Today I’m starting what may be a two or three part series having a detailed look inside the Eureka Weather Station and the data it produces. Thanks to the manager of the station Rai LeCotey, we have a lot of new information that had not previously been available on the web. Mr. LeCotey has been most gracious and forthcoming and I commend his openness, which as we have seen in Climate Science, is a rare quality. Here’s an aerial view of the station.
click for a larger image
Ecotretas and I looked at a number of what we identified as errors in data from Eureka, Nunavut, Canada weather station. Some errors are real, such as the January 1st 2007 METAR error (caused by transcription error).
We identified what we thought were errors on July 13th and 14th. The Station Manager Mr. LeCotey says that the July 14th new record high temperature “error” was real (meaning meteorological data, not a transcription error), and a function of wind direction bringing air from the North that has been warmed by terrain. He also says he’s working to get the error on Jan 1 2007 corrected in the record. He’s sent along some photo documentation of the July 14th 2009, event. We’ll get to that in a subsequent post, but first some background on the station itself.
Here’s what the Meteorological Instrument Complex looks like:
Looking Southwest at Eureka Met Instrument Compound -7/24/2004 - click to enlarge
The truck is interesting. Note the blowers on top of the Stevenson Screens for continuous aspiration.
Mr. LeCotey provided this official visitors guide to Eureka, which I have posted as a PDF, link below
He also graciously answered a number of questions. His answers are in blue.
1) The sensors in the Stevenson Screens are electronic it appears. Am I correct in assuming they are cabled to the met office? Of what type are they? Thermistors, RTD? Thermocouple?
We use a remote temperature and dew point measuring system type 2. The dry bulb temperature is measured with a thermistor and the dew point is measured with a dew cell.
2) I notice fan aspirators on the screens. Are these run continuously for the electronic sensors, or are they a holdover of earlier times when wet bulb DP/humidty readings required aspiration?
The sensors are housed in a ventilated Stevenson screen that runs continuously. Psychrometer comparisons between the remote system and our mercury thermometers (in a second Stevenson Screen right next to the remote screen) are done once a week with an thorough calibration done once a year.
3) How far away, in meters, is the Met Instrument compound from the nearest structure, such as the bright blue HQ building?
The Stevenson screens are approx. 40 meters
4) Why are there no readings in the first two hours of the day (00 and 01)?
We only do a surface weather program for 22 hours a day. We have a contract with Nav Canada that only wants aviation weather between 06Z to 03Z inclusive.
Surface weather observations are done on the side (with NavCan funding). Our primary function is that we send up 2 weather balloons a day as our commitment to the WMO. We stay on EST all year (there is no point to go to daylight savings time as an extra hour of daylight does mean anything to us when we have 24 hours of daylight in the summer anyway). Therefore, our last observation is at 22:00 EST (local) and we start observing again at 01:00 EST (local). The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations.
5) Do the electronic displays have max/min memories?
Yes, our AES remote temperature and dew point (1987) system (RTD-87) measure the max and min temperatures and stores them in memory until cleared by the observer every six hours on the syno. The RTD measures the temperature & dew point every minute.
6) How often are the meteorological instruments calibrated and how is this done?
Psychrometer comparisons between the remote system and our mercury thermometers (in a second Stevenson Screen right next to the remote screen) are done once a week with an thorough calibration done once a year.
7) How are the hourly METAR reports made. Are they transcribed from the paper form to teletype or Internet data, or some other method?
The METARS are transcribe from the 2322 form into a WinIDE quality assurance software system (WinIDE version 3.0, is used as the principle data input system for human METAR observations within EC) that automatically checks for errors/discrepancies and gives a warning to the observer to make a correction before the observation data will be sent out. The WinIDE system is very good and follows the observing criteria of MANOBS very well. It will not allow an observation to be sent out over the met circuit with any errors or unnatural trends as in the case of the temperature being entered in as +23.0°C when it was supposed to be -23.0°C.
There will be subsequent posts on Eureka coming in the next day or two.
Visitor’s Guide to Eureka
1) The sensors in the Stevenson Screens are electronic it appears. Am I correct in assuming they are cabled to the met office? Of what type are they? Thermistors, PTD? Thermocouple?
We use a remote temperature and dew point measuring system type 2. The dry bulb temperature is measured with a thermistor and the dew point is measured with a dew cell.
2) I notice fan aspirators on the screens. Are these run continuously for the electronic sensors, or are they a holdover of earlier times when wet bulb DP/humidty readings required aspiration?
The sensors are housed in a ventilated Stevenson screen that runs continuously. Psychrometer comparisons between the remote system and our mercury thermometers (in a second Stevenson Screen right next to the remote screen) are done once a week with an thorough calibration done once a year.
3) How far away, in meters, is the Met Instrument compound from the nearest structure, such as the bright blue HQ building?
The Stevenson screens are approx. 40 meters
4) Why are there no readings in the first two hours of the day (00 and 01)?
We only do a surface weather program for 22 hours a day. We have a contract with Nav Canada that only wants aviation weather between 06Z to 03Z inclusive.
Surface weather observations are done on the side (with NavCan funding). Our primary function is that we send up 2 weather balloons a day as our commitment to the WMO. We stay on EST all year (there is no point to go to daylight savings time as an extra hour of daylight does mean anything to us when we have 24 hours of daylight in the summer anyway). Therefore, our last observation is at 22:00 EST (local) and we start observing again at 01:00 EST (local). The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations.
5) Do the electronic displays have max/min memories?
Yes, our AES remote temperature and dew point (1987) system (RTD-87) measure the max and min temperatures and stores them in memory until cleared by the observer every six hours on the syno. The RTD measures the temperature & dew point every minute.
6) How often are the meteorological instruments calibrated and how is this done?
Psychrometer comparisons between the remote system and our mercury thermometers (in a second Stevenson Screen right next to the remote screen) are done once a week with an thorough calibration done once a year.
7) How are the hourly METAR reports made. Are they transcribed from the paper form to teletype or Internet data, or some other method?
The METARS are transcribe from the 2322 form into a WinIDE quality assurance software system (WinIDE version 3.0, is used as the principle data input system for human METAR observations within EC) that automatically checks for errors/discrepancies and gives a warning to the observer to make a correction before the observation data will be sent out. The WinIDE system is very good and follows the observing criteria of MANOBS very well. It will not allow an observation to be sent out over the met circuit with any errors or unnatural trends as in the case of the temperature being entered in as +23.0°C when it was supposed to be -23.0°C.
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Steve in SC
April 24, 2010 12:26 pm
Interesting indeed. Good to see that they are using RTDs.
Paul Vaughan
April 24, 2010 12:38 pm
My experience dealing with EC has been that they openly admit any errors without hesitation.
Doug Badgero
April 24, 2010 12:39 pm
“The Station Manager Mr. LeCotey says that the July 14th new record high temperature error was real, and a function of wind direction bringing air from the North that has been warmed by terrain.”
We really need to start talking about total system energy and stop talking about temperature when discussing global warming. This is obvious when you consider some thermodynamic properties of water and air:
Specific heat:
Water – 4.2 KJ/KG-K
Air – 1.0 KJ/KG-K
Latent heat of vaporization for water:
~2200 KJ/KG
Now consider the volume of 1KG of water (1 Liter) and the volume of 1KG of air (~800 Liters at 1 atmosphere). You quickly realize that ignoring the transfer of heat from oceans to atmosphere and vice versa is idiotic.
Ed Caryl
April 24, 2010 12:54 pm
Those Stevenson screens were moved to their present position, probably when the blue building was built. They are not there in the earlier picture. Is there a step in the temperature record? REPLY: I’m trying to determine the date of the blue building addition to check. Seems like it may be 2004 as I see construction machinery as well as some temporary sealant tarp on the building- A
DirkH
April 24, 2010 1:01 pm
Anthony, i’m confused:
“Some errors are real, such as the January 1st 2007 METAR error.
”
I think here you mean “it’s really an error”.
Later:
“The Station Manager Mr. LeCotey says that the July 14th new record high temperature “error” was real, and a function of wind direction bringing air from the North that has been warmed by terrain. ”
Here you mean “it wasn’t an error but real”. So you use “error is real” in two ambiguous ways… REPLY: Yes I agree my wording choice is confusing. Look for the uncertainty to be resolved in the next post. The bottom line is that the Jan1 2007 error is real, confirmed, and a transcription error. The July 14th 2009 “error” appears to be a real temperature reading, not a transcription error. -A
MaxL
April 24, 2010 1:15 pm
I worked as an operational forecast meteorologist with EC for many many years and still do some contract work for them. One of our forecast areas was the arctic, including Eureka. I do not know of any deliberate attempts to falsify or questionably adjust data. Certainly there are instances when some bad data gets into the system. This is especially true now with all the auto stations. In older times, humans would actually take and input the observations. Errors were caught much more readily. There are many known systematic errors from auto stations which get into the database Anyone using the climate database needs to be aware and cross check the observations that may seem out of sorts. Downloaded data contains flags for each parameter which may indicate that errors are possible.
Andrew P.
April 24, 2010 1:19 pm
I followed yesterday’s thread and the discourse over the July 14th 2009 20.9C reading with great interest. For the temperature to peak at 20.9C so late in the day does seem quite unbelievable. But I am happy to take Mr. LeCotey’s word that the reading was correct and that it was caused by an entirely natural sudden warming event due to north winds from presuambly sun-warmed terrain.
That said, this must have been an extraordinarly event and as such very rare.
Which leads me to suggest that Chefio’s argument (that the effective extrapolation of the Eureka data such that it can be used to potentially ‘colour’ an area of up to 3600km in diameter) is still very much a valid concern. Using Eureka’s data but excluding other settlements in the high Arctic is fundamentally bad/junk science. Irrespective of whether the 20.9C reading was caused by a nearby deisel engine left running, or a natural warm north wind, this was evidently an extremely rare and localised event, which lasted less than an hour, and cannot (with any credibility) be used as an example or consequence of AGW; as it clearly had nothing do to with CO2 emissions, local or global. If you will it is more akin to UHI, but with sun-warmed bare rocks au naturel, rather than ashpalt/concrete.
Rhoda R
April 24, 2010 1:21 pm
It is nice to see such a clear and upfront response from Mr. LeCotey. Did you contact him, or is he a reader? REPLY: He is a reader, and contacted WUWT via comments first. – A
MikeC
April 24, 2010 1:32 pm
Give that man a ceee-gah! Nice to see an honest chap, a real scientist, in the bunch!
MikeC
April 24, 2010 1:34 pm
…oh… and how do we send good guys like this some support… I have a very old bottle of scotch that may be useful as back-up generator fuel 😉
I understand that real errors such as transcription screw-ups, when discovered are corrected in the main Environment Canada data base by some established process. It would be nice to know what that process is and how well it works, i.e. how long it takes, stuff like that.
I wonder then what happens to the corrections. That is does EveCan issue an exception or correction report? Do users or collectors of the data then update their data holdings? Things like that.
Spector
April 24, 2010 1:36 pm
RE: Mangled Data.
Perhaps a standard should be set that any software used for collecting this type of information should be required to include ‘bogus abnormal data’ (BAD) detection routines to flag or exclude single point anomalies.
Ed Caryl
April 24, 2010 1:36 pm
“July 14th so late in the day” has little meaning so far north in the “land of the midnight sun”. I remember playing baseball in shirtsleeves at 2AM at Thule on July 4th. During July the temperature doesn’t change much around the clock if the wind is steady. I also experienced rapid temperature shifts depending on whether the wind was blowing from the land or the sea.
BBk
April 24, 2010 1:38 pm
The WinIDE system is very good and follows the observing criteria of MANOBS very well. It will not allow an observation to be sent out over the met circuit with any errors or unnatural trends as in the case of the temperature being entered in as +23.0°C when it was supposed to be -23.0°C. ”
Ummm… so how did the real error occur then? He seems to be claiming that the error doesn’t exist, even though you say he’s trying to get it corrected. It’s obviously possible to somehow not get corrected…
RichardS
April 24, 2010 1:40 pm
“The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations. ”
I’m a physician not a climatologist but this caught my eye.
Is this standard paractice?
Would this not bias the average daily temperature higher by eliminating night-time observations?
jaypan
April 24, 2010 1:45 pm
It’s important to clean up what’s going on in the Arctic.
Holdren’s keynote shows a Hansen et al. globe from 2006, with the big deep-red Arctic, suggests a disruptive(!) climate change now.
Strong words. Weak facts. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/22/ostp-director-holdren-keynotes-engineering-academy-summit
Very impressive, well, sort of … if you are not a WUWT reader.
Haven’t we seen some graphs lately, showing temperatures, ice cover, sea level over time with not a bit of disruption anywhere?
Hummm,
From this exchange, it seems our Mr LeCotey is a scientist – weather watcher, and intellegent to boot. I look forward to more from him, no matter what he “thinks”. We need more, many more of this type to sort out what’s happening to our world, and how best to use it.
Mike
Clive
April 24, 2010 2:14 pm
Thanks as always Anthony.
I am rather surprised that the printout is in F° vs C°. Temps are recorded in C and only converted on request … at least at the lay level.
Clive REPLY: that is from Weather Underground, F done for American consumption -A
MaxL
April 24, 2010 2:18 pm
RichardS (13:40:10) :
“The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations. ”
“Would this not bias the average daily temperature higher by eliminating night-time observations?”
Many stations in the arctic only take observations for a limited time during the day…some for only 12 hrs or less. Forecasters very often have to wait for the first morning observation to find out what is actually happening. It is all a matter of funding and it is not going to get better.
Clive
April 24, 2010 2:18 pm
Anthony,
One more item if I may. Can the “Eureka story” be put in a single PDF when completed for submission to various authorities.
Of course the significance of possible errors at Eureka are monumental when it is such a pivotal site.
Thanks for your efforts. They will be rewarded one day.
Clive
Carbon Dioxide
April 24, 2010 2:33 pm
It may be of passing interest to readers to hear the origin of the name “Nanavut”
When Nanavut was granted autonomy by the Crown and the Canadian government, the representatives of the residents were asked what wished their newly semi-independant region to be known as- they said “nanavut”
(“Nanavut” in the local native language translates as “government idiot”) REPLY: Rubbish. -“Nunavut” means “our land” in the Inuit language of Inuktitut. http://www.gov.nu.ca/English/ – Anthony
Is Eureka the station that is being used by some to measure the temperature for the 1,200km diameter area mentioned in an earlier article? Is that right?
Interesting comment by Mr. LeCotey, about the wind from the north. On the previous WUWT article I was going to mention the fact that the only way the temperature could spike up like that would be a north wind. Having heading many times towards Black Top Ridge for a hike (north of Eureka), there was a noticable difference in temperatures away from the Fjord. Also, they are linked up now with the south, gotta like it. Back when I worked there as an Upper Air Tech. and surface obs. we had: no live TV, limited water during winter, no telephone, … i could go on… glad to see that its a much more habitable place now!! Good on him to be so forth right on information. thanks Mr. LeCotey.
Lance – Eureka – 1979-80. (PS. I arrived just after they set the N. American record for coldest month ever recorded -47.9C in Feb 79, I think its still holds.)
Interesting indeed. Good to see that they are using RTDs.
My experience dealing with EC has been that they openly admit any errors without hesitation.
“The Station Manager Mr. LeCotey says that the July 14th new record high temperature error was real, and a function of wind direction bringing air from the North that has been warmed by terrain.”
We really need to start talking about total system energy and stop talking about temperature when discussing global warming. This is obvious when you consider some thermodynamic properties of water and air:
Specific heat:
Water – 4.2 KJ/KG-K
Air – 1.0 KJ/KG-K
Latent heat of vaporization for water:
~2200 KJ/KG
Now consider the volume of 1KG of water (1 Liter) and the volume of 1KG of air (~800 Liters at 1 atmosphere). You quickly realize that ignoring the transfer of heat from oceans to atmosphere and vice versa is idiotic.
Those Stevenson screens were moved to their present position, probably when the blue building was built. They are not there in the earlier picture. Is there a step in the temperature record?
REPLY: I’m trying to determine the date of the blue building addition to check. Seems like it may be 2004 as I see construction machinery as well as some temporary sealant tarp on the building- A
Anthony, i’m confused:
“Some errors are real, such as the January 1st 2007 METAR error.
”
I think here you mean “it’s really an error”.
Later:
“The Station Manager Mr. LeCotey says that the July 14th new record high temperature “error” was real, and a function of wind direction bringing air from the North that has been warmed by terrain. ”
Here you mean “it wasn’t an error but real”. So you use “error is real” in two ambiguous ways…
REPLY: Yes I agree my wording choice is confusing. Look for the uncertainty to be resolved in the next post. The bottom line is that the Jan1 2007 error is real, confirmed, and a transcription error. The July 14th 2009 “error” appears to be a real temperature reading, not a transcription error. -A
I worked as an operational forecast meteorologist with EC for many many years and still do some contract work for them. One of our forecast areas was the arctic, including Eureka. I do not know of any deliberate attempts to falsify or questionably adjust data. Certainly there are instances when some bad data gets into the system. This is especially true now with all the auto stations. In older times, humans would actually take and input the observations. Errors were caught much more readily. There are many known systematic errors from auto stations which get into the database Anyone using the climate database needs to be aware and cross check the observations that may seem out of sorts. Downloaded data contains flags for each parameter which may indicate that errors are possible.
I followed yesterday’s thread and the discourse over the July 14th 2009 20.9C reading with great interest. For the temperature to peak at 20.9C so late in the day does seem quite unbelievable. But I am happy to take Mr. LeCotey’s word that the reading was correct and that it was caused by an entirely natural sudden warming event due to north winds from presuambly sun-warmed terrain.
That said, this must have been an extraordinarly event and as such very rare.
Which leads me to suggest that Chefio’s argument (that the effective extrapolation of the Eureka data such that it can be used to potentially ‘colour’ an area of up to 3600km in diameter) is still very much a valid concern. Using Eureka’s data but excluding other settlements in the high Arctic is fundamentally bad/junk science. Irrespective of whether the 20.9C reading was caused by a nearby deisel engine left running, or a natural warm north wind, this was evidently an extremely rare and localised event, which lasted less than an hour, and cannot (with any credibility) be used as an example or consequence of AGW; as it clearly had nothing do to with CO2 emissions, local or global. If you will it is more akin to UHI, but with sun-warmed bare rocks au naturel, rather than ashpalt/concrete.
It is nice to see such a clear and upfront response from Mr. LeCotey. Did you contact him, or is he a reader?
REPLY: He is a reader, and contacted WUWT via comments first. – A
Give that man a ceee-gah! Nice to see an honest chap, a real scientist, in the bunch!
…oh… and how do we send good guys like this some support… I have a very old bottle of scotch that may be useful as back-up generator fuel 😉
I understand that real errors such as transcription screw-ups, when discovered are corrected in the main Environment Canada data base by some established process. It would be nice to know what that process is and how well it works, i.e. how long it takes, stuff like that.
I wonder then what happens to the corrections. That is does EveCan issue an exception or correction report? Do users or collectors of the data then update their data holdings? Things like that.
RE: Mangled Data.
Perhaps a standard should be set that any software used for collecting this type of information should be required to include ‘bogus abnormal data’ (BAD) detection routines to flag or exclude single point anomalies.
“July 14th so late in the day” has little meaning so far north in the “land of the midnight sun”. I remember playing baseball in shirtsleeves at 2AM at Thule on July 4th. During July the temperature doesn’t change much around the clock if the wind is steady. I also experienced rapid temperature shifts depending on whether the wind was blowing from the land or the sea.
The WinIDE system is very good and follows the observing criteria of MANOBS very well. It will not allow an observation to be sent out over the met circuit with any errors or unnatural trends as in the case of the temperature being entered in as +23.0°C when it was supposed to be -23.0°C. ”
Ummm… so how did the real error occur then? He seems to be claiming that the error doesn’t exist, even though you say he’s trying to get it corrected. It’s obviously possible to somehow not get corrected…
“The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations. ”
I’m a physician not a climatologist but this caught my eye.
Is this standard paractice?
Would this not bias the average daily temperature higher by eliminating night-time observations?
It’s important to clean up what’s going on in the Arctic.
Holdren’s keynote shows a Hansen et al. globe from 2006, with the big deep-red Arctic, suggests a disruptive(!) climate change now.
Strong words. Weak facts.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/22/ostp-director-holdren-keynotes-engineering-academy-summit
Very impressive, well, sort of … if you are not a WUWT reader.
Haven’t we seen some graphs lately, showing temperatures, ice cover, sea level over time with not a bit of disruption anywhere?
Hummm,
From this exchange, it seems our Mr LeCotey is a scientist – weather watcher, and intellegent to boot. I look forward to more from him, no matter what he “thinks”. We need more, many more of this type to sort out what’s happening to our world, and how best to use it.
Mike
Thanks as always Anthony.
I am rather surprised that the printout is in F° vs C°. Temps are recorded in C and only converted on request … at least at the lay level.
Clive
REPLY: that is from Weather Underground, F done for American consumption -A
RichardS (13:40:10) :
“The 23:00 & 00:00 observations are missing as NavCan does not pay us for those two observations. ”
“Would this not bias the average daily temperature higher by eliminating night-time observations?”
Many stations in the arctic only take observations for a limited time during the day…some for only 12 hrs or less. Forecasters very often have to wait for the first morning observation to find out what is actually happening. It is all a matter of funding and it is not going to get better.
Anthony,
One more item if I may. Can the “Eureka story” be put in a single PDF when completed for submission to various authorities.
Of course the significance of possible errors at Eureka are monumental when it is such a pivotal site.
Thanks for your efforts. They will be rewarded one day.
Clive
It may be of passing interest to readers to hear the origin of the name “Nanavut”
When Nanavut was granted autonomy by the Crown and the Canadian government, the representatives of the residents were asked what wished their newly semi-independant region to be known as- they said “nanavut”
(“Nanavut” in the local native language translates as “government idiot”)
REPLY: Rubbish. -“Nunavut” means “our land” in the Inuit language of Inuktitut.
http://www.gov.nu.ca/English/ – Anthony
Is Eureka the station that is being used by some to measure the temperature for the 1,200km diameter area mentioned in an earlier article? Is that right?
The Visitor’s Guide is interesting reading.
Looking back a long, long, long way – what is hot and what is not:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/7624014/Dinosaurs-died-from-sudden-temperature-drop-not-comet-strike-scientists-claim.html
Interesting comment by Mr. LeCotey, about the wind from the north. On the previous WUWT article I was going to mention the fact that the only way the temperature could spike up like that would be a north wind. Having heading many times towards Black Top Ridge for a hike (north of Eureka), there was a noticable difference in temperatures away from the Fjord. Also, they are linked up now with the south, gotta like it. Back when I worked there as an Upper Air Tech. and surface obs. we had: no live TV, limited water during winter, no telephone, … i could go on… glad to see that its a much more habitable place now!! Good on him to be so forth right on information. thanks Mr. LeCotey.
Lance – Eureka – 1979-80. (PS. I arrived just after they set the N. American record for coldest month ever recorded -47.9C in Feb 79, I think its still holds.)