Today I obtained the paper: LaDochy, S., R. Medina, and W. Patzert. 2007. Recent California climate variability: spatial and temporal patterns in temperature trends. Climate Research, 33, 159-169 You can download the paper in PDF format in its entirety here: ca_climate_variability_ladochy.pdf
I’ll post more on this paper later, but I wanted to make it available for everyone to read beforehand.
This paper references my good friend and colleague, Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist in its bibliography. As you may recall, I posted on Jim’s work here a couple of months ago. One of the maps that Jim has prepared, seen below, closely matches the mapped results from the LaDochy et al paper.
Great support for UHI. Some interesting adjacent blue and red dots.
In any event, Anthony, you need to add one more thing to the graphic, explanation of the diameter of the dots. I knew what they were, but I have forgotten.
George There’s a key on the right hand side. It represents the warming trend in degrees F per year, as indicated in the title on the graphic.
Anthony:
No, the temperature delta is color coded, although it is difficult to see the shades in this rendition. The diameter of the dots are something else, and it isn’t population size represented, I don’t think. Oh, well, maybe I can get back to the original figure and turn it up.
Anthony, any way to get some wizz kid to put the California data into Google Earth with the same color code but when you click on the dot get some basic information on it plus a graph of the data? The USGS has a great site that gives the latest earthquake feeds and data and when activated goes into GE to display. It is really cool. Even has the continental plates with a vector showing which way the plates are going and the speed. (another thought, do the same for all the climate station data that you collected and audited, attach a picture. Show station symbol by category, good, fair , bad, unchecked.) just a thought.
Anthony, would you please group all 40 (and continuing) of your “How not to measure temperature” series in a new category? The reason I ask is that it would be the simplest way to introduce newbies to the visual evidence of why surface station data are tainted by the UHIE.
Anthony,
Maybe you could produce an overlay of the surface stations (you got all of them for California, don’t you?) with their own circle and color scheme based on the number and severity of their microsite violations.
Folks, these are all excellent suggestions. I’d do them in a heartbeat.
But I’m one man, I have a wife and two small children, a cat who is sometimes more demanding than them, a weather technology business, a daily radio program, a blog, and a nationwide survey project to run on zero budget plus out of pocket expenses. Plus I’m now developing a replacement/complement for the MMTS that is inexpensive and affordable so that it can be used to verify existing sensors or spot UHI. There is only so much Anthony to go around.
Google Earth, great idea, overlays, ditto. Volunteers anyone?
This is what the USGS puts out for earthquakes if anyone cares to check it out. It is really nice.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/catalogs/
It is a GE KML file. Maybe I can find someone there to volunteer to do this since the basic template already exists. I can do simple stuff like load locations of oil wells and such with some basic info into GE but ……… I’ll look into it.
The other take away is, California climate has been going downhill now for a few years. Namely, it’s gotten colder in general. Especially the summers. Oh sure, we had a fall-like triple barrel high in July 2006 that got lots of media attention, but look at the overall trend.
Hey Anthony,
You heed a hand? I kid.
First thing is to see what these dots correspond to on the ground, so I’ll break out a map of california, a ruler and some push pins.
That’ll get me started.
Then we’ll see
Let me revise my previous post. – Maybe I could produce an overlay of the surface stations with their own circle and color scheme based on the number and severity of their microsite violations.
Not a bad idea.
How does the data here correlate with the sites surveyed in the project?
What I really want to know is what is the temperature record over the last century if we only include the sites that rate 1 or 2 on your scale? In other words what if any actual warming is shown by properly operated surface sites?
It looks like someone could pretty much do this for California, too bad this paper didn’t include that as a variable.
I could never get the report pdf to open. I thought at first maybe the download went bad but that wasn’t it. My acrobat reader couldn’t decrypt the code.
I have noticed these spots do not correspond to the USHCN in an obvious way. If these are readings from local weather stations or city hall rooftops – that would make sense to me.
anyway I downloaded a population map of California which makes for an interesting comparison with the temp trend map.
What happens after the survey is completed? Is there a plan to plot the “overall” temperature of the US using only data from stations rated 1 ?