GISS: World's airports continue to run warmer than ROW

Where can one find the station list? It would be interesting to look it over. There are probably more crypto-airports. For example in Sweden many seemingly “rural” sites are actually at military airfields.
Reply: It is not posted anywhere, but was not that hard to determine. I filtered the v2.mean file for all entries that had valid June, 2009 temperatures. I further filtered that with the list of stations actually used produced by GISS.

This is like receiving an economic report from the USSR tabling the great economic results, while ignoring the people lined up for their bread ration.
Must keep doctor Hansen happy, science and accuracy has nothing to do with it.

[snip]

Simple solution.
Want to avoid global warming?
Don’t live at an airport.

Seems somehow appropriate, today. Showed up in my email queue from poethunter.com:
“Weather”
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be–
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he’d preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote–
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
“Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow.”
Ambrose Bierce

Could we start a campaign to educate Bill O’reilly on Fox News. He believes GISS and Jim Hansen. Glenn Beck has tried to explain what is going on, but Bill is six cookies short of a dozen. He repeated the GISS nonsense again, yesterday, July 14. His email is oreilly@foxnews.com.
Jeff

Regarding the BBC blog Frank mentioned: I had a quick look and discovered that it’s an article about an article in Spectator about Ian Pilmer’s book. Intentionally sarcastic, it was reviewed in the Spectator by Delingpole because Pilmer is one of a ‘dying breed who concedes nothing in climate change.’ The only point in the BBC article as far as I can see is to add that Moonbat has compiled a list of basic errors and finds it laughable.

“the science is in” Lets go for the numbers that support the presuppositions
Same goes for models. Lets chose those that fit our expectations.
Now if Hansen uses these, He can just get all huffy and claim, “How dare you question my numbers or conclusions” He is THE scientist of course.
I have an aunt that has translated the bible in the jungle for several languages. The point she makes is this is how the local witch doctors operate. Bringing in just a few antibiotics or sutures causes them to go into threats and hysteria. A well supplied first aid kit threatens them to the core.
Some middle school science students with a few instruments may be intimidating. Just a thought. Of course the sun cranks out so much heat and the runnways according to an engineering friend who is also my yacht club neighbor they are incredibly thick. In our local airport, we have somewhat regular deliveries of huge airplane parts by the Russian freightors. A modified 124 record load of 253.82 tonnes of cargo landing with several dozen tires sending all kinds of smoke from friction when it lands. Even with a lighter cargo, the heat is massive. A couple of points. The runway is incredibly thick to carry this impact. It retains heat because of it’s mass.

Fudge are us.

Porto Alegre…Brasil
Station Information from GHCNv2 Inventory
country: 303
wmo_identifier: 83967
mod: 000
name: Porto Alegre
latitude: -30.00
longitude: -51.18
elevation: 3
elev_interpolated: 30
population_type: Urban (population > 50,000)
*****population_in_thousands: 1109……………….MORE…4000
topography_type: Flat
vegetation_type: No information
location_type: Within 30 km from the coast
distance_to_coast: 5
*****is_at_airport: Not at an airport……………….AIRPORT
dist_to_airport: -9…???????
grid_vegetation: Warm Grass/Shrub

“This month’s whopping anomaly of 0.63C is once again much higher than that of RSS, UAH,…
Once again?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/from:1980

Maybe OT, but it seems that cries about the icecaps melting have not been heard this summer, at least in the sites I frequent…

Bill: then you cannot accuse media of alarmism, can you? The Antarctic is slightly higher than last year and than average) and the Arctic is lower than last year (way below average)
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
or
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
for a comparison with last year extent.

If the surface data is wrongly measured, then if data is additionally adjusted, then satellites’ temps readings are also adjusted with respect to ground stations..and so on. Who will in the future know, if only approximately, nowadays temperatures?. Our time will be called the “confused data era”.

Jeff Wiita (06:17:31) :
“Could we start a campaign to educate Bill O’reilly on Fox News. He believes GISS and Jim Hansen. Glenn Beck has tried to explain what is going on, but Bill is six cookies short of a dozen. He repeated the GISS nonsense again, yesterday, July 14. His email is oreilly@foxnews.com.”
Let him run for right now. His theme this week is to expose the insanity of cap and trade. Not a bad message from someone claiming to believe in global warming. We can start the education process later.

Re Bill Illis: I like how the small warm part of Western Greenland (250km map) gets spreaded over the huge part of Arctic (1200km map), where are no stations. What the f__k?

Steve S (07:03:02) :
Well here’s a helpful explanation from a RealClimate poster
I think it’s James Hansen or Al Gore as some guy named Wayne?
He predicts “Global temperatures may be highest in history soon.”
Only in written history wich is much worth as the paper it is written on.

I wrote Bill O’reilly.
What he says is this: Global warming is undoubtedly happening. Its the “cause” that is in question. And, regardless, Cap & Trade will not fix anything.
Seems similar to my viewpoint.

Actually, you should read the BBC link… where you’ll find such laughable statements as:

All in all, Plimer’s book is dismissed by Monbiot as ‘utter nonsense’ and ‘a hilarious series of schoolboy errors’. Strange. I wouldn’t have put Monbiot down as the giggling type.

As if Monbiot is the last word, or indeed, as if Monbiot has any sort of valid opinion whatsoever, on anything. Come on, tell me that isn’t hilarious!
Also, I love their misspellings (“prooves”).
However, the real gold there is the comments section.
One nice thing about the Internet is it keeps raving lunatics raving in front of their monitors, not raving on the streets where they might actually cause some disturbance. Reading some of the regular commenters at BBC and other bastions of warmists, I am often reminded of a guy that I used to see walking near my office. He would carry on both sides of a conversation, LOUDLY, and sometimes get quite worked up over things. But no matter how intense the argument, it never really made any difference outside of his own head.

As the rate of decrease in ‘real’ global temperature starts with the NH winter, Hansen’s nubers will be shown as the fraud they really are. I almost feel sorry for the guy, as the very same politicians who currently support his efforts will turn on him like a pack of wolves once the game is up. The word ‘scapegoat’ springs to mind.

The GISS has the following table of surface station locations:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/v2.temperature.inv.txt
Colum 68 has a header of “P” which stands for “Population” and is described as follows:
P =R if rural (not associated with a town of >10,000 population)
S if associated with a small town (10,000-50,000 population)
U if associated with an urban area (>50,000 population
Colum 82 has a header of “A” which stands for “Airport” and is described as follows:
A =A if the station is at an airport; else x
The table is easily loaded into Excel as fixed fields and contains much useful information. Sub-totals can be generated which yields the following table:
Rural Airport, 975
Small-town Airport, 504
Urban Airport, 911
Subtotal Airports, 2390
Rural Non-airport, 3021
Small-town Non-airport, 905
Urban Non-airport, 1048
Subtotal Non-airports, 4974
Total Surface Stations, 7364
The GISS surface station table has 7,364 entries of which 2,390 are airports, so one-third of the GISS stations are at airports. Of the 2,390 surface stations described as airports, 975 are in rural locations. There are a total of 3,996 rural surface stations of which 975 are at airports so one-fourth of all rural stations are really not rural.
If anyone wants a different analysis of the data just post a request.
Mike
Reply: The list you are referencing is the complete list GISS starts with. The GISStemp software culls some of the stations from the overall herd. The list of stations actually used can be found here.
Also note that the majority of stations actually used did not report a June 2009 temperature. – John

Sorry to be pedantic, but I think it useful when talking about UHI effects to be more accurate and use the term Delta UHI over time (using Delta in the calculus sense meaning change). UHI doesn’t matter if it hasn’t changed over time. eg, if the surrounding population hasn’t changed.
The team can argue that UHI ‘doesn’t matter’ if they can point to locations where it hasn’t changed over time.
Obviously, for a host of reasons, airports are very likely to have changed over time, and thus demonstrated Delta UHI which contaminates the temperature record. Delta UHI can and should be measured by comparison with truly rural sites some 10km or so away, far enough not to be affected by the UHI effect.
As I understand it, ‘Rural’ is defined as towns where less than 10,000 people live. Anyone with a thermometer reading outside temperature can prove to themselves that small towns most certainly do have a UHI effect, and it can be quite pronounced. The real question though is how the UHI has changed over time, since the Delta UHI could be the main contributer to the reported temperature increases.

I should have said. ‘Anyone with a thermometer reading outside temperature IN THEIR CAR can prove to themselves that small towns most certainly do have a UHI effect, and it can be quite pronounced.”

It’s NOAA’s 0.63C of separation.

Sorry… It’s GISS’s 0.63C of separation.
Must have been a self-biased error.

Newark Airport and NYC used to have the same daytime temperatures. However, in the past 20 years or so, Newark has become much warmer than Central Park in spring and summer, typically 3 – 4 degrees on sunny days.
Here’s my explanation, and maybe some research can bear me out:
The weather station was located just to the west of Parking Lot C, that big lot which abuts Route 1 – 9. Up until recently, that parking lot was full night and day, and you really had to circle around to find a space. The parking lot, in fact, was expanded, and the weather station is just to the west of the expanded lot. My hypothesis is that when the lot expanded, that’s when the discrepancy started to occur.
Now, this year, an amazing thing happened. The Port of NY – NJ Authority, which runs the parking lots, raised the rates to $24 a day. Coupled with the soft economy, this has let to Parking Lot C being almost empty. In fact, the monorail no longer serves the most distant of the two stops.
Let’s see if the temperature discrepancy between NY and Newark Airport (EWR) has narrowed. If so, it would indicate that the Newark temperatures have been spiked by automobile traffic nearby. Of course, the lot is still paved, and the concrete has a lot to do with it, too.

urederra (09:07:01) : “Excuse my ignorance, what does ROW mean?”
http://www.acronymfinder.com/
Of 56 returns for ROW, “Rest of World” is number 2. This is a handy site to put in your favorites list. Also, Steve McIntyre provides a list of acronyms common on climate related sites:
http://climateaudit101.wikispot.org/Glossary_of_Acronyms

“Reply: ……Also note that the majority of stations actually used did not report a June 2009 temperature. – John”
Isn’t that the problem? If there is a valid algorithm that can predict temperatures within an X mile radius, then I am sure that we would understand weather a lot better than we do. As it is, there can be a huge variance between a distance of ten miles. I can think of one such example from here in Ohio back in June where it was at least 5ºF warmer downtown than it was at my house. Cloud cover and precipitation were the main reasons for this, but how does an algorithm adjust for that, and why would you want it to?

I propose GISS software engineers spend a couple of million dollars to write a computer program that will provide an answer to the following probability problem:
What is the probability that to further the AGW agenda an individual who advocates and participates in civil disobedience as a means of disrupting coal mining operations will if given the opportunity knowingly distort temperature data to further that agenda?
On second thought, we can save a couple of million dollars. The answer is 0.99999999999 give or take a couple of 9s.

A Tarmac could be a good example of Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation, or black body experiment. I would suspect that the increased thermal emission from the dark construction materials are from the increased UV radiation reaching Earth’s surface.

HadSST2 June is out at 0.5C, warmest June also since 1998. So such a warm temperature in GISTEMP can only be expected. No doubt HadCrut3 will also show a warm June too, it’s quite evident from the sea surface temperatures over the past month that it was very warm.
Why have the satellite records shown cooling? Because the lower troposphere is evidentally not in sync with the surface. In fact it’s pretty obvious from even a cursory inspection of the records that the lower troposphere temperature lags behind the surface temperature by several months.
In other words the surface records are showing what is happening at the surface now, while the satellite records are still showing what happened at the surface months back when we were in La Nina conditions.
So why oh why is a comparison between the satellite and surface records for a single month being made as if they should be in sync? They aren’t even measuring the same thing.
I also have a nice prediction that the satellite records will show strong warming in coming months due to the El Nino conditions filtering up into the satellite records.

it might be a good idea to set up some (scientific, thus controllable by all involved) temperature/weather stations in the vicinity of the “official” weather stations where some doubt might arise … 1to 2 km from the official location, same altitude, same conditons … just the see whether the numbers are more or less correct (and then I don’t mention the method to come to a “world temperature …) …
I would be happy to contribute …

I think we can all agree that airports are undergoing manmade warming 😉
Ergo, Consensus-John, any plans to meet with Edward Markey to learn how to make legislation to mitigate airport warming? 😀

Bobn (12:29:32) : “I also have a nice prediction that the satellite records will show strong warming in coming months due to the El Nino conditions filtering up into the satellite records.”
Excellent, surface temps travel upwards. How does CO2 in the atmosphere (traveling upwards) heat the surface?

alex verlinden (12:40:35) :
it might be a good idea to set up some (scientific, thus controllable by all involved) temperature/weather stations in the vicinity of the “official” weather stations where some doubt might arise … 1to 2 km from the official location, same altitude, same conditons … just the see whether the numbers are more or less correct (and then I don’t mention the method to come to a “world temperature …) …
I had the same idea. Get 20 or more Temperature Data Loggers that AW advertises here, and site one in the NOAA Stephenson Screen with the NOAA thermometer, and put one close, at 1-2 km away, in a non-UHI site.
The NOAA would have to be involved, and ideally we would need to look at 20-40 sites, at a minimum.
ID each Logger, and Double blind the data. Run it out a year, and send double blind data to both interested and neutral parties. We would get direct comparison to the accuracy of the NOAA thermometers, plus the actual UHI effect (if any).
I also would contribute. Hell, I would buy the first 10 loggers.

Steve S (07:03:02) : 153.
wayne davidson says:” So I await some convincing conviction statement on this temperature pause. Seems that current El-Nino is poised to surpass 1998 one, if this trend holds, Global temperatures may be highest in history soon.”
So this implies to me that Davidson must think strong El Ninos are the result of AGW because If they weren’t then we are just talking about natural variations. Is this the position of AGWers, that CO2 will cause strong El Ninos resulting in higher global temps?

jorgekafkazar commented on a comment to my comment:
jorgekafkazar (13:51:01) :
John F. Hultquist (11:40:53) : “‘bob paglee (09:12:28) : “Isn’t there an abundance of CO2 being spewed close to the ground . . .’
“As Tina Turner might sing “What’s CO2 got to do with it?”
“Ans: Extremely little when thinking of the extra over the background concentration.”
The background concentration is essentially zero. CO2 concentration in the exhaust would be roughly 2 to 4 percent by volume. So within the confines of the airport, the average CO2 concentration would be measurably higher than background. But if anything is significant to the local microclimate, it would be the water vapor created.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/7181814/Gravimetric-Analysis-of-Exhaust-Gas-From-Gas-Turbine-Combustion
Thanks Jorge — I just thought that besides all the other things going on around airports, maybe the extra CO2 would be something to consider, but you are right — exhaust from jet aircraft must also create a lot of H20 as a product of combustion. The question is would any of these products cause an increase or decrease in the nearby ambient temperature? And if there is an effect, would prevailing low altitude wind blow it toward the temp sensor or away from it? Doesn’t that same question apply to the location of the sensor with respect to prevailing winds blowing across the huge concrete or asphalt parking lots toward or away from the sensor?

I expect you chaps already know about this site, but in case you don’t:
http://clearclimatecode.org/
Quote: “The results of some climate-related software are used as the basis for important public policy decisions. If the software is not clearly correct, decision-making will be obscured by debates about it. The project goals are to clear away that obscurity, to increase the clarity and correctness of climate science software.
The Clear Climate Code project is conducted by Ravenbrook Limited and its staff, in the public interest. Nick Barnes had the project idea in 2007. Nobody has commissioned this work from us, or paid us for it. All the code and documentation written as part of the project is available at no charge under an open source license.”
See an interesting PDF here:
http://clearclimatecode.org/doc/2008-09-11/pyconuk/ccc-20080914.pdf
Shame the site has not been updated since last September.

Only 134 stations for the entire U.S.? On my 50 mile drive to work using the thermometer in my vehicle i’ve seen differences as much as 10 degrees F and i’m going east to west not north and south so how are they supposed to call a sampling of only 134 stations anywhere near accurate?
I guess the G stands for Guessing.

An immediate correction. Three more Swedish sites are misclassifiied and are actually airfields
2128 Stensele, is actually at Gunnarn, a military airfield
2142 Jokkmokk, actually at the nearby military airfield
2462 Stockholm is actually Stockholm/Bromma, the domestic airport.
So that makes 11 airfields out of 19 stations (58 %)

Flanagan
Here is the difference between GISS and RSS since 2002:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gisshotterthanrss.gif
I dare say there is a trend (!)
And yes, of GISS, HADCRUT, UAH and RSS, it is ONLY GISS that has 1998 relatively cold.
The relative smaller temperature rise GISS 1998 yields both a more warm-friendly trend and it gives you the long run compare UAH vs. GISS more similar.
But as i showed GISS after 1998 has a MUCH warmer trend than RSS.
In 7 years GISS trend has warmed 0,15 K more than RSS ..

I think we all know that July is heating up quickly, but in what way, seeing the continued stream of record low highs in the US according to NOAA is suggesting it’s not neccesarily because of high temps. in the US.
And for those reading the scare stories by the media, look, I can make alarmist statements too and top them, like
[alarmist]-emit all you want, by 2011 it will be so hot there will be no more life on Earth, enjoy your last two years, the beginning of thermal armeggedon will begin in less than a month and it’s too late to stop it[/alarmist]

“”” David (11:32:54) :
“Reply: ……Also note that the majority of stations actually used did not report a June 2009 temperature. – John”
Isn’t that the problem? If there is a valid algorithm that can predict temperatures within an X mile radius, then I am sure that we would understand weather a lot better than we do. As it is, there can be a huge variance between a distance of ten miles. I can think of one such example from here in Ohio back in June where it was at least 5ºF warmer downtown than it was at my house. Cloud cover and precipitation were the main reasons for this, but how does an algorithm adjust for that, and why would you want it to? “””
You are talking about a simple failure to observe the standard laws of sampled data systems; notably the Nyquist sampling Theorem:
Any band limited continuous function can be reconstructed accurately from samples of that function; if and only if the continuous function is sampled at a rate at least twice the frquency of the band limit.
If the continuous function is sampled at a rate of 2B, but contains an out of band signal component at a frequency B+b, the reconstructed signal will contain an aliassing noise signal at a spurious frequency of B-b; and since that signal is now inside the band limit; no filtering can remove it; it is a permanent corruption of the recovered function.
And in the case where the function contains a signal component at a frequency of 2B or higher, then the aliassed signal is at B-B or zero frequency (or less), and that zero frequency component is simply the average value of the function; which now becomes completely unrecoverable.
The GISS temp data; being based on a min-max thermometer reading gives no more than two samples in a 24 hour period, which is the bare minimum for a 24 hour period signal component (the diurnal temperature cycle) but it is only sufficient, if that temperature cycle data is time symmetric; like a pure sinusoid. Since the daily average of min-max is reported; then the factor of two undersampling is already present, so the average cannot be recovered; and any harmonic variation which would make the signal time assymmetric, or any higher frequency cycling such as that due to clouds moving by, makes even the temporal data corrupt. But when you look at the spatial sampling component (the 1200 km BS or even the 250 km), it is clear that the function is undersampled by orders of magnitude; so it is inherently impossible to accurately compute the average of the recovered but aliass corrupted signal.
Sorry GISStemp; your output is simply the result of applying your algorithm to your data. It in no way relates to anything to do with Planet Earth; since yourt signal sampling regimen is insufficeint to properly recover the original continuous function; you are simply publishing GISStemp; which is not any mean global temperature or anything else of physical importance to climate.

Broome Airport Western Australia. For all intents and purposes the Airport is practically in the middle of the town (a great planning coup). That could be a case of a double whammy. UHI plus AHI.

“The GISS temp data; being based on a min-max thermometer reading gives no more than two samples in a 24 hour period, which is the bare minimum for a 24 hour period signal component (the diurnal temperature cycle) but it is only sufficient, if that temperature cycle data is time symmetric;”
Has anyone done 24 Hrs logging temps every 5 mins so as to compare an integrated daily temp against a min/max average?
Seems to me a balmy night, blistering day and a CuNim hailstorm round the sensor for 30 mins then heating into a balmy evening again, gives a very short cold spike which is not representative.

30 or so years ago, I took off from Chicago OHare airport in a snow storm. Takeoffs were delayed as they cleared snow off the runway. It was snowing hard. My plane sat waiting to takeoff for at least an hour.
I watched truck after truck go to a big hole in the concrete and dump its load of snow into the hole. Then I saw blue flames coming out of the hole. They were dumping snow onto a gigantic gas burner.
It must have been putting out prodigous amounts of heat to melt the volume of snow being dumped in. I hope they weren’t measuring temperatures anywhere near it.

“George E. Smith (17:13:17) ”
A couple of additional points.
To precisely reconstruct the analog (continuous-time) temperature record at a point in space, the sampled temperature values must be perfect — i.e., they cannot be quantized to a fixed set of values — like the nearest tenth of a degree centigrade.
Since it is extremely unlikely that the time intervals between “minimum/maximum and maximum/minimum temperature states” are the same, the sampling times are not uniform — which means that even if the highest frequency component in the analog temperature record at a fixed location were less than one cycle per day (which itself is next to impossible), the analog temperature record can be precisely reconstructed only if the times of the temperature samples are perfectly known.
In addition to being a function of time, real-world temperature records are also functions of position (latitude/longitude/altitude). To reconstruct over a volume of space a precise instantaneous spatial analog temperature record from a set of spatially diverse temperature samples taken at a single instant in time, (a) the sampling locations must be precisely known, (b) the analog temperature variations must be “bandlimited” in a three-dimensional spatial sense, and (c) the “sampling spatial locations” must obey a spatial three-dimensional sampling rule similar to the Nyquist sampling rate for real time-sampled-data.
If the objective is to precisely reconstruct a four-dimensional (three spatial dimensions and one time dimension) analog temperature record (i.e., a temperature record that is continuous in both space and time) from a sampled temperature record (sampled with respect to both space and time), the “sampling rules” will be both complex and a function of the four-dimensional “frequency” content of the actual analog temperatures.
Bottom line, I agree with you. Anyone who claims the existing temperature records provide anything but a coarse and ill-defined estimate of “average” temperature is simply wrong.

Warning: non-scientist alert!
Several lifetimes ago, I spent some time in the air force, mainly in hot and uncomfortable places (and in the tropics too). At that time, the air force always mounted the airfield weather station at the top of a wooden tower, about twenty feet above ground level – presumably to remove bias caused by ground temperature.
All of the pictures I have seen recently that show civilian weather stations show them close to the ground.
Imah sittin here wonderin whay th’ar be a diff’rnce?

Oh please, how dare you think that there is a heat Urban Island effect!?!?!? Remember that is why we have algorithms to account for such silly non-sense. I mean seriously a twelve degree difference is nothing hard to account for lets see that really just means we have to raise the surrounding area by 12 degrees! See Problem solved. Sheesh, come on people this is science, don’t question our methods there is a consensus after all.

Flanagan, (07:11:54)
Frank Lansner, (16:33:47)
“Here is the difference between GISS and RSS since 2002:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/gisshotterthanrss.gif
I dare say there is a trend (!)”
I made some graphs (not shown here, i regret) and i did the following findings:
1. From 1979 to June 2009, the average difference between (RSS+UAH)/2 and GISS anomalies is 0.248 C (GISS 0.248 C more than the average between RSS and UAH). This difference can be explained (different base).
2. From 1979 to June 2009: The trend of the difference between (RSS+UAH)/2 and GISS is y = 0.0002x. This means that in this period, GISS showed 0.07 C more warming than the average between UAH and RSS.
3. Since 2002, this trend is rising. It amounts to y = 0.0016x. So GISS gives 0.144 C more warming during this 90 months.
4. Since 2008, we are witnessing large fluctuations in the differences (0.145 C (February 2009) to 0.592 C (June 2009).
In 2008, there was a similar discussion on this site as we have now. Taking into account the large differences since 2008, i think we have to wait the end of 2009 to draw conclusions. One point is clear to me: the more the difference between GISS and RSS/UAH is rising, the less the GISS figures become credible. How long will this trend go on like this?

and -0,1 K is indicated by yellow.
To get a bluish color you have to come below -2 K..

An interesting study would be to look at record high max temps versus record low max temps, and record low min temps versus record high min temps as a function of airport placement. If Airport sites are over represented in the high records, that would be evidence of a temp sensor site bias. A case in point, the temp sensor at the Pendleton Airport is probably on record as the site of record highs while the sensors placed at the same elevation but away from the airport in this high plateau area will record the record low at that elevation. The NOAA sensor at Meacham, Oregon is in an area all its own. I swear that place really is an Arctic island that just got misplaced in the continental shuffle and neglected to adjust its climate accordingly.
By the way Frank, I emailed the Unisys site and attempted to educate on standard metrics for warm vs cool colors. Red is warmer than gray when it comes to standard definitions for color warmth but on the new color scheme at Unisys SST, red is used to show just a bit of warming while gray is used to show a lot of warming. The “warmest” color on their new design is…wait for it…BLUE.

Pamela-Meacham’s site is where the long gone FAA(really CAA) Flight Service
station was.-there used to be an Airport there too.I knew an old FSS fellow back in the 1970’s who was one of the last to “man” that FSS.-He likened it to his days at Solydatna Ak.-execpt Solydatna-not sure of the spelling-was warmer.
Meaham’s got a long string of records-at least into the 1930’s but finding it all
would be a challenge.As I recall 1948 is the oldest in the NOAA data…

And here
http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?WWDI~StnSrch

Claude Harvey (10:07:57) :
Has anyone else noticed the AMSU-A satellite readings lately?
Steven Hill (12:41:21) :
Looks like July is heating up.
Agreed. Go to http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps and set the graph for ch05. There is a dramatic warming in the last two weeks. Is there an equipment issue, or is this the effect of the return of El Nino?
Roy Spencer: If you’re reading this: What’s up with that?

If you zoom in the station is just around the corner where the Airport road leaves the Murchison downs road.
The BoMs metadata puts it 2 kilometers south of there. Unless the Google Earth’s GPS locations are wrong which doesn’t seem to be the case.