As many readers know, I’ve been working with a team of dedicated volunteers on the US www.surfacestations.org project since June 2007. We now have over 50% of the 1221 station network surveyed and new surveys are being added, though slowed somewhat due to winter months.
The project scope was so large that it hasn’t been practical to consider other countries until the USHCN network has been completed. Another issue is that stations in the HadCRUT list for the UK aren’t quite as easy to locate, nor to get access to. One thing that NOAA does better than any other meteorological agency is to provide public access to all records. That level of access is not as common (or missing altogether, requiring FOI actions) in other countries.
I’m happy to report that there is now an effort underway in the UK to survey that network of stations. Pete Rawlinson writes to tell me of this first survey. Kudos to him and his team. I’ll be working with them to help locate stations and to bring you reports. In the meantime, you can learn more about the effort at this link.
The first station does appear at first glance to be well sited, until you see the Google Earth view and realize how close it is to the access road, and how much land area is urbanized north and south of the runway. This concerns me more than the Goliath jet. A good portion of GHCN stations are at airports like this one. Airports, as we know, have grown in size, sprawl, and flights served significantly in the last century to accomodate air travel growth. So when we have a significant portion of the GHCN record coming from airports, what are we actually measuring? – Anthony
Wales’s Record station – or is it? A David and Goliath tale
Hawarden Weather Station
Today we introduce Hawarden weather station, a pristine-looking station that provides hourly observations to the UK’s Met Office. It’s claim to fame is its holding of the maximum temperature ever recorded in the principality of Wales. 35c (95F) was recorded on 2nd August 1990.
Hawarden (more) is a small town situated on the Wales/England border close to the city of Chester. The nearby Deeside industrial conurbation provides most of the power generation for the Merseyside area that contains the large city of Liverpool.
Hawarden Airport has intermittent services, mainly serving the aerospace factories nearby. Airbus manufacture wings of their airliners in the next-door town of Broughton before assembly in Germany. This necessitates the use of bulky cargo planes such as the Beluga (more), generally used to transport large but light items. Speaking of the Beluga…
This is quite an amazing shot and we were lucky to get such an opportunity. It is unfortunate that temperature records are put in doubt when the sensor is placed in the vicinity of a huge heat source. Usually small town airfields like this are used for small passengers planes and leisure flying but to see a behemoth trundling along like this with a Stevenson screen in the foreground is an amazing contrast.
I think it’s only fair that on this occasion the last word is reserved to the Goliath.
Click for interactive view
Anyone interested in weather stations next door to the UK in Ireland information can be found here. Most of the stations have buildings next to them but these would be origional.
http://www.met.ie/about/weatherobservingstations/default.asp
http://www.met.ie/about/weatherobservingstations/climap.asp
Includes some history on the stations, like this interesting fact on one of the most important weather observations in history. “It was from Blacksod that the observation, which finally determined the date of the D-Day landings in June 1944, emanated.” If i recall my history correctly there was bad weather and the whole invasion rested on this one report.
By the way here is what the temperature was like in Ireland in December.
“It was the coldest December for between seven and 12 years generally and the coldest since 1981 at Casement Aerodrome. Ground frost was severe in places at the beginning and end of the month, with the lowest December ground temperatures at many stations for between five and 27 years in the period 27th to 29th.”
http://www.met.ie/climate/monthly-summary.asp
January is looking like being even colder so far.
Anthony,
I am prepared to survey some stations in the Netherlands and possibly northern Belgium if you wish to go continental. I do notice quite a lot of MMTS units attached to motorway bridges and it would not surprise me if some of these were used by GISS.
If you want to do this, drop me an e-mail on the address entered on this post.
Mike, GISS only uses one Dutch station, De Bilt.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=633062600000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1
Siting itself is pristine, although it is almost completely surrounded by city – De Bilt, Zeist, Uithof, Utrecht. All of which have grown considerably since the early 20th centrury. GISS mentions 33.000 people for De Bilt, but June 2008 census shows 42.000. But that is ignoring Utrecht (300.000 people), which is less than 2 miles away.
Equipment moved around a bit at the site itself and was less than ideal in the early part of the record. Photos and metadata can be found here (in Dutch):
http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/metadata/debilt.html
If you’re using Google Maps, search for KNMI De Bilt – it’s the field south of the big buildings, west of the “people’s gardens” (volktuintjes).
The only problem we may have in the UK is that anybody caught/reported for photographing anything anywhere could be arrested, held overnight, & DNA sampled, under the Anti-Terrorism laws, as happened to an innocent bystander who photographed a railway station out of enthusiasm! Most of our stations appear to be at airports & military/government establishments. You may not have heard about a bunch of UK military aircraft enthusiasts who went to Greece(?) a while back now, who were imprisoned for taking photos at a military airbase& accused of espionage, it was quite a to do over here at the time!
I hope it really goes well! Fingers crossed.
From my local paper…
Temperatures fall to lowest for 40 years
Thursday, January 08, 2009, 09:15
http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/news/Temperatures-fall-lowest-40-years/article-595712-detail/article.html#StartComments
From my local paper…
Temperatures fall to lowest for 40 years
Thursday, January 08, 2009, 09:15
http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/news/Temperatures-fall-lowest-40-years/article-595712-detail/article.html#StartComments
Siting’s not too bad for a weather station and would probably serve quite well for most people’s needs. At least it’s not located on an asphalt paved parking lot or next to an A/C unit.
But if it’s climate data you want, you can zoom out on that Google map and see that there’s an area a bit over a mile to the west near to some forested land which would probably minimize any biases.
In the meantime, best wishes for the UK project. Should be interesting to see how it develops.
Anthony
Don’t forget the Armagh observatory in Belfast – Northen Ireland that has the longest “continuous” record in the UK going back to the 18th century or maybe before.
The last time I looked at the history, it did not show much in the way of late 20th Century warming but then I have not looked at whatever “adjustments” were made to the records.
Regards
Paul
I’ve looked at a couple stations here in Germany, which appeared quite well-sited. Yet I saw one at Dortmund airport surrounded by concrete and asphalt.
I’m not sure which stations are used by the German Weather Service (DWD) and GISS and which are commercially operated.
I tried to get a list from the DWD once, but gave up after running through the bureacracy. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
That aircraft had landed on runway 23.
It then turns and taxis back along the runway.
There may be some jetwash as it turns to port at the runway end.
DaveE.
Your http://www.surfacestations.org link in your post is malformed and sends you to a 404 error page. — John M Reynolds
That’s quite the “clean” factory on the horizon in the first picture. I thought all of Europe was running on solar, wind and unicorn flatulence power after they adopted the Kyoto
ProtocolsPonzi Scheme and agreed to reduce their CO2 emissions to zero? Perhaps that’s just Al Gore’s Tennessee mansion’s chimney, as viewed from the other side of the pond. 😉It’s great that you’ve taken on yet another massive
headacheproject on behalf of the sane half of the planet, Anthony. You and your team will go down in history as having helped all of humanity by exposing the fraud and malfeasance of the “science” of AGW. The debt the world owes you and your dedicated team can never be repaid. (Although, when the next Ice Age starts, you could start selling reverse carbon off-sets.)Paul Maynard, re Armagh:
The Central England Temperature record says the following: “The longest continuous record of measured surface air temperatures in the world exists for a region representative of the English Midlands – known as the Central England Temperature record. Daily records extend back to 1772 and monthly records to 1659. Annual temperature fluctuations in this region are representative of those in most of the UK. The data are quality controlled and updated monthly.”
See http://www.ecn.ac.uk/iccuk/indicators/1.htm
However, treat with caution as it says “Since global warming is anticipated to lead to changes in the frequencies of extreme events – such as hot summer days and cold winter days – these indicators are potentially useful as well.”
Great – will get in touch to see if I can help.
You see this all the time in airports: An otherwise well sited ASOS–with a ‘specially constructed paved path leading right up to it.
From the aerial shot it looks as if it’s a gravel path, what with those track marks running down it, but the ground level sure looks like standard blacktop. (And the Google hybrid does mark it as a road.)
Those ASOS systems seem to be only secondarily concerned with temperatures. They also measure visibility, icing conditions, wind and what have you. They are interested in local conditions for planes in the AP, which is its own microenvironment, and not necessarily indicative of what’s going on on the outside.
Wait. Is that even an ASOS? Is that box a Stevenson Screen . . .?
Being in an airport, I just automatically assumed it was ASOS.
Alan the Brit,
(sarc on) For Pete’s sake man, don’t give the US of A Gov’munt any balmy ideas! Gore/Hanson will be on the scent to restrict access to stations here like an AGW activist on a Chinook Wind. (sarc off)
Actually, I think the Foggybottom crowd is already talking about bringing the US out of its economic funk by painting everything green or some such hyperbull.
Mike
Hehe, I hereby declare these to be Carbon On-sets.
Here in France, ALL stations with long records and used in the GHCN database (hence in Noaa & Giss temp) are at airport in big cities.
The only rural station in the GHCN database is Mont-Aigoual, a pristine mountainous station used as a reference station by Meteo France. It is a manned station and a tourist destination well known to French amateur meteorologists. The problem is in the GHCN databse, temperatures have been stopped in late 80s. And there is no data prior to 1950.
It’s with such sloppy data climatologists know the warming has been “unprecedented”.
jmrSudbury (06:09:30) :
Your http://www.surfacestations.org link in your post is malformed and sends you to a 404 error page. — John M Reynolds
Worked OK for me.
The track running nearby will almost certainly be concrete.
The old peri-track 40′ away is still used by light business type jets.
The airfield had 3 runways the current one 05/23, 01/19 and 14/32. I suspect 14/32 used to be the main runway as there is a small emergency runway parallel and it would also roughly align with what used to be the main runway at RAF Sealand ~5Mls away.
Given when it was decommissioned as an RAF base, I was surprised to see what appear to be 3 hardened aircraft shelters due North of the weather station although at ~150′ wide by ~300′ they are rather large.
The freighter in the photos is visiting the factory in the background.
Wish I’d known it was there when I was over that way a couple of months back, I’d have taken a closer look.
DaveE.
Worked for me too.
Forgot to mention. While I was there I saw one of those aircraft and was surprised by it’s size.
Not by how big, but how small. I was about 800′ from it.
DaveE.
It should be noted that the area where the photo’s were taken is the land to the left of the station. You may notice on that satellite two roads which appear to end in T-Junctions? Well that photo is a few years old! That land to the Left is now built upon. We should have got pictures! It is now “Hawarden Inustrial Park”. The land directly by the fence was in a “turfed up” state on the visit, as if another expansion phase was about to take place. There is now a large building to the North of the upper “dirt track road”, which no longer ends after 20 yards, but in tarmaced up to the fence.
Also! You see the Black Tarmac in the picture just outside the station on the far side? On the satellite this is shown a dirt track, but is not anymore! That road is the only way from the main entrance to the Control Tower off to the Left. Large HGV trucks pass by there and low loaders. We saw 3 in 20 minutes. Should have got pictures. Each one has to have an escort. We are still learning what to look for!
Obviously the Commerical interest which have popped up around the airfield to support such a large Airbus plant is substantial. There are 100’s of sub contracting premises, in what used to be quite a rural airfield before Airbus.
A bit OT, but here’s a book review you that might be of interest to Anthony’s fans:
Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.
Not that that’s news to anyone here, but the review has some very interesting excerpts.