NOAA: FUBAR high temp/climate records from faulty sensor to remain in place at Honolulu

“This thermometer is dead.”
“No it’s pining for the fjords.”

Email Hawaii’s Dept of Tourism and notify them that you’ll be vacationing in Tahiti this year because of the record temperatures in Hawaii.

Perhaps the Honolulu station is too important as a generator of nice neat virtual grid nodes out in the wide blue Pacific. Do these people measure the CO2 up that volcano as well?

Perhaps the new thermometer was one of those negative thermometers.

Really wierd how all the erroros, fubars and otherwise screwed up data always seems to skew one way. Just weird how random the errors are. I am sure it’s just an error.
And you wonder why people know a hoax when they see one.

Further to OT comment above, you cna find even more UK climate projections here:
http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk/
You need to register and then log-in but can then play with the data to your heart’s content. It’s geographical resolution is I think 15x15km square.
You will be glad to know it is all based on “Sound Science” –
“The science underlying UKCP09 has been the subject of peer review within the scientific literature (see references within the sciences reports). In addition, to checking and verifying the methodology and outputs throughout their development, a peer review panel examined the methodologies used to produce the climate projections and the marine and coastal projections, as well as those to develop the weather generator tool, and found that they are credible using state-of-the-art science and methodologies. The team of reviewers also noted that the work carried out was of high standard and represented a large step beyond UKCIP02.
The scientific reports and user guidance have benefited from recommendations to improve the description and communications of the methodologies and assumptions, including the implications for use. “

Ric, to clarify:
RealClimate = SNAFU
NOAA data = FUBAR
NASA sun theories = FUBAR

Per the statement from the “official” link below, not just Hawaii is getting warmer.
The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for May 2009 ranked fourth warmest since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090617_globalmay.html
My favorite doublespeak on artic ice coverage is below.
May 2009 is 1.6% less than 1979-2000 average, but should be “on the average” down 7.5% (per the decade average decrease)
Arctic sea ice covered an average of 5.17 million square miles during May. This is 1.6 percent less than the 1979-2000 average extent. By contrast, Antarctic sea ice extent in May was 6.6 percent above the 1979-2000 average. Since 1979, May Arctic sea ice extent has decreased by 2.5 percent per decade, while May Antarctic sea ice extent has increased by 2.1 percent per decade during the same period.

Soylent Green is People! I’m afraid we’re screwed. Now the government is ignoring facts. It’s not going to change until the there is ice crossing the Canadian Border all the way to Texas.

This story is simply amazing. Honolulu has a faulty thermometer but all the records set there are kept. Meanwhile as soon as Illinois and Maine set all-time temperature records this past winter they were called into question the day it happened. In fact, so rigorous was the process in trying to ‘debunk’ these records the Illinois one was rescinded that very day. Meanwhile the Maine record took nearly a MONTH to verify and was buried in the news with quotes from alarmists “This does not prove global warming does not exist!”
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL
432 PM CST FRI JAN 16 2009
…REGARDING ROCHELLE`S LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING…
THE AUTOMATED WEATHER OBSERVING SYSTEM (AWOS) AT THE ROCHELLE
AIRPORT RECORDED A TEMPERATURE OF -36F AT 745 AM THIS MORNING.
WHILE THE THERMOMETER ON THE AWOS WAS RE-CALIBRATED YESTERDAY
AND MAY INDEED BE ACCURATE…AWOS OBSERVATIONS ARE NOT QUALITY
CONTROLLED OR CALIBRATED BY THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AND
ARE ALSO NOT DESIGNED FOR CLIMATE PURPOSES.
THEREFORE…THE STATE CLIMATOLOGIST DOES NOT CONSIDER THIS
TEMPERATURE AN OFFICIAL MEASUREMENT FOR THE PURPOSE OF
DETERMINING WHETHER OR NOT AN ALL TIME RECORD LOW FOR THE
STATE WAS REACHED. FOR THE PURPOSE OF DETERMINING RECORD
TEMPERATURES FOR THE STATE…ONLY ASOS AND
COOPERATIVE OBSERVER OBSERVATIONS WILL BE USED SINCE BOTH OF
THESE OBSERVATIONS ARE QUALITY CONTROLLED BY THE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE.
So, I ask, where’s the quality control here for Honolulu?? The quality was found to be bad, but the control is lax.
The Honolulu ‘heat wave’ has already been picked up by media outlets but I seriously doubt a follow-up story will find its way through the editor’s office explaining how far off the temperature recording equipment was or that there may have been no records set once these errors were taken into account.
Here’s some articles written recently, with excerpts.
It’s Hot!

In the first fifteen days of the month the temperature at Honolulu International Airport has either tied or broken a previous record high. The 92 degrees registered at the airport Monday was yet another record, breaking the previous one of 90 degrees all the way back in 1982.
“We’re only a couple of degrees over the record highs but certainly that’s all it takes,” said National Weather Service forecaster Derek Wroe. Monday’s high temperature at the airport was the eighth day in a row a record has been tied or broken.
Oahu Swelters Through Record Heat Wave

Forecasters Say All Time Heat Reaches Eighth Day
HONOLULU — Honolulu has been experiencing unusually hot weather for this time of year, weather officials said.
It is the eighth day that temperatures have reached as high as 92 degrees. It is an all-time record for June — 5 degrees above average.

Early sizzle fries Oahu

Shave ice sales and AC unit rentals heat up as summer moves in
Honolulu has burned up records for eight days with sizzling temperatures.
“As far as the records go, it’s just a single digit that’s sending it to the record category consecutively,” said Vic Dejesus of the National Weather Service. “It’s still exceeding 90s or above most days.”
From June 8 through yesterday, the record for high temperature was broken on seven days, and tied on one. Temperatures consistently reached 91 to 92 degrees last week and will continue to be in the low 90s this week, according to the National Weather Service’s Web site.
All is not bad, however. There has been one met over there on Hawaii that seems to get it.
I Don’t Think You’re That Hot

We’ve done it again.
For the eighth day in a row, Honolulu has busted or tied a temperature record. Today, we melted the 1985 record. And I’m starting to think something is wrong.
No, not the global warming kind of wrong.
But perhaps there’s something amiss with the equipment taking these readings.
Have you noticed that Honolulu’s temperature has been about 8-10 degrees warmer than the rest of the state each day?
But 10 degrees warmer? It doesn’t add up.
Or perhaps the most compelling evidence of all: 91 in Honolulu, but 84 just seven miles away at Kalaeloa? Something’s up.
It’s time for someone from the National Weather Service to take a trip down to the Honolulu International Airport, and do a little check-up on the temperature machine.
Because there’s nothing cool about breaking records with broken equipment.

That is why hospitals started taking rectal temps. Less fudging the data.

Accuracy is always important, but temperature sensors need to be particularly accurate (and precise) in tropical areas, where interannual variation is very slight. In temperate continental areas, the frequency with which a sensor error of 1-4 degrees F would cause a new record to be set would be relatively low, because of the greater inherent variability in day-to-day and interannual temperature. In the middle of the Pacific, every sunny day at a given time of year has pretty much the same temperature. If the sensor is off, you will break records very frequently. They obviously need to delete those records. I’m not sure if they’re trying to support global warming, or whether they just want to cover their behind after the media made a big deal about the heat.

‘Peter Plail (05:37:28) :
The Beeb also has a wonderful grahic explaining how global warming works. See if you can spot what’s missing . You can find it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8107014.stm
‘
Is the quote from this article a record? I’ve only seen 11 degrees before! 🙂
“But if greenhouse gas emissions rise quickly, that figure could be as high as 12C, Mr Benn said. ”
cheers David

“TerryS (01:50:29) :
This BBC article should be titled “How not to measure temperature in Africa”
They are planning to deploy 5,000 automatic weather stations across the continent mounted on phone masts.
Of course, being attached to a steel structure, probably with nearby generators, wont introduce any form of bias into the record.”
Reply:Mobile phone base stations produce heat and have air conditioning to cool them. Also you are correct in Africa because the power grid is unreliable most sites use generators to power them. Question is will they sue the data for weather or climate

They’ve moved on from predictions/projections to absolutes now! That’s a big certian rise in just 30 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193847/Summer-temperature-rise-2C-2040-Britain-inevitable-warns-climate-report.html?ITO=1490
cheers David

Something similar occurred at SeaTac Airport from Dec 2005 – Feb 2006 where the ASOS temperature sensor was off by +2 to +3 deg F over a period of about 2 months. It would have gone on longer except some of us diligent temperature watchers brought it to the attention of the NWS who then diagnosed and fixed the problem. It makes you wonder if an overall warm bias may have developed in the ASOS temperature reporting. There also are some serious quality control issues with ASOS precipitation data. There are now many bogus reports of measurable precipitation where none occurred. For instance, take a look at the 0.01″ reported from Tucson today (18 Jun 2009).

OT: The Sarychev eruption is the greatest SO2 injection(to 50,000 feet) of the year, via Volcanism, Eruptions and Seablogger blogs.

Offtopic, but an excellent post-mortem on the economics of ethanol –
http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
The money quote:
“…this is an industry that has raised food prices, destroyed billions of dollars in shareholder value, and according to the CBO reduced US greenhouse gas emissions by only about 0.2%, even if we ignore offsetting global land-use changes.”
Saving the planet for fun and profit…..errr…..

Off topic but more global warming causing troublesome global cooling.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html

This is the outline of QC procedures for NOAA’s surface observations. My take is that it is mostly eye-candy.
http://madis.noaa.gov/madis_sfc_qc.html

Also off topic, there’s a big report out today here in the UK with “predictions” for 2080. Needless to say it’s raising the level of alarmism considerably at the BBC (and the nationals tomorrow no doubt), as if that were possible:
More BBC alarmism
Richard Bacon is hosting a phone-in about it on his show on 5-live this evening (11pm). Are there any articulate sceptics among us who will give his show a call I wonder?

[snip]

“UK ‘must plan’ for warmer climate”

Computer models
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/ukcp/

Ron de Haan.
[snip – and previous comments snipped]
I usually enjoy Ron’s comments but this debate is polarised enough already and the above comment borders on the fanaticism it decries. That said, I am as shocked as all of you at FUBAR’s lack of rigour along with the cooking of the books.
REPLY: I agree, let’s not incite any further name calling or labeling. The issue is data. – Anthony

John Wright: “..the above comment borders on the fanaticism it decries..”
Ron was just referring to their favorite inkjet color: the red.

Adolfo Giurfa (11:55:15) :
John Wright: “..the above comment borders on the fanaticism it decries..”
Ron was just referring to their favorite inkjet color: the red.
Yeeeah, Pull the other it’s got bells on…

Some other FUBAR derivatives:
[snip funny. But piling on. Lets stick to the data issues – Anthony]

Canadian sensors appear to
be still buried under towering snowdrifts.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/199706

While we don’t know how long the volcano will keep blowing I did check the latest SST and wind readings in the Nino regions with TAO’s colorful temperature image, the 30C pool has been getting a bit smaller in the past 2 days and quite a few of the arrows in that same image representing wind have been getting longer, so the warm pool in the west hasn’t been building up very good and lends credence to what some here say El Nino may not form.
Then some of you say a La Nina may pop up sometime around next winter which if so it could form not long after that major eruption that would cool the Earth even further O.O!
Luckily if that means an extremely cold Winter we lost two sizable cottonwood limbs from storms recently that means we partially rebuilt our stock of firewood 🙂

Do we have any other instances of “failed on the high side” temp sensors other than Honolulu HI and WEAC1?
Looking back over the record (and please do check it out) for Aug 2007 it seemed to me that the hotter the actual day, the greater the error when compared to nearby stations. That’s what it looked like to me, anyways.
Honolulu is a place where the daytime max doesn’t change all that much, not like the Sacramento Valley where you can get 20 degree swings in a matter of a few days.

Britannic no-see-um (03:58:20) :
Perhaps the Honolulu station is too important as a generator of nice neat virtual grid nodes out in the wide blue Pacific. Do these people measure the CO2 up that volcano as well?

There are no active volcanoes on that island. Among the Hawaiian Islands, only the ‘Big Island’ has any active volcanoes.

Anthony, you are right about the SNIPS.
It does not serve the discussions.

Thursday, June 18, 2009
Reasons to Distrust Your Government
By Alan Caruba
In the normal course of events, when voters no longer have confidence in the President, their Senators and their Representatives, they vote them out of office, but there are whole agencies of government that continue on no matter who is in office and, since their budgets and existence depend on the politics of whoever holds power, they bend to serve their policies.
A democracy is most in peril when citizens conclude they can no longer trust their government and there is no better example of that than a recent report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is sheer rubbish.
It is typical of the deliberate distortions and outright lies that have been put forth to an increasingly doubting public regarding “global warming.” It is part and parcel of the deceptions perpetrated for decades now by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all of which feature tortured data of dubious quality and, since 1998, have ignored the Earth’s cooling trend.
The increasing reports from around the nation of “freaky” weather, of snow in June, and other anomalies are, in fact, a reflection of this cooling trend and it is likely to last at least thirty years or more.
John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President on Science and Technology, and a man who holds some of the most outlandish and baseless views on climate change, said “This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experience of Americans, region by region and sector by sector.”
No it doesn’t. For one thing, the “heat-trapping pollution” to which he obliquely refers is mostly carbon dioxide, a gas vital to all life on Earth and a gas which, in the days when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, could be found in concentrations five times or more higher than today. If CO2 was the great Earth destroyer that Holden, Gore, and others insist, there should be no Earth at all as we know it today.
To call CO2 “pollution” is to immediately invalidate the entire report, but to further insist, as the report does, that it is “primarily human-induced” is not just quite wrong, but a great big LIE. Human activity plays virtually no role whatever in the production of CO2.
This product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program is a 190-page piece of loathsome propaganda that predicts more frequent heat waves, more flooding and waterborne diseases, rising water temperatures, more insect infestations and wildfires, and that old standby, rising sea levels with coastal flooding that will no doubt drown Manhattan and other coastal cities.
Hollywood does a better job with such fantasy than the minions of Washington, D.C.
Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, said of the NOAA report “This is not a work of science, but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA.”
This report and the hours of effort that went into is pure science fiction, predicting outcomes, as all such “global warming” does (now called “climate change”), fifty to a hundred years from now.
Global warming propagandists always focus on a distant and unknowable far horizon, safe in the knowledge that only a future generation will discover their lies. By then, the horrid “environmental” legislation they wish to impose on America will have destroyed its economy and ruined our lives.
It is no accident this report has arrived just in time for a debate on the “Cap-and-Trade” legislation that is nothing more than a huge TAX on all energy use and one that will increase the cost of all energy to everyone by thousands of dollars individually. It will drive industries dependent on large quantities of energy to foreign nations. It is a huge job-killer.
Duke Energy of North Carolina, based on the spurious science of global warming, has asked the regulators of that State for permission to raise electricity prices 12.6 percent. The requested price hike would cost North Carolina ratepayers $496 million. They should change their name to Enron. It’s not being used any more.
Utilities required to include a mix of solar and wind energy, the least efficient and most impractical producers of energy because of Renewable Energy Mandates will be forced to ask for similar increases. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. It is the most affordable way of generating energy. More coal-fired and nuclear plants would ensure that rates would remain stable for many decades to come.
Naturally “Crazy Eyes” Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, was quick to weigh in on news of the NOAA report. “The impact of the climate crisis on the United states and around the world is becoming increasingly severe.” Nonsense! More lies from the Speaker.
The climate is always in a state of change and that change is determine primarily by the Sun, as well as other natural factures such as the oceans, volcanic activity, and the greatest meteorological mystery of all, why clouds behave the way clouds do.
The NOAA report has already been torn to shreds by many of the leading meteorologists and climatologists throughout the nation. It is pure scaremongering and it is intended to further an environmental agenda that is determined to deprive Americans of the energy sources we will need to power our way out of this government-induced Recession and meet the needs of an expanding population.
It is yet another Obama-driven “crisis” and Americans have good and grave reasons to reject the massive global warming deception, “Cap-and-Trade”, and all those seeking to drive us like lemmings over the cliff of an insolvent, bankrupt nation.
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

From iceagenow.com:
“593 NEW record low max temps for the month of June –
and we’re only half way through the month
17 Jun 09 – Here we sit, with our fearless leaders in Washington DC trying to shove ever more global warming taxes down our throats while low-temperature records are being broken across the country. Where is the outrage?”
I think it is a legitimate question to ask!

Have a look at how the moderators at the British site “the environment site .org “is trying to stifle discussion on this and other subjects raised by Anthony
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/climate-change-forum/17308-new-experiment-discussion-here-19.html

Since this is about NOAA temperatures and they just came out with their report about USA warming. Lets look at the USA 48 temperatures. Since Anthony has done all the work and we can pretty much say that the NOAA temperature data for the USA is dubious, lets use the UAH and RSS satellite temperatures for the USA 48.
Bob Tisdale has pretty much convinced me that the 1998 El Nino had an anomalous effect on temperatures, so what I do is look at the RSS and UAH charts for the period Jan 1979 – Oct 1997 and Nov 1998 – Present for RSS and UAH. Basically cutting out the bump caused by the El Nino. (The effect has still not worn off according to Bob, but I’ll ignore that)
The results are for the USA 48:
RSS 1.68 Deg C per Century 1979 – 1997 (linear trend)
-4.2 Deg C per Century 1998 to Present (linear trend)
UAH 2.54 Deg C per Century 1979 to 1997 (linear trend)
-3.24 Deg C per Century 1998 to Present (linear trend)
Seems to me the USA 48 could use all the CO2 it can get!! NOAA better make darn sure it’s temperature data is better that the satellite data.

My PC is playing up just now. I tried to post this earlier but the tea-leaves said that it didn’t get through. Here goes.
Got to admit, however much you may deplore the ‘delusionalists’ for their repudiation of the scientific method, you have to praise them for their loyalty.
Not for them a curt dismissal into forced retirement and un-thanked obscurity, for an elderly and once-respected sensor-servant brought low by the wearage and tearage of life into disrespected and premature senility.
When you have right on your side, inconvenient facts are but, insignificant, vermin fully deserving of being ridden down.
I salute your chivalry, Viscount NOAA and wish you well for the remainder of your Crusade. Droit de seigneur – Alive and Kicking once more!

9.5 years, CO2 according to Mauna Loa has gone up every year, but no rise in world temperatures.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/plot/rss/from:2000/trend

Anthony:
Is the ASOS temp sensor failure (my judgment, not NOAAs) a relatively slow process, or a sudden jump (up, obviously)? Slow upward drift of these neat little sensors could explain a lot of things.

Maybe we should organize a protest rally to shut down the weather station. It surely warrants the widest possible publicity. Even the radio station got the joke!

Mike (16:09:39) Let me apologize if I have misinterpreted your post. There are people starving on Oahu. There are people starving on the continental U.S. These are issues that are more important than Global Warming. My question to you is; How many more people are going to suffer if cap-trade is implemented? Cap-trade is based on Co2 being a “pollutant”. The claim is that Co2 will increase earth’s temperature. This idea will cripple an already weak economy. How many people are going to starve then? All based on an idea that you agree is false. What if the earth cools and crops fail when we have not prepared for this because we were preparing for catastrophic warming? Perhaps you can see the importance of breaking down this false premise. Water is also an extremely important issue that needs to be looked at as well. In a resourceful country like the U.S., you have the ability to address all these issue at the same time. The powers that be seem to want to focus on Global Warming only. They have made it the priority, not WUWT.