It could easily be a private residence close-by. Still looking…

MarkW (15:49:52) :

Ever consider trying to get the $50M reward for Bin Laden?

—————–

Would bin Laden show up as a hot spot or a cold spot?

Cold before cruise missile, hot after..

“Gary A
Picacho State Park is indeed open, but they want six bucks to get in. All the same, I’ll be driving by there Tuesday, and I think I’ll try to talk my way in to get a picture.
Juan”

I don’t think we have proven that there IS a station there. It’s just that the “8 SE” notation of Picacho appears to place it there.

Has anyone tried calling the ranger station to see if there is a station there?

A couple of points:

(1) The Station ID (and data) is available on the HPRCC web site, but only for the 10 High Plains states. I think the orange dot is Watford City and the temperature data is complete to Aug. 2008, but is only sporadic thereafter.

(2) On the regional maps there are many interesting / puzzling dots, e.g.,
(a) In TX there are 2 red dots that do not show up on the national map.
One appears to be Dallas, the other is east of Dallas somewhere out in the boonies.
(b) In southern OK, near the TX border is a red dot sandwiched between 3
green dots – a delta T of 4 degrees (or maybe 5, since one dot appears to be dark green).

—————–

Would bin Laden show up as a hot spot or a cold spot?

I think this practice (throwing out years with missing data), if used on all stations would produce a much clearer picture of temps, and is a better practice than trying to fill it in, and certainly much better than trying to just take an average, even if you only have a few months of data (big DUH).

I think I found it… The “higher lows” phenomenon has been going on for quite a while at Florence, with a big shift in 1985 (instrumentation change then also), and a huge increase lately. The High-Low temps have fallen off a cliff lately. See the “DeltaChart” tab here:

http://home.comcast.net/~naturalclimate/florenceAZ.xls

Now look at the highs (no change), and the lows (much higher). Normal difference was 35°F decades ago, it is now down to a 21°F delta from max to min. This is pretty common with irrigation as Anthony has pointed out before. I suppose with the growth of Florence, irrigation might include people watering their lawns at night also? Whatever the cause, the effect is HUGE. While this might be a localized phenomenon, the average temperature is up A LOT, even though the highs have not budged…

No wonder it shows up as a red dot! Looks like this station needs an audit…

What does GISS say about this station?

I thought you’d be interested in the prospective of a glider pilot and student of micrometeorology.

The Phoenix heat dome is often clearly visible from an airplane. Since I began observing it in the early 1970s it has grown significantly larger and more intense. The dome is a stagnate air mass made visible by the pollution and dust it traps near the surface. It also traps hot air.

Daytime thermals drive a vertical circulation of the air mass, or “mixing” in weather-speak.. Arizona thermals usually reach 9,000 to16,000 feet msl during the spring and summer. This pushes cold, upper level air downward, which in turn moderates surface temperatures.

Most people know that urban areas retain heat at night. Urban areas also produce strong stagnant air masses which delay the onset and intensity of thermal mixing during the day. This in turn raises day time temperatures.

From decades of experience, glider pilots know that thermal activity is suppressed over urban areas. Since gliders rely upon thermals to stay airborne, they avoid large urban areas whenever possible. The larger the urban area the larger the effect.

The Phoenix record high of 122 F was set on a very stagnant day in June 1990. Gliders just 10 miles south of the Sky Harbor weather station could not find usable thermals .. an almost unheard of event.

From my prospective the heat island effect is under estimated by most warmists.

peter_ga (06:12:43) :
Squidly,
I believe the decline in CO2 consuming plankton coinciding with cooling periods suggests that cooling periods have less CO2, so anything that relies on CO2 is [snip-find better word for has a problem] This is incredibly supportive of the theory that CO2 causes heat, provided no other possibilities occur to you.

Peter,

I believe what they are trying to say is, oceanic plankton removes billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere and that around 33 million years ago, a very sharp decline of the population of this plankton resulted in much higher CO2 concentration, and further that this coincided with a significant global cooling. Hence, the CO2 rose sharply during that period of time but the planet cooled.

Coincidently, I happened to catch a science channel program last night where they were talking about increasing the amount of plankton in the ocean to help scrub CO2 (same hypothesis as in the article cited), which also coincides with the more recent attempts seed the oceans with iron filings to boost the growth of various algae and plankton.

What puzzled me most, was that this article was presented on a typically AGW alarmist website and that most importantly, the hypothesis was that the lack of this “CO2 gobbling Plankton” would lead to cooler temperatures. This hypothesis is in direct contradiction to the hypothesis that CO2 drives global warming.

This says to me that they obviously have no clue as to the effect that CO2 has on global temperature, which further diminishes credibility of the AGW hypothesis in general. This “chasing the CO2 tail” is getting past the point of ridiculous, and for me beginning to pass the point of humorous.

Seems to me that CO2 causes everything and therefore we must remove this terribly destructive pollutant from our world [sarcasm].

I also read the article “Scientists Refute Argument Of Climate Skeptics” (link posted on same web site and cited by someone else on this blog as well) and found it equally disturbing in that they seem to distort the record to bias their sensational title.

Perhaps it is better to be uninformed than misinformed?

Florence: http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/stations/index.php?action=metadata&network_station_id=023027
Casa Grande: http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/stations/index.php?action=metadata&network_station_id=021314

Looks like a combination of missing data and maybe a moisture issue or some other heat influence at the Florence site at night. Humidity records might show something…