New Temperature Record at BWI: atmospheric or asphaltic?

Decisive detective work, these ” stats” have been truly toasted!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

Here in Utah it was in the upper 60s (Brrr!) over the weekend, 80 monday, 74 lovely degrees yesterday.

Never mind (just twist the map around and…) duh, sorry…

Simply to pay my respects for the coining of “asphaltic“.

This record is BS. I was in downtown Baltimore (a huge heat island) and it didn’t hit 105. It was, at max, 101 with surprisingly low humidity for Baltimore. There’s no way BWI was actually hotter than here. So, complete BS, just like the failed record snowfall at BWI ast winter (if you can remember that far back).

Driving from DC to home (35 miles west) the temperature on the toll road was
a pretty constant 104 F. I didn’t drive off the road to see if it was cooler.

Right on, Anthony! As usual, damn good, enlightening sleuth-work.
These surfacestations are so bad they reflect not only incompetence, but rather an agenda-driven malfeasance.
On the Washington National pictures, yeah the Potomac is going to be no help this time of year.
And the huge tarmac with runways being located to the west of the station is a witches brew for extraordinary readings, given they typical surface wind-direction in Mid-Atlantic heat waves of hot, downsloping west and northwest winds.
Here’s a fun GOES water-vapor image of our back-door upper level cyclone knocking at the North Carolina coast.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/flash-wv.html
It’s a battle, though, and that dolphin-shaped upper ridge is going to put up a fight.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Here’s a breath of cool summer air from flyover country:
“SALT LAKE CITY — There were no weather records set in the Salt Lake area over the holiday weekend, despite the unusually cool temperatures, but there were some records set in southern Utah.
The Bryce Canyon Airport dipped to a record low of 31 degrees on Monday. That broke the old record of 32 degrees for July 5, set in 1978.
Bullfrog also shivered with a 56-degree low that day, while the Cedar City Airport set a new low temperature record of 43 degrees.
Bryce Canyon was even colder on the morning of July 4, with a 27-degree reading, three degrees below the previous all-time mark for Independence Day, set back in 1956.”

It didn’t feel that way as high temperatures were at record lows in San Diego County today, says the National Weather Service. It was quite a contrast from the East Coast, where such big cities as New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore experienced record highs.
A trough of low pressure and a thick marine layer kept most of the western half of the county cloaked in clouds for much of the day.
The temperature only reached 62 degrees in Oceanside Harbor. The record “low high” for this date is 65. That record was set in 2002. The harbor averages a high of 74 degrees this time of year.
They say record heat and permanent drought in the southwest.

Interesting idea, but how about some science to back it up. The asphalt heating certainly seems feasible but the exhaust air effect less so. What volume of exhaust air is coming from the shed and at what temperature? From the Bing map it looks like the shed is 25 ft away from the temp sensor. It seems to me the exhaust would have to be very hot indeed to raise the temp of a large volume of air from 100 to 105 degrees over a distance of 25 feet. Even allowing for asphalt heating and saying the exhaust air effect gives a 2 degree temp raise, that’s a lot of heating power coming from a small vent.
REPLY: I never suggested it raised it from 100 to 105 degrees, that’s an assumption by you. I figure it adds maybe a degree at that distance. It is part of several factors of the location, just one piece of the puzzle. I have stood nearby these before, and they blow at a pretty good clip, but I have no volume/heat measurements. My point here is to demonstrate possible issues in hopes they’ll be investigated. I can’t just walk on to BWI and do these things without being tossed into the pokey. – Anthony

ROTFLMAO!!!!! Gotta love Meacham in the Blue Mountains of NE Oregon.
Record Report
000
SXUS76 KPDT 061820
RERPDT
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PENDLETON OR
1120 AM PDT TUE JUL 6 2010
…NEW DAILY RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES FOR JULY 6TH…
NOTE: STATIONS MARKED WITH * INDICATE THAT THE STATION REPORTS ONCE
PER DAY. FOR CONSISTENCY…THESE VALUES ARE CONSIDERED TO HAVE
OCCURRED ON THE DAY THE OBSERVATION WAS TAKEN BUT MAY HAVE ACTUALLY
OCCURRED (ESPECIALLY FOR MAX TEMPERATURE) ON THE PREVIOUS DAY.
STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS
RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN
MEACHAM, OR 36 / 2002 31 1948
*MONUMENT 2, OR 39 / 1994 39 (TIED) 1961

Gneiss, IMO you have reported on a “dress for weather” descriptor and weather pattern variations, not climate, with some of your “climate” data obtained from AGW graphs down right bereft in terms of information. There is no such thing as a single statistic for global temperature. It is the most misleading of all AGW statistics and should be shunned by meat and potatoes scientists. It is no more useful than reporting the averaged zipcode. Data rich, information poor.
Let’s not be data rich and information poor.

Watch temps in surrounding areas in real time. The WMAR coverage area is about 75 miles west and 100 miles east of Baltimore and immediate surrounding areas about 20 miles north and south of the city.
http://web.live.weatherbug.com/Broadcaster/2/Home.aspx?no_cookie_zip=21212&no_cookie_stat=WMARB&no_cookie_world_stat=&zcode=z4241&list=1&lid=BSL
BWI has the lead so far today.

Thanks to the obscenity known as Washington, D.C. ( a/k/a the “District of Confusion” and “Cancer On The Potomac” ), I have observed the explosion of development and the destruction of some of the nation’s most beautiful agricultural land. From my vantage point in Baltimore, the growth of the federal government over the last eighty years caused massive immigration to the region and is directly responsible for the horrific degradation of the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding environment.
There is little doubt in my mind that the region’s population growth and transformation has greatly affected temperatures. There is good reason that current temperatures are not comparable to the historic record.
In my father’s child

savethesharks. The weather stations at airports are there to support aviation only and are properly sited for their intended purpose. Knowing the air density, i.e. temp/humidity, is crucial if ones plane is loaded near the edge of the envelope because the density of the air affects the amount of lift and thrust that can be produced. The malfeasance/incompetence comes from incorporating airport station data into the climate record. The challenge in temperature recording is having calibrated instruments properly sited while being accessible/convenient over the long haul for the humans or electronics that record the data throughout the day. Airport stations are convenient, but the data is not suitable for analyzing subtle trends in climate.
cheers,
Tim

Alexander K says:
July 7, 2010 at 2:14 am:
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.
Unsurprisingly, “tenet-based” Climate Science does seem to be much more “Armchair” rooted than real Science – maybe also because you can’t get too far away from the Warming Models without some rather unpleasant withdrawal effects?

When asphalt is initially installed it is very dark black. But in time it becomes a much lighter gray color. I’m guessing that the dark black is a much better solar collector than the light gray. So temperatures could also be affected by resurfacing of the asphalt.

Leonard Weinstein is correct but it is also correct that if the temperature was not increasing the number of record highs and record lows would be about the same, and indeed in the 1950s that was the case. However in the last decade (2000-2009) the ratio of highs to lows had increased to ~2. One can also see the cooling in the 1960s from this figure.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/images/temps_2.jpg
Also, Beng, this heat wave seems to be pretty much pushed up against the coast and 100 mi makes a difference, esp to the west.

Yes, and all those “siting problems” were there 20 years ago as well. Unless they were introduced in the last few days, it is illogical to claim that they “caused” the record. Learn basic logic.

When I read highest temperature in the record, I asked myself how long is the record. And in this situation, how long is the record of hourly temperature record. I wonder if they have the record of the hottest hour of the day for the 40s.

“”Owen says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:08 am
I guess that it is unimportant that NOAA works with temperature anomalies to correct for differences in positioning and environments of its weather stations. It’s amazing to me that these scientists at NOAA are not even aware of what is so patently obvious to the average person.””
Owen, what’s amazing to me is those “scientists” can tell within a 1/100th to 1/10th of a degree exactly how much UHI is affecting their thermometers….
….and they know exactly how much to adjust, change, fudge, their temperatures to account for that

Owen writes,
“I guess that it is unimportant that NOAA works with temperature anomalies to correct for differences in positioning and environments of its weather stations. It’s amazing to me that these scientists at NOAA are not even aware of what is so patently obvious to the average person.”
What makes you think that NOAA scientists are unaware of siting issues?

I have a couple poorly placed remote outdoor min/max thermometers. One is 4 inches underneath the roof of a covered deck that is open on 3 sides. The top of the roof is standard white roofing shingles. The deck is cement. There are no heat sources or trees near it. It reads 7 degrees (F) high when the sun is blazing in the summer. Another is on the underside of a step in an open outdoor stairway about 6 feet off the ground. Cement underneath and on two sides. It is located about 10 feet from the exhaust of a small window air conditioner. It reads 5 degrees high in the summer sun. Finally I have one other that is located under the eave of a small shed. There are no heat sources within 100 feet and the shed is completely shaded by a forest canopy with natural ground cover. It gives me the correct temperature in agreement with what I see on local weather reports.
Location matters a lot. It isn’t enough to put something inside a white box with ventilation slats. It needs to be in the natural environment for the area. Not near cement, asphault, mowed lawns, and unnatural things like that. Given a great many locations, probably a majority, are in locations with considerable land use changes they’re not valid indicators of CO2 driven temperature anomalies. I know for a fact that it’s a lot cooler at the surface underneath a forest canopy than it is in a grassy field in full sun. The transpiration of the trees combined with the shade and moister ground beneath keeps it a lot cooler below the canopy. The difference seems to be a good 5 to 10 degrees F. One lonely dry white box doesn’t duplicate the natural cooling effect of a forest canopy. They’d need to add a swamp cooler of some sort.

It would be interesting if someone would do a study comparing soil temperatures under asphalt or concrete runways to temps at various distances from same. My impression from my research into ground source heat pumps was that soil temps at a depth of ten feet or so were a great approximation of average air temps at the surface.

Gneiss
Oh they’re aware of the UHI and land use effects. They’re also aware that there are no adjustments to the raw data made for such effects. The problem is that people like Anthony Watts and his growing audience are aware of the siting issues and lack of compensation for them too.

Positive or negative anomalies (data rich) increase or decrease for some reason (information poor). The trick is to get out into the field and figure out why (information rich). What amazes me is that those that provide us with these temperature trends do not do so, and they fully admit to not doing so.

Dave Springer writes,
“Oh they’re aware of the UHI and land use effects. They’re also aware that there are no adjustments to the raw data made for such effects. The problem is that people like Anthony Watts and his growing audience are aware of the siting issues and lack of compensation for them too.”
Now I’m confused. I was responding to Owen who claimed NOAA was not aware of position and siting issues. The NOAA scientists I know are well aware of these. Elsewhere on this thread several posters claimed, without evidence, that adjustments for siting biases are made conspiratorially to get a desired warming result. But some adjustments should be made, shouldn’t they?
Also relevant to this thread — are these BWI record temperatures, right or wrong, contributing to anyone’s global temperature index? Many comments here assume that they are, but I’m not sure how. The Baltimore USHCN series I mentioned above is not from BWI, and the Chestertown MD station, which has a similar trend, looks bucolic:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=29874
As for Anthony Watt’s surfacestation hypothesis, I honestly look forward to seeing his data. Like the USHCN data he criticizes, Anthony’s data should be made public so that anyone can test for themselves the differences in trends between anomalies from stations with urban or microsite issues and others; and how the categories are defined. If the definitions and trend differences both prove to be robust, this would be an important study.

The Frederick, MD station ALWAYS measures higher temperatures than the surrounding areas during the day. I live in the region, and often look up the NWS data for that station. Unfortunately I have not compared the nighttime data but I’m curious to do so after learning about the over-asphalt siting.

Pamela Gray writes,
“This happens when a farmer has become convinced that we will just be getting warmer and warmer (aka the positive trend lines you reported).”
Really, you know a farmer who became convinced it will be getting warmer and warmer, “aka the positive trend lines” I reported?
“Regarding being data rich and information poor: The fact that students, on average at a particular school, score below the national average is data rich and information poor. Weather trends (both the data and the statistics derived from the data) are data rich and information poor. Calling a temperature hot has more information in it than the temperature reading or trend alone does. Having an explanation for why the temperature is hot, how to prepare for it, and when it might go away is being data AND information rich.”
The rich/poor slogan doesn’t work for me because data is one type of information. So what you’ve written above just says that for some purposes, having more information is better than having less information, which is true enough but not deep.
“However, on a blog meant to encourage debate, simply listing data as if data has information in it without further work will certainly encourage debate. If all we needed was data, we would have very short journal articles.”
That’s true, and I write longer articles when I’ve got more to say. But the four slopes I listed do convey information related to the main point of this thread, which I gather you missed. They show a warming trend in Baltimore (but not at BWI) that is similar to the warming trend in a more rural Maryland location. Moreover, both local trends have the same sign but are steeper than two independent estimates of global temperature trends.
Such decadal trends show one dimension of “climate,” just as daily tempertures (the inspiration for this thread) show one dimension of “weather.”

Gneiss
Anthony and co-conspirators have already reported on a great enough percentage of continental US temperature sites to indict the whole system. The rules for siting are not terribly stringent to begin but it’s painfully obvious that there is no oversight or enforcement of the rules. I’d equate the site placement rules to traffic controls (signals and signs) in Taipei which are for all practical purposes not traffic laws but rather recommendations that are seldom followed.

Gneiss, it was my attempt at sarcasm.

solrey
re; temperature reporting at airports are for pilots
True enough. And if working under the rubric of “it’s better to err on the side of caution” and then taking into consideration that reporting a temperature that is higher than the actual temperature will result in aircraft being more lightly loaded and thus have a larger safety margin… it behooves the safe operation of the airport to exagerate the temperature in a warmer direction.

Dave Springer writes,
“I think ‘they’ know what will happen if they get out into the field and invest some due diligence into the so-called ‘settled science’. They prefer the data they have now and don’t want to do anything that will change it.”
Perhaps ‘they’ are someone specific in your mind, but this stereotype bears no resemblance to the scientists I know or the journals I read. Thousands of field researchers, not just modelers or data analysts, are contributing to climate-related research. The coauthors on research articles often span a broad range of knowledge, from details on the ground to syntheses across studies. Field researchers and modelers talk to each other at meetings, share data and ideas, ask questions and learn things they don’t know. They read each other’s papers. Modelers tend to be keenly aware what aspects of their models “are not well constrained by data,” and where they need better ground-truth research. Field researchers take account of such gaps in considering what and where they should measure.
To imagine that researchers don’t go in the field is just fantasy. And science meetings tend to be all about new data, opposite to your belief that “They prefer the data they have now and don’t want to do anything that will change it.”

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjQyMWU4NDhkMzc2MWEwYTczODY5YzAwZjRkNGEyZGI=
Jonah Goldberg from National Review made a request to explain the weirdness of car thermometers. Does anyone want to take a stab at it?

“”” Gail Combs says:
July 7, 2010 at 1:15 pm
HankHenry says:
July 7, 2010 at 9:42 am
It would be interesting if someone would do a study comparing soil temperatures under asphalt or concrete runways to temps at various distances from same. My impression from my research into ground source heat pumps was that soil temps at a depth of ten feet or so were a great approximation of average air temps at the surface.
_______________________________________________________
Cave temperature remain constant year round also. I have often wondered why cave temperatures are never mentioned since they would give a very good indication of the real average temperature trends for a region without all the noise in the signal. Maybe one or more of the caving societies has historical records that could be accessed. “””
Well Gail; all I have to do is measure the Temperature of my well water; that’s as good as a cave; maybe better sinc3e it is less subject to winds blowing through.
Come to think of it; I don’t even have to measure the temperature of my well water; it’s 68 deg F (20 deg C); for some reason it never changes; even when we are in the middle of a global warming meltdown like we have today.

“”” Leonard Weinstein says:
July 7, 2010 at 7:34 am
Anthony,
Consider this: In the last 100 years there have been 100 days of each day of the year. If temperatures varied totally randomly, there would be a 1% chance any given selected day of the year would be a record high for the last 100 years. Since there are 365 days in a year, the probability is that between 3 and 4 days of any given year will have record highs for that year. If you add to this the fact that the temperature has slightly increased in later years compared to earlier, the probability of record days in recent years is even higher. Thus a few record highs is no big deal. In fact, if less than 3 records are not made in a given recent year, this would be the odd fact. “””
And when the news media only reports the new records; you get the impression that they are something special.
Well they are still well within the total global range of -90 C to +60 C, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Too bad that Nyquist fellah keeps getting upset at our sampling methodology. But not to worry; nobody has shown any good relationship between the global average temperature; and the net flow of energy into or out of this planet.

Geoff, I have not studied the data, but anecdotally Frederick MD has decent radiational cooling, usually tracking Manassas and a couple degrees below IAD. Then it usually tracks higher in the daytime like you said.

With today’s siting issues at BWI, and 1930’s temperatures, Baltimore may have asphalted to 112.

@ Alexander K
I’ve seen the same thing.
I think to compare apples to apples, it has to be in a stevenson screen with the sun beating down on it. But, that’s OK, as long as that’s the standard and there are no siting issues, such as 190 deg-F asphault nearby.

@ Karmakaze
In addition to what -A said in his reply, your logic is faulty, too. Just because the pavement might have been there last year, doesn’t mean a new record would necessarily have to have been set last year.
But, if the siting issues had been identical when the previous record was set, the previous record might have been set higher, depending on other factors such as wind direction, cloud cover, sensor issues, etc.

Mike McMillan says:
July 7, 2010 at 3:37 am
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.
Mike,
Remember back to your A&P school days: There’s less lift in warm air than in cold, by dint of the fact of air density.
THINK: A vacuum has no air at all, and affords no lift, whereas a really dense atmosphere would behave as would water: Maximum lift.
Take the analysis from one extreme to the other.
And that applies to engines as well: Thin air has less available oxygen, and thus the fuel burn produces less power for natural aspiration, and even jet engines.
Back in the day, the airlines would use water injection (in the jets) in order to gain total reaction mass to assist in takeoff on really warm days.
As an aside, it’s also the reason that vacuum cleaners and clothes dryers don’t work as well in really hot days: Less air density.

Jason says:
July 7, 2010 at 1:37 pm
As a Baltimoron, I can tell you that the record for July 6 is actually 107 in 1936. I don’t know where they got the 1999 stat from…
Jason,
What exactly is a Baltimoron? Is it someone born in Baltimore? Or, is the term restricted to just those haven’t chosen to leave?

I’m curious. Both sets of pictures show the ASOS calculated with the ILS glideslope transmitter. Granted this is a low power transmiter, but the nearby radars both ATC and on the aircraft are not. I’m wondering if the ASOS has been tested for accuracy in this kind of hostile electromagnetic environment.

Ref – solrey says:
July 7, 2010 at 7:50 am
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Sooooooooooo True!
_____________________
You’ll know that the AGW Mob is serious when they start taking jackhammers to airport runways and interstates and blowing up whole city blocks of concrete, glass, and steel skyscrapers. If any CO2 is ‘at fault’, it’s the CO2 that is produced producing, installing, and employing asphalt, steel, and concrete that raises the atmospheric level of that dasterdly gas AND causing the UHI to go through the blogosphere.
Doesn’t NOAA assign something like a armchair handicap correction factor to each of their “official” locations to account for the unique physical and regularly recurring transient effects (jet engine backblast, etc.) at each site? Seems like JFK, LAX, BWI, DFW, ATL, and a few hundred other locations around the country ought to have their own individual fudge factor. Tell me they do… please?
We need to bring back the buffalo and live in teepees.

On 22 June 2010, at an elevation of 6767′, 10 miles SE of Santa Fe, NM airport, my exposed data logger USB temperature sensor (15″ above dirt surface) reached 140F while another sensor, shaded to the north and 8 feet above the surface read 86F. Micro climates and exposure issues do make a difference. Having a homogeneous climate record is near impossible. Certainly, data reveals non-stationarity at best.

@ Pascvaks says:
July 8, 2010 at 5:55 am
…Doesn’t NOAA assign something like a armchair handicap correction factor to each of their “official” locations to account for the unique physical and regularly recurring transient effects (jet engine backblast, etc.) at each site? Seems like JFK, LAX, BWI, DFW, ATL, and a few hundred other locations around the country ought to have their own individual fudge factor. Tell me they do… please?
—————–
If they did decide that a fudge factor was needed to counter the ocasional jet blast, etc., they would probably decide it needed to bias the temperature further upwards.

A few things I didn’t see mentioned.. I grew up in Baltimore and I remember a lot of ASPHALT STREETS !! I would bet that the Temperatures in parts of DOWNTOWN Baltimore were even HOTTER!! And as for National Arpt. in DC the Official temperatures have been measured there, near the Runway Complex, since 1942….
They have always been paved so at least the Records for the past 68 years have been recorded in the same basic location. I would think that is true at BWI (Friendship) too.
Bottom line is there is NO PERFECT LOCATION and furthermore the Equipment itself normally has a plus or minus 1 to 2 degrees level of accurracy. Lord knows how accurrate the Records of the 1800’s are!!! Here’s what we KNOW!! It was VERY HOT this week and it SNOWED a lot this past Winter.. Live with it and move on!!

I also find it amazing that a person who makes it their obsession to call accomplished scientists frauds and liars would be so upset by me saying he is making stuff up.
Seems you can dish it but can’t take it!
Talk about a coward. Why am I not surprised, though?
REPLY: Sir/madam, show me where I personally have made the claims you say against scientists, using those words, in any story I’ve posted at WUWT. Yes the words appear from time to time in context or in comments, but show me where I’ve personally named a scientist a “fraud or a liar”.
“Seems you can dish it but can’t take it!” Huh, you don’t read/remember much do you? Even when goaded by people that have no scruples such as seen here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/16/oz-report-footy-at-least-has-rules/ I don’t stoop to that level. With anonymous cowards (I’ll use that word since you first invoked it) like yourself, it sure is easy to hurl insults though, isn’t it? I notice it is easy for you here:

Karmakaze
2010/01/23 at 11:47 am
[snip]
[If you want to call our host a “liar” there are some other sites which allow, and even encourage that. This isn’t one of them. ~dbs, mod]

You also seem to have no tolerance for delay.

Karmakaze
2009/09/07 at 9:22 am
Well isnt that intersting…
I see you deleted my post showing how you were using phony figures…
Funny that,.
REPLY: 200% wrong you are.
1) You’ve jumped to conclusion without facts in evidence. Your post appears at 4:02AM. (PST, where I live)
2) You made no allowance for moderation delay. It is a holiday here in the USA, “Labor Day”, so there’s no expectation that posts will be approved immediately.
– A

As you’ve proven yourself time and again to be rude and disruptive, the decision stands, read the blog policy page, be as upset about it as you wish. – A