From Cliff Mass, a study that demonstrates how adding a runway generated a hockey stick in temperature difference to surrounding stations. As I’ve been saying for years, the dynamic environment of the airport is the wrong place to measure “climate change”, and in this case, Cliff Mass shows why.
Last week the Seattle Times had a front page story about the Northwest becoming warmer and wetter based on recently updated climate statistics at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. But can we use one observing site to reliably determine region climate trends?
…
Between 2004 and 2008 there was a huge change at the airport, one of the largest construction/earth moving projects in the region in years–the building of a third runway. In this blog I will ask the question: did the construction of the third runway have an impact on summer temperatures reported from the airport? My conclusion and that of my colleague Mark Albright is: it sure looks like it.
But first a few pictures. Here is a picture of Sea-Tac before the third runway was installed. I have also indicated the position of the National Weather Service/FAA temperature sensors (their ASOS system) by a blue circle (just to the west of the second runway).
…
Here are two recent pictures of the current runway situation (with the blue circle showing the sensor position). Quite a change.
Did the runway change the summer climate at the airport? My colleague, Mark Albright, calculated the difference in summer temperatures (June, July, August) between Sea-Tac and an average of four nearby official reporting locations (Olympia, McMillan Reservoir near Tacoma, Kent, and Buckley).
Negative means that the neighbors are warmer than Sea-Tac, which you would expect since they are farther inland and generally south of Sea-Tac (which has some cooling influence from the Sound). You will see that Sea-Tac was generally cooler than those surrounding station (by roughly 1.5F) early in the period. And the slight shift in 2002 had little impact. But after construction began in 2004 (particularly in 2005 to 2006 when the heavy earth moving occurred) things changed: Sea-Tac temperatures warmed up by roughly 2F so it was the same or warmer than the surrounding, more inland, stations. I strongly suspect we are seeing the influence of the third runway.
…
Bottom line: It really looks that the third runway has significantly warmed summer temperatures at the airport. Thus, one must be really careful in assuming that any warming there is the result of some kind of greenhouse gas influence.
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Full story at Cliff Mass blog h/t to WUWT reader “Speed”
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Excellent! I live in the Seattle area. I had not seen the story in the Seattle Times, as I long ago stopped paying for that biased rag. I’ll be sure to post this data at my place of work and share it with family and friends. Thanks!!!
This is a nice naturally occurring experiment. However, the time period presented seems unnecessarily short and the aggregation of the reference sites could mask what might actually be happening. Can you provide links to the original data that was used?
Of course the black runway and additional exhaust changed the readings? Remember the differential at the Honolulu International Airport that has 2 meteorological stations a mere half mile apart? One near the a runway, the other on natural surface, properly situated. Half a degree differential at noon, with nighttime temperatures even more disparate. Guess which one is used by NOAA? Busted by a local TV station. AGW is dead in Hawaii except by politicians, academics, and crackpot enviros/leftists.
In this instance, I wonder how this run up compares data from the Vashon Island Airport?
Good article, but the link to the Seattle Times article doesn’t work.
Given that CRU relies heavily on airports, could post-1950 CRU warming largely just reflect the growth in the aviation industry? Willis Eschenback shook lose their station list back in 2007, and now it looks like a new FOI will let us see their data soon to check this.
But if airport growth causes warming, why doesn’t bad siting of USHCN cause much except a reduction in the diurnal (max minus min) range, per the new SurfaceStations article?
REPLY: Link fixed, errant clipboard content, thanks – Anthony
Incredible that this kind of obvious effect is glossed over or denied. It’s so easy to demonstrate. There must be a lot at stake.
Like the fundamental generalizations about temperature “trends”, perchance?
“blue circle (just to the west of the second runway)”
I wouldn’t trust the temperature recordings from any sensor beside an airport runway, particularly in the era of jet exhaust and many multiple landings/takeoff each day (unless you’re interested in the temperature at the airport only). That’s like trusting a sensor in the middle of downtown of a large city to record the temperature for a whole “metropolitan region” that includes the city, the outlying suburbs, and a lot of parks.
I know an anecdote isn’t evidence, but I live in the somewhat built-up suburban area on the south side of a fairly large metropolitan area (we’ve got the roads and shopping centers out here, but also plenty of trees, grass, and open green space). The airport for the metro area is to the east of the city center about as far as I am to the south of it (and is surrounded by wooded areas on three sides, with roads and shopping centers on the 4th). The airport (the official station for the area) regularly has higher night “lows” than I do at my house (we’re at the same altitude, and I don’t live in a valley or hollow). I found this out when I put in at little “weather station” that recorded the highs and lows for the day, among other things. My low is usually about 4 or 5 degrees (F) lower than the low at the airport, or the predicted low (which I suppose is based on the airport temperatures). I’ve even witnesses this when I had to get up before dawn and looked out the back door at the temperature on the large thermometer on my back porch to compare it to the “official” (airport) temperature. At least I now know why I’ve had plants frost-damaged in the spring and fall. Now, any time the predicted low is 40 or lower, even if it’s predicted to be several degrees above freezing, I cover the plants. So far it’s worked.
I don’t trust any temperature recorded at any large airport to be in any way indicative of the area’s actual temperature.
OT but reading through the comments on this
http://climateaudit.org/2011/07/14/covert-operations-by-east-anglias-cru/ leaves one with the impression, ironically that the AGW scam may fall apart due to the re-emergence of climategate brought about an association between CRU, MET police and Norfolk Police.
Gee, you would think adding around 2 million sq ft of runway and tarmac on the other side of the thermometer…………
It is a well known fact that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside because:
a) Tarmac is black and absorbs and then radiates away heat
b) Buildings are heated and some of the heat is lost to the surroundings (change heated buildings to jet engines at an airport and some heat to all heat)
c) Water runs off tarmac and concrete so each square foot of man-made surface has virtually zero water to evaporate and cool it.
Common sense tells you that thermometers should be placed in well ventilated areas, with no black body radiators nearby, in the shade.
Some years ago Newcastle upon Tyne had the dubious distinction of being the worse polluted city in the country by a very wide margin. Why? Because someone put one of the pollution sensors in an underground bus depot, so it was exposed to all the diesel fumes from the large number of buses going in and out. Needless to say when it was moved, Newcastle became one of the least polluted cities in the UK.
A minor point, but the drawings/photos in the article have the runways mis-labeled. The first photo that should have Taxiway “T” as the far left, then Runway 34L in the center, and Runway 34R at the right. This is the “before” status of the airport.
The second photo, “After” should have Runway 34L at the far left, then Taxiway “T”, then Runway 34C, then Runway 34R at the far right. Essentially, the new runway was added to the far West (left in these photos). By FAA runway naming conventions, the new runway is 34L (for 34 Left), the previous 34L becomes 34C (for 34 Center), and the 34R retains its name.
I clicked Cliff Mass’s link and read his blog post. He notes that he is a believer in GHG based warming and says that it is inevitable. However, he obviously has scruples about using corrupted temp recorders (he clearly doesn’t need this kind of loading of the deck – indeed, if it is to come to pass, then why would anyone need to cook results). This post by an AGW believer is the kind of thing it would be nice to see more of. I know there are a lot of honest believers in the future warming arising from GHG and other causes, like land-use changes. These honest folk should be the debaters from the AGW side – they would make for a meaningful debate. I have no interested position in what finally shakes out. My scepticism is more like outrage at the unabashed fraudsters and tricksters that have kidnapped climate science. It must be tough for the honest practitioners who have found a scientific reason to believe in AGW but have their work tainted and discredited by the position (albeit non hysterical) they share with the “political climate scientists”. Good on you Cliff – you are more likely to convince reasonable people of your position than the performances of the likes of Gore, Hansen, and other coreographed CAGW troopers.
I know an anecdote isn’t evidence,
An anecdote is a data point. It IS evidence. Depending upon the circumstances, it can be good, unbiased evidence. It just isn’t proof and no one expects it to be. Neither should it be ignored because it is not proof.
Many a good scientific discovery was made by observing one instance, one anecdote, of the unexpected and and investigating it further.
Seattle Sea-Tac airport runway layout at this link: (the “After” version). Note Taxiway “T” is smaller in width, while the runways are a bit wider.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:00582AD.svg
From the wiki, about that Taxiway “T” being mistaken by pilots as a runway: (note that “Tango” and “T” identify the same stretch of taxiway)
“A recurring operational problem at Sea-Tac is misidentification of the westernmost taxiway, Taxiway Tango, as a landing surface. A large “X” has been placed at the north end of the taxiway to prevent confusion, but a number of incidents of aircraft landing on the taxiway have still occurred.[11] The FAA has issued an alert notice dated from August 27, 2009 to September 24, 2009 urging airplanes about taking precautions such as REILs and other visual cues while landing from the north.”
An excerpt from:
Lights, action, lies
by Peter Smith
July 17, 2011
——————————————————————————–
The government climate infomercial they didn’t use.
——————————————————————————–
Wayne: I can hardly speak I am so excited. It is really an invisible tax. It taxes a colourless gas; we’ll call it pollution, which nobody can see. That’s the real beauty of it. Because it can’t be seen we’ll need lots of agencies, authorities, programs, initiatives, schemes and funds to deal with it. Look we’ll need a Climate Change Authority, a Clean Energy Regulator, a Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an Australian Renewable Energy Agency, a roped in Productivity Commission, an Energy Security Council, a Remote Indigenous Energy Program, a Jobs and Competitiveness Program, a Low Carbon Communities program, a Low Income Energy Efficiency Program, a Household Energy and Financial Sustainability Scheme, a Carbon Farming Initiative, a Carbon Farming Futures program, an Energy Security Fund and a Biodiversity Fund, the list goes on and on. It’s so long I am sure I have missed some.
(Wayne takes a deep breath.)
Literally tens of thousands of new Labor-voting public servants will be needed to administer the new qangos and boondoggles and calculate how much of the invisible gas different businesses produce or alternatively don’t produce and how much different businesses will get for not producing it or producing less of it or for reducing it or to make up for being taxed for producing it and how much particular categories of people should get for paying higher prices because some businesses of our choosing are producing it being taxed and increasing their prices. I don’t know how much legislation and regulation will be needed. It will run into many thousands of pages.
Julia: That is truly amazing Wayne! It is a Labor government’s dream come true – billions of dollars coming in billions of dollar being doled out as we choose. If only communist Eastern Europe had of thought of it, the commissars might still be in charge. (The PM sighs.)
An excerpt from:
Lights, action, lies
by Peter Smith
July 17, 2011
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/07/canberra-soap
Of course 1981-2010 will be warmer on avg than 1970-2000. The former nicely correlates to a warm PDO. Watch the avg temp drop when 1991-2020 can be evaluated.
Airport data is adequately precise, and exactly what pilots need. The location of the sensors is intended to report the actual runway conditions, which can be critical for computing landing and takeoff distances, and maximum load capacity of the aircraft. The idea that this should be used to record climate data is absurd. Only if you are looking for bad data to support what you know to be a failed premise would you use such a questionable source. Most airport data, whether from ASOS/AWOS or old, manually recorded data, should be purged from the climate data records. An exception might be records from before runways were paved, which might be an interesting idea for a comparison if the dates of runway paving can be located (or the dates could be determined from a step-change in the temperature data).
I used to fly 747 ‘s for qantas. The temperature I need to calculate my takeoff performance is the temperature about 10-12ft above the runway. The temperature in farmer Brown’s fields 2 mls away is useless. Airport temperatures are by definition the highest in the area, to use them for climate calculations is fraud.
THEY always warned us about run(a)way global warming…..so now we have proof!
What more could you ask for…… ?????
Yes, reduced evaporation has a big local warming effect.
Regarding anectodes:
The plural of anectodes is not data, but a single anectode can lead to many good ideas and quality data, if you do science.
Charlie Foxtrot says:
July 17, 2011 at 11:13 am
“… intended to report the actual runway conditions, which can be critical for computing landing and takeoff distances, and maximum load capacity of the aircraft.”
And pretty handy in determining how hot/cold it’s going to be when you get your colonoscopy over at the TSA area.
There are some obvious questions one should raise about any analysis.
The months reported are 25% of the year. In that time you see a 2F jump.
What about the other months? Well, we dont know because the report has no data sources.
Lets assume that if the other months were just as bad they would be reported, but they’ve been left out. On the assumption that the other 75% of the year shows no difference between airport and non airport, then our 2F for 25% of the year suddenly gets chopped down to .5F you can go figure what number that is in C. Simply, on an ANNUAL basis we have no been shown the different. But it gets worse. Lets suppose that the airport is 2F warmer than the 4 stations selected for the FULL year. A generous assumption since we’ve only been shown 3 months.
What happens when you spatially average 5 sites,One which is 2F warmer than the average of the other 4? what happens to that 2F? well, its 20% or .4F. I leave it to you to turn that into C. Now what happens when you average that one airport with all the sites with 500km ( a 5 degree grid )? its contribution to the average gets diminished even more. It’s not enough to show the corruption of one airport during one season. We KNOW that we can find cases where the change in land effects the temperatures. What we want to PROVE is that these changes are widespread. We want to prove that they change the GLOBAL average. Now we can assume as a THEORY, that this should be the case; but we dont prove that theory by looking at single cases. We have to look at all airports. The story there is different. I’ll save that for another day.
Back now to the problem with this analysis. What does the other 75% of the year look like?
In order to see what the other 75% of the year looked like, one has to have the data source. But the article doesnt show the data source. NCDC is mentioned but NCDC has all sorts of data sources. I feel like I’m working with CRU who told us “the data is out there”
The source that gets used for climate studies is GHCN.
So we can look there to see if we find the data sources used
Id Lat Lon Elevation Name
4473 42500450945 47.1694 -122.0036 208.8 BUCKLEY 1 NE
4474 42500451233 47.4144 -121.7561 475.5 CEDAR LAKE
4475 42500451276 46.7200 -122.9528 56.4 CENTRALIA
4476 42500451484 48.9672 -122.3292 19.5 CLEARBROOK
4477 42500451504 47.1856 -120.9469 585.2 CLE ELUM
4478 42500451630 48.5472 -117.9019 474.6 COLVILLE
4479 42500451666 48.5467 -119.7492 707.1 CONCONULLY
4480 42500451939 47.3706 -123.1600 6.4 CUSHMAN POWERHOUSE 2
4481 42500452007 47.6503 -118.1456 743.7 DAVENPORT
4482 42500452030 46.3153 -118.0022 474.6 DAYTON 1 WSW
4483 42500452505 46.9692 -120.5400 451.1 ELLENSBURG
4484 42500452675 47.9753 -122.1950 18.3 EVERETT
4485 42500452914 47.9558 -124.3539 106.7 FORKS 1 E
4486 42500453222 45.8081 -120.8428 499.9 GOLDENDALE
4487 42500454154 46.2111 -119.1011 118.9 KENNEWICK
4489 42500454764 46.7492 -121.8120 841.9 LONGMIRE RAINIER NPS
4490 42500454769 46.1506 -122.9164 3.7 LONGVIEW
4491 42500455224 47.1358 -122.2558 176.5 MC MILLIN RSVR
4492 42500455946 48.9114 -117.8069 423.7 NORTHPORT
4493 42500456039 47.3286 -118.6997 466.3 ODESSA
4495 42500456610 46.4686 -117.5894 579.1 POMEROY
4496 42500456624 48.1139 -123.4317 27.4 PORT ANGELES
4497 42500456678 48.1161 -122.7586 30.5 PORT TOWNSEND
4498 42500456789 46.7564 -117.1911 775.7 PULLMAN 2 NW
4499 42500456914 46.6533 -123.7300 9.1 RAYMOND 2 S
4500 42500457059 47.1139 -118.3772 557.8 RITZVILLE 1 SSE
4501 42500457267 47.0894 -117.5931 592.8 SAINT JOHN
4502 42500457458 47.6500 -122.3000 5.8 SEATTLE URBAN SITE
4503 42500457507 48.4958 -122.2355 18.3 SEDRO WOOLLEY
4504 42500457773 47.5414 -121.8361 134.1 SNOQUALMIE FALLS
4505 42500457938 47.6217 -117.5281 717.2 SPOKANE INTL AP
4506 42500458059 48.3511 -120.7267 387.1 STEHEKIN 4 NW
4507 42500458207 46.3236 -120.0103 227.7 SUNNYSIDE
4508 42500458773 45.6778 -122.6519 64.0 VANCOUVER 4 NNE
4509 42500458928 46.1000 -118.2833 355.4 WALLA WALLA FAA AP
4510 42500459012 47.6478 -120.0697 798.6 WATERVILLE
4511 42500459074 47.4247 -120.3150 195.1 WENATCHEE
4512 42500459238 47.7569 -118.6775 679.7 WILBUR
4513 42500459376 48.4539 -120.1936 534.9 WINTHROP 1 WSW
5093 42572698000 45.6000 -122.6000 12.0 PORTLAND/INT
5095 42572698006 45.6200 -121.1500 73.0 DALLESPORT/FCWOS AP
5096 42572698009 45.7000 -121.9000 30.0 CASCADE LOCKS
5130 42572781000 46.5700 -120.5300 325.0 YAKIMA/YAKIMA
5131 42572781005 47.4000 -120.2000 375.0 WENATCHEE/PANGBORN FIELD
5132 42572784003 47.1800 -119.3200 360.0 MOSES LAKE/GRANT CO
5133 42572784004 47.3200 -119.5200 383.0 EPHRATA/AIRPORT FCWOS
5135 42572786003 47.6300 -117.6500 743.0 FAIRCHILD/AFB
5137 42572792000 46.9700 -122.9000 61.0 OLYMPIA WA
5140 42572793001 47.2800 -121.3300 1209.0 STAMPEDE PASS/WSMO
5141 42572793003 47.5000 -122.5000 70.0 VASHON ISLAND
5142 42572793006 47.6500 -122.3000 5.0 SEATTLE/PORTAGE BAY
5143 42572793008 47.6800 -122.2700 12.0 SEATTLE/NAS
5145 42572797000 47.9500 -124.5500 62.0 QUILLAYUTE WA
5150 42574201007 48.8000 -122.5300 45.0 BELLINGHAM/INTL AP
5151 42574206002 47.1500 -122.4800 88.0 TACOMA/MC CHORD AFB
Sea Tac is at
47.446317,-122.301865
Apparently not in GHCN. is Kent in there ? dunno. doesnt appear to be.
And it doesnt look like its in GISS
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?lat=47.6&lon=-122.33&datatype=gistemp&data_set=2
When the data and the methods for this study get published, then we have something we can look at. It could be interesting . Until such time we have something that I lend as much credibility to as a Mann paper. No data, no code, no reason to respond much beyond what I’ve done here.
In any case perhaps folks can point to the data sources and show how those sources get used in any global average.
The Weather Underground has a page where you can track live temperatures in any major US city. There are multiple stations reporting from different locations in each urban area. It is common to see differences of up to 10F in the same city at the same time.
A British research team that researched UHI found differences up to 14F. The further into a city they would travel, the warmer the readings. Concentric circles of heat, like nesting domes of ever increasing heat the nearer to a city center.
Anthropogenic Urban Warming, just not catastrophic.
To make an approximation of the effect of the airport changes, assume that the Sea-Tac record for the last 5 years was biased upwards (due to the new runway) by 2 deg F, and unchanged for the previous time. [This seems a reasonable first-order interpretation of the figure.] The effect of this bias upon the 1981-2010 average is 2 deg F * (5 years/30 years), or one-third of a deg F. The difference between the 1981-2010 average and that of 1971-2000, is about 0.5 deg F per the Seattle Times article (60.3 minus 59.8).
It appears the new construction represents a majority of the measured temperature change. Thank you Cliff Mass for your observations and analysis.
Edim says:
July 17, 2011 at 12:08 pm
“if you do science.”
Should be emblazoned on the forehead of anyone claiming to be a climate scientist! The AGW balloon would have had so many holes poked in it initially, it would never have floated!