Below is a photo of the USHCN climate station of record in Pascagoula Mississippi. Note the location of the MMTS temperature sensor. The phrase “industrial nightmare” comes to mind.
But the MMTS didn’t always have this sweet location at the water treatment plant. It was moved there after Hurricane Katrina. Craig interviewed the curator and writes:
“Moved to current location after “the storm” (Katrina), which took place in Aug. 2005. Previous location was over pavement. When I told the plant employee that there were problems with the instrument location, he said the NWS guy didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”
Well, it’s a tough call; pavement or pipes?
Craig describes the location in his site survey report as:
“MMTS is 6’ north of big water pipe, 12’ east of the brick control building, and 10’ west of a concrete canal. There is a metal track with several hoses attached about 10’ overhead.”
Here’s another photo that shows the “brick control building”:
A reminder for the NWS employee from NOAA’s reference on the siting of temperature sensors might be helpful.
The location certainly doesn’t fit the “representative of the area” specification for siting a Cotton Region Shelter in the NOAA/NWS COOP Observers Handbook (PDF available here).
3.1 Shelter Placement. The ground over which the shelter is located should be typical of the surrounding area. A level, open clearing is desirable so the thermometers are freely ventilated by the flow of air. Do not install on a steep slope or in a sheltered hollow unless it is typical of the area, or unless data from that type of topographic location is desired. When possible, the shelter should be no closer than four times the estimated height of any obstruction (tree, fence, building, etc.). Optimally it should be at least 100 feet from any paved or concrete surface. Under no circumstances should a shelter be placed on the roof of a building as this may result in extreme temperature biases.
This aerial view looks representative of the area, right?
There’s two large heat sinks and plenty of humidity via the aeration ponds to go with that tanks and piping.
While GISS hasn’t caught up with the 2008 record yet, it looks like the new location may already be registering. The above is the USHCN data from that location.
Fortunately, NASA GISS knows just what to do with that temperature data from the waste water treatment plant
– spread it around a bit!
There, that makes the historical temperature record in Pascagoula all clear now, right?
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Is it really possible to be this dumb? A newly sited sensor, and they put it in the middle of a sewage plant?
Slightly off topic: Has anyone that has a handle on GISS thought of putting the adjustments to the data rather than the data itself (i.e. homogenised minus raw) into the reconstruction model to see exactly how much of the trend is attributable to the adjustments, and to generate some lovely maps of the world to show this in colour?
This struck me as a good idea because I see so many stations where the trend is largely artificial, and the one station in my corner of Europe for around 100 miles is one of these.
The blink graph is interesting, looks like the 1925-35 period is a fulcrum and the homegenisation process just swings it about that, pre-25 down, post 35 up, taking a 10th or so off one end and sticking 3/10th or so on at the other.
And the justification for this is what?
And these guys (NWS) consider themselves competent? Outsource this work (siting stations) to the private sector and I bet you’d get a much better outcome. They wouldn’t get paid if they didn’t meet guidelines and NWS could audit the work…(or they could outsource the auditing as well).
OT The Catlin team are breaking wind at 0.11 km per hour!
[with fond rememberance of ‘The Big Bus’]
Anthony
Is this the worse you have found? It looks like a classic to me.
of topic but you will hate this
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/epa-says-global-warming-public-danger/
stalin would love this
What can I say, from what I have seen on this website regarding the quality of the USHCN I regard that this site fits in with the quality of many of the other USHCN sites, namely, “up s*** creek”. Therefore it could be argued to be a representative site.
They just keep getting better and better! Obviously that cable must be very expensive to keep it so short.
OT, Anthony, the WUWT website just made The Australian newspaper here in OZ, with a mention in an extract from a Christopher Booker article in the Telegraph, referring to the Catlin Adventure. Well done!
So .. can somebody point me to …
1) USHCN raw data.
2) The exact methodology used to correct the raw data in enough detail to obtain ANY of the derived data sets myself.
If it weren’t for corrupted data (“How Not to Measure Data, Part” X), or falsified data (“Weather Station Data: Raw or Corrupted”), Hansen, et. al. would have no data with which to work!
Adam Gallon (00:15:33) :
The blink graph is interesting, looks like the 1925-35 period is a fulcrum and the homogenization process just swings it about that, pre-25 down, post 35 up, taking a 10th or so off one end and sticking 3/10th or so on at the other.
And the justification for this is what?
This particular chart has had an overall downward cooling slope adjusted to a neutral slope. You can’t make make a case with any one chart, because there are about as many adjusted to cooling slopes as adjusted to warming. You can’t spot what’s being done because it looks so random, but when you average all the adjustments for each year over the whole USHCN, you see the insidious creep of global warming is being adjusted into the dataset.
Tweak the homogenization algorithm, check the totaled curve, tweak, check, tweak, check, until you get what you need.
A couple posts ago we had the USHCN total adjustments chart
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_t.gif
What we need is the same chart for GISS adjustments, as Mike (23:29:36) : suggested.
Well, if trailer parks are tornado magnets, sewage treatment plants are MMTS magnets. You’d think a properly run government agency would at least try to work out a deal with Char-Broil to purchase the BBQ grills with the MMTS sensors right up front. Nope. That would be efficient.
I wonder who on this list http://www.noaa.gov/organizations.html one should ask about quality control at these stations? It would be interesting to get their own audit results and see how that compares with Anthony’s project. FOI request?
OT, but here we go:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/epa-says-global-warming-public-danger/
Note the picture of the power plant with all that nasty C02 just hanging around it…
JimB
i try to avoid conspiracies, but when i see the adjustment it is beginning to look like one! how do you adjust this area mostly up???
If the Treasury Department and Wall Street would adopt this method of readjusting financial history we might find that we’re a lot better off than we imagined:
“The dollar continued it unprecedented climb against other world currencies……”
” The DJIA again set a new daily high recording its third highest close in the past ten years and making this the most prosperous decade since …..”
“Good enough for government work”!
Lucky that they didn’t have a steam line to site it by.
OT: UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt…Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society…“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”…Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. “We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder,” he said.
Unbelievable!
Mr. Watts,
I’m was wondering if you’ve also done articles on “How not to measure CO2”. I’ve read that of the volcanic gasses emitted by Mauna Loa, about 20% is CO2. Does the Volcano Observatory adjust their measurements for this naturally occurring volume? QA/QC measures? Is it scientifically sound to use one data point to characterize the entire Earth’s atmosphere? I don’t think so.
I wonder how many years of service the NWS ‘government guy’ who sited this station has under his/her belt? I’d be inclined to be forgiving if they were in their probationary period and were still in training when this station was sited. Otherwise, I WANT MY (tax) MONEY BACK!
That said, Anthony, do you happen to have an example of a completely-in-spec station that you could put up for comparison… just to show it actually can be done… at least once?
The shock value of the image of a properly sited station would be like posting “weather porn” :o))
Yet another one. I’m just waiting for some giant piece of legislation to have a tiny amendment quietly added to it that reads something like, “In the interests of national security, climate stations will be off-limits to the public, and people caught photographing them will be harassed and prosecuted.”
The ability to tax carbon is almost within congress’ grasp, so close they’re already discussing how to spend the huge amounts of tax revenue that would be generated from it. I wouldn’t put anything past them to make sure nothing threatens them reaching this goal.
The interests of the Public are slowly giving way to the interests of the State, and it is the interest of the State to tax and control the Public as much as possible.
It has always been the goal of dissent to expose those in power. This project of exposing problems with the climate station siting, which represents one piece of the infrastructure being used to push for carbon taxes, can’t be sitting well with those seeking greater control over the public.
In a perfect world, science discovers truth, and speaks truth to power, and expects that this scientific truth will result in legislation that advances the interests of the Public.
In the real world, in our world, power funds only the “truth” that advances the interests of the State.
Great work on this project Anthony.
What is “the governments” scientific , as opposed to political, explanation for raising some data points and lowering others ? You’d think with all of the reconstruction billions that were poured into this area that they could have at least purchased 400 square feet of land, cleared the trees, fenced the area and placed the sensor in the middle. We have a government run be nitwits!
[snip – off topic]