WUWT readers may recall the bizarre saga of Douglas Keenan’s attempt to bring the research data of CRU’s Dr. Phil Jones and SUNY’s Dr. Wei Chyung Wang to sunlight, which I’ve covered here and here. At issue, is the metadata (or lack thereof) of Chinese weather stations used in a 1990 study by Jones and Wang which concluded that UHI didn’t exist in China. Keenan made complaints of academic misconduct to Wang’s university based on the fact that Wang couldn’t or wouldn’t produce the Chinese station metadata to back up his claims.
The metadata location history of where the weather stations were sited was crucial to Jones and Wang’s 1990 paper. It concluded the rising temperatures recorded in China were the result of “global warming” rather than the UHI effects of China’s rapidly growing cities and industrialization.
The IPCC used the Jones and Wang study in the 2007 TAR to justify the claim that “any urban-related trend” in global temperatures was small. Notably, Dr. Phil Jones was one of two “coordinating lead authors” for the relevant chapter.
From Warwick Hughes:
The IPCC drew that conclusion from the Jones et al 1990 Letter to Nature which examined temperature data from regions in Eastern Australia, Western USSR and Eastern China, to conclude that “In none of the three regions studied is there any indication of significant urban influence..” That has led to the IPCC claim that for decades, urban warming is less than 0.05 per century.
Really? UHI is easily observable. I’ve been telling readers about UHI since this blog started. One notable example that I demonstrated by actual measurement is Reno, NV:
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Even in my small town of Chico, CA the effect is measurable:
Oddly, Jones recently wrote what may now be viewed as a CYA paper, seeking to distance himself from Wang’s data. I reported in March 2009 that:
A paper in JGR that slipped by last fall without much notice (but know now thanks to Warwick Hughes) is one from Phil Jones, the director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK. The pager is titled: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China
In it, Jones identifies an urban warming signal in China of 0.1 degrees C per decade. Or, if you prefer, 1 degree C per century. Not negligible by any means.
Now, Steve McIntyre of Climate audit has put the entire tale of Jones, Wang, and Keenan together in one encompassing history. True to form, Steve finds and documents many minor but important details in this two decade long saga which many journo’s have missed.
In Brit parlance, it’s “gobsmacking”.
Steve outlines the Chinese Weather station issue in three parts. It is well worth the read because to really understand the depths of the pea and thimble management that went on over the years, you really need a complete history. Call it metadata.
Part 3 has this Climategate email from Wigley worth noting:
Phil,
Do you know where this stands? The key things from the Peiser items are …
“Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist. Moreover, the report was published as part of the Department of Energy Carbon Dioxide Research Program, and Wang was the Chief Scientist of that program.”
and
“Wang had a co-worker in Britain. In Britain, the Freedom of Information Act requires that data from publicly-funded research be made available. I was able to get the data by requiring Wang�s co-worker to release it, under British law. It was only then that I was able to confirm that Wang had committed fraud.”
You are the co-worker, so you must have done something like provide Keenan with the DOE report that shows that there are no station records for 49 of the 84 stations. I presume Keenan therefore thinks that it was not possible to select stations on the basis of …
“… station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times”
[THIS IS ITEM “X”]
Of course, if the only stations used were ones from the 35 stations that *did* have station histories, then all could be OK. However, if some of the stations used were from the remaining 49, then the above selection method could not have been applied (but see below) – unless there are other “hard copy” station history data not in the DOE report (but in China) that were used. From what Wang has said, if what he says is true, the second possibility appears to be the case.
What is the answer here?
The next puzzle is why Wei-Chyung didn’t make the hard copy information available. Either it does not exist, or he thought it was too much trouble to access and copy. My guess is that it does not exist — if it did then why was it not in the DOE report? In support of this, it seems that there are other papers from 1991 and 1997 that show that the data do not exist. What are these papers? Do they really show this?
Now my views. (1) I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here. But ITEM X is in both the W-C W and Jones et al. papers — so where does it come from first? Were you taking W-C W on trust?
(2) It also seems to me that the University at Albany has screwed up. To accept a complaint from Keenan and not refer directly to the complaint and the complainant in its report really is asking for trouble.
(3) At the very start it seems this could have been easily dispatched. ITEM X really should have been …
“Where possible, stations were chosen on the basis of station histories and/or local knowledge: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times”
Of course the real get out is the final “or”. A station could be selected if either it had relatively few “changes in instrumentation” OR “changes in location” OR “changes in observation times”. Not all three, simply any one of the three. One could argue about the science here — it would be better to have all three — but this is not what the statement says.
Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it’s not too late?
—–
I realise that Keenan is just a trouble maker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I *am* concerned because all this happened under my watch as Director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me.
Best wishes,
Tom
P.S. I am copying this to Ben. Seeing other peoples’ troubles might make him happier about his own parallel experiences.
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“pea and thumble management”?
REPLY: Thimble thanks
I also find it very difficult to credit such a low rate of UHI effect on the temperature trend, but please be precise that the claim is (or was) that UHI had minimal effect on the temperature *trends*, not on the temperatures themselves. It’s conceivable (at least in theory) to have a site within a UHI which has elevated temperatures, but the temperatures at that site change at the same rate as an uncontaminated site (say, outside the city and upwind of it).
Also, can you please discuss this from the abstract of Jones et al. (JGR 2008):
0.1°C decade−1 over 50+ years comes to about 0.5°C, which hardly seems relatively small. If I read the 0.81°C figure as the non-UHI portion, then UHI represents about 40% of the reported land-based temperature rate, in China at least. Reducing the land-based rate by this amount may bring that record into accord with the satellite-based records.
Some stand out quotes from Tom Wigley’s e-mai;: “It was only then that I was able to confirm that Wang had committed fraud.” So it is labeled by Wigley as “fraud”, and then Keenan, who is simply trying to verify the science, is spoken of as a “troublemaker…”I realise that Keenan is just a trouble maker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil.” …and so in climate science “someone trying to replicate a study is a “troublemaker”, someone committing “fraud is” sloppy” and when later the true UHI is shown to be 1C per century verses the .o5C per century the troblemakers are just ignored. They wonder why the public does not worship the doom and gloom they conclude.
So the warming has been about 1C, the UHI effect is 1C. Yet we can discern global warming. reminds me of my Physics teacher, a long long time ago, who gave 0+, 0 and 0- as scores in tests, and expected us poor souls at the receiving end to understand the distinction
I support many of Steve’s observations, but on the question of what this all means I’m with Doug Keenan.
I was late to following the climate story and have only been reading and studying it for 3 years. The one factor that immediately made me a strong critic was this denial of data and methods by the hockey team. While on the government dole, these guys were screaming, the sky is falling one moment and then denying the source data the next. It is impossible to reconcile these two behaviors by any legitimate scientist. Either there is a real problem and they would want the work double checked or they are frauds. Its hard to describe my dismay at the media shills for letting the hockey team get away with hiding publicly paid for data.
I know Mr. McIntyre likes to stick to facts and not motivation but there is no other word for it than fraud. Duck, walks, swim, quacks, and all that. An honest scientist would understand why someone would want to double check work and want verification and validation. A fraud gets all indignant and attacks the one who asks questions. How has the hockey team behaved? Accuse them of fraud and that accusation has been verified and validated.
Typical of British academics and civil servants in general – they have no concept of other ‘less principled’ nations playing fast and loose with the truth in front of their noses. They seem to think that everyone around the world plays cricket.**
Witness the £millions in aid that is given to petty dictators worldwide, on the naive assumption that the money will go to the poor and needy.
** A euphemism for being honest.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Well here we have yet more proof of the climate science truism – there are lies, damn lies and climate statistics.
No surprise that fewer and fewer members of the public believe anything the IPCC climate cabal say. Time to get rid of the lot of them and their already falsified CAGW premise!
RE: HaroldW says:
November 7, 2010 at 9:12 am
**It’s conceivable (at least in theory) to have a site within a UHI which has elevated temperatures, but the temperatures at that site change at the same rate as an uncontaminated site (say, outside the city and upwind of it).**
But what if a true rural site had not changed significantly or gone down??
When McIntyre began writing about the Jones/Wang paper a few years ago, the thing that most surprised me was that even though he was the lead author, Jones apparently did not possess and presumably had never seen the data in question.
Since the station histories are critical to his conclusions that the UHI effect is negligible, and his contention that measured increases can only be attributable to human released greenhouse gasses, I would have thought that he would have had great interest in all aspects of the station selection and histories. Instead Jones allowed this critical work to be outsourced to an unnamed third party.
Now attention is brought to this statement from the Nature letter:
“Where possible, stations were chosen on the basis of station histories and/or local knowledge: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times;”
I am surprised that such a vague and subjective description was allowed by the Nature editors, by the reviewers, and actually by Jones himself if that is all he knew about the data.
As Wigley’s email points out, this gave the authors almost unlimited wiggle room, the phrase “where possible” negates the suggested rigor of the rest of the sentence, so the whole study should have been considered as a scientific nullity when submitted.
In this case it appears that the Brits knew full well that the paper contained highly dubious ‘data’ (see Wigley’s comments). Blind eyes seemed to have been turned, and continue to be turned, because this was, as usual, a mistake in the desired direction.
>>HaroldW says:November 7, 2010 at 9:12 am
>>please be precise that the claim is (or was) that UHI had minimal
>>effect on the temperature *trends*, not on the temperatures themselves.
The argument is, that with growing industrialisation and urbanisation in China, the temperature ‘trend’ across the nation has to be upwards.
You can bet that many of the monitoring stations were in small towns and cities which have now become large cities and even larger mega-cities, surrounded by a sprawl of energy intensive factories, and you can bet that this has increased the temperature trends recorded by those monitoring stations. To claim that none of this warming is due to the ever expanding UHI effect, is utterly mendacious.
Sack them all.
its about time somebody is charged of fraud and locked up
This reminds me of an old joke about accountants, ( no offence meant)
A man is looking for an accountant and asks one question:
What is 2+2, they all give the same answer 4, except for one which the man choses.
That accountant asks, What kind of figure are you thinking of?
When I first moved to Las Vegas, we had a population of approximately 350,000. Today the population is 1.9 million. All this growth in less than 30 years of the instrument record. Instruments that were once outside the city and unaffected by UHI are now surrounded by pavement, buildings, and the reflective glass of buildings (providing direct sun heat load on the screen and additional load by reflected sunlight). I’m sure these instruments have seen a significant increase in temperature trend within recent years which is directly attributable to increasing UHI effect.
I’ve read rationalizations that a screen that suffers from UHI effect is still going to see the same “rate” of temperature trend change as one that doesn’t. But in the case of many long established screens in the Las Vegas area, that can’t be true. How does one reconcile that significant increases in temperature trends due to UHI effect emergence has no effect on averaged temperature trends? I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. And why, when these instruments are adjusted for urbanization, they’re adjusted upwards (to produce greater trend) rather than downwards and then downwards prior to the emergence of UHI effect? The adjustments seem counterintuitive.
david says: November 7, 2010 at 9:22 am
David, Wigley was quoting Keenan’s words in Peiser’s article here, AFAICT. Certainly, Keenan IS accusing Wang of outright fraud.
So.. what is the global record with high-quality stations only? Has anyone tried to do so?
Ralph (November 7, 2010 at 10:13 am)
I agree with you that the general growth in the area is such that it seems plausible that there’s a significant UHI component in the land temperature record. A station does not actually have to be urban to experience a UHI effect (despite the name). And it seems that Jones et al 2008 has quantified a considerable effect due to urbanization, correcting the 1990 paper.
All that I was complaining about, is that the original (1990) paper did not dispute the existence of UHI, as seems to be implied in the post’s graphs showing the very considerable amount of UHI. The original paper claimed that — even though UHI affects certain stations’ temperatures — UHI did not result in a significant change in the temperature *trend*; urban and rural stations warmed at about the same rate. Imprecisions like this are seized upon by people who wish to ignore this issue, so it’s important to be accurate. There is much to criticize in Jones et al. 1990, but mischaracterizing its argument does not advance the criticism.
I noticed the smoker next to the BBQ in the cartoon….looks a lot like an old Stevenson screen….
Maybe that’s why the temps are so high in the urban areas….they’re usin’ ’em as smokers and leaving the thermometers inside!
Btw, I’m in Reno, up in the northwest, and I have a digital weather station out in the backyard, and situated fairly reasonably…in the light of things… I note that the official temps during the day are fairly close if a bit higher, but official NIGHTIME temps are MUCH higher!
Gerald Machnee says:
November 7, 2010 at 10:05 am
The bottom line is that the UHI warming that is seen in cities has an upper limit, and so too does the trend that Warmists so fondly cite as proof of global warming.
All that it takes to disrupt UHI station selection bias is movement of Jet Streams caused by the change in Solar Activity.
Oops, there goes the warming trend tea leaves.
They know this, and that’s why the goalpost is moved to climate disruption…the warming is Gone with the Wind.
I really appreciate the care McIntyre uses to lay out the case. It has allowed me to better understand Keenan’s approach.
Further, since the station history is central to the assertion of negligible UHI effect it is not at all unreasonable to be expected to document the data. Even Tom Wigley recognizes that – and while he really knows the answer (just didn’t write it) – calls Jones on it.
The context provided by McIntyre and WUWT really helps explain a) the basis for the deception and b) why this heavily referenced paper should be retracted
I think this issue makes a great reflection point, that when people say that the IPCC represents the best available science on climate change, it pays to think about what that actually means. Remember that Jones’ original conclusions are referenced in AR4, not those of his new study. Going from .05 degree urban warming per century (AR4), to 1 degree urban warming per century, is a massive adjustment to consensus knowledge (I’m assuming that Jones’ latest work will be in AR5). That it’s taken 20 years for climate scientists to recognise UHI effects doesn’t reflect well on climate science at all, imo. And Steve has shown here the kinds of stories and excuses that Jones and others are willing to construct in order to skirt around these issues… by calling their critics ‘lazy’, ‘incompetent’, with ‘nothing better to do’, etc. If this is representative of the best available science, then it’s not worth very much in my opinion. I’m sure much better science is indeed possible.
Hank,
I absolutely agree with you. The argument I have heard put forward is that there is an initial increase in trend that then equilibrates and drops off to the same as the non-UHI trend (else how do we get elevated temps). As all good propaganda there is some truth in it. According to an interesting study Dr. Spencer did on comparisons of urban/rural/and city size, the largest UHI’s are in very small areas modernizing and growing while a large established city would have a small UHI
This excuse ignores the physics of increasing amounts of material that absorbs and emits. It also ignores the problem of waste heat released in the environment. Unless there is no increase in energy usage their excuse is impossible. Some areas of some cities will have decreasing energy intensity. Trying to claim all cities have reached their equilibrium with no increases in waste heat, wind reduction, increased absorption etc, is delusional or lying.
As you point out, adjusting a cities’ temps upwards is claiming that the temperature measurement is somehow being artificially biased lower. Since I have seen no paper referenced on why this would be we are again in the realm of delusion and fraud.