WUWT readers may recall last summer when the ASOS weather station at the Honolulu Airport malfunctioned, giving a whole series of shonky readings that resulted in a string of new record high temperatures being set. What was even worse, is that NOAA, knowing the records were based on faulty equipment, let them stand anyway even when a nearby NOAA station demonstrated the records were false.
WUWT reader “Geo” alerted me to the issue at DCA in “tips and notes”, and I made some immediate screencaps of the data which I have below. The DCA ASOS station at Washington National/Reagan Airport is part of the COOP A network which makes climate observations. First, a look at the station itself.
By siting standards, it at first glance appears to be well sited, being over 100 meters from the nearest runway, in the grass, and on the bayside riverside:
But on closer inspection it appears to be sited over asphalt:
From the ground, NOAA has this photo and more:
Here’s the hourly data in question, note the big jump at midnight and the 87.1F recorded at the 6 hour preceding mark. What’s odd about it is that its a big jump compared to the readings in the hour before and after, plus it occurred during thunderstorms and light rain. It seems unlikely.
Nearby Andrews AFB, just a few miles away, doesn’t show a similar jump in readings. It shows 64F and light rain at midnight, and a 6 hour max of 73F.
The high 87.1F reading at DCA made it into the official climatological report for Friday May 28th, which places it at 12:25AM, in the middle of rain and thunderstorms. It seems pretty clear that the reading is erroneous.
http://www.weather.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=lwx
I recorded all the screen caps above last Friday, May 28th. I figured I’d wait to see if the NWS staff caught this and corrected it.
Sure enough, they did:
That’s the right way to do it. But is the 76F reading at 127AM valid? With a malfunctioning sensor, who knows for sure?
Now the question is: why does one NWS office fix an obviously faulty ASOS reading in the climate record while another ignores it and leaves it as a new record? Are there not standards for handling such things organization wide?
Another question is: how many events like this go undetected due to a lesser, non obvious magnitude, and remain in the climatic record?
Invariably, such events almost always (though there are rare exceptions) seem to embrace a warm error, be it electronic or human error, or even transcription error, such as “Dial M for METAR“.
And yet, there has been a large migration of GHCN to airport systems both in the US and globally.
At ICCC4, Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt came up to me after my talk to tell me that I was “spot on” with criticizing the use of airport sensors for climate, because they were designed for a different mission. It was a proud moment for me, having watched this man walk the moon as a boy in high school. He said to me (and I’m going on recollection):
“The only purpose of the ASOS system is to measure the runway conditions for flight safety. I’ve seen runway temperatures vary as much as ten degrees from other airport locations. These shouldn’t be used for climate.”
The data at Reno, NV airport, showed not just siting differences, but a UHI factor also.
I agree with Dr. Schmitt’s assertion, and given that ASOS continues to produce faulty data, perhaps it is time to look at ASOS data issues on a broader scale.
That 76F is probably accurate. We have had extremely hot nights lately in the Mid-Atlantic.
Yesterday I was travelling with a storm front blowing through and the temperature difference was 12 degrees celcius in a 50 kilometer trip.
Isn’t there a situation that happens rarely on the tail end of a thunderstorm where a pocket of compressed hot air from up in the thunderhead descends rapidly and can cause artificially hot temps locally for a brief period of time?
Perhaps it captured this? Even in the remote possibility of this happening it still needs to be thrown out as an anomaly.
REPLY: Yes there is, it’s called a heatburst. See more here. I may have a way to check to see if this was likely at DCA, and I’ll report back what I find. – Anthony
REPLY2: Here’s the DCA ASOS data plotted as it appears on Weather Underground:
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KDCA/2010/5/28/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
While there was elevated wind, if there was a dry heatburst from a thunderstorm, I’d expect to see a corresponding sharp drop in dewpoint, but it drops gradually. The fact that the dewpoint system is fog mirror based in ASOS, while temperature is done with a separate sensor and looking at the data where temp and dewpoint don’t track, suggests a sensor error to me.
Note also, in the screencap of NWS tabular data that from 11pm to midnight on 5/27, the dewpoint remained constant at 62F while the temperature zoomed from 69F to 84F. Sensor error is the only explanation for that.
More on the ASOS sensors here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/10/inside-the-asos-ho83-tempdewpoint-sensor/
Temperatures and climate should stay far apart from each other.
There is too many variables in just reading a thermometer such as elevation, location, material surroundings, water, heat sources, human error, machine error, etc.
Different “Geo”, btw, than the one (me, that is) that usually comments on arctic ice. Just in case anyone wonders if I was branching out into ASOS.
Well, actually, I did take some pics of an ASOS in South Dakota last year, but still, this one wasn’t me.
ASOS= Automated Surface Observing System ( yes? )
What is missing is the note that the NWS DCA had (but is not there anymore) just after their revision….it stated that the ASOS had failed between the hours of midnight and 4am……but now they are still using data while knowing (or at least stating) that it had failed (1:27am)
In the end, I think the temp did (later in the day) get up to 76 (off hour ob)…….
The dew point did not changed it stayed at 62 while the temperature jumped from 69 to 84. That seems a little unreal to me.
Perhaps there is another reason for the quick temperature increase. Most people don’t know that the dewpoint thermocoolers for the old dew point sensor remain on in most, if not all HO-1088’s, as per instructions from NWS. This is a heat source, which is normally taken care of by the ventillation fan, which draws air up from the bottom of the sensor housing and out through the “top cap.” If the fan fails, the only indication is that the temperature sensor reads quite high for a long time, as the temperature readings are 5 minute averages taken in sequence, then the average centered over the 5 readings. If, by some wind condition, or by an intermittant failure of the fan, the readings for the 5 minutes are corrupted, then, even if a maintenance flag is issued, the data may not be checked by the responsible WFO and flagged, allowing such erroneous readings to be accepted by NCDC at the end of the month. It appears that this might be the case, if quality control at the WFO is not done properly, and it would therefore appear in the record. By the way, the dewpoint cooler being run is nonessential, as, at most sites, a new sensor has been substituted (I believe the designation is the DTS-1).
REPLY: Yes, spot on, many have been upgraded with the separate DT-1 units, because the HO-83 and 1088 are soooo bad. You explanation is plausible here. – Anthony
Just a thought…
Pathetic. Truly pathetic. And these guys are the scorekeepers?
DCA has always been an odd place for DC’s official climate record. As can be seen in the photos, it sits just yards from a very wide portion of the Potomac River. The river actually bends around DCA, with water to the north, east and south of the ASOS.
Why do climate scientists continue to use data using a source which is unsuitable for purpose? I’m appalled they call this science!
I really wonder about the maintenance and calibration on these ASOS and AWOS systems. When a pilot is approaching an uncontrolled airport, the main thing he or she wants to know is what runway is in use. In that case, one listens to the ASOS/AWOS to determine which way the wind is blowing. At one local airport (Pickens County, SC), the AWOS wind function hasn’t been working for several years. I just dialed it up at (864) 843-5801 and the wind information is still “missing”. Why the feds don’t fix it, I have no idea. So I called them up.
First, I called the FAA Aviation Safety Hotline in D.C. at 1-866-TELL-FAA. I got a bored woman who didn’t understand anything I was telling her, and got snotty after I had to tell her the third time that the airport was in South (not North) Carolina. She referred me to the South Carolina FSDO so I called them at (803) 765-5931. All I got was a recording and then dead air. I hung up after 3 minutes of dead air.
It really makes one feel safe to know these people are looking out for the flying public, doesn’t it? /snark
Geo says:
June 1, 2010 at 6:02 am
What is missing is the note that the NWS DCA had (but is not there anymore) just after their revision….it stated that the ASOS had failed between the hours of midnight and 4am……but now they are still using data while knowing (or at least stating) that it had failed (1:27am)
In the end, I think the temp did (later in the day) get up to 76 (off hour ob)…….
_____________________________________________________________________
If you look at the data from midnight to four AM the data is all over the place. It would indicate a loose connection aggravated by the rain perhaps? and was later fixed. I see the problem in my old trucks speedometer every time it rains. It registars 100 mph crawling down my rutted gravel drive…
10 pm 73
11 pm 69
Midnight 84
1 am 78
2 am 82
3 am 76
4 am 80
5 am 68
These types of out and out lies do the reputation of NOAA and climate scientists in general absolutely no good.
I do not think we should be appalled by such errors: these are real world gizmos operated by humans, employed mostly by government agencies. Errors are inevitable.
What is appalling is that “scientists” lately do not seem concerned that the data on which they base their apocalyptic scenarios is so faulty. Climate Science, properly understood, is in its infancy. It needs time spent on first principles, especially collection of accurate, non-biased data. The best climate science being done on earth seems to be here at Wattsupwiththat.com, with Anthony Watts and others scrutinizing the data collection process for all these other sloppy “scientists”, who cannot be bothered.
KW
Tenuc says:
June 1, 2010 at 7:06 am
Why do climate scientists continue to use data using a source which is unsuitable for purpose? I’m appalled they call this science!
___________________________________________________________________________
Because it was never science it is propaganda used to generate more wealth for the politicians and their handlers and tighter control of people other wise known as advancing “Global Governance”
“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” Al Gore Remember the “Danish text” would hand control over to the World Bank.
“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance. From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace.” Jacques Chirac
“….the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller
http://www.tasmantimes.com/world-government-quotes/78/
“National auto-determination” is another way of saying national sovereignty and democracy. or in other words a form of “Socialism” ” “What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control…” http://search.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/0-2souls.htm
If you believe the records have been cultivated for warming trends for a few decades, then you must understand there is a limit to the distortions that can be added without outright and discoverable lies.
The scientists we distrust have projected a rate of warming that will not be sustainable if their finger is on the scale. The finger will have to get heavier each year until it is obvious to anyone who cares to look.
Feeling the Heat: Global Warming and Rising Temperatures in the United States
Executive Summary
Globally, the year 2007 tied for the second warmest year on record, behind the record warmth of 2005. This warmth is part of a long-term trend toward rising temperatures and extreme weather events resulting from global warming.
Global average surface temperatures have increased by more than 1.4°F since the mid-19th century. In 2007, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the evidence of global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activities are responsible for most of this rise in temperature.
To examine recent temperature patterns in the United States, we compared temperature data for the years 2000–2007 with the historical average, or “normal,” temperature for the preceding 30 years, 1971–2000. Our data were collected at 255 weather stations—those with the highest quality data—in all 50 states and Washington, DC. Overall, we found that temperatures were above the 30-year average across the country, indicating pervasive warming.
Turns out those 255 high quality stations were Airport ASOS stations.
The Ecofascists are working very hard to close down the debate at James Delingpole’s site by hacking peoples’ login IDs.
Pointman
We should all know by now that the liberals perpetrating this hoax will never back down, regardless of how much evidence is shown to refute them, or how much their deceit is exposed.
Yes, that’s concrete. The telltale “Y” at the end of the pathway is the giveaway.
By the way, I sent you some commentary on the Central Park, NY, site, which I re-surveyed on Sunday site. Another heavily warming site. “It’s worse than we thought.” (And the previous site was on a rooftop, for which I have two eyewitness reports. I have photoed the previous site.)
Has anyone compared airports v the rest, or v rural sites in the surface records?
REPLY: Yes Zeke Hausfather did one for GHCN, not sure though how valuable it is since in USA there is so few “rural” stations. -A
KevinM says:
June 1, 2010 at 8:19 am
If you believe the records have been cultivated for warming trends for a few decades, then you must understand there is a limit to the distortions that can be added without outright and discoverable lies.
The scientists we distrust have projected a rate of warming that will not be sustainable if their finger is on the scale. The finger will have to get heavier each year until it is obvious to anyone who cares to look.
The problem is that this has already occurred and many of the sheeple are still following blindly. Remember, these types of catastrophic predictions have been made since James Hansen et al opened their mouths and began to speak about the climate. Their predictions have been falsified and they just keep nudging the records along closer and closer to their beliefs without any repurcussions. See 1998 is hotter than 1932 for proof. I say “is” instead of “was” because it was hotter in 1932, but according to the records now, 1998 is hotter.
This highlights the very serious dichotomy that exists between theoretical and observational scientists. As a retired lifelong obsevational, instrumental astronomer I was very much aware of this problem. You, Anthony, as someone who has a “feel” for your equipment, its capabilities and drawbacks, obviously understand this and are able to show up the appalling arrogance/ignorance of the people who pontificate on the future of the earth’s climate (I see the Met Office are now predicting that the number of very hot nights which are potentially lethal for older people could increase fivefold by 2040!).
Keep up the good work, Anthony!
Extremely small nit to pick:
Reagan National Airport is not on the Chesapeake Bay. It’s situated on the West bank of the Potomac River, and quite a distance from the Bay.
REPLY: Yeah, I never know when one begins/ends thanks for the clarification. -A
So there is a new category, instead of UHI, now AHI (Airport Heat Islands) or THI(Turbines Heated Islands).
Once most of the thermometers left in the survey have already been moved into cities, airports and tarmacs, what do they do? The offset is static. Their target is dynamic.
[snip – for tips and notes, not here, but thanks]
[snip sorry, OT]
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere
REPLY: Perhaps, but let’s leave it out of this thread please. -A
Big headlines about scores of heat deaths in India. How is this new? Wonder how they figure what a heat death is compared to malnutrition or old age in the alleyways of New Delhi.
Forgotten are the clear-cut cases of freezing to death in Europe a couple of months ago. Thousands died in Poland and Eastern Europe; unpublished tens of thousands east of the Urals. This goes to the point of the warm-earthers who rely on short-term memory loss in the sheeple.
KevinM says there is a limit to the climastrologers constantly pushing the scales over time. I’m not so sure. The climate fundamentalist peachers rely on the short-term memory of the people and the mass media, so they can keep going back to the “averages” in the past, selecting new “normal” baselines, and thus keeping the old shell game alive. If that fails, they distract with new catastrophes for a moment, like malaria, ocean acidification, sunstroke, syphilis and varicose veins. Then it is back to the old saw.
If only there were thousands of Anthony Watts, Rick Moranos, Senator Inhofes and Lord Moncktons, etc. around. Since the climate cult leaders are relying on 1984 newspeak and similar contrived control of the masses, perhaps we can take a page from Brave New World and start cloning these good guys en masse?
Until then, it is we. Make sure we vote at the ballot and in person.
National Airport? I recall they have a curfew. They are in town and limit takeoffs and landings at night. I have flown in behind schedule and been diverted to Dulles.
Enneagram says:
June 1, 2010 at 9:39 am
So there is a new category, instead of UHI, now AHI (Airport Heat Islands) or THI(Turbines Heated Islands).
—
Perhaps UHIs should be renamed Developments Heat Islands (DHI) to account for the range of uses that heat releasing developments encompass, instead of trying to specifically name each one.
There have been a few different looks at airports vs. nonairports recently:
– My post over at The Blackboard: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/airports-and-the-land-temperature-record/
– Clear Climate Code’s version using the GISTemp code: http://clearclimatecode.org/airport-warming/
– Nick Stokes over at his blog: http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2010/04/ghcn-results.html
– The slide in Peterson’s recent congressional testimony: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/karl_senate_2010_pg23.png
You could also use the R script that Jeff Id/Roman M made to do a similar test, if you want validation from someone on that side of the proverbial aisle.
It’s worse than we thought.
Al and Tipper separating.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/06/al_and_tipper_gore_separating.html
Sorry, I didn’t see that it had already been posted.
I’ve been wondering ever since I took pictures of the ASOS in Baker City, OR, about the effect of placing these installations at the end of long access roads. Seems to me the daytime temperatures should be heavily affected by wind direction: when the wind blows straight up the road towards the station, I would expect a daytime spike as compared to wind from other directions. Has anyone studied this?
Yet another spike in the concept of truth and accuracy…
Thanks to Anthony for reporting the ‘scientific’ propaganda promoted to us at our expense.
Does the word ethical mean anything to these folks?
1,200KM smoothing vs. 0.1 degree changes after faking the data – what is going on anyway?
Oh, will we ever learn…?
This post reminded me of a chart I saw on this page a while back……
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/leftist-big-govt-types-believe-human-co2-causes-warming-theyre-wrong-actually-its-big-govt-that-caus.html
I leaning towards the congressional “hot air” that causes the D.C. warming 😉
I wonder how much the location of the airport itself changes readings.
Years ago when I lived near Milwaukee we all knew that the MKE airport readings were never that same as 80% of the metro area due to it being sited very close to Lake Michigan.
The summer would bring cooler readings on many days as the lake air conditioned them. Spring and fall brought hotter readings as the big heat sink moderated the weather. Sometimes they would get 6-12″ of lake effect snow that almost no one else got. It was not a good proxy for the city, but was the official one.
The point is, how does the siting of the airport figure into this. Is it fairly consistent with adjacent readings? Is it subject to offshore wind/weather anomalies?
Re ? 9.22 am Thanks A ,
the GHCN analyses for rural designation are unhelpful surely.., this does indeed beg the question is airport heat island a more interesting potential bias.
If you are in Spitsbergen but on tarmac it might seem far from a heat island effect but be quite create quite an anomalous, apparrently.
I am just back from new Delhi. Apparently these temperatures are not uncommon in May, but its a ten year high I was told. 45c most of the week! but its a concrete jungle with new builds everywhere covered by a haze of humid smog so how do you standardise that?
Most weather monitoring sites were not selected for the purpose of measuring long term climate change. The link below addresses this issue and shows quantitatively how much site location has altered Global Warming temperature measurements.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
REPLY: Actually, no it doesn’t. The data they used was
1. “borrowed” from me against my wishes
2. incomplete at 43%
3. had no error correction.
They were in such a hurry to discredit me they did this half assed job, and didn’t even put an author on it. Our upcoming paper does it correctly. and no I won’t share it now. – Anthony
@Anthony Scalzi,
The important aspect is the HI. I doubt a heat island represents any data beyond the “island”, regardless of what kind of island it is, man-made or natural.
Then again, a map with “HI there!” arrows all over it would look funny =)
Sigh. There’s just no end to this stuff.
“But on closer inspection it appears to be sited over asphalt”
Perhaps they will explain that this is that natural asphalt from off the California coast? And that they have “adjusted” for its effect? Yes, that must be it.
As for that apparent spike in hot air, was Biden in the vicinity?
In any case, now we’re learning what it must have been like in the USSR in the Lysenko era. Of course, they didn’t have the internet then and, sorry, Anthony, but you would have been in some Siberian gulag by now, as would everybody writing inconvenient articles and making inconvenient comments here.
REPLY: Nyet, I denounce you! 😉 -A
#
#
Myron Mesecke says:
June 1, 2010 at 11:22 am
It’s worse than we thought.
Al and Tipper separating.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/06/al_and_tipper_gore_separating.html
_______________________________________________________________________
HMMMmmmm
I wonder if SHE sees the writing on the wall and is getting her chunk of the millions before HE has his pants sued off by irate parents who’s kids were needlessly traumatized by having to watch his movie in school.
Here are the surface maps at 04 and 05 UTC 28 May 2010 showing the warm anomaly at KDCA:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/sfcplot.kdca.2010052804.gif
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/sfcplot.kdca.2010052805.gif
This appears to be an obvious glitch in the ASOS system. I have seen many of these glitches from ASOS stations over the past couple of years.
It appears the temperature was below 70 throughout early morning of the 28th, but the temperature reached 75 later in the afternoon of the 28th and we indeed see 75 reported as the 6-hr high temperature at 00 UTC. But by 00 UTC (8 PM EDT) the temperature had cooled to 72. So it appears to me the correct calendar day maximum temperature for 28 May probably should have been reported as 75 observed at 4 PM EDT on the 28th. In summary, neither the max temperature nor the time of max temperature appear to be correct, even after the correction was issued.
A nearby weather observer recorded a high temperature of 74.8 on the afternoon of 28 May just one mile SW of KDCA:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KVAALEXA15&day=28&year=2010&month=5
T Td Tmx Tmn
28 KDCA SA 1952 8 39 10 1013.1 75 63 110 8 29.92 0
28 KDCA SA 2052 8 37 10 1013.1 74 62 140 6 29.92 6 09 0 0
28 KDCA SA 2152 8 28 10 1012.9 73 62 140 5 29.91 0
28 KDCA SA 2252 8 39 10 1013.2 73 62 130 8 29.92 0
28 KDCA SA 2352 8 30 10 1013.6 72 60 130 6 29.93 3 04 0 0 75 72
29 KDCA SA 0052 8 30 10 R- 1014.3 68 63 120 7 29.95 01
29 KDCA SA 0152 8 38 10 R- 1014.7 67 63 160 6 29.97 28
29 KDCA SA 0252 8 36 10 1014.9 68 62 0 0 29.97 1 13 T 29
29 KDCA SA 0352 8 35 10 1015.0 68 62 130 3 29.98 0
29 KDCA SA 0452 8 42 10 1014.9 67 62 130 3 29.97 0 Mx=87Mn=66
29 KDCA SA 0452 8 42 10 1014.9 67 62 130 3 29.97 0 COR Mx=76Mn=66
I will send an inquiry to NOAA to see what their line of reasoning was.
Mark Albright
Research Meteorologist
Univ of Washington
How about Anthropogenic Heat Island (AHI)? It would cover every case of poor siting.
But, but, but Anthony!
Even if NOAA did not have weather observing stations across the length and
breadth of the United States the impacts of the warming are unmistakable.
Think I’ll go out and watch the flying pigs.
In the first set of 24 temperatures, there are 6 readings with a decimal point, such as “75.9”. In the second set, there are 8, giving a total of 12. Probability would suggest that of the 48 readings, 43 should show a decimal point.
It is apparent that there is some form of manual intervention in this data. It also raises the question of accuracy of all temperature data, particularly when the tiny increase of 0.6 degrees per century is claimed. This is less than the recording accuracy defined by: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/dad/coop/EQUIPMENT.pdf (page 11)
What is the “probable error” of annual temperature measurement ?
Even before it became fashionable to exaggerate temperatures, faulty equipment would sometimes lead to unrealistic record highs. A friend of mine lived in Ft. Myers, FL in 1981. Temperatures there rarely hit 100 degrees due to the close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the preponderance of cooling PM thunderstorms in the summer.
That June, the official recording station came in with a week of 100 degree readings and 3 consecutive days of 103! My friend, a young TV meteorologist at the time, called the weather service office and told them that their thermometer was broken. (It was, I believe, a mercury thermometer.) They checked and found that it was broken. He asked them if they would revise their numbers and they said that couldn’t, because those were the only numbers they had! To this day, the records stand.
Anthony, I am really looking forward to your article.
I’ve been scanning wunderground.com for a while now, looking at various major conurbations around the world to see the range of temperatures being recorded at the regional locations surrounding the target city. Most large/capital cities have at least 20-30 stations within a smallish radius – 50km or thereabouts? – of the main entry, so they provide a good basis for comparison and cross-checking; these readings are all shown at the bottom of the page. They are readings from automatic online sensors that are refreshed at regular intervals, therefore at any given moment they are largely aligned to within a few minutes or seconds of one another.
What I find interesting is that every time I look, wherever I look, there is a significant range of readings – typically between 2-5 degrees C – from the lowest to the highest. Now, if readings vary so much over a relatively small area, how can the “powers that be” justify extrapolating a single remote location’s temperature readings across an entire 1200km grid section and beyond, and then claiming that the single averaged number they have used is a fair representation of the monthly heat flow characteristics of a huge swathe of the earth? How do they sleep at night, knowing that they have used a handful of small anomalies for a given month (which are grossly inadequate averages given the 43,200 dynamic weather minutes in a month), and which may be less than than the differences between adjacent suburban stations, to daub the entire Arctic region red? Sure, a method is required to deal with the difficulty of reconciling sparse measurements into a global picture, but the results should be regarded as, at best, mildly indicative, and certainly a million miles away from the gospel truth which we must insist upon before venturing to disrupt the world economy.
And why, given these substantial local variations in the places we live in and the demonstrated instrumental glitches that can skew the results without sensible intervention, oh why are those people getting so dramatically worked up about less than a degree of apparent (but still disputable) global rise in a whole century?
Global warming? Possible, but minuscule. Less than the difference between moving from one room in a house to another. And we’re supposed to treat this as catastrophic?
Clearly, one thing that does not get handed out with a PhD degree in climatology is a sense of proportion.
To all those who would have us believe that disaster is nigh, I say, “Forget the fancy maths and contrived logical sophistry; just look at the data, stupid.”
Just a little more information regarding the HO-1088 temperature system…
First, the system is checked out every 3 months by the ASOS Electronics Technician.
He cleans the system, and checks the components, then compares the temperature readings against a secondary standard, which is checked by a Claibration Lab contractor once a year. The claimed accuracy of the system for the basic system is +/- 0.5 degree celsius. However, in the S-100 book, (the ‘bible’ on how to calibrate the system) it is stated that the system is within calibration if the readings are within +/- 5 degrees celsius!(could this be a typo, or a failure to print the decimal place, and not inserting a zero in front of the .5?)) No technician would let the system drift out this far, I will assure you.
Secondary problem… The ventilation fans which are running 24 hours a day are beginning to wear out. (about 8 to 10 years usage). The only way that this is caught,
unless the 3 month maintenance catches it, is the high temperature readings which look really out of sync with surrounding systems. So, there you are.
I hope this clarifies the situation. Also, the system measures temperature in degrees celsius, then converts it to degrees fahrenheit. Remember, if the temperature is negative, minus 0.1 through -0.5 is added upward (add 0.5 to the reading) , rather than taking the absolute number, and adding 0.5, then restoring the sign of the number.
Just a few thoughts.
But I presume that NONE of the stations used to try to guess at climate change are sited to give a guide to ‘world’ conditions.
They have been put up (I only presume) to measure local conditions. They have grown up by accident and convenience, and as you have shown they have not been adapted.
There is no central controlling standardising body for these stations.
My presumption may be bollocks of course, so my apologies.
PS – I live next to an RAF base in England and I am told that our area will always pick up record cold temps due to the nature of the soils around us. This may be rubbish but it points to another non climate reason for temperature anomalies.
Isn’t this a bit of a leap Gail? Wouldn’t the use of Occam’s Razor which applies the meta-theoretical principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) and the conclusion thereof, that the simplest solution is usually the correct one would lead one to a more concrete, logical, and dare I say it, rational reason without having to reach for the world-wide, eternal conspiratorial reasons?
Suffice it to say, bad/easy and ‘convenient’ siting of these stations is sufficient reason enough to see why the data shows warming, reason enough without involving the CFR, the Trilateral Commission or the NWO bogey men …
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All temperature is local.