A couple of days ago, I highlighted a worst of the worst NOAA climate monitoring station in Arizona with the help of a scientist from the University of Washington.
My friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist continues to be busy in his retirement, and sends this along today. He’s been tracking a group of weather stations in California, and has been doing so for over 20 years. In fact, it was Jim who first introduced me to that light bulb moment where I realized that global warming wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be when he made this short publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 1996.
I guess you could say it was the graph that launched a thousand blog posts, because as we all know, CO2 can’t heat differently based on county population.
So with that in mind, have a look at his current analysis:
What is most notable is the red dots, which cluster in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the Los Angeles basin. You can also make out the I-80 corridor from San Francisco to Reno, traced in red.
Jim’s Excel spreadsheet is here, you can play with the data yourself: CA-Temp-map-100-Years
Of the stations showing the greatest 100 year warming rate, the one station right on the border of Arizona and California, Parker 6NE, has the greatest at 0.0625/year degrees Fahrenheit as this screen cap from his worksheet shows:
That’s a whopping 6.25 degrees Fahrenheit ( 3.47C) per century! That’s a bigger rate than some of the climate model predictions. Wow, the greenhouse effect must surely have gone into overdrive in Parker, right?
I decided to have a look at the Parker 6NE station, and started with the B91 forms of original data, boy was I surprised:
Look at all that missing data, which I’ve marked in yellow. 10 days in November 2015 and 16 days in December 2015. Of course NOAA/NCEI “corrects” this by infilling it with other data from surrounding stations so that no station record is incomplete in their database. In the case of December, 2015, over 50% of the readings aren’t actually real data from the station in Parker, they are “fabricated” from other data using NOAA/NCEI’s special FILNET sauce. No worries, all’s fair in love and climate science, right?
NASA GISS keeps a plot of Parker 6NE data, and it seems missing data has been a hallmark of this station for quite some time. Notice all the gaps:
Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=425000262500&dt=1&ds=14
With that many gaps in annual data, you’d think this station might not be suitable for climate science use, much less categorized as a “best of the best” USHCN station, right? No worries, all’s fair in love and climate science.
Steve Goddard had a look at Parker 6NE a few months ago, and plotted the infilled data from NOAA NCEI:
It seems pretty clear that the majority of the warming trend is all about the minimum temperature, which has a sharply higher trend than the daytime maximum temperature. This mirrors the temperature trend of nearby Las Vegas, NV which has had explosive growth. The UHI signal in the nighttime Tmin is very clear:
But, it turns out that most of that trend is in overnight temperatures, which are most affected by the explosive infrastructure growth of Las Vegas and the resultant UHI:
Inconveniently, there is no upward trend in maximum temperatures, in fact it appears there has been a slight downward trend since the late 1930’s and early 1940’s:
So surely, Parker 6NE must have had similar explosive growth contributing to UHI, making the Tmin trend grow large, right?
Nope. It’s a siting issue. According to the B91 form, the Parker 6NE USHCN climate monitoring station is located at radio station KLPZ in Parker, it is a volunteer observing site, which sort of explains why NOAA gets what it pays for when we have 16 days of missing data in December 2015.
A cursory look at the station in Google Earth shows the problem, can you spot the official climate monitoring temperature sensor in this aerial view?
I couldn’t either. But thanks to Google Earth street view, I found it. You may have to click the images to see better. Annotations are mine.
The junk piles and junk cars are certainly a nice touch for NOAA’s official climate observing station, don’t you think? Note also the big “swamp cooler” on the roof of the radio station about 20 feet to the right of the MMTS temperature sensor. That will put extra humidity into the nearby air, which will contribute to local warming due to moist enthalpy, in addition to the heat sink effects provided by the junk, cars, and nearby building. Those who live in the deep south understand how a how a humid summer night can stay at 80 degrees for a Tmin, while over in the desert of Arizona, away from the swamp cooler A/C units, the temperature can fall to 50 degrees at the same latitude on the same day, with an even higher Tmax.
And then there’s the nearby tree, which we know will limit LWIR going from the ground to the upper atmosphere at night, keeping the air near the ground warmer than it normally would be. That’s a factor too.
But I think the biggest factor is the solid metal fence that surrounds the compound, which can be clearly seen in the aerial view. Then there’s the building itself to the south. That essentially cuts off the temperature sensor from any wind flow near the ground in any direction, and as we know from basic meteorology, windless nights are the biggest problem for UHI. In this case, thanks to the fence, all nights are less windy at the sensor than they normally would be, resulting in less mixing of the boundary layer air, and warmer temperatures at night. This site mimics a big city UHI effect due to these factors I’ve noted.
But NOAA says they can “fix” garbage temperature station data like this.
If it were up to me, I’d remove this station from all climate databases rather than trying to fix this hodgepodge of inaccurate and highly biased data. But NOAA and their fanboys prefer keeping junk data like this.
This is why I’ve said before and will continue to say:
“The majority of weather stations used by NOAA to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts. This study demonstrates conclusively that this issue affects temperature trend and that NOAA’s methods are not correcting for this problem, resulting in an inflated temperature trend. It suggests that the trend for U.S. temperature will need to be corrected.” He [Watts} added: “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record”
“Our viewpoint is that trying to retain stations with dodgy records and adjusting the data is a pointless exercise. We chose simply to locate all the stations that DON”T need any adjustments and use those, therefore sidestepping that highly argumentative problem completely. Fortunately, there was enough in the USHCN, 410 out of 1218.”
But, they at NOAA keep these garbage climate stations anyway. No worries, all’s fair in love and climate science.
ADDENDUM: I hope Anthony won’t mind if I add this. I took Jim Goodrich’s Excel data from above, added county population density data, and that gave me the following graph:
Best to everyone,
w.
America, you are not alone with this “world’s best practice”.
We in Australia are also met with the very same brick wall.
Those of you who are familiar with Jo Nova’s site would sense an air of deja vu with wattsupwiththat observations.
So many are now aware of their rediculous practices but still they persist.
How do we stop them?
Yet the BOM trend is well below that of UAH v6? The “gold standard” satellites show a much higher warming trend.
Local temperatures are not global ones. AMO and other oscillations shift heat around the globe in a time frame of decades. I guess the southern part of the globe had actually a cooling the last decades. Just think of the growing antarctic ice.
Johannes, sorry, I should have been clearer. Jo was constantly complaining that the ACORN data set for Australian temps was cooked, and adjusted to show more warming than there is, yet UAH v6 shows a much higher warming trend for Australia than ACORN.
Ps, what growing ice in Antarctica? If you couldn’t tell by the lack of posts here about it, sea ice is now below average. Both in Antarctica and in the Artic. It just set a new global minimum.
Could you post a link please, Daveo?
I can only find Roy Spencer saying of v6 UAH that “We also find that the resulting LT trends over the U.S. and Australia are in better agreement with other sources of data.”
That could cover a lot of different meanings. E.g. By itself it doesn’t mean they are in good agreement, only better than previously.
Daveo, I’ll also add that I don’t think JoNova was complaining about the recent match between satellite and surface measurements (which both embarrass the models).
The surface record goes much further back in history than when the satellites started in 1979.
I can’t speak for JoNova but from what I’ve read at her blog the biggest complaints are about the adjustments to the long term record which, like the USA, usually seem to make the past cooler and thus inflate the magnitude and continuity of late 20th Century warming.
The southern oceans have ben cooling for a couple of decades. For most of the past four years global SI has been at or above the mean. That it is currently low is not due to some sudden onslaught of CO2. Many factors besides air T play into global sea ice. The 30 percent costal masked (for accuracy) DMI arctic graphic is at a record, well above any recent year. So we have more ocean with at least 30 percent ice, and less with only 15 percent ice. Hum? If a portion of the record denser 30 percent sea ice were to move from the 30 percent area, into the 15 % ice area, then there would be a great deal more 15 percent ice, likely showing an increase instead of the current decrease. (The ice is there, it is just more dense then normal in the 30 percent pus area, and thinner in the 15 percent area)
I have not looked into the current Antarctica decline. It is not Southern ocean T that is for certain. Perhaps it is storm and ocean current related. At any rate Antarctica has recently set records for greater ice extent, and there is no correlation to CO2.
Says who?
ACORN
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/ACORN_zpsmzrjjdc6.jpg
UAH – Australia
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/UAH%20-%20Australia_zpsemu6ihsl.jpg
According to UAH v6, there has been ZERO warming for neigh-on 21 years in Australia!
Michael Hart says:
Could you provide a link please.
Sure.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/
V6.4 had a trend of .24
V6.5 the trend has drooped to .15
“I can’t speak for JoNova but from what I’ve read at her blog the biggest complaints are about the adjustments to the long term record…”
Yes, she did. She and a few others even made such a song and dance about it, there was even a review set up to look into it. Did you here about the results of the review?
https://www.environment.gov.au/minister/baldwin/2015/mr20150618.html
An independent review has endorsed the Bureau of Meteorology’s management of Australia’s official temperature record.
The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature dataset (ACORN-SAT), which is managed by The Bureau of Meteorology, is an important part of Australia’s official climate record.
The dataset is used to monitor climate variability and change in Australia and contains more than 100 years of temperature records.
This was set up by a conservative government, so you cant complain it was a white wash.
Bruce C
Where did you get your UAH chart from? and why does it stop in early 2015?
The chart is based on UAH v6.5 with a 12 month running mean, hence the early 2015 cut-off.
LOL, Daveo’s independent review went for ONE DAY (26th March, 2015) and contained 9 employees from the BoM (incl: David Jones, Rob Vertessy & Blair Trewin) and 6 employees from the Department of the Environment.
“Ps, what growing ice in Antarctica? If you couldn’t tell by the lack of posts here about it, sea ice is now below average. Both in Antarctica and in the Artic. It just set a new global minimum.”
You mean your lacking post that it is below “average” levels (whatever “average” is)? You mean below means MORE?
Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
NEW RECORD MAXIMUM, but new record maximum is less than average to global warming fanboys.
NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/antarctic_seaice_sept19_1.jpg?itok=dOXhVW_K
The old Melbourne station near the historical society building was a riot! Huge glass fronted apartments and sky scrappers due south of that site and surrounded on both sides by paved asphalt.
Daveo, the key word missing in your comment regarding the initial enquiry into the BOM ACORN methodology is “independent”. Following a number of complaints regarding the results of this enquiry, a second was scheduled with genuinely independent experts, but was cancelled by the Minister for the Environment (Greg Hunt) who happens to be my local Member of Parliament. As a result I have notified him that after 50 years of supporting the Liberal (conservative) Party I will not be supporting either him or the new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the coming election due to their record on supporting the waste of money being spent on “green energy” alternatives. They do not reflect the policies on which the Government was elected with Tony Abbot as Prime Minister.
Overthrowing him before his term of Government was finished has led to a weakening in the sensible attitude toward warming alarmists that he had promoted.
Bulldog44
Daveo, the key word missing in your comment regarding the initial enquiry into the BOM ACORN methodology is “independent”.
An INDEPENDENT review has endorsed the Bureau of Meteorology’s management of Australia’s official temperature record.
it’s the second word in the quote, not sure how you missed it?
Daveo,
I meant independent in the true sense of the word. The group you refer to was composed of people selected by the BOM and even they made suggestions on the need for more transparency and clarity which would allow others to replicate the results of the Bureau’s methods – Totally ignored!
The plan put forward under Abbott’s leadership called for a review by outside experts in statistics and science. The fact remains that the BOM methodology remains shrouded in mystery and, “If results aren’t replicable they are false”.
My thoughts as well. As soon as I read about the UHI problem I asked the same question; we know the data is bad, it should be discarded. My guess (and I have nothing really to base it on) is some dweeb GS-12 decided it could be “fixed” by “adjustment” and the games began. Since then the entire land based temperature record has been corrupted to the point of uselessness. The sadder part is, once the door to fabricating data was opened, it grew like a fungus and became a kind of justification for even more egregious “adjustment”, after all, if it got a nod for UHI, why not anything else they can think of?
More important to me though is the UHI effect isn’t being given proper consideration. The conversation on that subject seems limited to the effects of local outside heat sources (A/C equipment vents etc.) and hardscape like buildings, tarmac and concrete. Occasional fences are mentioned (as in this article).
But I’ve yet to see a comprehensive investigation of what I consider the “elephant in the living room”, which is structural heating. Virtually all inhabited structures outside the tropical latitudes are equipped with some mechanism for providing artificial heat. Propane, natural gas or electric are the most popular, some use wood stoves, but all of them generate heat.
While one or two buildings might not have an effect on average climate, certainly billions of them will, and the effect will be most noticeable in high density population areas, but I haven’t seen any discussion of this. Surely it should be easy enough to estimate, especially in industrialized countries, just by measuring the number of kilowatt hours or cubic feet of propane/natural gas used in an area? These devices essentially do nothing more than heat air, which naturally escapes the structures. They’re primarily used at night.
Warming alarmists are quick to point out the “real” problem (as if there was a real problem), isn’t higher highs, it’s higher lows, which occur at night. When people everywhere turn the furnace on. Near temperature sensors. In cities and suburbs (and even in the countryside) all over the planet.
What astounds me is these so called “scientists” haven’t figured this out. I think they’re being paid too much.
fascinating and important info. NOAA/NASA have an agenda. It is obvious. They can make the temperatures, past and present, anything they want them to be, and of course the want the past to be cooler than the present. Urban heat islands, be damned. They don’t care. They fill in whatever numbers they thinnk they can get away with to try to support their nonsensical AGW hypothesis…. and to keep the money rolling in. It is all a travesty and a dark period in science.
Considering that even with NOAA’s inclusion of recording stations with the UHI effect, the overall temperature of the US is not showing much warming occurring. This is not a good sign.
I think it’s remarkably coincidental that the “flattening” of the warming trend in the US lines up nicely with a virtual cessation of new home construction. Maybe just happenstance….
I’ve added an addendum at the end, with this graphic:
w.
Interesting plot Willis. A lot of that scatter may be from microscale influences, beyond the overall urban influence. Anthony’s work definitely points in that direction.
It should possible to correlate population growth by decade (US census data) to temperature trend by decade.
Yes, that would have been what i’d expetct. Maybe Willis could explain the logic behind dT vs pop.
What would be more revealing is to compare the difference of Parker to a nearby rural site that has remained rural and plot the temp difference against Parker pop.
SadlyI don’t have time, I have to do some real work on an injector pump and stop messing around on WUWT. 🙁
Willis, thanks. A good addition.
Nicely done Willis. And how many therms does the average household consume for heating? My bet is that correlation will even be stronger.
Great investigative work Anthony. I especially like the map plot of temperature trends in CA. It would be nice to see similar plots for other parts of the US and to see maps showing trends for both USHCN and USCRN sites for the same time period. I recently looked at temperatures at Mount Washington NH, which does not appear to be a USHCN site. I’m not sure why, since it may actually be a good site to measure trends in the lower troposphere. This is my take on the temperature trend patterns, which seem to be very similar to the satellite derived TLT trends:
It would be interesting to see a few USCRN sites established on high mountain peaks. Mauna Loa and Pikes Peak come to mind. I realize this is much easier said than done for places like Pikes Peak, but should be doable. With all the CO2 and other measurements from Mauna Loa, I’m surprised that I can’t find any temperature data. Shame on NOAA.
Mt Washington has had a weather station from 1933 to the present. Not sure why the graph only starts at 1948. I have checked into this from time to time over the years, but not have been able to construct the continuous data from 1933:
“…Normal, Means, and Extremes:
The following tables provide the “normal” average weather conditions on Mount Washington for each month, averaged over the period of 1981-2010. Also included are the extreme (record) conditions recorded during the station’s history, from 1933 to the present….”
Reference: https://www.mountwashington.org/experience-the-weather/mount-washington-weather-archives/normals-means-and-extremes.aspx
They must have all that information somewhere, but I can’t find it on their site even though they have “archives”. (Maybe it contradicts Global Warming).
Philip, the NCEI web site only had data back to 1948 and January 1948 was incomplete. Not sure why they don’t have the older data.
I know I have contacted them about this (CAGW) and never got a satisfactory answer. Have seen their site recently and they did away with some of their “Past Projects” had eliminated some of their older data…
Sure would like to see all there older DATA…
oz4caster:
I used Ipswitch WS_FTP successfully for a number of years for file transfers. I am sure there are others but it worked very well for me.
oz4caster February 19, 2016 at 5:24 pm
Hourly temperatures at Mauna Loa since 1977 available here … no shame on NOAA.
w.
Also, oz4, you might enjoy this analysis of the MLO temperature record …
w.
Thanks Willis. Shame on me for forgetting I had seen this ESRL link once before. Since I retired, I have had trouble trying to get FTP data that I used to get easily at work. I have FireFox on Win7 and installed FireFTP, but it never connects to any FTP site. I have not been able to figure out what is blocking it, although I suspect it is my Norton AV. I have the same problem with Tony Heller’s new software, it won’t connect to FTP.
Looks like the Mauna Loa data through 2006 does not show much upward trend since 1977, despite all that extra CO2 measured there, and shows a downward trend 1999-2006. Too bad NOAA doesn’t have temperature data going back to when the CO2 measurements started. If I can figure out how to get the FTP data I will go and get it. Even back to 1977 is slightly better than the satellite and CFSR temperature data. I’d like to see what has happened there since 2006.
No worries. Just for you I just put the zipped files on dropbox here. Only goes up to 2014, but it’ll get you started.
Thanks Willis. Got the data and will crunch through it an post on it soon.
oz4caster, Firefox is self destructing and it becomes even bigger entropy laden bloatware. I dropped it last year because of a slew of problems. Others are doing the same:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-shrinking-firefox-faces-endangered-species-status.html
The Firefox market share continues to slide:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
I use Chrome now, and have uninstalled Firefox…nearly all of the weird problems in browsing have disappeared now.
This phenomenom of less cold night temperatures and less warm day time temperatures seems to be all around the world. It also shows up as a trend of less cold and less warm over the period of record in a lot of locations. Bob Tisdale wrote an article on diurnal variation with respect to the GCM model expectations but it seems to me clouds and a whole lot of other things could cause this. A lot of people have commented on this trend both in the diurnal record and the long term record. The long term temperature has been showing this trend for up to 125 years based on the data I have downloaded. I have no idea what it means, just an observation. Most places haven’t been getting warmer, just a tad less cold. I don’t see that as a problem except for missing some of the 40 below November cold spells we could use to kill the pine beetles in Alberta and Eastern BC.
But other than in Bob’s Analysis, I haven’t seen a lot of discussion on this issue but it is there in the Mona Loa data. They say it is consistent with CO2 warming per the IPCC but then they say it is also consistent with SST. Their paper rejects cloud cover since there is no distinctive seasonal variation in the Diurnal Temperature Range from season to season. I am unconvinced yet, then they say it might be Anthropogenic CO2 (although they say it in the negative – “does not reject the hypothesis that the decrease in DTR may be associated with the increase in global anthropogenic CO2.”
Their conclusion is that it “might” be due to anthropogenic CO2 or it might be other factors, more study is required. I believe Bob Tisdale’s writings cover this along with information from BEST and comparisons of DTR from southern latitudes to northern latitudes. But the data doesn’t match the models … yet.
Interesting information but no strong conclusions.
With apologies for including a long quote but this closure of minimum temperature and maximum temperatures both diurnally and over the total period of record at many sites has intrigued me for a very long time (perhaps 20 years or more).
The Mona Loa summary published August 31, 2011:
Bob Tisdale’s paper dealt with this in detail and the fact that observations and models still don’t match (my interpretation). I am left wondering since even correlation does not mean causation.
oz4caster:
I used Ipswitch WS_FTP successfully for a number of years for file transfers. I am sure there are others but it worked very well for me.
Thanks Willis and oz4. Looks like if you average out the noon temps and the midnight temps you would almost have a horizontal line. (slightly uphill by a fraction of a degree) I realize that type of averaging is not really “Kosher” as far as climate scientists go but it is interesting. I wonder how their data compares to the satellite data since it is over the same period/years.
Lower daytime maxima and higher nighttime minima would result from more clouds.
Willis, I finally figure out what was blocking my attempts to FTP. It was my new high speed cable modem/router. The router firewall was the problem. I had to lower the firewall security setting from “medium” to “low” to get FTP to work. Did so and got the 2014 and 2015 Mauna Loa data and made a time series of compiled annual averages:
Write-up about it here:
https://oz4caster.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/mauna-loa-temperature-trend/
Thanks again for your help and inspiration.
Everyone, I found out that NOAA does now have a USCRN site on Mauna Loa. Below is a photo of the shielded and motor aspirated temperature sensors.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/coop/crn/img/img_crn_3.jpg
Que Stokes explaining that NOAA really doesn’t use that station and Mosher explaining how his “best” algorithm corrects that station to within .01 degree F.
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog and commented:
You know, I don’t think the argument against CAGW is going to be won with equations – there are too many ways to play with the numbers and equations. The argument is going to be won with common sense arguments. And this is really good; it makes you reconsider whether the numbers are worth anything to start with. As I say, an average doesn’t melt ice anywhere.
You know, I don’t think the argument against CAGW is going to be won with equations – there are too many ways to fudge numbers. The argument is going to be won with common sense arguments. Those things that make you reconsider whether the numbers are worth anything to start with. Surface station temps don’t seem to be worth a whole lot (and for even more reasons than presented here). Keep up the great work, Anthony!
I agree plane old cold weather will do it and falling food production would sheet it home.
Unfortunately if the background post LIA trend remains up they will manage to keep this alive till all resistance is gone.
There are too many in the U.S. Congress and Senate aligned with the climate change agenda to do anything about the temperature data situation. If this was not the case something would have already. been done.
Provides an excuse for renewable energy projects. Suits the big U.S. money interests.
Years ago when I learned that about a third of all weather station were not showing any warming or some were showing cooling, my thought then and now is until you can explain that, you cannot make any claims about what the overall climate is. Yet in this modern era, it seems hard work and good research, is a thing of the past.
Talk about dodgy data! Not quite another set of AC sets, but close.
Another great job Anthony. Very well explained. Somehow the meme must be pushed that in order to use less than ideal data – such as outlined in the piece – the real data (not the infiliated data) must be assigned a much larger error than would otherwise be necessary. ie, if the temp sensors calibrate at +- 0.2 deg C [NIST traceable of course] a much larger margin of, say 1-2 deg C must be assigned in these cases.
NOAA wouldn’t like this of course because the calculations of what is a ‘real’ remp quickly get a LOT more complicated. That very complication makes a convincing case showing that the data should NOT be used for climate change research purposes.
“remp” = temp, sorry!
Well, anorher expose, perhaps thanks to Tony Heller. For a much more ecumenical view from many more perspectives, see essay When Data Isn’t in ebook Blowing Smoke.
. For a sharp, specific criticism see guest post here concerning the karlization of temperatures. Yah, there was a slight post goof. Corrected in the comments. Karlization conclusion remainded unchanged.
Might have to have a look at some of the UK ones as well. I just had a look at the met office website and found the 2 nearest to me – one is at a busy RAF station, between the main runway and a carpark, another is in a park surrounded by mature trees right next to a busy main road near the city centre. Not ideal either.
“Tallbloke’s” been doing it.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/index-page-surface-stations-project/
Have a look at this PDF which explains what sites make up CET:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
You will note that many of them that used to be in the countryside are now in built-up urban area’s so are also recording heat emanating from buildings, traffic etc, resulting in ‘The Heat Island Effect’
I know the one at Weston Park in Sheffield, http://tinyurl.com/nr7x39s .
Started in 1882 in a leafy suburb when transport was horse & cart, it’s now just ~25m from the busy A57, a major bus route on a steep hill. It’s close to two large concrete hospitals (the Children’s, 50m, & Western park 100m).
They use the large tarmac area 10m to the left to land the air ambulances, often there is an Ice cream van parked at the gateway with its engine running 20m away (you can see it in the sat view); so lots of false heat sources.
How meaningful can it be to compare current & historical measurements??
Oxford is shown in here – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/heat-island-at-heathrow/
Somerset House, London http://tinyurl.com/qbhdxux
dickon66
Re airfield sites, I have often wondered if the amount of fuel that is burned in a sensible assumed volume within the airport perimeter to say 50 metres altitude, has the heat to change temperature in a measurable way. Airfields can be easier than most places to test for this type of UHI because they have a simpler mix of heat sources and often have public records of fuel use over time. Have you ever tried a ball park estimate to see if fuel burned can heat the local air measurably?
The REAL issue is that the guys at GHCN have absolutely NO IDEA how bad some of their stations.
It took Anthony to show just how bad the USA sites were, and the global sites could only be worse.
Quite so.
Yet Zeke (see his recent post on Climate etc) suggests that US sites need more adjustments (at least for TOB) than the global sites. I find that assertion rather surprising.
Personally, I would have thought that the starting point to any assessment of temperature data would have been to carry out a quality audit of the stations used to report temperature data, and then to identify only those which are best sited, have the best quality control/maintenance record and documented procedures, and those with the longest continuous record. I would have thought that those, and only those stations would have been used to put together the temperature data series.
It seems rather strange that one would wish to work with crud, not cream, and then try and adjust the crud. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear however hard one tries.
Here is Jim’s spreadsheet in an interactive map (if you have a free ESRI ArcGIS Online account). (Edited longitude value for Livermore by 1° to the east)
http://arcg.is/1RdiA1w
“. . .because as we all know, CO2 can’t heat differently based on county population”. Really, I thought CO2 was sort of like a magic elixir, you can make it do whatever you want it to.
“Look at all that missing data, which I’ve marked in yellow. 10 days in November, 2015 and 16 days in December, 2015. Of course NOAA/NCEI “corrects” this by infilling it with other data from surrounding stations so that no station record is incomplete in their database”. This seems to me to be standard procedure!
What if financial institutions did this? – I’m sorry Mr. Smith, the bank manager said, but your financial and savings records are missing so we infilled from your neighbour down the street. What did you say? You have a million dollars in savings and your neighbour is up to his eyeballs in debt. So sorry, but this is standard procedure.
Why aren’t all these shenanigans being called, loud and clear, by the scientific community for what they are – FRAUD! This is not only besmirching climate science, but all of science.
A single picture is worth a thousand words.
Pictures of sites like this need to be sent to every media outlet and government representative.
Even if it gets just one or two to start asking questions, it is worth the effort.
A number of years, ago I ran across a map on the internet that appeared to be from a doctoral dissertation. It showed how the average temperatures had changed over the last 100 years in each of California’s physiographic regions. Just eyeballing it, it appeared that there was a strong correlation with population growth in each of the regions. Notably, in the NE corner of the state, which has a very low population density, it showed a decline in average temperature. When I last looked for it, I could not find it.
For in-filling, how many places are used and is there a distance limitation?
Phoenix is a few miles closer to Parker than is Las Vegas and at the stevengoddard site, he uses it to show the trend of UHI.
For what it is worth, a poorly sited station might give incorrect discrete data and still provide an informative trend. But only data from that site could be used and you would need it to be for 99.44% of the time. Otherwise, it won’t float. [Ivory Soap® ref.]
I used to live and farm in that Northeast corner of California and I can assure you the the useful growing season has been reduced 20 days since 1970. The temperature gauge at Cedarville, elevation 4600ft, also indicates gradual cooling from that time…pg
“…reduced 20 days since 1970.” I live near there now and know quite a few farmers/ranchers in Surprise Valley, and I would say they would not agree with your assessment, as there is still the usual three-month growing season, the duration of which fluctuates on an annual basis. The last three drought years have acted to lengthen the growing season. You might recognize my last name.
Your family has been in California as long as mine!
Anthony. Please continue sending out your message and sending it loudly. The more I read, the more I am convinced that global warming = UHI. We have the satellite data, which shows a slight warming from 1979, easily attributable to natural climate change. Then there’s the meaningless garbage from the ground-based data. Take away NOAA’s’/Gavin/Hansen’s fiddled ground-based data (and take away Mikey’s hockey schtick) and there’s simply nothing left that’s even worth talking about.
One could say that UHI, and few bad apples in the science community, have cost the world trillions of dollars from carbon hysteria.
So much of this goes on in oz but they don’t even need a badly sited screen to massage the data to suit .
Whenever I hear hottest day ever ,now I just think is that figure adjusted unadjusted ,since yesterday or 20 years ago or just plain made up .
Our BOM is just as big a joke as yours .
China and Indian temperature anomaloy — maximum and minimum since 1950 — shows slightly increasing trend in minimum temperature after around 1990 in India and even earlier in the case of China. Maximum temperature presents a plateau pattern during these periods. As the urban heat-island effect not only rises night temperature at ground level but also at higher levels — included in my book of 2010 — and thus with the advection [temperature gradient] the heat is also transported to peripheries in the wind ward direction.
The important point here is — majority of the met stations are located in urban areas.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
easy to get to, and the pre-climate doom days , this is where you needed to know the weather for . To be honesty who cared about the weather conditions in the middle of desert were no one lived.
“The important point here is — majority of the met stations are located in urban areas.”
Well, “Dr.” Mann (and the rest of the “team”) would tell you that is a good thing since all we care about is scaring the man in the street into accepting the dismantling of our industrial society.
“But NOAA says they can “fix” garbage temperature station data like this.”
It is beyond reason to think this can be fixed by any kind of routines. And as “Steve Goddard” (his real name is Tony Heller) has shown in multiple posts – NOAA even add a warming trend by their “adjustments”.
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016-01-12-06-46-13.png
Tony Heller has a fine summary in this post:
History Of NASA/NOAA Temperature Corruption
On BBC 1 Scotland TV the weather forecasters put night time minimum temperatures on a map and often say “These are for towns and cities, the countryside will be 3 or 4 degrees (or sometimes “several degrees”) cooler.”
And BBC Weather in the East Midlands (of England) always several degrees difference urban to rural on still nights. Strange seeing as how these forecasts are still from the Met Office who are true believers in CAGW.
he who pays the piper calls the tune , the head of the MET office is ‘full on CAGW’ and can you blame them after all they done very well out of it .