This describes some of the many projects that I’m currently working on in weather, climate, electronics, and multimedia.
Project: www.surfacestations.org
This project, started on June 4th 2007, is designed for the express purpose of photographically surveying every one of the 1221 USHCN weather stations in the USA which are used as a “high quality network” to determine near surface temperature trends in the USA. USHCN is a subset of the larger COOP network of stations in the USA, of which there are about 9000. The USHCN subset has been hand picked by the National Climatic Data Center to be more regionally representative due to their placement, length of service and minimum station moves. Unfortunately, the network has fallen into neglect, and the temperature data produced by it is suspect due to microsite biases. See what has been learned so far here in this slide show.
You can help in this project by signing up and doing site survey in your area. It’s free, and open to anyone with basic observational skills, a digital camera, GPS, and ability to follow written directions. Check the Master List of surveys to see locations and what is available.
Project: Stevenson Screen Paint Experiment
This was actually the very first project I started, but has been given second priority now due to what has been learned about the siting issues of instrumentation with the USHCN network. The experiment continues with a 4 channel NIST certified data logger and probes and is now approaching it’s 3rd month of continuous data logging (as of 10/22/07). The premise is that since Stevenson Screens were originally specified to be painted with whitewash (CaCO3), and were changed to semi gloss latex (TiTO2) around 1979 that there is a different response to visible and IR wavelengths. A preliminary test of wood slats confirmed that there is a radiation response differential, as shown in this graph.
Project: UHI Transects
Under development. An experimental hands on response to Parker’s claim (which was not hands on, but rather a data mining from far less than ideal station sites) that UHI does not exist. A trial run is being made in Indianapolis, IN in the first half of November 2007 to test the equipment and work out any bugs. Once that test is complete, the methodology will be published so that anyone can do this experiment and publish the result. An online database of UHI transect data will be developed for use by the scientific community.
Hi Anthony, I miss having a real weatherman in Chico. My husband and I are/were professional artists, and we liked you. My husband had quite a bit of telescope equipment, for a couple different telescopes. He is deceased, now, and no one seems to have the time to tell me what to do with this stuff or what it is worth to sell. I would donate it to a non-profit org , locally, if there is one that is official and could use it. My brother builds telescopes and is a night sky fanatic, but he is in S. CA.
Wow to those who wait for the wrath of whatever god Gore believes in, who shall deem to punish those with a warm Hell, who fail to show proper fear for the new popular religion of global warming. Those who refuse to buy expensive putt putt cars in bright, adolescent colors,shall suffer, I am sure!
Please let me know if you know a good place to donate that is also a tax write-off.
Thank you! June Carey
HI June,
For your telescope maybe local highshool would be interested by the equipment. They would perhaps interest a few kids in science or astronomy.
Parker’s claim was sneakier than that.
Dear Anthony,
I am after some long term US temperature records, 200 years plus if possible. Can you tell me where I could get one or more such records?
Thanking you in advance,
David Archibald
[...] this case, you can see the Stevenson Screen paint experiment. For those unfamiliar with the screens, they are those white ‘weather’ screens you [...]
I think that urban heat islands are real. My observation involves the outside temperature sensor on my car’s climate control system. It updates quickly, and I have noted that it tends to go up a degree or two when I drive from my home in the suburbs 12 miles to my work in downtown Little Rock. My car is fairly new, so I haven’t had it during the summer months yet, but so far, it’s been consistent.
Tony,
you might find interesting the following new study about UHI:
Montávez, Juan Pedro, Jesús Fidel González-Rouco, and Francisco Valero, 2008. A simple model for estimating the maximum intensity of nocturnal urban heat Island. International Journal of Climatology Vol. 28, No 2, pp. 235-242, February 2008
Abstract
Several studies have tried to determine the empirical relationships between the maximum urban heat island (UHI) intensity and factors such as the city size taking the number of inhabitants as indicator, the geometry of the city (i.e. the H/W ratio), meteorological factors, etc. On the other hand, numerical models have also been formulated to understand the main factors contributing to the formation of UHI.
In this work, a set of empirical equations for determining the maximum of the UHI is presented. The equations have been fitted to the output results of a set of experiments performed by a canyon model (Montávez et al., [2000a]), investigating the main factors contributing to the nocturnal UHI. The input parameters are the thermal inertia of rural and urban materials, the H/W ratio and the increase in long-wave sky radiation due in part to pollution over cities. The results obtained are able to reproduce most of UHI intensity maxima around the world.
All the best
Timo
Just a quick question
Since 1970 weather forecasts appear to have become more reliable.
The predicted overnight lows are fairly accurate, I presume there are tables/curves that are used to predict based on temperature, humidity, cloud cover, wind speed and direction etc.
The question is do you know if the weather models have been changed to reflect the buildup of CO2, was this an adjustment to the tables/curves or an add-on adjustment. What if any was the magnitude of the adjustment? I think the answer would help define the magnitude of AGW.
Thank you for providing a great informational service with your website and investigational articles. I signed on to inspect some monitoring sites and expect to get to do so as soon as the snow levels receed here in western CO. In the 80’s I set up a temp. monitoring system with a couple of dozen thermocouples, taking readings every five minutes 24/7 for certain aspects of an IC photolithography process. I ran the database through SQC (Deming) models for graphical display allowing instantaneous deterimation re: being in statistical control or not for any given time. What might be of interest to you is a simple calibration method that produced a simple linear regression calibration offset for each thermocouple. I was monitoring at 0.1 degrees F accuracy, using water melting and boiling temperatures as the calibration points.
REPLY: Thanks, I tried to get Cheesman reservoir last August, but ran out of daylight. That one is well away from development, and I’m hoping you can get it maybe this summer.
A very quick glance at your commentary and graphs indicates to me that you are putting the science first ! This is so critical in a politically charged time when lots of people cannot even agree on basic facts.
I suspect that the current excursion seems to be a large but normal swing in a system where both small and large swings in temperature happen all the time. The sunspot curve shows nothing to be alarmed about yet. I have been trying to find some actual graphs on this issue and the ones on your site were the first I found. We should keep close watch on this, until the current cycle shows that it is a normal one. Since we only have a single record of a Maunder Minimum, we have no idea of how often they happen, and how much of an effect on global temperatures they have.
I am a participant in the Space Solar Power Architecture Study, (SBSPAS) which aims to put Space Solar Power forward to the public and media as a real energy choice, one which has a huge capacity. We believe the best place for solar collectors is in Geosynchronous Orbit (the same place as Communication Sats.)
I have been following the energy issue for 35 years, and see that there are two kinds of greens: ideological and pragmatic. The ideological ones have been opposed to effective and economical energy solutions for the last 35 years. This includes Fission, Wind, and Space Solar. (Note that currently, space solar is not yet economical due to astronomically high launch costs, but that is the result of politics and big aerospace companies who want to continue to have taxpayers pay for expensive throw-away rockets.)
Global Warming or not, we cannot manufacture a new and “clean” energy system if we dismantle the existing industrial and energy infrastructure. Information about Space Solar is available at the National Space Society’s site: nss.org and the Space Frontier Foundation’s site.
You might comment on how small changes in the system create the large swings seen in the graphs. I have also had trouble in trying to print out the enlarged version of the graphs. Even in landscape mode, only about the left half of each graph is being printed.
Any suggestions?
John
Anthony, what does the extra ‘T’ in TiTO2 mean? I thought one of the major ingredients in latex was titanium dioxide (TiO2). I’m not all that ‘up’ on paints but I’m fairly sure there are no single ‘T’ chemical symbols. Is TiTO2 a typo or is the ‘T’ an abbreviation for some common name?
REPLY: It’s a typo, extra character. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll fix it on the next publish.
Question.
If the urban heat island effect is real as I believe it is and that this effect accounts for about half of the temperature increase seen by the ground stations, when will this effect reach saturation, could this have already occurred.
At the start of the 20th century most weather stations were rural and amateur, over the years many of those rural stations have been closed and the majority of the remainder have slowly become urban due to development around them.
Have these mainly urban stations now swamped the few remaining rural stations making the temperature input from the rural stations negligible.
If this is the case could it mean that the UHI effect from say 1998 when temperatures leveled and off and the majority of the stations became urban will not upwards bias any future temperature readings other than making them about 0.4 degrees higher than they actually should be.
REPLY: That’s an interesting idea. But there’s also increased energy use/waste heat to factor in at a city.
One aspect of this whole business of CO2 buildup from human activities that I have not seen mentioned in any blogs is the effect on plant growth rates. In a small book called “Global Warming–a Guide to the Sciences” by four different authors, (available from Amazon) there are data (mainly from Japanese research) showing that growth rates of several different plants and trees respond linearly to increases in carbon dioxide. So at some level, the human-generated carbon dioxide would presumably be completely offset by the increase in plant uptake (if we don’t cut down all the rain forests, etc.) Presumably, eons ago, this is how the fossil fuels were formed in the first place. Why is it that I don’t see any discussion of this offset?
Anthony
You might be interested in A conversation with Janis Dickinson about citizen science
http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/05/05/a-conversation-with-janis-dickinson-about-citizen-science/
I appreciate your scientific approach and avoidance of the rhetoric around the climate change issue, though I wish you would give less space to rhetoric-spouting legislators (the Rohrbacher entry) and position-paper news items and more space to the science. Thanks for an interesting and informative blog. – Tim (www.timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com)
did you know that the weather can change peoples moods? i know it can change mine, but i didnt think much of it til i came across this ebook that has a point of view i had never heard of How the Weather Changed History its pretty interesting
Anthony,
For those of us who comment on several strings and don’t have much of a memory and who are interested in what other people have said on the various strings, it would be nice if we could click on a name and see all their comments.
Plus I have to admit, I like to see my own brilliant remarks occasionally and see if anyone has replied to them.
But please, this is just a minor request. Please keep healthy sir, we love ya.
REPLY: WordPress hosts this site, so I don’t have programming control.
Anthony,
I’m not the brightest bulb in the world but I am free. If you need any grunt work I am available. About my only skill I have that I can see you using is Excel. I’m a pretty good Excel geek.
Anthony,
I thought you would be interested in this historical archive. If you know it already I apologize.
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/brs/nwind24.htm
BJV
Ref; Jim Bushnell – 07.59.08
In the Netherlands the oil refinery’s in Rotterdam (f.e. Shell) deliver CO2 to greenhouses in the Westland (approx. 10 miles away) to increase the production of tomato’s and other vegetables. The newest is to use natural gas as fuel in an engine, produce electricity, deliver the exhaust CO2 back into the greenhouse to increase vegetables production and use the rest-heat also in the greenhouse to increase the air temperature in it. If you are interested I can try to find some calculations.
Hi webmaster!
west antarctic melt debunked!!!
Prevoius changes in temperature almost 3 times the current.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Antarctic_Temperature_Changes_Linked_To_Tropical_Pacific_999.html
Quotes:
1) (supposed proof of global warming) Schneider and Steig estimate that West Antarctica warmed about 1.6 degrees F (0.9 degrees C) over the 20th century.
2) (natural changes much more that our current catastrophy) For example, during a major El Nino event from 1939 to 1942, temperatures in West Antarctica rose by about 6 to 10 degrees F (3-6 degrees C), and then dropped by an estimated 9 to 13 degrees F (5-7 degrees C) over the next two years.
very wonderfull man
The picture that you have at the top of your “projects page” of the two A/C units in dangerously close proximity to one very old stevenson screen and a MMTS unit – are these part of GISS’s USHCN of 1,221 sites in the U.S.?
Anthony, I know you are busy with a lot of things on your plate, but I found something I thought you might be interested in while scavenging around the NCDC/NOAA ftp site. It seems to be several files of pictures from various weather stations/monitoring sites around the country. Maybe there’s a few of the unsurveyed stations included. Each file of pictures includes a text file saying where the station is and some general station topographic details.
The base folder location
In their fight against climate change, Australia’s government is downgrading weather stations
Who needs measurements when you have models?
I believe you have forgotten one important piece: painting latex OVER the whitewash!
[...] we have known for some time, including through the work of Anthony Watts, that many weather stations are poorly maintained and positioned in wrong places – including next [...]
[...] we have known for some time, including through the work of Anthony Watts, that many weather stations are poorly maintained and positioned in wrong places – including next [...]
I once saw a computer model of the magnetic poles path across
our planet over thousands of years. I think it was a project someone
placed on the Discovery channel.
With all the research from such diverse sciences across the spectrum
I would hope that there is a model incorporating a lot of the cyclical
elements for our planet. I know there is one for plate tectonics and
the ocean currents and so on.
Can you tell me if someone has combined all these cycles in a model
that could be used to help us laypeople to see the cycles of our planet.
After all, the Mayans new where our solar system is relative to the galactic
plane. so did the ancient Egyptians and Olmecs.
Please advise.
thanks,
Jer
Anthony,
Is it possible to collect the wind speeds at the time you are doing your transects? I think it would be very interesting to compare transect data at different wind speeds.
Hello Anthony,
I would like your help please, or maybe this is a new (continuing) project.
I would like to see the raw data for the CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa Observatory, and the South Pole Station.
I do not mean the “hourly averages”, that is not raw data,
it has already been processed,
as the description hourly average says.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/04/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/07/mauna-loa-to-improve-the-co2-data/
I realise after following this link, that the “houly average” figures have omitted much of the data already.
http://www.catskill.net/denisenorris/ThoningK_JGR89.pdf
I first saw given on this blog by Dee Norris that the commonly referred to raw data is infact
” selected data”.
Surely the raw data should be avaliable, so that others can look at it without having to accept the “selected data” with it’s assumptions and omissions first.
This post sums up the situation well in my opinion.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/06/post-mortem-on-the-mauna-loa-co2-data-eruption/
I also read a reply here that said, we should not go into Dr. Tans office and demand the raw data.
We should not have to, surely it should be public (and raw) in the first place.
If the actual raw data was made avaliable then it could be put into excel sheets for anyone interested to examine, check, and use.
I have put together an excel workbook from the released MLO monthly mean figures and have plotted various different trends from these monthly means and their rate of changes, both monthly and annually.
To say there are rather a lot of straight or the same shaped lines is an understatement…
If you would like a copy to use as you wish, please let me have an email address to send it to.
Derek.
We have a small group searching for the current UK GISS stations. There are only about a dozen left.. many have been dropped depite still publishing data as far as I can tell. The most strinking thing is that the majority are cited at either civil or militray airports and the rest on remote islands.
Also striking for the ones we have located is that they seem to be pretty well sited, certainly by the standards of your bad examples.
Two questions
1. Are you collecting data for abandoned sites in the US or just current ones?
2. Do you have a list of all the information you would want about a site. If you did and we got organised we might be able to provide you with some properly organised data.
It occurs to me that if recession hit UK has uniformly good sites we might even shame NOAA into spending some money on improving your poor ones!! If they are bad then another nail gets driven into the GISS coffin
Reply: Go to surfacestations.org for an answer to question 2 ~ charles the moderator.
What is the status of the paint project?
What is the status of the solar theory (work with Basil)?
REPLY: Not that you deserve an answer after the sort of things you routinely post about me…but I’ll answer anyway so as to avoid your posting falsifications rooted in your personal dislike of me.
Paint test:
1) On January 4th of last year, 65 MPH winds blew over and damaged one screen, requiring major repair. Causing the second run of the experiment to be interrupted. I repaired the screen and started again in May, but in June we had over 30 days works of fires and constant smoke cover here in CA, which was an abnormal deviation and I stopped again. In late summer I had other more pressing work to do and had no time to start over. Now the screens have been painted again, new anchors installed and run number 2 is slated for January again.
Solar
2) Basil and I are preparing a paper for publication. It will not be posted here until after it has been published.
Now a question for you. What is the status of TCO becoming a real courteous person instead of an internet coward that uses nasty language and denigrates others?
Anthony,
A few years back when I decided to investigate for myself the reality behind global warming one of the things I did was look up the raw data at numerous stations and graph the raw data. That quickly convinced me the the urban heat islands were quite real (as new foliage in the spring had also done).
At any rate I worked up a little Excel spreadsheet to help parse the data available on the NOAA site.
It’s nothing fancy, but I would like to make that available to anyone who wants it and I thought perhaps a project you might be interested in is making one of your links to the NOAA data and to the spreadsheet so that anyone with any interest could pick apart the NOAA data for sites they might be interested in. Another thing I thought might be interesting is to allow readers to send the graphs to you and then assemble an Atlas of all the sites available so that people could compare data that showed the greater temps of the 30’s vs. those that show urban heat islands.
Anyway, if you are interested I would be happy to send the spreadsheet and instructions to any address you provide.
While I’m at it, the urban heat island is very obvious around Birmingham, and Montgomery, AL and Atlanta, GA in the spring when trees start to show their leaves. In the spring I’d be happy to send digital photos with GPS coordinates if you are interested. Trees outside of town are bare and those in town are showing fresh green leaves. This makes a pretty good visual.
Thanks for your time and for the website.
Erm, Anthony, I forgot I was sending a post instead of a private email. Would you please omit my address from the previous post.
Fred
Reply: Done ~ charles the moderator
Non requested Technology Submision:
The Gearturbine, power by barr, with retrodynamic dextrogiro vs levogiro effect, at non parasitic looses system. Details:
http://www.geocities.com/gearturbine
Anthony-
Your website is becoming one of my favorites where I live in very cold rural Alaska. This has been a very cold fall-winter with many new records.
Question:
Would you know if the “daily mean temperature” for a specific date can be tracked over time (e.g. 30 years) as a proxy for valid cooling or warming trends for a given locale?
Thanks,
Ron
Hi guys,
Something’s been bugging me that’s cross-disciplinary between meteorologists and vulcanologists.
I believe it isn’t settled yet as to whether an effusive gooey eruption like Hawaii can affect world-wide weather.
This particularly applies to flood basalts. The columbia river floods have a 600mile long lava flow. I asked some volcano guys for estimates of the ground temp. over what area.
A few 1,000s of sq. miles at a few degrees above normal can set off respectable hurricanes.
The thing this sets off will make hurricanes look like dust-devils.
I think a wide ‘eye’ would be at such a low pressure that the volcanic gases and particulates will go straight up, maybe through the stratosphere?
Leadikng surely to decades without a summer (Tambora erupting in 1815 nixed summer world-wide in 1816, or so the tree rings say).
I hope this intrigues as an alternative to fuming at AGW lies.
As ever,
Sandy
seems like a pretty worthy project, good luck with that.
Dear Mr. Watts:
I am not sure if there is any way to e-mail you directly, so I will try this. You probably have an inside track to Dr. Roy Spencer, and I have a question about the somewhat periodic positive excursions in the lower troposphere MSU data for 2008. The question is: Does he have any theory on what causes it. If one looks at “http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+001″ , especially in the last half of 2008, about every 45-55 days there is a sharp upward spike in temps with a slow return to”normal”. I know this is not the correct thread to address this, but perhaps in the future you could post on this or ask Dr. Spencer to talk about it on his blog.
REPLY: I’ve sent him your question – Anthony
Thanks,
Mike Chamberlin
REPLY2: I have the answer from Dr. Spencer.
Mike, those are called tropical intraseasonal oscillations. They are periods of enhanced (warming) or depressed (cooling) rainfall activity in the tropics, driven by enhanced or depressed evaporation episodes. The usual period is 40-60 days.
-Roy
ATTN: Ron Bowerman
As a matter of fact, it can, and this so is easy to do that you can do this project yourself.
About two year ago I started a study of the temperature records of the remote Quatsino (B.C.) weather station, which is located the northwestern tip of Vancouver Island. It is the only weather station in this region that I could find which has long a continuous, unbroken record that started before 1900. Record keeping at this weather station began in 1895. There is also a lightstation at this site whose elevation is about 14 meters higher that than of the weather station which is 7 meters above sea level.
When I started this project, I wanted to use the data from the lightstation, but unfortunately, record keeping only began in 1979, Record keeping at the nearby Cape Scott weather station began in 1897, but the station recorded is broken and there is no data from ca 1910 to1965. Check http://www.fogwhistle.ca/bclights for the location of these two sites.
For this type of study I recommend that you should use records from a station that start before 1930 and preferably around 1910 when the PDO shifted into a warm phase. You should pick a day when any effects of the ENSO are minimal. For the Pacific Northwest, Sept 21 (i.e, the fall equinox) is ideal since ENSO effects are usually minimal and the photoperiod is12L:12D. You should also keep separate the Tmax and Tmin metrics as recommended by Roger Sr.
For a multi-decadal analysis compute the classical average deviation (AD( since it is a measure of local weather variability whereas any change in the means is related to local long-term “climate change.”
Finally, check the temperature data in the records because there are always some transcriptional errors such as a misplaced decimal point (e.g., 0.5 should be 5.0), transposition of numbers (e.g., 12 should be 21) and the wrong sign (e.g., -6 should 6). Use raw data from the USHCN, and round any computed mean to the nearest whole number.
Here is the most biazzare set of numbers I have encounted in the Quatsino temperature records that I have checked to date. For 1924, the reported Tmin for Sept 23, 24 and 25 are -0.6, -0.6, and -0.6, respectively. Yikes! The Sign of the Beast! How did this joke get past the data quality checker in Ottawa? This could only happen if the data were not checked for quality. Or the observer was a Tory and the checker was a Liberal, i.e., a Satanist to the folks in BC, and was be sent a message.
The above type of analysis is not new and is a modification of that used by A. Masterman in his study of the CET. He analyzed the CET on month-by-month basis using 30 year intervals and reported the results in “Climate Change and Global Warming” GO: http://www.useful info.co.uk/climate_change_global_warming.php
He found that for most months the monthly means of the 30 year intervals had remained unchanged for 300 years except those in the fall which showed significant warming trend, i.e. a seasonal bias, which would impart a slight trendnif the annual means was computed.
Here is a snippet of data from the Quatsino weather station for Sept 21 for the years 1990 to 2008.
Year——-Tmin.
1990——-10.0.
1991——-07.0.
1992——-12.5.
1993——-06.0.
1994——-10.0.
1995——-11.5.
1996——-06.5?
1997——-08.5.
1998——-10.5.
1999——-08.5.
2000——-09.5.
Mean=9.0. AD=+/- 1.7, round to +/- 1.5
2001——-11.0.
2002——-10.0.
2003——-09.0.
2004——11.5.
2005——10.0.
2006——10.0.
2007——09.0.
2008——09.0.
Mean=10.0. AD=+/- 0.7, round to +/-0.5.
Year——-Tmax
1990——25.0.
1991——19.5.
1992——18.0.
1993——17.5.
1994——24.5.
1995——21.5.
1996——14.5?
1997——18.5.
1998——20.5.
1999——19.5.
2000——19.5
Mean=20.0. AD=+/- 2.0.
2001——14.5.
2002——14.5.
2003——15.0.
2004——15.5.
2005——14.5.
2006——14.0.
2007——14.0.
2008——13.0.
Mean=14.0. AD=+/-0.5
Delta T from interval 1990-2000 to interval 2001-2008 interval: -6.0 deg C. WOW!
The data show the neccessity of keeping separate the Tmax and Tmin metrics,
Tmax is a measure of the sea breeze sweeping across the surface of the Pacific ocean. Tmin is a measure of the “forest breeze” (i.e., the land breeze) coming out the old-growth forest and flowing down to the ocean. The trees in the old-growth forest are usually over 100 feet tall and the canopy is closed. This why temperature is cool and relative constant.
The large drop in the Tmax metric shows quite clearly the shift of the PDO into a cool phase. There is not enough data determine the trend value of the cooling, but it look likes Tmax is decreasing and it get really cold in the next few years. Brrr!
Hi Anthony. long time lurkjer, first time poster.
ap[oligies for posting here, but can’t locat any suitable email address for you ? (no doubt iot shere somewhere but my poor eyes have missed it !)
You may have seen this already ? but thought of you and your site when I read it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7878399.stm
oops, I pressed submit before I had the chance to edit my ’speed typing’ post ;)
pls excuse my poor typing – its been a long day……
[...] a very dubious proposition. I’ll explain that shortly, but you can get a piece of the story here with the condition of instrumentation used to declare the greatest catastrophe in the history of [...]
If the conditions around a sensor are generally the same, ie proximity to asphalt, buildings, etc then any trends in the data from that sensor will be valid. The whole urban heat island thing doesn’t matter. This isn’t about absolute temps, it’s about trends. If vast majority of the temp sensors show an increase in temperature over time, then that is real. As for things like nearby AC condensers, it is just as likely that at some other sensor site, a formerly operational AC condenser will have stopped working and it’s absolute readings would be lower.
Peter, your “ifs” are big enough to drive an icebreaker through.
Trends over decades of time are important as you say. Consider these trends in the temperature record: increased urbanization around existing sensors, removal of rural sensors, conversion of well-sited sensors to MMTS-on-a-wire that are placed closer to inhabited buildings. These are trends that all lead to an upward bias. The only potential downward trend I’ve heard of would be increased shading as trees grow… yet that’s been found in the field to be a minor effect.
The whole urban heat island thing matters exactly because this is about trends, not absolute temp. So as urbanization increases around individual sensors and sensor networks, we obtain an upward bias.
In other words, “if vast majority of the temp sensors show an increase in temperature over time” then one must determine if the temperature is increasing, or if there’s something about the sensor network itself that might be a problem. WUWT experiments have demonstrated the latter.
As for nearby AC condensers: pick any location on the planet. Count the number of AC condensers available in 1940, 1970 and 2000. Then count the number that were working in 1940, 1970 and 2000. (30 year spread, since that’s the minimum for “climate.”) And now repeat your assertion that it’s “just as likely” a formerly operational condenser can be found somewhere else.
Please learn to think folks.