Comments on: SurfaceStations.org: A tour of Italy

By: George M

George M — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:59:59 +0000

I can’t address European airport expansion in general, but I can comment on the Madrid-Barajas field from 1988 to 2000, and to the present. When I first landed there in 1988, it had just expanded the main runway, and added a perpendicular secondary. The terminal building was small, you could walk from one end to the other in about 5 minutes. By 2000, my last visit, the terminal had quadrupled in size, the perpendicular secondary runway was now the location of a large parking garage (later bombed by Basque separatists), and several additional runways had been added. By last year or maybe ’07, when they had that terrible crash, there is now a secondary terminal about twice as big as the original terminal, and I no longer could pick out the outline of either the original terminal or runways from the overhead photographs. Of course, Spain is atypical, growing quickly out of the Franco era, but the growth of that airport amazed me when I went through, usually twice a year, as it was significantly larger each time.

By: Paolo M.

Paolo M. — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:02:18 +0000

Fabio,
thank you for your contribution.
Right now I can’t look from my office at the photo gallery of Milano station, but I think they are the same pictures posted in a weather forum in 2004.
If you look at satellite maps from Microsoft live, Google and Pagine Gialle (links above) you can appreciate the ongoing transformation of the site.

Could you, please, write me at @arpa.emr.it, just add a “p” followed by my surname?

To whom are concerned about GISS adjustments, the real, original data from the real source regarding Pisa/SGiusto show a linear trend of:
0.093 °C/dec for 1952-2007 (dic-nov)

Excluding 1992, as in GISS data, the linear trend is:
0.089 °C/dec

When GISS combines the several data sources from GHCN, the linear trend they find would be:
0.046 °C/dec

GISS adjusted linear trend is an astonishing:
0.241 °C/dec

Caveat: in 1973 there was a change in the observation time. I haven’t still computed the ToBS for Pisa, but for other stations is not negligible but not relevant, surely far from 0.241….

By: Fabio

Fabio — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:46:57 +0000

I see that Paolo surveyed a lot of italian weather stations, Milano Linate included. GISS database for this site ends in 1987, and I must say this is good.

Just to contribute, I have some photos taken on 2004/05 showing the Stevenson’s Screen surrounded by vegetation (Click here to see a gallery). In that period (and probably since many years before) that station was obviously highly overestimating temperatures, so me and my fiends at http://www.centrometeolombardo.com (it’s a weather association) started complaining about this with AM and ENAV, documenting the situation you can see. Within a few months that vegetation was removed. After this, readings became more reliable (we verified this through our regional amatorial network – see http://www.centrometeolombardo.com/temporeale.php for our network realtime readings), but later we verified a new degrade, probably related to some works (a construction site with building materials just around the screen).

At the moment the area , previously surroundend by open grass fields, is interested by a permanent transformation. They are building some big parks for automotives just a few hundreds of meters aside. I can collect photos about this too, if someone is interested in.

By: E.M.Smith

E.M.Smith — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:29:14 +0000

E.M.Smith (21:25:05) :

[snip - none of that here]

My first snip! Sorry to have offended. It did get under my skin that the data look to be so cooked… I’ll try to restrain my ‘enthusiasm’ in future…

By: wattsupwiththat

wattsupwiththat — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:05:45 +0000

Steve, by all means, send it. Anthony

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:33 +0000

I’ve got a photo of what I think is a weather station on the top of Vesuvius taken this summer.

By: DaveE

DaveE — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:41:06 +0000

The Pisa & Trieste temps have lost the mid century cooling.

Someone correct me if I’m reading that wrongly please.

DaveE.

By: lichanos

lichanos — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:37:05 +0000

Yes, I too would like to understand the logic of the GISS adjustments. If we assume that the adjustments are biased in favor of AGW, would we not expect to see the older records depressed in value, to accentuate the later rise? (I’m not saying that’s what they would do – just exploring the logic.)

On the other hand, for some of the stations that have become surrounded by urbanization, you would expect later records to be adjusted downward to correct for heat island effects.

Am I careless for not noticing either of these patterns? It seems in the ones I looked at closely that the older records were adjusted upwards, and the later ones left largely alone.

By: DaveE

DaveE — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:03:10 +0000

E.M.Smith (19:09:18) :

“Oh, and 1961, she’s a little flat, just a tweak, about .25 degree more. Can’t say we don’t raise the early temps some times, if only a smidge.”

That’s to smooth out the mid 20th cooling :-P

DaveE.

By: tallbloke

tallbloke — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:29:52 +0000

Chris D. (19:45:57) :

One thing I’m curious about is whether or not we’ll see many air conditioners cluttering up the micro-environment of the European stations in general. I have been told that air conditioning isn’t nearly as popular in Europe as it is in the U.S. Is that a myth?
Oh it’s popular, but a lot of folk can’t afford it.

By: Paolo M.

Paolo M. — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:09:20 +0000

Regarding air conditioning, in Italy is very popular.
Office buldings and other working places are conditioned since many years.
Private house conditioning is now very extensive and the heat wave of 2003 has made it much more popular.

By: Paolo M.

Paolo M. — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:00:44 +0000

As a general rule I tend to consider airports as a “living” infrastructure and data contamination comes from not only new buildings or runways but also from usually increasing energy consumption and waste heat.
Nevertheless, I think that a few airports can be choosen as a good candidate because of small changes through the decades. We have just to look for that.

I think that to avoid many problems with urbanisation and waste energy, a radical choise would be to use, for climate purpouses, only maximum temperatures, that are more representative of the real heat content of the planetary boundary layer. Siting and maintenance of the shelter could affect Tmax (also the seasons in the northern lands), but Tmin is more error-prone.
Of course, isolated stations sited on mountain tops or small islands would be my first guess choise.

That European temperatures in the last decades have increased is an undisputed fact. Data, anyway, must be cleaned up from all those non weather related, contaminating perturbations.
If, at the end, the data still show a jump around the seconf half of the 80s, as Demesure pointed out, and someone tell you that the jump is GHG induced, be sure…that guy hasn’t understand how weather and climate work.

By: E.M.Smith

E.M.Smith — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:25:05 +0000

The more I closely inspect the individual GISS vs non-GISS temperature charts the more I am convinced that (if this is representative of GISS transformations) the GISS data set is useless. It is nothing more than a computer generated fantasy.

Just look at Pisa (it’s the most blatant). Give me a rational explanation for changes of over 1.5 degrees down at the start and up .25 at the end. That’s about 1.75 C of ‘fudge’. From this a 0.1 C change in the average is to be taken as deadly?

UHI compensation pushes the other direction. It’s not compensation. Could they have the sign backwards on their UHI compensator? It IS NASA and they have had, um, issues, with sign and feet vs meters before…

[snip - none of that here]

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:48:06 +0000

Hope someone will graph the climate change during the Bush Administration.
Might the world have undergone Global Cooling during his 8 years?

By: Chris D.

Chris D. — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:45:57 +0000