna. The new office can be seen in the background left of this photo:
Direct URL to the photo above here
What is curious is the plume in the left of the frame. It appears to be steam but could be smoke, we’ll never know for sure.
I’ve also been able to obtain the raw daily data for Verhojansk.
Which has four readings per day at six hour intervals, plus the Tmax and Tmin Temperature. I’ve placed the text file on my surfacestations.org server for anyone that wishes to do an analysis and compare it to the same period for HadCRUT or GISS.
Here is the GISTEMP plot, there does appear to be a positive trend since about 1980:
Fighting a massive cold and work duties preclude me from doing any decent analysis now, but given the interest level, I’m making it available to anyone that wants to give it a go. Even though the data set is only 8 years long, there may be something interesting to discover. This short raw data set has not been processed by GHCN whereas the GISTEMP data has been.
Link: VerhojanskDaily Data (ASCII text file 1.1 MB) to save to a file, do a right click and “save target as”
Link: Verhojansk GISTEMP Monthly Data (ASCII text file 17KB)
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Whoops!
I think you mean 133.413E — not west!
REPLY: Fixed Thanks – Anthony
What a bloody shame… NASA GISS has billions of dollars to spend on computer generated climate garbage and can’t spend a few hundred thousand bucks to do some due diligence to insure their data is accurate.
[snip] Note: no postings posing as somebody else, no matter how relevant or interesting the comment – Anthony
Yakutia stations were of interest for dendros, like this often cited paper:
A 538-Year Record of Climate and Treeline Dynamics from the Lower Lena River Region of Northern Siberia, Russia, by G. M. MacDonald, R. A. Case and J. M. Szeicz, Arctic and Alpine Research, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 334-339
and this pdf about the vegetation period in Siberia in German,
http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Polarforsch2005_2-3_4.pdf
with Figs showing yearly average temperatures of 13 stations in the Siberian region up to 2001. The authors obtained their data until 1972 (Min, Max, Mean) from the Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information, Obninsk, Russland and from that date from National Climate Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina, so probably not GISS-muddled. Interestingly, many of the stations show a temperature decline since the the early to middle 90’s…
I wonder what year they added that convenient incandescent bulb to the screen box, and if they leave it on all the time?
The Stevenson Screen photo may explain Russian “hotspots”.
What type of light is shining out from inside the Stevenson Screen?
Could it be an oil lamp?
An electric light bulb?
(Does Russia have low energy light bulbs?)
A laser?
Does the light go off when the door is closed?
I remember having a torch – flash light – in my mouth when I took earlier morning readings in the 1960’s. (Late 1960’s, very late.)
I imagine that the guy in the first photo, just breathing in front of the station, has raised the local temperature! No doubt about AGW! Shouldn’t an important station be kept isolated, or are they special Hansen friends?
Ecotretas
Anthony, I think you’re right to assume that there are more than one Stevenson Screen. The unit the fellow is peering into in the top image is different from the one in the arcticphoto.co.uk image, which has some sort of device under it. The former appears to be located nearer the eastern edge of the fenced enclosure. It looks like yet another unit is just to the east of that one but is concealed by the open door in the top image, though you can easily make out the stand.
So more questions: Which of two (and possibly three or even more) Stevenson Screens is used for the official temp record? Are the extras for back up when one is broken? Does the light get left on from time to time? And then there’s that river…
WOW, sure looks warm in those images, there is no doubt that heating is a serious problem there.
38 at Tampa Fl in the morning…more data on Global Warming.
As usual, excellent work all round.
And a good choice of words in describing the GISTEMP plot as having a positive trend (rather than a warming one) since about 1980. Just in eyeballing that graph it looks to have been fairly steady from 1900 to approx 1987 at around -15°C and since then seems to have moved up to roughly -14°C. At that gawd awful temperature, my subjective reaction is that cold is cold; one degree less cold brings little comfort.
With all that imagery above as well as the snow outside my window, I need a warm drink about now.
This chart shows temp correlation with solar activity
http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/4/47/20080602183300!VERHOJANSK_on_global_climat_changes.gif&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:VERHOJANSK_on_global_climat_changes.gif&usg=__z9hfGEl8WhTMZudnmvtoR4td3qc=&h=400&w=620&sz=18&hl=de&start=3&um=1&tbnid=IxeyTzFh1jN3CM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3DVerhojansk%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dde%26sa%3DN
Anthony,
It’s a sad, sad morning when I come to work and there are no WUWT updates. I hope you feel better soon.
As for work duties, I’ve found that they are highly overrated 🙂
Sorry.
try this link:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:VERHOJANSK_on_global_climat_changes.gif
In the photo titled “Stevenson Screen at Verhojansk Meteo Station looking ENE” there is a lovely warm glow coming out of the box. Is that an incandescent bulb?
If so, is there any mechanism to make sure it is turned off after a reading?
And just what is that guy in the picture doing anyway? It looks a bit like he’s taking a picture of the inside of the box, but why?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml
Sorry to add this randomly to a post – Good to see your work getting a wider audience. The Telegraph is the largest circulation broadsheet in the UK.
Yes, me too I saw that incandescent bulb! Maybe it’s there since the 80’s ! If it is left on for a day, there’s your AGW !
Kosmos
I bet there’s a candle inside the box – and each year they get a bigger one… 😉
Well president elect Barak Obama is getting it started on climate change.He told scientist in California today we must take on climate change once and for all and wants our emmision level to be where it was in 1990.Iwrk at a smal town Ford dealership and Ican rember in 1996 every vehicle had to be ordered with Calfornia emissions which by the way an chargeable option.I just don’t understand .California has the most strict emissions and yet they have the warmest temps.Of course we know from the site, whats up with that Thanks Anthony, that most of their temps are from equipment that has been moved from original location,who knows why, or is beside an air condition exhaust fan.I guess that hot exhaust could have an effect on a thermostat .Today in North Caolina , surry county we have been in the 30 ‘s all day ,no clouds,which is about a month early than normal.Our mountains are having snow and there is snow in the eastern part of the state as well only flurries butthis is early none the less.I know natural variences.How much longer can the global warming crowd keep saying this before we say NO ENOUGH LIES something really is going on ??There is something going on .Despite the fact that we are being lied to by Noaa and the AGW crowd the earth is in fact cooling.What Obama Mccain,and the liberal media are trying to do is nothing more that the goverment controling the american people.It’s no different than Hitller.
Like some previous commenters, I can see several ‘strange objects’ on the Google Earth satellite imagery, all of them can be stevenson screens or other instruments. Which is the operating one? If the thermometer is located in the temperature sehlter seen above with that nice lightbulb, it could be an explanation for the recent rise in measured monthly and annual mean temperatures.
According to Mojgorod.ru, Verhoyansk (Верхоянск) has a population of about 1300, and it had only 400 inhabitants in 1897.
We had a few weeks in SW Florida at the end of August his year; needed to get away from our wet windy Scottish summer.
OK OK no one told us it was hurricane season. Faye came ashore a couple of miles south and Gustav cooled down the gulf and Hannah……
But apart from all this I got a real education watching US TV.
Newscaster says…
“If Obama wants Hilarys support, she will not come for free. She comes with a big bill”.
I said to my wife, “But worse she comes with a big Gore, and he will be even more expensive!”
Looks like it has started already.
Perhaps we should try to find a person in Siberia who can find out what is going on there… the growing Siberian internet penetration rate (now about 30%) can be a great advantage.
About Stevenson screens and Yakutia tourism: I made some web reading in Russian and English.
It seems that there are actually two Poles of Cold rivalling: Verkhoyansk (which at the time already had a proper meteorologic station founded at the end of 19. century by a Siberian prisoner, I think in 1892) and Oymyakon, where the temp was lower, but not measured in an official station, which was built afterwards. Both places are frost basins (translation?). Both places are trying to woo tourists by taking them to the stations, letting them to observe the temperature and then issuing “Pole of Cold” certificates.
The “old” Verkhoyansk building on the arcticphoto is probably the one from the end of 19th century. I’m not sure if the photo of people peering inside the Stevenson screen is not taken in Oymyakon – I”ve seen a photo from there, which I can’t find now again and their Stevenson didn’t have anything under the booth.
REPLY: “I’m not sure if the photo of people peering inside the Stevenson screen is not taken in Oymyakon”
The photo is from Verkhojansk, of that I have little doubt. Look at the buildings (pole barn) in the background of the camera field of view. – Anthony
The biggest problem is the remoteness of this station. Verhoyansk is a very small settlement, and located far away from big Siberian cities. Yakutsk, the closest city with a population above 200-250 thousand is more than 700 kilometers away.
The pipes thread identified the light switch (box upper right). The guy’s probably taking a picture of the thermometer. That’d be the best reason to travel to the pole of cold that I could think of.