The heat is on: the UK SurfaceStations effort

Anthony, something puzzles me about the whole “heat islands” thing. I can see where a thermometer in Las Vegas might be registering considerably more heat in 2012 than in 1952 due to urbanization, but shouldn’t there be at least a few dozen or hundred weather stations around the world with decent records and that are still sitting 50 miles from the nearest McDonald’s? Aren’t there enough stations like that to record the changes/lack-of-changes accurately or are the changes being looked for so small that they get lost in the noise without many hundreds of data gathering points?
😕
MJM

My daughter lives in all blue blue blue, far from any huge UHI effect, far from any large urban area. Life is good, until a hard winter when it’s nice to be a bit warmer.

@michaeljmcfadden,
One thing that has been blogged about here before is the dropping number of stations in the global land surface temp products particularly GISS.
People here looked into it and discovered that many of the missing stations are still to this day reporting data.
They also found that the stations dropping out where overwhelmingly rural, making the global products much more heavily weighted towards urban temps in recent years.
They even had a video clip of an animation showing the change in stations / station distribution over time. I don’t remember which articles it was on, maybe one of the mods here can look it up for you.

Typo at the end: huge dose vs “a huge does of the heat seen in the national heat map.”
Good info as always.
[Fixed. Thank you. Mod]

One of the big problems with the UK is our weather stations are often locked away in RAF sites, eg Church Fenton, and completely inaccessible.

Tony McGough says:
October 10, 2012 at 12:31 pm
I posted a similar comment on a previous article here, East Midlands weather tacitly assume +3’C for towns (Derby, Nottingham and Leicester).
MJM
October 10, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Try this
http://www.wunderground.com/about/faq/international_cities.asp
From this list I’d say these were far from anywhere
Muckle Flugga UK 60.85 -0.88 0 03001
Baltasound UK 60.75 -0.85 15 03002
Sella Ness UK EGPM 60.45 -1.27 8 03006
Muckle Holm UK 60.58 -1.27 22 03007
Fair Isle UK 59.53 -1.63 59 03008
North Ronaldsay UK 59.37 -2.42 11 03009
Sule Skerry UK 59.08 -4.40 16 03010
North Rona UK 59.12 -5.82 98 03011
Foula UK 60.15 -2.07 22 03013
Foula UK 60.12 -2.07 13 03014
Benbecula UK EGPL 57.47 -7.37 6 03022
South Uist Range UK 57.33 -7.37 10 03023
Butt Of Lewis UK 58.52 -6.27 23 03025
Waterstein UK 57.43 -6.77 92 03027
Loch Glascanoch UK 57.72 -4.88 265 03031
Aultbea UK 57.87 -5.63 11 03034
Barra UK 57.03 -7.45 3 03035
Kilmory UK 56.77 -6.05 45 03040
Aonach Mor UK 56.82 -4.97 1130 03041
Altnaharra UK 58.28 -4.43 80 03044
Tulloch Bridge UK 56.87 -4.70 237 03047
Cape Wrath UK 58.63 -5.00 112 03049

When I commented (at the Talkshop a couple of months ago) about the Littlebrook power station waste heat outflow at Gravesend, I made some rough calculations of the possible temperature rise in the river on the bend around the weather station. I didn’t put these in the comment because I was playing around with inputs and don’t know the turbulence behaviour in the Thames, not to mention the tides, which Tim discussed briefly. I thought it too speculative in the context at the time. But what the heck, I’ll throw it in here. It was between 0.4 and 0.8 C if concentrated in a surface layer of 500mm and a couple of hundred metres wide. The UK record in 2003 from this station (one of the reasons for that blog post by Tim) was 100.8F and it was that ‘.8’which captured the public’s imagination because we had breached the 100F point. So a warming of the river of 0.4C to 0.8C just might have caused the media frenzy that followed.

Matt says:
October 10, 2012 at 1:03 pm
@michaeljmcfadden,
One thing that has been blogged about here before is the dropping number of stations in the global land surface temp products particularly GISS.
======================================================================
1940 there were some thousands of stations:
http://bacontime.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/climate_and_man_002.jpg

Which are the 20 UK Climat surface stations, please?

The National Heat Map is built from a bottom-up address level model of heat demand in England. The model estimates the total heat demand of every address in England, but based on published sub-national energy consumption statistics and without making use of metered energy readings.
The map is of essentially waste heat, not temperatures as some have assumed. Some studies show waste heat contributes minimally to UHI. Other studies suggest it can be a significant factor.
And, I and some others concluded that the reason for the high temperatures at the Gravesend site is the low albedo (dark) mudflats that surround it on 3 sides.

@ Matthew W
That is not the image I was looking for. There was an animation that showed the locations of temp stations globally from something like 1890 to ~2000.

small quibble
David Schofield brought me to think this would be [a] good [time] to mention it,

It’s not a heat map.
Check out Didcot power station – it produces no heat. Neither does one of the largest users of electricity in the country, which is situated just down the road in Culham. Nearby houses produce more heat according to theis DECC product.
It’s a utilities bill map, which ignores real sources of heat, and users of oil, lpg, coal, wood, and those with special deals with power stations.

“marchesarosa says:
October 10, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Which are the 20 UK Climat surface stations, please?”
Goodness knows if this will post, copied from an actual source file.

local stations={ { wmo=3005, name='Lerwick', lat=60.1391666666667, long=-1.18472222222222},
	{ wmo=3017, name='Kirkwall Airport', lat=58.95352188819607, long=-2.901431693510928},
	{ wmo=3026, name='Stornoway', lat=58.21361824254632, long=-6.318955738311116},
	{ wmo=3066, name='Kinloss', lat=57.6456067915196, long=-3.563464535150946},
	{ wmo=3091, name='Aberdeen / Dyce', lat=57.20497061327473, long=-2.205313861954394},
	{ wmo=3100, name='Tiree', lat=56.50001018774803, long=-6.880803487104119},
	{ wmo=3162, name='Eskdalemuir', lat=55.31209027497275, long=-3.206307301991473},
	{ wmo=3171, name='Leuchars', lat=56.37735298771637, long=-2.86192902784711},
	{ wmo=3257, name='Leeming', lat=54.29698920443254, long=-1.533062211300392},
	{ wmo=3302, name='Valley', lat=53.25267670440459, long=-4.53652739944032},
	{ wmo=3377, name='Waddington', lat=53.17535595567492, long=-0.5233386419626107},
	{ wmo=3414, name='Shawbury', lat=52.79469108656707, long=-2.664777635006615},
	{ wmo=3502, name='Aberporth', lat=52.13947375127079, long=-4.571154152607138},
	{ wmo=3590, name='Wattisham', lat=52.13947375127079, long=-4.571154152607138},
	{ wmo=3740, name='Lyneham', lat=51.50313207002159, long=-1.992399086381173},
	{ wmo=3772, name='London, Heathrow', lat=51.47916444653322, long=-0.4505671614755646},
	{ wmo=3797, name='Manston', lat=51.3463666867272, long=1.335387206040604},
	{ wmo=3808, name='Camborne', lat=50.21831496050969, long=-5.327559840358448},
	{ wmo=3862, name='Hurn, Bournmouth Airport', lat=50.77935751853183, long=-1.836177830278091},
	{ wmo=3917, name='Belfast, Aldergrove', lat=54.66377729916611, long=-6.22513985034386}
	}

http://www.metlink.org/pdf/articles/urban_heat_island_-_manchester.pdf

At last someone is having a good look at the station locations. I’d always thought some to be a bit bizzarre to say the least – this was (and probably still is) one near to me in Manchester : http://www.flickr.com/photos/kh1234567890/sets/72157622974758406/

I have photocopies of the original hand-written thermometer records for the first ever weather station in the world, at Durham, UK. The actual written data for the early 1700’s is between 5 and 10 deg C cooler than the Met Office quoted temperatures derived from the same records. I have emailed the Met Office several times over the last 5 years for clarification on the differences and have been ignored. Since I am busy making a living I have not chased this up vigorously, especial as it looked like the sceptics had “won the argument”.The other interesting thing I found out while accessing the historical records is that even up until 2011, no calibration data of the instruments at Durham university have been archived/stored/ are available…

David A. Evans says:
October 10, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Is Durham used?
It is marked as active. Not seen that one in ages and IIRC was a CET station removed because of UHI yet why so? Not wonderful, but fair enough, however, play with Google Earth history, ouch.
Roughly 54.768, -1.58612
Changes like that ought to be clearly mentioned in the formal records.
Not seen it mentioned in extremes so I’ve not paid attention. (quite a few are known but not yet posted as articles, in part because I am trying to avoid deluging someone else’s blog)

kh1234567890 says:
October 10, 2012 at 5:35 pm
At last someone is having a good look at the station locations. I’d always thought some to be a bit bizzarre to say the least – this was (and probably still is) one near to me in Manchester ”
There is one marked as current at 53.4668,-2.25152, sheesh, although it might not be accurate.
The Google Earth history is unusual, from 2000, see a building rise but this poses a problem: the data starts 1996 when the new building was not there. Maybe it was on the old library. A quick look I can’t see a screen in Hulme Park which is opposite and a more typical location.

Steve Keohane,
He’s not paying attention to us.

Matt says:
October 10, 2012 at 1:03 pm
One thing that has been blogged about here before is the dropping number of stations in the global land surface temp products particularly GISS.
People here looked into it and discovered that many of the missing stations are still to this day reporting data.

Most were “dropped” only in the sense of being ignored by GISS and the boys.

Charles,
You are absolutely correct much of the UHI is in fact waste heat, but also the built environment has heat sinking (thermal mass) effects as well. In fact since energy is never created or destroyed (apparently except for magical CO2) almost 100% of our energy use ends up as heat eventually. For example you might put energy from your electric car into motion, but the energy inherent in that velocity is then converted to heat eventually through friction with the road and other moving parts and via the brakes when you stop, the energy is never “Used up” it goes on and on, from one form to another forever eventually degrading to the lowest form – heat.
So when looking at UHI trends the real influencing factor on UHI is Energy density – that is what is the energy consumption per square meter, rather than the heat emission per square meter. Energy density is related to the population density AND Energy Consumption per capita. I’ll wager that our modern energy consumption profile per capita alone, is enough to create an upward trend in UHI without even taking into account changes in population density.
Anthony, you should look at this factor?
Bob

MarkCooper
I have Durham on my historic temperatures site here.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Do you have the older handwrittenDurham records in any sort of digitised format and the comparitive older Met office records? I would like to add them to the site.
tonyb

tchannon says:
‘There is one marked as current at 53.4668,-2.25152, sheesh, although it might not be accurate.
The Google Earth history is unusual, from 2000, see a building rise but this poses a problem: the data starts 1996 when the new building was not there. Maybe it was on the old library. A quick look I can’t see a screen in Hulme Park which is opposite and a more typical location.’
That’s the location, just across the road to the east from your co-ordinates. It’s never been in the park – it would not last five minutes in that neighbourhood.
Hulme Library was built in the 70’s. The surrounding area was redeveloped at that time from terraced streets to quite widely spaced large blocks of apartments (Hulme Crescents). These were in turn demolished in late 90’s and the area redeveloped to what it is now.
The only other data available for Manchester would be Manchester Airport, way to the south and a completely different place.

Swanscomb not only gets heat from the Thames but radar has a heating effect, like microwaves, and there is an air conditioner spilling heat from the equipment room. So an unreliable data set from here.

Stephen Skinner says:
October 10, 2012 at 2:44 pm
The Heat Density map shows very clearly urban heat. All the main urban areas are clearly visible. Considering that in the space of about 100 years the number of cities of over 1,000,000 people has grown by several 1000%. On this map there are many towns of much less than a 1,000,000 and they show up clearly also.
There are only two cities in Britain with a population of over a million, London and Birmingham. If you added in the surrounding built up areas you would be able to add a few more to that list.

Matt says:October 10, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Steve Keohane & D Boehm,
That is a version of it yes, but I was actually thinking of the video posted in the WUWT article I linked to.
Matt, I saved that file Feb, 10, 2008. I would suspect it came from a current posting here at WUWT. You might check the old posts from then..

Why are new stations being sited on high rooftops ?
http://www.cas.manchester.ac.uk/restools/whitworth/photos/

David A. Evans says:
October 11, 2012 at 3:21 am
>>
tchannon says:
October 10, 2012 at 5:26 pm
re your list of sites
RAF ‘Kinloss’, lat=57.6456067915196, long=-3.563464535150946},
RAF ‘Leuchars’, lat=56.37735298771637, long=-2.86192902784711},
RAF ‘Leeming’, lat=54.29698920443254, long=-1.533062211300392},
RAF ‘Valley’, lat=53.25267670440459, long=-4.53652739944032},
RAF ‘Waddington’, lat=53.17535595567492, long=-0.5233386419626107},
RAF ‘Lyneham’, lat=51.50313207002159, long=-1.992399086381173},
RAF ‘Belfast, Aldergrove’, lat=54.66377729916611, long=-6.22513985034386}
Aldergrove is an oddity because although it is a civil airport, the thermometer site is on the RAF portion.
Your chances of getting to these sites I would say is 3/5s of 5/8s of FA
>>
At least RAF stations are generally fairly rural and not the same continual traffic as a commercial airport. Presumably they have decent maintenance. On that basis they are probably on the better end of the quality scale.

Large red area in South Yorkshire – looks like my wife is turning the heating on during the day again ;>)

From this temperature plot I can readily identify every city and major town in England.

@QuestingVole,
Even the one’s in generally rural areas can be subject to micro climate heat sources such as (grills, trash burning bins, AC exhausts, pavement) All things that rural stations in the US have been found to be exposed to. The problem is that temp stations (especially the newer automated ones) tend to be built close to human habitation even in rural areas.

@Fred Berple
I agree in some sense however you are ignoring other factors of your energy consumption, for example the 50KWh you consume driving to and from work gas consumption, and the reduction is transpiration cooling for the built area of your property. I’d wager if you took this into account your “Footprint” would be something of the order of 30-40 watts per square meter, or about 10 x CO2 theorized effect for a doubling, and about 100 x the theoretical effect of CO2 for the increase from 1960 to now. Let’s assume energy use on your property increased linearly from nothing (wilderness) in 1960 to your current estimated 33 W/ Sq m, That results in a gradient of 3w/m2 per decade for UHI growth and a maximum of about 80/310 * 3.7/11 per decade using a linear approximation or 0.086 w/m2 for CO2. So we have a situation that a thermometer placed on your property would experience extra heating energy trend of 3W/m2 per decade for UHI Vs 0.086 W/m2 per decade for CO2 – and they think from this noise they can extract the CO2 component accurately. To quote a famous Australian Film ” The Castle” , tell-em they’re dreamin’

While this is primarily about UHI, rural areas also have had changes causing warming, with likely a greater overall effect because the land area is much larger.
Since the 1950s there have been large increases in field drainage, which reduces evaporation and hence increases temperatures, this in turn has allowed earlier planting of crops, generally reducing albedo (again causing warming), and hedgerows and small copse of trees have been removed (in the 1970s and 80s as much as 2% of hedgerows were removed every year), reducing turbulence and boundary layer mixing at night. Without getting into the details, reduced boundary layer mixing, locally cools, but over wider areas the net effect is warming.

“PRD says:
October 11, 2012 at 9:12 am
…
Along the theme of temperature trends and verification of historical records. I got to thinking about soil temperatures. As an agrarian by education, we use soil temps to determine planting times and seed germination.”
You are correct, ground temperature is the body temperature, entropy, not the ephemeral layer of gas. Moreover it is an integrating measure which largely avoids the Nyquist violation so endemic in what passes for measurement.
I’ve spent a lot of time on ground temperature data. I found that wrong adjustments to the data have been made. Also, the available data is in a worse state than air measurements, perhaps because it has received so little attention.
There is a very common misunderstanding of the infamous Stephan Boltzman equation, a purely theoretic thing where it has to connect with the real world via “magic”. The key is the surface thermal conductivity and thermal capacity, as I showed via modelling the lunar surface, matching the Diviner data (but not the wrong public web version, undergrad errors). http://diviner.ucla.edu/
Lunar dust behaves as highly thermally insulating, in a large part because it is in high vacuum which defeats gas conduction. Radiation is a very weak energy transfer mechanism. This has been known or correctly theorised for many years but the true implication seems to have been missed.
I like it when maths and measurement agrees.
The earth behaves as highly conductive but is far beyond my meagre capability at figuring out. I could make some observations, best kept private since I am in strong disagreement with many. Nevertheless much the same process takes place at the air/ground interface.
The ground behaves as a thermal delay line introducing a phase lag with depth (acts as a natural low pass filter). The energy flow is bidirectional on a thermal capacitance. The body rotation and orbital is critical to almost all parts of the physics yet largely ignored in climate, want a fixed world.
An exactly similar effect is taking place with objects near Stevenson screens hence phase delay is introduced. I have seen sites where temperature rise _after_ peak insolation, known heavily contaminated sites. If pristine high resolution data is available that is a signature.

Very useful informations, thankyou very much!
K.R: Frank

“Here’s a question I have often asked but have never received a satisfactory reply to;
Given that few machines even approach 100% efficiency and that every machine generates excess heat and that we ‘burn’ giga-tons of fossil fuels as well as utilize nuclear, hydro, wind power etc….has anyone ever tried to calculate how much ‘heat’ is added to the atmosphere in a generalized way (as opposed to measurable UHI effects)?”
Answer from Max:
Considering that the daily input from the Sun is on the order of 1,000,000 times the total amount of energy “release” from coal, nuclear, gasoline, fossil fuels in general..the contribution of the “heat load” from our energy sources is miniscule. Now DO NOT be lead down the “primrose path” that “Well, ‘we’ should get all our energy from the SUN…and not use any of these non-Green sources…” As this is where we get into the concepts of ENERGY DENSITY, energy distribution (time and space) and ECONOMICS. All of which make SOLAR and WIND terribly useless logistics wise (time and space) and HORRIBLY expensive (ECONOMICS).
(Not So Mad) Max

Max;
+1
The issue with UHI is the misrepresentation of a specialized subset of readings as representative of the whole, despite their obvious unfitness for that purpose.
The whole “sustainability” push, too, is a farce. Time-travel back 100 years, and advise our ancestors what to “conserve” for our needs. There is nothing they used that we now care about, or isn’t in plentiful supply. We could advise them to lay off the slaughter of passenger pigeons and Dodos, perhaps, and encourage the substitution of petroleum for whale oil, but not much else.
And the technological change over the last century is nowhere near as swift and unpredictable as the next’s will be. It is risible to imagine we can “save” anything the future economy will care much about.