UPDATE: Another new record at BWI on July 7th:
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
522 PM EDT WED JUL 07 2010
...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT BALTIMORE MD...
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 101 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY.
THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 99 SET IN 1993.
A new record high temperature was set in Baltimore today…
RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC 0547 PM EDT TUE JUL 06 2010 ...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT BALTIMORE MD... A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 105 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 101 SET IN 1999.
The temperature is measured here at the BWI airport at this NOAA ASOS. It doesn’t look bad from this photo provided by NOAA. In fact with the exception of the building, it looks reasonably well sited. More photos here.
But when you look at this BWI ASOS station from the air, an entirely different picture emerges.
From Bing Maps, see interactive view here.
Here’s the East looking view:
Note how close the NOAA ASOS station is to the asphalt accessway, and how it is surrounded on 3 sides by runway and taxiways.
Here’s a ground level view showing the asphalt accessway:
But also notice the vent in the ILS instrumentation building. That’s an exhaust vent. When the wind blows from the NW, it will carry any waste heat from that vent (note it points downward) directly into the ASOS sensor array, as shown in this zoomed aerial view from Bing Maps below:
Interactive view of above here.
Note the direction of the wind when the ASOS recorded 105° F per this screen cap of the NWS hourly observations for BWI:
The ILS waste heat, combined with the asphalt proximity of the accessway, as well as the runway and taxiway on three sides contributed to the new high temperature record, in my opinion.
When you look at other stations high temps (which I plotted) in the area on the same day, the 105° F record high stands alone near Baltimore, though one other airport, Frederick, also with ASOS measured the same 105° F high. The Baltimore downtown Tmax (at the Museum/Science Center) was 103°F.
Source of observed high temps: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/observations.htm and http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lwx
From the website CCF, who also had an interest in the issue, it was reported that some other private stations nearby also didn’t hit 105.
Nearby Weatherbug stations, which are considered to be fairly accurate, were all lower:
- Columbia hit 102F at Clemens Crossing ES.
- Ellicott City hit 100F at Veterans ES.
- Owings Mills hit 100F at The Harbour School.
This suggests that BWI stands alone in the 105 temperature for this area.
Since the Frederick, MD Airport ASOS (nearly 40 miles away) also hit 105, let’s have a look at it:
Interactive view from Bing maps here. Note that this station while an older style AWOS instead of ASOS, also has it’s sensors sited near/over asphalt and near the waste heat of the ILS building and it’s electronics. Just like BWI. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.
And here’s the observations from Frederick:
While the winds at this time weren’t in the direction that would pull waste heat from the ILS building, I’ll point out that the KFDK AWOS sensors are sited directly over the asphalt, where the BWI ASOS has asphalt very close by. This is great for keeping weeds down and mowing, not so great for measuring temperature.
Washington National has similar siting over asphalt (or possibly dark crushed rock, but does not have an ILS electronics building nearby. It does have one feature though, the Potomac river is only 180 meters away.
Of course, the KDCA ASOS station isn’t far from a megaplex of tarmac, terminals, and aircraft.
If you wonder if tarmac/taxiway/runways are capable of generating a lot of heat, this story from Albany, NY yesterday, on the same day the new record high was set at BWI, might be of interest:
Oh, and by the way, Albany’s airport also had a new record that same day:
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBANY NY
958 PM EDT TUE JUL 6 2010
...RECORD HIGH MINIMUM TEMPERATURE TIED AT ALBANY NY...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE AT THE ALBANY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ONLY DROPPED
TO A LOW 76 DEGREES AT 509 AM JULY 6TH. THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD
HIGH MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 76 DEGREES SET BACK IN 1911.
It takes some time for all that tarmac heat to dissipate. You can bet they didn’t have tarmac there in 1911. The high temp also got pretty warm:
TEMPERATURE (F)
YESTERDAY
MAXIMUM 96 353 PM 97 1886 82 14 80
MINIMUM 76 509 AM 47 1961 59 17 51
Sources: http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=aly
While this certainly isn’t an exhaustive survey, it does illustrate that the two highest reading airport stations today at BWI and FDK have siting issues.The BWI ASOS went in in 1995 according to the NCDC MMS Metadatabase. It set a new record of 101 for this date 4 years later. We can be certain that in the years prior, the station was not sited just like you see it now. Airports are dynamic engines of change.
Also from the CCF website:
Records go back to 1880 for Baltimore, so this is an impressive feat, and it has been done before. A temperature of 105F has been hit four other times in the the area’s, and many long ago. So these numbers should quell the talk of Global Warming with this hot summer.
Here are the four other dates:
- June 29th, 1934
- August 6th 1918
- August 7th 1918
- August 20th 1983
Another mark hit many times in Baltimore was 104F on these days:
- July 3, 1898
- July 16 1988
- August 4th, 1930
- July 6th: 101F in 1999* BROKEN TODAY with 105F
- July 7th: 99F in 1993
- July 8th: 100F in 1993
- July 9th: 103F in 1936
- July 10th: 107F in 1936 * Hottest of all time for Baltimore
The question is, are airport stations like this at BWI climate-worthy? I sincerely doubt it.
I’d like to share a story that I’m proud of. At ICCC4 in Chicago this past May, I gave my presentation on what I’ve learned from the surfacestations.org project and what is about to be published. One member of the audience came up to chat afterwards. I was surprised to see Dr. Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut, and the only geologist to walk on the moon. He said:
Anthony, I want you to know that you are spot on about these airport stations. I’ve seen them read up to 10 degrees warmer than the surroundings. But that’s what they are supposed to read. Pilots need to know the runway conditions, and these stations measure that. Their primary mission is aviation, not climate.
A proud moment for me, having a man who was a hero of mine, whom I watched on Live Lunar TV in high school, giving praise, but also stating the base truth of the matter. Climate monitoring is not part of the mission plan for airports, but they get co-opted for the task.
For example, BWI also has problems with snow records, which I’ve covered before:
BWI snow record rescinded: Another reason why airports aren’t the best place to measure climate data
Here’s some related reading about Baltimore’s other high reading climate (USHCN) station (now closed):
Full story here:
How not to measure temperature, part 48. NOAA cites errors with Baltimore’s Rooftop USHCN Station
Another mark hit many times in Baltimore was 104F on these days:
- July 3, 1898
- July 16 1988
- August 4th, 1930
- July 6th: 101F in 1999* BROKEN TODAY with 105F
- July 7th: 99F in 1993
- July 8th: 100F in 1993
- July 9th: 103F in 1936
- July 10th: 107F in 1936 * Hottest of all time for Baltimore
Same in the Big Apple?
http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalerts/heat.heat.wave.2.1790119.html
Decisive detective work, these ” stats” have been truly toasted!
Meanwhile Alice Springs, in the middle of Australia, had its coldest maximum temperature on record yesterday: 6.3 deg Celsius, about 43 deg F. Think our thermometer is at the airport too. What can it all mean?
In my London, UK, back yard I have two thermometers, both shaded but not enclosed in anything even faintly resembling a Stephenson Shield. The yard has no grass, just ornamental stone, blockwork and brick paving plus an ‘Oriental style’ (landlord’s description) pebble garden. No grass area and all flowers and shrubs are grown in ornamental pots.
Strangely, despite my yard being what should be a mini-UHI, both thermometers agree with each other but only occaisonaly reach the daily Met Office forecast max or min temps – my readings show a flatter curve than the Met Office figures. What kind of environment are the Met Office instruments sited in?
I also measure rainfall with a two simple calibrated collection flasks. These also agree, but rarely capture the quantity of rain forecast by the Met Office. Currently, the new desalination plant in London appears to be a very sensible project and will be called into service soon if the current lack of precipitation – a total of 11 cc in the previous 30 days – persists.
Dave Richards says:
July 7, 2010 at 1:44 am
Meanwhile Alice Springs, in the middle of Australia, had its coldest maximum temperature on record yesterday: 6.3 deg Celsius, about 43 deg F. Think our thermometer is at the airport too. What can it all mean?
Hi Dave
It means that some opportunists can have a party with lots of homogenizing of data, feed that data into models, hmmnn then adjust the data to make it more “robust” or politically correct and feed the excitable result direct to media and before it’s casually examined for publication, scary “science” in action!! Except there are more an more science blogs looking at the issues.
Then as in our case if you adjust historical records for by inventing “possible” rather than evidence based reasons, it becomes a magical pudding mix, add a few flavours of if’s, “perhaps”, something might happen (the scarier the better of course) and the recipe will bring you lots of riches in the form of research grants.
Damn, I don’t want to be cynical, just a little sceptical …. BUT!
Dont forget to add the increase in plane flights over the past few decases. Yes, there would have been big drops around 2001, but in general, aviation has bee increasing greatly over the past few decades.
Spot on, as usual, Anthony!
From this morning’s DC/Baltimore weather discussion:
“SO FAR THIS YEAR /INCLUDING JULY 6TH/…BWI HAS RECORDED 24 CALENDAR
DAYS WITH 90 DEGREE OR HIGHER TEMPERATURES. THIS IS THE MOST
FREQUENT NUMBER OF 90 DEGREE OR HIGHER DAYS THAT OCCURRED BY JULY
6TH AT BWI…SURPASSING THE 22 DAYS IN 1991. BWI SET A SIMILAR
RECORD FOR NUMBER OF 100 DEGREE OR HIGHER TEMPERATURE DAYS TO DATE.
WHILE THERE HAS BEEN TWO YEARS /1898 AND 1966/ WITH THREE 100 DEGREE
HIGHS BY JULY 6TH…THERE HAS NEVER BEEN FOUR DAYS UNTIL 2010.”
http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?%20%20site=NWS&issuedby=LWX&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1
Frank Tipler comments on the raw vs adjusted temperatures.
And of course, all these temps go into the big global stats to say “See, it is warmer”. The other temperature stats of the area would be ignored and trashed. (Deleted?)
Yet to hear ANY media coverage of ANY cooler abnormalities.
Warmists constantly tell me that this is the hottest decade on the record. I remind them that it is man-made global warming. I’m surprised at the faith warmists have about these stations. We are on WUWT constantly arguing about tenths of a degree and here we have tarmac and exhaust vents that, IMHO, can contribute a whole lot more that tenths of a degree. Yet they say that climate scientists can make the necessary ‘adjustments’. :o)
I measure 196 ft to the taxiway and 247 ft to the runway. The ILS transmitter is putting out maybe 20 watts max, so aside from the asphalt walkway and the jet exhaust, that’s CRN 2.
That toasty 192° tarmac sounds about right, as often as I’ve had to do the aircraft walkaround, but I wasn’t aware that we had to lighten our payloads because hot air had less lift than cold air. I always thought it had to do with hot air cutting back the available engine thrust.
Question?
Since man is the only species that produces vast amounts of heat through our comfort, daily activities and industry related activities, building materials, how much cooler would it be without this over an accumlative period of time?
I know the graphs show a slightly elevated temp over extended period.
But what would the graph show if all the heat we produced was subtracted?
I would suspect a cooling trend.
On question that we should ask about the Baltimore Airport station is: how long has it been around? Anomolies are calculated from each site. Has there been warming at this site during the last decade or two or was this particular site just put in this year? Perhaps this question was answered somewhere in the posting, but I missed it.
Met Office forecasts could be quite different from the actual measured values, there is model bias and model uncertainty in their forecasts. Another issue is resolution Met Office models computed temperatures and precipitation over 1×1 km grid or 5x5km, so they obviously miss quite a bit of detail. You can see an example here
http://www.nanowx.com/innovation.html , you would probably need something like uncoupled surface layer model to get more adequate values here is a nice example http://api.ning.com/files/a8ZZitQ2zfVaFICzYJYond7Qv7OnHRY7OzLfUkwd9Y0kAx9x*TjoaEXT*YtBQGD9tAJ5gb1dL*xWg2-nnCManh5v4KaP2BIN/CarpenterWSN09ExtendedAbstract.pdf
Thanks, Smokey. That’s a very interesting link to some quite shocking information re attempts to black-list eminent scientists and to a sane and unbiased view of some historical temperature records which clearly demonstrate that there has been no discernable rise in temperatures in those places in the last century. I am driven to wonder, from my own observations, how many Warmists actually observe and record temp readings for themselves in a similar manner to my own very amateur efforts. If the Warmists did this on a long-term basis, they might begin to realise the impact of seasons, climate cycles and the historical records of phenomena such as volcanic activity and their impact on crop yields, how well livestock thrive, etc. I had the advantage of a rural upbringing during and after WWII and I have vivid memories of conversations between older members of the farming community about the huge influence and importance of climate cycles. Their economic survival depended on their climate knowledge in ways most urban dwellers would struggle to understand.
Alexander
Jimbo said “Yet they say that climate
scientists can make the necessary `adjustments’.”
Even if that is true, that only applies to average temperatures. There is no way to adjust these “record” highs.
Does it go without saying that there was no asphalt in 1999? Or does it go without saying that the wind was NW then too?
Weather:
It’s been hot recently in Baltimore
Climate:
1970-2009 annual temp USHCN Baltimore, MD +0.30C/decade
1970-2009 annual temp USHCN Chestertown, MD +0.26C/decade
1970-2009 annual temp GISTEMP global +0.16C/decade
1979-2009 annual temp RSS lower troposphere +0.15C/decade
Some international pilots rank countries according to whether there is close or distant agreement between the ground station temperature reported before take off or landing at the airport, compared with the instruments in the aircraft.
Any pro pilots here willing to venture a comment on which countries rank better than others? And what size the difference can be? I know of an A380 and an ex B747 pilot speaking highly of some smaller African countries.
Has anyone taken, for example, a LIG / Stevenson Screen and an MMTS and put them in various places to detect relative performance? Like, oh, at an airport and under a tree?
It would be interesting to review such a study. And to find out if a thermometer at the Airport is hotter than one in the bushes on a sunny day…
If not, perhaps Anthony could put a screen on his driveway and one on his lawn and publish the comparative graphs….
I don’t see a compass rose on that aerial image of Fredericksburg, so I assume north is at the top. That being my assumption, the recorded winds of 5 mph from the west WOULD have carried heat towards the sensors.
Mike McMillan says:
“That toasty 192° tarmac sounds about right, as often as I’ve had to do the aircraft walkaround, but I wasn’t aware that we had to lighten our payloads because hot air had less lift than cold air. I always thought it had to do with hot air cutting back the available engine thrust.”
Actually it would be both: Warm air has less density, thus reducing lift as well as mass (and you want O2 for your engines) available per volume unit for your engines -> less power.
I live +/- 20 miles from BWI. I don’t know about the 104 degrees………but it was hot yesterday……….Reminds me of the summer of 1993.
Hi Anthony,
I very much enjoyed your posts from down under, great job…
I live about 15 miles southwest from BWI and my rural “unofficial” thermometer only reached 100 for about 1/2 hour…….. But, it felt like 105!
Keep up the great work.
pRadio – MD