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.

pls excuse my poor typing – its been a long day……

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

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!

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

The Gearturbine, power by barr, with retrodynamic dextrogiro vs levogiro effect, at non parasitic looses system. Details:

http://www.geocities.com/gearturbine

Fred

Reply: Done ~ charles the moderator

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

thanks,
Jer