We, at the Division of Climatology, could not get the forecast office guys to admit there was a problem and fix it. It took the newspaper expose to get someone to do something about the oil.

During the past couple of years the temperatures at HNL began to increase relative to other nearby stations. A simple comparision with those stations, and other statewide temperatures, shows that by mid June the HNL readings had hit 3-4 degrees higher than an index of other Oahu stations and other statewide stations. This is much more than a “couple of degrees”. The bogus readings should be removed from the official record.

I sent a detailed email with a thorough statistical analysis to the NWS office in Honolulu and did not receive a response. I also sent the same email to one of the Honolulu TV stations that had been advertising the record temperatures and they even did a live story on The Weather Channel about the record heat. Of course, I have yet to receive a response.

I would suggest to anyone reading this that they do a similar, simple statistical comparison of HNL vs any other Hawaii temperature station. You’ll immediately see the 3-4 degree variance into mid June compared with past months and years.

REPLY: Spot on Tom, and welcome. – Anthony

http://geomag.usgs.gov/observatories/honolulu/

It is certainly a cooler environment than the airport:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=21.31528,-157.99917&z=17&t=h&hl=en

And just 3.9 miles to the west, about the same distance inland, but sans the asphalt ocean.

[ 2008-04-10 ] Current EVAP GALVAN(F) PRIMARY GALVANIZED PAN, FIXED POINT EVAPORATION — — COOP SOD
PRCP SRG STANDARD RAIN GAGE PRECIPITATION
TEMP MMTS MMTS ELECTRONIC SENSOR TEMPERATURE UNK
CRS — COTTON REGION SHELTER — — —

Something hinky there. Will investigate. – Anthony

Do they? I see HONOLULU OBS OAHU and HONOLULU, OAH (the two near stations shown below the quote) but not the Honolulu Airport in GISS’s “list of stations actually used”:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/station_list.txt

It does show up in the “full list”:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/v2.temperature.inv.txt

The above links in context are here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

“According to the Hadley CRUTEM3 data the 5×5 degree grid containing Honolulu has had no warming since the early 1970s (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/hawaii.jpg) Since the IPCC attributes warming prior to the 1970s to natural causes and there has been no warming in Hawaii since, it appears that CO2 causes no warming in that environment.”

I’ve made this point before … why aren’t there CO2 measurements being taken at all/most/a few of the temperature recording sites? It would seem like a study of the relationship would be essential to understanding the impact of CO2 on temperatures. With all the money being spent on climate research the cost would be low. I guess no one really wants to know.

Here is a climate summary for the state of Hawaii (http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Hawaii.htm)
Some observations:
Hilo temperatures correspond almost exactly to the local SSTs.
Hilo temperatures correspond to the PDO.
Hilo sea level fluctuations match the PDO.

The left does not have much time left to get us all an order of magnitude lower living standard and pick our pockets clean.

Each thermometer had a special pellet in the mercury column. The max pellet was pushed ahead by the mercury, and stuck at the hottest point as the mercury shrank away from it by cooling. The min pellet, on the other hand was pulled down (cooler) by the retreating end of the mercury column. It somehow stayed put at the coldest point when the mercury expanded again by heating.

After observation, the max thermometer was spun like a propellor- it was mounted on an axle. The centrifugal force moved the mercury and the pellet to a low temperature position, hopefully lower than the highest temperature that could occur in the following observation period.

The min thermometer was reset by shaking the mercury and pellet to an artificially high temperature position.

These two thermometers never agreed closer than two degrees as to the current temperature at the time of observation. At first, I thought the thermometers were faulty, and requested new ones from our NWS supervisor. Well, the new ones were no different.

Now we are using a Nimbus electronic sensor and digital readout. It displays to the nearest 0.1 degree. However it is only accurate to 0.3 degree, per manufacturers literature. It has no stamps or stickers indicating calibration. Is it better than the old mercury sticks? Couldn’t prove it by me.

Accurate temperature measurement is not and never has been trivial. Don’t think that your Kmart digital with 0.1 degree precision means it’s accurate, unless you can calibrate it – more than once.

Sorry for the long ramble. It’s not much fun for me to think that weird government actions causing the degradation of our country’s energy supply could hinge on data collected in this way.

dh

REPLY: Typically it is crushed rock – Anthony

Thanks again, Anthony… Sorry for this question: what kind of rock? The total normal emittancy at environmental temperatures is 0.93 for crushed quartz, 0.9 for calcite and 0.83 for sandstone with 5% calcite.

If I understand your thread, you are discussing MIA (Miami International)….white gravel in south Florida is virtually always crushed shellrock/limestone, usually about 1″ sized…particularly on government locations as it produced locally….cdl

And how much warming did we have last century? About 2 degrees?

Yes, you heard it right. I am shocked over +-2 degrees, as I thought +-1 degree was as
bad as things got. Start looking at some RAWS data, for example, and you will see whole degrees. Look at other type of stations, such as CalTrans or Water Resources and you will most likely see outputs to the nearest 10th of a degree.
Good project now that most of the stations have been identified.

The warming of the last century (AFAIK) was 0.7C, or 1.26F.
+-2 F is ugly.