Senator Inhofe’s EPW office issued a press release today on the subject of USHCN Climate Monitoring stations along with links to this report from the General Accounting Office (GAO)
…the report notes, “NOAA does not centrally track whether USHCN stations adhere to siting standards…nor does it have an agency-wide policy regarding stations that don’t meet standards.” The report continues, “Many of the USHCN stations have incomplete temperature records; very few have complete records. 24 of the 1,218 stations (about 2 percent) have complete data from the time they were established.” GAO goes on to state that most stations with long temperature records are likely to have undergone multiple changes in measurement conditions.
The report shows by their methodology that 42% of the network in 2010 failed to meet siting standards and they have recommendations to NOAA for solving this problem. This number is of course much lower than what we have found in the surfacestations.org survey, but bear in mind that NOAA has been slowly and systematically following my lead and reports and closing the worst stations or removing them from USHCN duty. For example I pointed out that the famous Marysville station (see An old friend put out to pasture: Marysville is no longer a USHCN climate station of record) that started all this was closed just a few months after I reported issues with its atrocious siting. Recent discoveries of closures include Armore (shown below) and Durant OK. This may account for a portion the lower 42% figure for “active stations” the GAO found. Another reason might be that they tended towards using a less exacting rating system than we did.
Recently, while resurveying stations that I previously surveyed in Oklahoma, I discovered that NOAA has been quietly removing the temperature sensors from some of the USHCN stations we cited as the worst (CRN4, 5) offenders of siting quality. For example, here are before and after photographs of the USHCN temperature station in Ardmore, OK, within a few feet of the traffic intersection at City Hall:
Ardmore USHCN station , MMTS temperature sensor, January 2009
Ardmore USHCN station , MMTS temperature sensor removed, March 2011
While NCDC has gone to great lengths to defend the quality of the USHCN network, their actions of closing them speak far louder than written words and peer reviewed publications.
I don’t have time today to go into detail, but will follow up at another time. Here is the GAO summary:
Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network
GAO-11-800 August 31, 2011
Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 47 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
Summary
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a network of weather-monitoring stations known as the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), which monitors the nation’s climate and analyzes long-term surface temperature trends. Recent reports have shown that some stations in the USHCN are not sited in accordance with NOAA’s standards, which state that temperature instruments should be located away from extensive paved surfaces or obstructions such as buildings and trees. GAO was asked to examine (1) how NOAA chose stations for the USHCN, (2) the extent to which these stations meet siting standards and other requirements, and (3) the extent to which NOAA tracks USHCN stations’ adherence to siting standards and other requirements and has established a policy for addressing nonadherence to siting standards. GAO reviewed data and documents, interviewed key NOAA officials, surveyed the 116 NOAA weather forecast offices responsible for managing stations in the USHCN, and visited 8 forecast offices.
In choosing USHCN stations from a larger set of existing weather-monitoring stations, NOAA placed a high priority on achieving a relatively uniform geographic distribution of stations across the contiguous 48 states. NOAA balanced geographic distribution with other factors, including a desire for a long history of temperature records, limited periods of missing data, and stability of a station’s location and other measurement conditions, since changes in such conditions can cause temperature shifts unrelated to climate trends. NOAA had to make certain exceptions, such as including many stations that had incomplete temperature records. In general, the extent to which the stations met NOAA’s siting standards played a limited role in the designation process, in part because NOAA officials considered other factors, such as geographic distribution and a long history of records, to be more important. USHCN stations meet NOAA’s siting standards and management requirements to varying degrees. According to GAO’s survey of weather forecast offices, about 42 percent of the active stations in 2010 did not meet one or more of the siting standards.
With regard to management requirements, GAO found that the weather forecast offices had generally but not always met the requirements to conduct annual station inspections and to update station records. NOAA officials told GAO that it is important to annually visit stations and keep records up to date, including siting conditions, so that NOAA and other users of the data know the conditions under which they were recorded. NOAA officials identified a variety of challenges that contribute to some stations not adhering to siting standards and management requirements, including the use of temperature-measuring equipment that is connected by a cable to an indoor readout device–which can require installing equipment closer to buildings than specified in the siting standards. NOAA does not centrally track whether USHCN stations adhere to siting standards and the requirement to update station records, and it does not have an agencywide policy regarding stations that do not meet its siting standards. Performance management guidelines call for using performance information to assess program results. NOAA’s information systems, however, are not designed to centrally track whether stations in the USHCN meet its siting standards or the requirement to update station records. Without centrally available information, NOAA cannot easily measure the performance of the USHCN in meeting siting standards and management requirements.
Furthermore, federal internal control standards call for agencies to document their policies and procedures to help managers achieve desired results. NOAA has not developed an agencywide policy, however, that clarifies for agency staff whether stations that do not adhere to siting standards should remain open because the continuity of the data is important, or should be moved or closed. As a result, weather forecast offices do not have a basis for making consistent decisions to address stations that do not meet the siting standards. GAO recommends that NOAA enhance its information systems to centrally capture information useful in managing the USHCN and develop a policy on how to address stations that do not meet its siting standards. NOAA agreed with GAO’s recommendations.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from “In process” to “Open,” “Closed – implemented,” or “Closed – not implemented” based on our follow up work.
| Director: | Anu K. Mittal |
| Team: | Government Accountability Office: Natural Resources and Environment |
| Phone: | (202) 512-9846 |
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve the National Weather Service’s (NWS) ability to manage the USHCN in accordance with performance management guidelines and federal internal control standards, as well as to strengthen congressional and public confidence in the data the network provides, the Acting Secretary of Commerce should direct the Administrator of NOAA to enhance NWS’s information system to centrally capture information that would be useful in managing stations in the USHCN, including (1) more complete data on siting conditions (including when siting conditions change), which would allow the agency to assess the extent to which the stations meet its siting standards, and (2) existing data on when station records were last updated to monitor whether the records are being updated at least once every 5 years as NWS requires.
Agency Affected: Department of Commerce
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To improve the National Weather Service’s (NWS) ability to manage the USHCN in accordance with performance management guidelines and federal internal control standards, as well as to strengthen congressional and public confidence in the data the network provides, the Acting Secretary of Commerce should direct the Administrator of NOAA to develop an NWS agencywide policy, in consultation with the National Climatic Data Center, on the actions weather forecast offices should take to address stations that do not meet siting standards.
Agency Affected: Department of Commerce
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
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So it isn’t Climate Disruption we’re facing–it’s Climate Monitoring station Disruption that’s causing the problem. I really think containing CO2 will have no impact at all–they just simply need to adhere to their own siting standards.
The CAGW crowd is gonna be disappointed!
What, no activist crowd to camp out and protect the faulty station siting? I guess they did not get the call to action memo in time. Or they were at the Wall Street event instead.
Honestly, I think Tom Karl has been less than competent in his job. One would have thought, given the claimed extreme importance of the surface temperature record, that his highest priority would have been to evaluate the accuracy of the record by distributing calibration experiments at selected climate stations all around the US, and by validating or up-grading the quality of all the USHCN stations. And this should have begun 20 years ago, when all the AGW dust was originally raised.
But he did none of that. Instead he was just was buddy-buddy with all the AGW folks and published papers that forwarded the status quo.
The cynic in me predicts that they will be found to have removed, closed or (possibly) upgraded station without keeping records of which stations were egregiously in error. This will make it impossible to know which stations have data so bad that they should be thrown out.
Was any of this information incorporated into the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis? It was mentioned at Climate etc. that a few papers were about to be submitted. From the AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, it would appear that the sensitivity of the overall signal to these issues really isn’t that big. The details should be interesting!
ABSTRACT FINAL ID: GC43B-0908
“Further, we automate the process of assessing station reliability to allow data of unknown reliability to be included in the analysis”
…
“Applying the Berkeley Earth techniques, we broadly confirm the temperature histories presented by prior groups. However, the improved methodology allows the uncertainties to be reduced (often by 50%) and also has allowed the instrumental temperature record to be extended back to 1800.”
ABSTRACT FINAL ID: GC44B-01
“We calculate the effect of poor station quality, as documented in the US by the team led by Anthony Watts by estimating the temperature trends based solely on the stations ranked good (1,2 or 1,2,3 in the NOAA ranking scheme). We avoid issues of homogenization bias by using raw data; at times when the records are discontinuous (e.g. due to station moves) we break the record into smaller segments and analyze those, rather than attempt to correct the discontinuity.
…
“The results we obtain are compared to those published by the groups at NOAA, NASA-GISS, and Hadley-CRU in the UK”
You guys are like fish out of water, thrashing around while rapidly asphyxiating. Once-upon-a-time, people like Ian Strangeways might have had a legit[i]mate point to make about the heat island effect (which may well be why this particular station has been re-sited). However, if you think that this – or our supposed inability to measure average su[r]face temperatures because we are land based creatures, or whatever is the plat du jour – casts doubt on the reality of AGW, then you are badly mistaken.
All research methods are not equally good; and all opinions are not equally valid. In life, there are winners and losers; there are right and wrong answers; bad decisions have consequences; and poor judgement could be very expensive in the long run.
You will no doubt say, rightly, that in science nothing is ever certain but, in seeking to perpetuate a debate that should have been over 150 years ago, you are just making this problem much much harder for us to ultimately solve. It would be a start, but nowhere near enough, if you could at least admit that we are causing the problem – as Tim Worstall has done very clearly on my blog today.
Say it aint so Jason
I love this site, so don’t misinterpret my skepticism or anything, but… taking a page from your video analysis, here. Why are there buds on the tree in January, but none in March???
Once again, testimony to the power of individual initiative and the internet. A government bureaucracy changed its procedures because someone cared enough to look and hold the institution to account.
Did members of Al Gore’s science experiment production team take thes two pictures at Ardmore ? The date stamp says that they are taken more than two years apart, however.
1) The same white car is in the same parking space in both pictures.
2) The Church in the background has moved many feet to the left in the lower photo.
3) The pedestrian crossing on the left side of the upper picture has disappeared in the lower one.
Sorry couldn’t resist : )
At some point they’re going to have to admit that there is no reliable US temperature record. That’s a great photo of the Ardmore station. I wonder how many people have parked on that street and tried to put a quarter in it?
No need to throw out those stations, just average the results. You know, like when pharmaceutical companies test new drugs and half the patients get dry mouth and half die, they just record the results as “mild discomfort.”
/sarc
I think I understand the problem now.
You have this station site, as the community around it grows, the ambient temperature increases.
Eventually they re-site the station. Because they move the site to a place with lower population density, the ambient temperature drops. They add an ‘adjustment’ to make the site’s measured temps roughly equal to the old site.
The population continues to expand, creating more local warming.
Repeat ad infinitum. How do you measure anything other than perpetually warmer temps with this system?
This is worse than if you left the site in it’s original place, UHI tops out at a certain point. If you just keep moving the site to the outskirts of town and adding adjustments, the AGW gravy train never has to end.
Too bad (for the Climate Gravy Train Scientists) satellite data will eventually curtail the need to depend on these stations.
Anthony, thanks for getting this posted so quickly, seeing as Inhofe’s staff released this item just this afternoon.
My concern is that the USHCN is now less well populated with any kind of stations, and as it now exists, leaves many more gaps in coverage. As well, the other concern would be if they have removed the monitors, but left the data, or terminated current use of the stations, but again have left old data in such a manner that it effectively contaminates the trend analyses, etc. Gaps in data (of varying quality) and poor data left in the system are not likely to be of any help to anyone.
Assuming that you will publish my comment (including URLs) submitted 25 minutes ago, please note that para. 1, sentence 2 should read… “However, if you think that this – or our supposed inability to measure average suface temperatures because we are land based creatures, or whatever is the plat du jour – casts doubt on the reality of AGW, then you are badly mistaken.” …If you should chose to edit it and then delete this, even better.
[Fixed, no charge. Robt]
Remember the joke that starts: “Men, I have some good news and some bad news…?”
“In general, the extent to which the stations met NOAA’s siting standards played a limited role in the designation process, in part because NOAA officials considered other factors, such as geographic distribution and a long history of records, to be more important.”
The bad news: Half our data is buffalo chips.
The good news: There’s plenty of ’em.
Congratulations Anthony and the surface station crew. Looks like you have had a major impact. I very much doubt that you would be writing about this report or that Senator Inhofe would know about the problem with out you and the crew.
The trouble is all the rubbish data poor station provided will clog in the systems for years to come , and we will still have policy and research based on it unless there is some serious data cleansing , and can anyone see that happening ?
Bottom line this station was never designed to be used in the way it has become, particularly airport based stations as they where intended to provided the aircraft coming in and out with very local weather data not to have their results smeared across many miles.
It’s not just the station siting that is a concern. How reliable are the data records? Is there any QC (e.g., having a second person check any data that are entered manually)? Is there careful annotation when stations are moved? Are any “adjustments” in station data carefully explained and the algorithm used for the adjustments shown and justified?
@ur momisugly Martin Lack — you say:
“All research methods are not equally good; and all opinions are not equally valid. In life, there are winners and losers; there are right and wrong answers; bad decisions have consequences; and poor judgement could be very expensive in the long run.”
This is correct. Unfortunately, jumping to judgement also has consequences, both monetary and in real terms. There are finite resources, so taking action on something today for which “proof” today is limited to theories and hypotheses, and where observations do not fully support said theories and hypotheses will impose costs (real and monetary) on the community. Once those costs are imposed, and resources expended, they are not there for anything else.
As well, science advances best from such discoveries as Tyndall’s of 150 years ago (relatively “abstract” laboratory experimental results at the time; as opposed to real-world implications as you imply) by informed discourse within the broad scientific community, well-designed and executed studies, cooperative research endeavors and the like. We (society) are not yet there in many areas, and harsh words by politicians and advocates seeking to still discourse — including that from those who are not yet convinced of a solid scientific foundation for the issue du jour — does not help advance science. Instead, it may be merely delay tactics in the advocates’ hopes for “action now” even though science may one day prove the action was a waste of resources or, worse, so fundamentally flawed that those “actions to save ____” were actually more problematic than the original concern. In the end, such “action now” campaigns may be bad decisions; making such decisions in a void or without all viewpoints considered risks imposing significant costs on our descendants too.
I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but…
Next!
Martin Lack,
You lack blog traffic, so you advertise here for free. How about making a donation?
If you had read the article you would see that it supports Anthony’s Surface Stations paper. Sorry you’re unhappy about that, but the fact is the USHCN stations are in a shambles. The data is completely untrustworthy when comparing a 0.7° temperature rise over 160 years, when the USHCN station errors are 5°C – or more. See here.
You say: “you are just making this problem much much harder for us to ultimately solve.”
Pure psychological projection and self-important puffery. You’re not solving anything, because the “problem” exists only in your head. The climate alarmist contingent completely ignores the scientific method, rejects transparency, hides out from real debates, and continues to sound a false alarm.
The alarmist crowd cannot admit that nothing unusual is happening; they have no understanding of the null hypothesis. There is zero evidence of any global damage from the rise in CO2, and their convoluted, contorted arguments trying to explain away the failure of the planet to heat up over the past fourteen years, as endlessly predicted by jokers like James Hansen, are getting plainly ridiculous.
CO2 [“carbon” to the scientifically illiterate] is a harmless and beneficial trace gas at current and projected concentrations. More is demonstrably better for the biosphere. Falsify that hypothesis, if you can. Show us all that global damage CO2 is causing.
More Soylent Green! says:
September 30, 2011 at 1:02 pm
“….No need to throw out those stations, just average the results. You know, like when pharmaceutical companies test new drugs and half the patients get dry mouth and half die, they just record the results as “mild discomfort.” /sarc “
_________________________________________________________________
Yes I am sure they use the Drug Co.s methods. Hire someone to make up the stuff out of whole cloth.
“….The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning pharmaceutical companies that they may have to take a second look at any drugs tested by Cetero Research, since it was recently discovered that the research firm was faking test results.
Two independent investigations in 2010 corroborated “significant instances of misconduct and violations” ….” http://www.miamipersonalinjuryattorneysblog.com/2011/08/false-results-for-certain-drugs-drug-testing-firm-faked-documents-says-fda.shtml
http://www.myfalseworld.com/2011/05/fda-approved-drugs-with-no-scientific.html
Science is getting a real black eye from all these unethical “scientists” and deservedly so
Martin_Lack says:
September 30, 2011 at 12:50 pm
So you’re saying your great-great-great grandparents didn’t want the earth to warm 1 degree over all those bygone years? Are you saying the crop failures they endured were wonderful to endure? Are you really serious?
I think not; epic fail on so many aspects, Martin. Call us fish out of water if you have to, but you are clueless about what man could do to “solve” this natural phenomenon that is creating a far more beneficial world–to both plants and animals, and that includes humans, too! I’m saddened you’re so gullible. I’m surprised you’ve just taken the CAGW’s talking points at face value.
@Gene L.
“In the end, such “action now” campaigns may be bad decisions; making such decisions in a void or without all viewpoints considered risks imposing significant costs on our descendants too.”
We are already taking action – we’re burning fossil fuels and dumping enormous amounts of C02 into the atmosphere. This is not a situation we’re currently doing nothing and advocates of two different courses of action (“burn fossil fuels”, “use non-fossil fuels”) are trying to convince society to act according to their preferences. We’re already performing one of those actions and the best scientific evidence available strongly suggests that action will produce consequences most consider undesirable.
It’s necessary to consider the impact of new information in relation to existing conclusions. We already know the warming that’s been detected is not an artefact of the monitoring network. We have the analysis published by both Menne and Mr Watts which show that warming trends are not caused by site quality. We know that the trends produced by ground station network are similar to the satellite one.
Consequently if someone suggests that a report like this has any impact on the decision as to whether we should change how we act in relation to fossil fuels then that person is grossly misrepresenting its importance.
Better data is always good, a better monitoring network is always good (although I don’t recall the reaction here being favourable when NOAA requested more funds for precisely that) however it should not be permissible that people be able to use unrealistic requests for perfect data as a shield to prevent action.