Having driven just over 800 miles around North Carolina, getting USHCN and GISS stations, like the one in Fayetteville NC yesterday, I’m pretty tired. But I’m at the middle of the trip, a trip made possible by the donations of many readers and supporters like you. Thank you, most sincerely for funding this trip. I’m getting lots of stations, but I’ve kept the centerpiece private until now.
Tomorrow, by an invitation sent almost two months ago, I am meeting with Dr. Thomas Karl and many of the principal scientists at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, NC. I will also be giving a presentation that will include many of the things presented here on this blog, and some that haven’t been.
Here is the meeting agenda prepared by NCDC: watts-visit-ncdcbb PDF file.
I’ll be relaying a couple of communications and have some questions. Feel free to pose some here. The visit has been labeled as an “exchange of ideas and information”, which I’m all for as long as a hockey game doesn’t break out.
More station surveys in western NC and into Tennessee for the weekend. I hope to survey 20-25 on this trip.
Sign up here if you’d like to survey some in your state: www.surfacestations.org
Or if you can’t do surveys but would like to help there’s always the donation button at right to fund the next trip.
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A place to see in Asheville, if you like astounding architecture at all, is St. Lawrence Basilica, right downtown. They give tours of the Church on Sundays. Or you can probably walk around it after a noon mass any week day. You must, if at all possible, see the belfry stairs, because you will question how they can possibly stay up.
St. Lawrence has a 135 foot by 80 foot elliptical dome of tile masonry, without ANY steel reinforcement. The main floors are on similar vaults (also unreinforced) and the tile vaulted stairs to the choir in the bell towers have no internal supporting columns, and also NO steel reinforcement or wood beams anywhere at all. Really neat.
It was built by Rafael Guastavino, the vault builder who did St. John the Divine main dome in NYC, and Bridgemarket under the Queensborough bridge (and about a 1000 other tile vaulted structures around the country). He aslo worked on Biltmore House there in Asheville.
He is buried in a crypt the main church — almost unheard of since the seventeenth century .
http://www.massintransit.com/nc/stlawrence1-nc/stl3.html
A quicktime 3d panorama is here:
http://www.massintransit.com/nc/stlawrence1-nc/tour.html
It deserves to be better known.
Anthony, be careful. This could be one of those sting operations, where they say you’ve won some fabulous prizes but you have to pick up the winnings in person at some fancy hotel, only to find that when you get there, you get arrested for being a dead-beat dad or you violated parole. But in this case, they could probably say you are feeding the “Deniers” their talking points, which keeps the public from realizing that if we don’t fix the AGW problem now, we are all doomed. This, of coarse, is a direct threat to national security, and you’ll be arrested under provisions of the patriot act, swept away to some secret prison for AGW deniers, and never be heard from again. 🙂
Just kidding. Congratulations on the recognition for the fine work you’ve been doing. I do wonder if the guys over at RC are going to say anything about this?
REPLY: The day was refreshingly candid and straightforward, I was warmly received and had open access. I’ll post more later.
BTW, I can’t imagine a better state to drive 800 miles through in mid-April than North Carolina. For 2 weeks while the azaleas and dogwoods are blooming, there’s no prettier place in the union.
REPLY: It has been a beautiful drive.
Denis: Can you provide a link to the earlier thread? I could perhaps do some in Cornwall…
Offtopic, but interesting, regarding the warming of Mars
Glaciers reveal Martian climate has been recently active
I wonder what could have changed Mars’ climate so markedly?
Since Karl has said he has photgraphs of all the stations, perhaps you should ask him if you could look at them or get copies.
REPLY: I’ve asked that question, and what pictures exist are with NOAA/NWS since they have the responsibility and control of the stations, not NCDC, and I trust the answer.
I’m at work and don’t have time to google the references, but I read recently that temp data from third-world countries has been purged because of bias. I’d like to know what criteria is used to determine how much bias is too much and if that means data from poorly located sites such as those you’ve documented will receive the same treatment.
Perhaps you could do an infrared picture essay of Big Al’s home and call it “How Not to Tell Others How to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint”
You have done yoeman’s work with your surfacestations audit effort.
But, here’s a question. If each station has a person or organization responsible for it, why hasn’t the the NCDC simply distributed an e-mail to all of those people and requested the same basic information you are getting through the audits (measurements, photos etc)?
If each station has a keeper/volunteer to chaperon its maintenance, why wouldn’t the organization that relies on the data, and likely paid for the equipment, have the authority to conduct an internal audit of all stations?
And why would that organization allow such poor installations to exist? Proper installation of new equipment should be mandatory and verified by documentation.
Just a thought.
REPLY: I’ll have a post that addresses this.
I found the reference, it’s from “Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess”:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9340
“In 2003, some tropical balloon data, largely from poor countries, were removed because their records seemed to vary too much from year to year. This change also resulted in an increased warming trend.”
everyone else who has never eaten grits.
Greasy farina.
The day was refreshingly candid and straightforward, I was warmly received and had open access. I’ll post more later.
Oh, boy, I can’t wait. (I hope you rubbed their face in “Yilmaz”!)
Anthony,
I echo Bob Tisdale’s appeal for a simple explanation of NCDC’s adjustments of station temperature data and their significance. A while ago, I became curious about the temporal and spatial variations in surface temperature and chose to examine the average monthly data for the last century (1987 – 2005) from several stations. I was perplexed by the significant differences between the monthly and annual temperature trends for a specific station. The differences in temperature trens between nearby (< 100 miles) stations was equally perplexing. I lost interest in my project when I realized that NCDC’s adjustment may have confounded the data.
Recently, I revisited the data from one station that I had previously selected (Fort Morgan, CO – 053038). This time, I elected to examine TMAX and TMIN compared to TAVG. I was surprised to the stability of the step-wise trends in both monthly and annual data for the difference between TAVG and TMEDIAN (delT). It showed the following: 1) 1897-1912: annual delT ~ +1deg F, 2) 1913-1965: annual delT ~ -0.4 deg F, and 3) 1965-2005: annual delT ~ 0.0.
REPLY: I’ll send it up the food chain.
The effect of the 1912 step-wise change varied month-to-month but was significant for all twelve months. The effect of the 1965 step-wise change primarily affected winter months, i.e., DJF. Lesser adjustment in 1987 and 1996 were apparent.
It’s not apparent to me whether TAVG, TMAX, TMIN or all of the above were adjusted. As far as I am concerned, the data for the Fort Morgan station is useless.
[…] Road Trip Update: What I’m doing Wednesday and Thursday Having driven just over 800 miles around North Carolina, getting USHCN and GISS stations, like the one in Fayetteville […] […]
“REPLY: Well if you have mbile email, drop me a line to info [at] surfacestations.org”
Sorry I missed you. I haven’t yet lept into the 21st century with mobile email yet. Was a lovely evening for an autocross under the lights at the Western NC Ag Center though. Spectacular drive up there too. Just gorgeous this time of year.
Congrats on all the accomplishments and have a safe trip back.
Matt
If you like pancakes and maple syrup, you should definitely take Cracker Barrel for a spin. Especially since those are probably banned substances in California.
Make sure it’s REAL maple syrup, though!