While Joe Romm squawks about record highs being “obscenely hot” over at Think-Climate Progress, there’s a quiet bit of questioning going on within NOAA about the veracity of the surface temperature measurements, particularly related to ASOS stations at airports, which have made up a significant number of recent record high temperatures in the USA in June.
Below is an extraordinary interchange between Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., and Greg Carbin, of the NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
Figure and Data Analysis Provided by Greg Carbin of NOAA
I received the e-mail below from Conrad Ziegler that alerted me to a really important analysis of siting issues with respect to surface temperature data. The relevant part of Conrad’s e-mail, and the e-mails on this figure by Greg Carbin and Richard Grumm are reproduced below (with their permission).
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:44:32 -0500
From: Conrad Ziegler <xxxxxx>
To: pielkesr@xxxxxxCc: gregory.carbin@xxxxx, richard.grumm@xxxxxxx Conrad Ziegler <conrad.ziegler@xxxxxx>
Subject: Fwd: [Map Discussion] All-time maximum temperatures broken or tied in
June
Hello Roger!
I hope this message finds you well!
I thought you’d be interested in the correspondence below between Rich Grumm and Greg Carbin about US record high temperatures since 1950. I’ve attached Greg’s interesting figure that accompanies his message below (Greg, I hope you don’t mind my sharing this). I know you have long advocated the need for adequate siting of surface operational meteorological sensors worldwide, and have written on the subject of effects of poor siting on temperature time series. Rich’s message raises the bar so to speak…the instrumentation itself needs to be properly designed and sensors aspirated correctly. One would have hoped this was at minimum a standard thorughout the US, though reading Rich’s message I’m no longer so sure.
Best Regards,
Conrad
Following is Greg’s initial e-mail on his analysis
From: gregory.carbin@xxxxxDate: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 10:37 pm
Subject: All-time maximum temperatures broken or tied in June
To: HWT Map Discussion Listserv <discussion@xxxxxx>, SUNY
Map Listserv <map@xxxxxx>
Maps,
I was wondering how the 41 all-time max temperature records broken or tied in the U.S. during June 2011 compared to other Junes of the past. So, I wrote a script this evening to grab the all-time annual maximum temperatures that were broken or tied during the month of June, for all Junes, back to 1950. The resulting chart is attached. June 2011 has had the most all-time maxes broken or tied (16 broken/32 tied through June 29) since June 1998 when 89 all-time max temperatures where either broken (31) or tied (58). However, the month of June 1994 really bakes the cake! That’s when a total of 229 all-time max temperatures where either broken (112) or tied (117). June 1990 was also another hot one with a lot of records either tied or broken. See the chart for more details.
-Greg
Greg Carbin
Warning Coordination Meteorologist
NOAA-NWS Storm Prediction Center
National Weather Center
Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7268
Richard Grumm’s of NOAA replied
From: Richard.Grumm@xxxxx Date: June 30, 2011 7:49:12 AM CDT
To: gregory.carbin@xxxx Cc: SUNY Map Listserv <map@xxxxxxx>, HWT Map Discussion
Listserv <discussion@xxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Map Discussion] All-time maximum temperatures broken or tied in June
Greg,
Nicely done. Kind of warms the soul.
I ponder if the sensors used in ASOS massively deployed circa 1991 played some role in this, that is [a] downward trend though most of this would be COOP site data. Did we go through some program to improve those sites in the 1990s?
As for ASOS sites, if used, we had one really badly placed sensor at KMDT when we opened in State College. The ASOS was aspirated and on grass, not a roof. It ran cooler in parallel to our older unit (was it an unapirated HO83?). We did not officially began using the ASOS until AFTER your 1994 spike. Hitting 100F at KMDT has been extremely difficult since the new sensor. Being on grass and on the ground helps.
Additionally, we had 2 very warm ASOS units and I know an office not too far west of me that did. It turns out how the fans are installed is critical. One does not want to pull hot air up into the system. We had a sensor that was really warm last year and in the July heat wave (KSEG) was often an eastern US hot spot. New fans lead to local cooling.
How much of the 1980s was badly placed sensors? Did we improve COOP sites in the 1990s? How much of this was the pattern? Some of those 1980s years were hot but how much did sensors contribute to this too? Gotta find the eggs for this Duncan Hines cake mix.
Thanks
Rich
The relevant part of my reply to Conrad’s e-mail is reproduced below.
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:20:54 -0600 (MDT)
From: Roger A Pielke Sr <pielkesr@xxxxx>
To: Conrad Ziegler <conrad.ziegler@xxxxx>
Cc: Roger A Pielke Sr. <pielkesr@cires.colorado.edu>, gregory.carbin@xxxx,
richard.grumm@xxxx Subject: Re: Fwd: [Map Discussion] All-time maximum temperatures broken or tied
in June
Hi Conrad
Thank you for sharing the information on the surface temperature measurements! I have a question and a list of some of papers on this issue below.
First, Greg/Rich – do I have your permission to post your e-mails and figure on my weblog?
Second, we have been examining the effect of siting quality on the long term surface temperature record, with our most recent paper
Fall, S., A. Watts, J. Nielsen-Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2011: Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., in press. Copyright (2011) American Geophysical Union.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/r-3671.pdf
We also have other papers on this subject; e.g. see
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/r-345.pdf
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2010: Correction to: “An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841″, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D1, doi:10.1029/2009JD013655.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/r-345a.pdf
Steeneveld, G.J., A.A.M. Holtslag, R.T. McNider, and R.A Pielke Sr, 2011: Screen level temperature increase due to higher atmospheric carbon dioxide in calm and windy nights revisited. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D02122, doi:10.1029/2010JD014612.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/r-342.pdf
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf
Parker, D. E., P. Jones, T. C. Peterson, and J. Kennedy, 2009: Comment on Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends. by Roger A. Pielke Sr. et al.,J. Geophys. Res., 114, D05104, doi:10.1029/2008JD010450.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321b.pdf
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2009: Reply to comment by David E. Parker, Phil Jones, Thomas C. Peterson, and John Kennedy on .Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D05105,
doi:10.1029/2008JD010938.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321a.pdf
Hanamean, J.R. Jr., R.A. Pielke Sr., C.L. Castro, D.S. Ojima, B.C. Reed, and Z. Gao, 2003: Vegetation impacts on maximum and minimum temperatures in northeast Colorado. Meteorological Applications, 10, 203-215.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-254.pdf
Pielke Sr., R.A., T. Stohlgren, L. Schell, W. Parton, N. Doesken, K. Redmond, J. Moeny, T. McKee, and T.G.F. Kittel, 2002: Problems in evaluating regional and local trends in temperature: An example from eastern Colorado, USA. Int. J. Climatol., 22, 421-434.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-234.pdf
We are currently looking at the instrument change issue as a follow on to our Fall et al 2011 paper. Your input on our paper would be very valuable.
This is really important and influential work and I am glad you have shared it!
Best Regards
Roger
Last evening when Greg sent me the latest figure with the June 2011 data, he also updated the information with the e-mail below.
On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, gregory.carbin@xxxx wrote:
Roger,
The updated chart is attached to this e-mail. It may be trivial to add one more record for the month but it was a new record (not a tie) and it was also the only new all-time record high broken in Kansas during the month. There were all-time max temperatures in Kansas that were tied during the month but only this one, on the last day of the month, was a new record. The other states with stations breaking all-time high temperature records in June were: FL, NM, OK, and TX. Again, there were 17 new all-time maximum temperature records set in June 2001, and 25 all-time maxes tied during June 2011 according to the data available from NCDC as of late this evening.
The top three years and numbers from the chart, if you need them handy, are:
Year, # Tied,# Broken, Total
1994, 117, 112, 229
1990, 95, 62, 157
1998, 58, 31, 89
I will look forward to your post.
-Greg
============================================================
From Anthony: I have documented serious and uncorrected problems with the NOAA ASOS system at airports. One notable train wreck of false high temperatures (which still remain in the climate record today) Occurred in Honolulu , HI at the airport. Just look at the difference.
The data from the two Oahu stations, 3.9 miles apart on the south shore. When plotted side by side, was telling. I marked missing data, the record high events, and when the ASOS was repaired.
The ASOS sensor read several degrees high, setting a string of all-time new temperature records. Seems to be a recurring problem, see my analysis over several posts:
This is your Honolulu Temperature. This is your Honolulu Temperature on ASOS. Any questions?
More on NOAA’s FUBAR Honolulu “record highs” ASOS debacle, PLUS finding a long lost GISS station
NOAA: FUBAR high temp/climate records from faulty sensor to remain in place at Honolulu
How not to measure temperature, part 88 – Honolulu’s Official Temperature ±2
Guest Weblog: Ben Herman Of The University Of Arizona – Maximum Temperature Trends and the HO83
Key West, FL sets new subzero “record low” temperature – Update: now snowing!
Hot Air in Washington DC- More ASOS Failures?
=======
I have more coming on this, look for another post on the ASOS/Airport issue related to high temperatures.
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Imagine that. One of the this that I find remarkable is that there are a few LIG sites that continued recording after new digital instruments were installed. I don’t remember many, but Ft Collins I think was actually available online and I suspect a good many more that the information was collected but not digitized. That would be a fun forensic project, digging up stubborn station keeper records to compare.
I got my lesson in inaccurate temperature reporting when I was recently working in Alaska for a few months, and my thermometer never matched the local official thermometer even though I was only a short distance away from,
http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/PABI.html
which has the weirdest anomaly; the Fahrenheit temperature is never in the middle of the range, such as 60.4, 60.5, 60.6 – always the decimal is zero, or one tenth or nine tenths. How can this be?
Game, set, match.
A cherry-pickers dream, our dataset.
Good thing the rest of the world doesn’t have our problems, or there might be some doubt about the temperature record.
@frank
Just a guess but if the temps are recorded in Celsius then it could be a rounding error in the conversion to F temps.
Appears to be an artifact of C to F conversion.
The C readings for the decimal digit seem to be distributed randomly enough …
.
Outstanding that other people are taking a serious look at the siting issue !!
I don’t know about the first sentence, but I think the second sentence could be added to a policy manual without going through a peer reviewed research project. 🙂
Oh my, so many promising candidates for Quote Of The Week.
A lot of sites reviewed by the Surface Stations project sure look like they hadn’t been improved. Especially the ones that now have a MMTS on a short leash.
I look forward to updates from Dr. Pielke. As for Conrad, Greg, and Rich, all I can say is “Welcome – be sure to read some of the other posts here – nothing gets past WUWT any more.”
The current line from los warmistas is that the SurfaceStations project did not show that the degradation of instrumental accuracy imposed upon the various temperature monitoring systems over the past seven or eight decades (the deletion of higher-latitude, higher-altitude monitoring posts’ recent archival and present readings from the databases, local heat island effects “siting the thermometer next to a lamp,” deliberately slurring station readings showing artifactual high temperatures over contiguous areas in which surface station data was no longer being directly reported, and so forth) had been proven insignificant, and that there has still been alarming global warming going on over the past decade and more.
And yet I can’t find support for that contention of statistically significant global warming anywhere except in los warmistas‘ online masturbation fantasies. No objective evidence anyplace.
What the hell is going on? Are the surface temperature datasets blown all to hellangone in their accuracy and reliability or not?
Maybe there is alot more Weber barbecuing going on these days.
How NOAA can hold a straight face and admit that that abomination outside the Environmental Sciences building at Tempe AZ is on their list of observation stations, is completely beyond my comprehension.
Your Team’s expose of the real situation is slowly bearing fruit Anthony. The very idea, that someone would want to know the temperature on a runway, in the interest of safe aircraft operations, and could care less about hokey climate machinations; does not seemed to have sunk in with NOAA. And Hansen is quite happy to use those silly results as valid for some place 1200 km away.
That’s worse than silly.
What’s the problem? Aren’t people like James Hansen adjusting these stations so they give the correct data? /sarc
Time for another surface stations project.
I hope someone checks KGVL. The Gainesville airport seems to be a lot warmer than what I experience about 10 miles west. It may be that I haven’t cut down all the tress or the I-75 is just east and causes convective showers, but the airport seems warmer both winter and summer. In fact, if you compare it to surrounding instrument readings, it runs warmer than they are as well. Of course, having the sensors in the middle of two runways might have an effect.
Would also like to see that new chart comparing back to the 1930s.
Either way….nice work Roger P.
This has got to be easy to check. Anthony, can’t you get people in a specific city which has a NOAA station at an airport to record temps for a couple months and check them to the official site?
A bit of quid pro quo…. a welcomed and applauded sharing amongst professionals on both sides of the issue!
Is this passage a spoof? It reads as though they were trying to site the station badly (on a roof) in order to get higher readings. Grumm:
Maximizing records broken by hook or by crook? Is this for real?
Would it really be that difficult to set up some old mercury thermometers in original spec Stevenson screens to run in parallel with the electronics? It would not be that hard to develop the correct mass to mount with the new devices to simulate the old reaction times, etc.
For that matter, you could completely automate and optically digitize a mercury thermometer without too much difficulty, with a simple cognex vision system to read it from a distance. As long as you kept the small (probably milliwatt) camera away, there should be no heat impact. Heck you could even turn it off, power up, hit it with a quick LED flash to take a picture once an hour, and turn it off again. You could probably set it up for under $5k each, internet posting of results included. More if you wanted to make it solar, satellite transmit, etc. OK, $50k if the government is doing the spending. Might have a little parallax error to deal with as well, probably nothing major.
Or, you could use micro LED’s to transmit light momentarily on one side, and receive on the other, as a scan up or scan down (last one off is the temperature on a scan up). As long as you only had it on for a few microseconds per hour, I don’t think you could reasonably argue that it was affecting the temperature. You could mount it far enough away to not affect the thermal mass. Boom, digital thermometer, for real.
I’m starting to think it’s time to go back to the original thermometers and read them electronically. Then run both in parallel for a decade in a large sample of good and poorly sited stations, then attempt to correct the historical record.
Is there an equivalent for lows. I suspect there may be many more of those to come as we fall off the top of the upwave.
Let’s notice the earliest email date, establishing about when they noticed the problem at NOAA: Wednesday, June 29, 2011. What is that, four years and two months after Anthony began drawing attention to the pervasive siting problem?
I have Roger Pielke Sr.’s 2002 paper about siting problems in eastern Colorado. His paper was followed by an accompanying response from NOAA scientists. That response is very revealing of a certain pervasive attitude. I’ll post an extract later.
32 years ago I personally did more ASHRAE 93-77 thermal tests (hundreds) of solar water-heaters than anyone else in the country. This test involved using platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) to measure water and air temps within 0.1 deg C. There were detailed calibration protocols using half-meter NTS-tracable mercury-column and a $5K datalogger. I went through many rounds of improvements to measure air temperature with the NTS thermometer-shed and surrounding white gravel, with solar-powered aspiration through a radiation-neutral inlet. I also had a pyrgeometer to measure sky infrared, which varied seasonally but, interestingly, not with changes in cloud cover. These temperatures were vital to giving each collector model an official DOE performance curve. It turned out that their ratings thresholds were easily crossed by a delta-temp changing by 0.1C, a typical display of perennial bureaucratic ignorance.
I took far more trouble to be accurate than 99.99% of today’s stations, just to get an rms of 0.1 C.
Pardon me as I laugh at the Alarmists’ absurd claims of surface-temperature accuracy, let alone the thermodynamic meaninglessness of any number purported to be an average global temperature or its ‘anomaly’ (They probably picked that term for its scariness connotations — did the Warmistas originate this usage?).
Gee Whiz!!!. There are siting issues with thermometers???. Who’da thought that?
Yes, but, but, it’s the trend, the trend that matters………
I’m beginning to think the good old mercury thermometers are still more reliable than the newfangled electronic albatrosses.
don’t know if this has been posted or if it is relevant:
6 July: Herald Tribune: Kate Spinner: Sarasota bucks warming trend
A new analysis of the past three decades of temperatures shows Florida — especially Sarasota — bucking a pronounced warming trend nationwide.
At the Sarasota-Bradenton weather station, average high temperatures fell every month of the year and in some months by nearly two degrees. As a result, Sarasota’s average high temperature for July will drop from 91.3 degrees to 89.8 degrees…
“It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you integrate that over a whole year in terms of your heating bill or your crops, it really adds up,” said Anthony Arguez, a physical scientist who managed the reanalysis of the nation’s normal temperatures for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…
Intrigued by Florida’s departure from the rest of the country in a warming scenario, Martin Hoerling, also of NOAA, compared the last decade of temperatures across the nation to the 30-year record from 1971 to 2000.
Every state in the contiguous U.S. except Florida saw a temperature increase over the period. Florida saw a cooler winter, a cooler spring, a warmer summer and little change in the fall. On a yearly basis, the temperatures average no change…
But Florida’s slowness to warm is not likely to last, said Aiguo Dai, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Dai said short-term weather fluctuations likely buffered Florida’s warming over the past decade, and long-term patterns caused by sea surface temperature changes may have moderated the state’s temperature over the past 30 years…
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110706/ARTICLE/110709744/0/FRONTPAGE?p=1&tc=pg
Anthony was spot on from the beginning when he first started the surfacestations project. Any reasonably intelligent person can see the issues with sighting, unless that person’s income depends on them not understanding.