When I first started the surfacestations.org project, this Google Street level view tool was just a concept, now I’m actually able to find USHCN stations with it such as this one in Manassa, Colorado:
Click image for interactive Google Earth Street level view.
I’ve found quite a few, and there are some real stinkers out there, like this one in Greensburg, KY on a major thoroughfare through town. Note the south facing brick wall and concrete work:
The official USHCN NOAA climate station for Greensburg KY also has a great proximity view of the main drag through town:
Click image for an interactive Google Earth street level view.
It’s pretty easy to find a few stations now, since a good portion of the USA has now been entered into the street level database. Unfortunately stations like this are the exception, since many USHCN stations are not in the front yards next to the street. But those that are, we are getting.
Feel free to load this Google Earth KML file of stations that have been surveyed (thanks to Gary Boden for this great resource) and try your hand at spotting USHCN stations. The ones that show up as question marks are unsurveyed.
If you spot any please report them here. Or if you live within driving distance and have some time, why not go out and get a good quality set of photos after signing up at surfacestations.org ?
(OK, OK. Let’s get this out of the way early in the thread so we can discuss the images.)
Where are the obligatory barbeque grills? Obviously these can’t be official sites if the grills are missing ;o)
On to business… Whats up with the Colorado garage? Is that a solar panel on the roof or are they waiting for the insurance adjuster after a wind storm?
It looks as though they have plenty of room to get the MMTS a good bit farther away from the building. It’s been discussed by others before, but is unwillingness to do much trenching the only thing keeping some stations from being sited farther from buildings?
Looks like a north facing wall to me on the house. Note N on image and, what looks like a, solar array on roof pointing I assume to the south.
Cool, except for one thing – stations found via Street View will tend to be poorly sited, road facing stations. That will skew the overall station quality toward the poorer levels. Of course, since we’re already there, it won’t skew things very far.
REPLY: The current numbers are CRN1 at 3%, CRN2 at 9% with the lions share of CRN4 being MMTS at 54%…given that I expect no more than 25-40 at street level view out of 1221, I don’t think it will matter much in the final numbers. Efforts are underway to get the stations even in the most remote areas not covered by street level. – Anthony
La nina
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.12.25.2008.gif
I enjoy your efforts to seek better data and you perform a needed public service with your efforts. However, I think you’ve miss-read the Greenburgs KY orientation, the solar panels would be facing North if that is a South facing wall.
That should have been the ‘Manassa, Colorado’ site.
Bad data are worse than no data at all.
Anthony, the surface station project is one of the greatest things that you have going. It is going to produce alot of great information to help make sure we get accurate information about weather in this country. The problem will be getting anyone to make the necessary corrections and take it seriously. What would really be great is if you could set up a couple of demonstrations with instruments in the same general area that would document the bias that occurs when you have bad placing. I know you have talked about doing an analysis of this, but like everything else it takes time. Sounds like a good project for a graduate student at some university. What is the most strange to me is that most of these bad placings just lack any common sense when they were set up. What were they thinking? Keep up the good work and I really enjoy your website!
REPLY: Already on it. – Anthony
H.R.
Perhaps the longer the cable, the lower the temperature readings.
🙂
Mike
Bill Junga (06:43:29) :
Bad data are worse than no data at all.
Tell that to your doctor when he does your bloodwork, x-rays and full body scan. You better start saving money to pay for all the surgery you will need. Better to be safe than sorry. It’s the precautionary principal, man. Do it for your children.
🙂
Mike
EXACTLY, Bill!
Poor basic science completely destroys any validity of theory. They use to teach this in Elementary School!
Heck the data numbers from before all of the current collection stations number were established are questionable just on a basic statistic problem of comparing a large group versus smaller groups. The exact same can be said for world wide station numbers.
Bad data equals bad theory’s, especially when you are attempting to project long term figures! And since errors usual magnify with time…
H.R.
“…but is unwillingness to do much trenching the only thing keeping some stations from being sited farther from buildings?”
I used to wonder that, too, after seeing so many that were within 10′ of a building. After seeing this, though, I’m convinced that unwillingness/laziness is the culprit (notice the spec on the cable length):
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/dad/coop/mmts_images/ShelterAssemblyDrawings1.pdf
As an aside, I left the industry I’d spent 30+ years in and changed areas. I’ve spent the last year in a very HIP facility. All I can say is if the weather folks devoted a tenth the attention to QC with regards to temperature sensors that HIP units require, we wouldn’t be seeing these suspect stations/data.
I’ve noticed that the Greensburg MMTS is at less than one meter from the wall. I had placed my MMTS in a similar location and the thermometers always registered two or even three degrees Celsius higher than the temperature of air registered by the thermometers situated at one and a half meters distant from the wall. I changed my MMTS to a new more “open” location and the registers were corrected. Another mistake is to place the MMTS on an irregular terrain (a small hill of a garden) because the station will not be at a regular 1 ½ meters above the floor. Turbulence is higher at smaller heights; as a result, the wind turbulence will be stronger in the left column of air from the station than in the right column of air from the station. This affects considerably the notches on air’s relative humidity and temperature. Those features which apparently are small have large effects on our instruments; it occurs in real nature, not in models.
By the way, I calibrate my maximum minimum temperature system two or three times per year. It would be interesting to corroborate if the people on charge calibrate their MMTSs with a reasonable regularity.
Randy and Wally,
Please check the pictures and captions more carefully and issue your apologies!
Keep up the good work, Anthony.
Donate everyone.
I always wondered about the strong divergence of the Manassa temperature record from that of Sagauche, further north in the San Luis Valley. Patently poor station siting now explains that divergence. When siting issues are in play, one simply cannot rely upon arbitrarily chosen “rural” records to give unbiased readings or to provide a sound basis for “homogenizing” urban records. But this is exactly what is done by GISS in computing gridded averages.
Correction : Saguache
If Bill Junga’s comment is intended to be taken at face value–and there seems no reason to think otherwise, it is equivalent to “mistakes and lies are better than facts”.
No good purpose was ever been well-served by lies or mistakes.
@Mike Bryant (07:17:17) :
“H.R.
Perhaps the longer the cable, the lower the temperature readings.
🙂
Mike”
THAT made me grin!
@Steve Moore (08:12:47) :
“H.R.
“…but is unwillingness to do much trenching the only thing keeping some stations from being sited farther from buildings?”
I used to wonder that, too, after seeing so many that were within 10′ of a building. After seeing this, though, I’m convinced that unwillingness/laziness is the culprit (notice the spec on the cable length):”
Thank you very much for the link to the drawing. A 45.7m cable should get the units far enough away from buildings, paved areas, cars and boats, and barbeque grills, eh?
I also had another thought about some units being so close to houses in some of the examples Anthony has posted here. I thougt I saw a couple of sites that were on very small lots. If the unit was placed 30′ away from the data taker’s home it would be on a neighbor’s property! No good at all, that.
I’ll stick with my theory that I posited on another ‘how not to’ thread. A willing volunteer is more important than a quality site. Bill Junga’s (06:43:29) comment above, “Bad data are worse than no data at all,” hits home with me.
Lots of fun here. That Manassa, Colorado station, from the point of view of the photographer, the sun is high over the right shoulder and very slightly behind. Colorada is well north of the Tropic of Cancer so the sun can’t get vertical. Looks to me like high summer time and the view into the picture is towards the east. So the MMTS is on the north side of the building and the door will face north. The solar panel, if that is what it is, is positioned to get the most from a slightly lower sun in the southern sky.
Do I get any points? 🙂 (OT the outside temperature is -1C here in south west Wales at nearly 8:00pm gmt and the forcast is even colder for tomorrow. Sheesh.. I retired here to keep warm!)
Appeal for a map of the Magnetic North Pole drift
with a higher resolution and more details than the one shown on
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GTvsMNP.gif
Please either post a web location or email to: vukcevicuATyahoo.com
vukcevic: click
All the remarks about south facing and solar panels confuse me.
This:
“Note the south facing brick wall and concrete work”
was about the Kentucky site. Where are solar panels in the the Kentucky pictures?
In the Colorado picture. There are solar panels facing – from the shadows – South as expected. But the only brick work and concrete work I see would be the long, low wall from the left of the picture to the middle. That wall indeed is facing South but it is about forty yards from the MMTS station.
So I’ll ask this. What portion of what picture shows both solar panels and brick and concrete work? Where within that picture is the brick and concrete?
I just don’t see a mistake about directions in the original text. Anyone?
I think the confusion comes from a brief reading. At first I misunderstood it also since I expected the description to be below the pictures. No big deal.
But Google Earth didn’t tell you that Manassa is where Jack Dempsey grew up!