I felt right at home when I walked into Dr. Bruce Baker’s office for the Climate Reference Network (CRN):
Why? Because the first thing they had, front and center, were pictures of every CRN site:
and more of them on other walls:
I asked about them, and the reply was: “every time we put in a new CRN station, up goes the picture”.
I spent and hour meeting with director Tom Karl and Assistant Director Sharon LeDuc, both were in attendance for my presentation on what we’ve all learned from the surfacestations project.
Quote of the day from Dr. Thomas Karl: “You and your volunteers have surveyed almost half of the network on a zero budget. If we had undertaken this, it would have meant preparing several proposals and allocating thousands of dollars”.
Yep.
Bruce also bought lunch, and I had a rousing discussion on instrumentation with him and Grant Goodge. More later.
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Time to form a 501 (c) (3) tax deductible charitable organization.
Sounds like a winner! (The belittling has begun already on the blog-that-must-not-be-named.)
Looking forward to more.
How did those CRN sites look?
REPLY: Unsurprisingly, they looked like CRN1 and 2’s. I was impressed with the diligence they have gone through to ensure siting is not an issue in the present or future. I am more convinced than ever that the CRN will be accurate. I threw about a half dozen what ifs and they had relevant and applicable answers for each issue. It is well thought out.
In other news, Matt Menne reads this blog, and spent and hour and a half with me today. He used several entries posted here in his presentation today on USHCN2. Here is a relevant paper:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100694.pdf
Though there’s another coming in BAMS on USHCN2.
Today was very
cordialfriendly, and there was none of that sniping that we see from the dark and angry. While Menne and I disagreed on some points related to detecting sit biases, I came away feeling that we had both gained from the experience. While USHCN2 is a huge step forward in detecting and correcting for undocumented change points like “sudden asphalt syndrome”, it still won’t catch long term drifts such as moldy MMTS’s or slow urban creep within the station representivity zone.Anthony, maybe you can get some no strings attached $$ from them to help fund your survey?
REPLY: Money can’t buy you love, but access is golden.
Awsome!!! I’m going to buy myself a bottle of wine to celebrate the recognition. Of course, I would have had the wine anyway, but now I have a good rationalization.
REPLY: Rationialzation is the mother of exemption
Time to stock up on popcorn.
Has anyone else seen this yet? This isn’t the Time 1974 article either.
Ooops, I messed that up. I’ll just put in the url.
Interesting article. This isn’t the Time 1974 article either.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html
When they say: “If we had undertaken this, it would have meant preparing several proposals and allocating thousands of dollars”.
They means 100’s of thousands if not millions.
Maybe our government will be shamed into into survaying the rest of the site.
But then again, that would take ten years.
Just opening the bid would have cost tens thousands, and it would take at least five years to get funding approval to release a contract.
The station survey is NOT zero budget.
It’s a voluntary, self funded exercise. Note that the station curators/operators are also not funded for daily operations.
REPLY: point taken, we have all contributed to this, in time, money, sweat equity, and ideas. I think Dr. Karl was referring to zero GOVERNMENT budget. Which by the expression on his face when he said it implied incredulity that we have been able to get this far.
And Hansen would have headed the bid selection committee.
Seriously, IMO the best thing would be the coordination of a unified data structure. There’s these computer thingies nowadays that have no problem with 4 dimensional thousand field sparsely [populated matricies that record every raw and adjusted aspect of any sensor readings.
So far it’s cost me one Italian dinner and an undisclosed amount of drinkin’, gas, and grits money for Anthony.
I’ve gotten far more than my money’s worth. It’s been a bargain.
I may have to get me one of dem thar computer thingies too!
The best part of the Surface Stations Survey, of course, is the data and insight that will come from it. Second best and nearly equally important is the outlet it provide for lay people to help scientific research. Amateur birders through Audubon’s annual bird count or simply monitoring what comes to the feeder provide a lot of data that would be very expensive to do otherwise. Amateur astronomers are probably the group best allied with their professional brethren. Amateurs find a lot of the comets and novae, but they also take on a lot of the grunt work like monitoring variable stars.
It’s very nice to see the SSS earning the respect of the CRN folks. It will be interesting to see the impact that the SSS and follow on projects will have on climatology. Keep up the great work!
…oh, and I guess someone should send a note to Eli Rabbittttt-a, showing that this project, according to Dr. Karl himself, was not the big waist of time Mr. Rabbittttt-a claimed.
PS. I was looking at the Spot-O-Meter, i.e. the link to the picture of the sun, and thought I saw a new sun spot. Turns out it was just a smudge on my laptop screen!
4 dimension? N dimensions in real time, slice and and dice, baby – not even hard, just alittle pricey.
As my Dad used to say years ago Hot Diggity Dog some body is watching.
Congrats Anthony,
Bill Derryberry
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING . . .
Anthony,
Well yes, but not a zero budget for us volunteers. We have put a lot of miles on our vehicles, and spend many hours search for clues as to the location of some of the surface station sensors. NCDC could help cut down on our cost by providing access to the exact locations, contacts, and give us permission to contact the private citizens who are operating some of the surface stations. Can they provide a volunteer log in using a list of vetted volunteers from your list? With just better access to information it could be a big help visiting the last half of the sites on your surface station list.
Russ
REPLY: Working on that very issue, government never moves fast. It’s possible, in discussion. Remember, a year ago they closed of certain data access. Now they’ve invited me to present. I’d say that it progress.
This is dandy, Anthony. You’ve done a fine job of getting a foot in the door.
It’s great that CRN stations might be well sited for future weather/climate monitoring, but I see no recognition of the fact that the surfacestations.org effort has cataloged the totally awful condition of most USHCN stations around the country.
We taxpayers have provided millions/billions of bucks for a “climate monitoring network” that has provided junk numbers. There’s no kinder way to say that.
The USHCN data give us little useful/verifiable information about local or regional temp/climate trends for surface sites in the US.
I’d stand up and salute Tom Karl if he announces tomorrow that we (NASA/NOAA) honestly don’t know squat about historic temperature trends (prior to satellite data).
Until that happens, I think I’ll keep my seat.
@Jeez
That was also my first thought!
“You and your volunteers have surveyed almost half of the network on a zero budget. If we had undertaken this, it would have meant preparing several proposals and allocating THOUSANDS of dollars”.
These govt folks have a habit of grossly overstating temperatures while grossly understating budgets.
I’m also wondering if the NCDC is going to use Anthony’s work to justify further adjusting (downwards) earlier temperature records.
HELP!
To other readers, I have to admit I’m awfully confused with the alphabet soup of US agencies (USHCN, GISS, NCDC) involved in temperature recording and all the station closings etc., etc. Who exactly is responsible for recording temperatures? Is the NCDC finally going to be the official network in the future? Exactly which stations are being (or will be) used?
If someone took a few minutes to guide me out of the woods, in which I’m hopelessly lost, I’d be most grateful.
I have the same problem with the German network. There are stations located at airports, but not used by the German Weather Service. I’ve called the Weather Service, but keep gettin the bureaucratic run-around (so much for the myth of German efficiency). No one can tell me where I can find a list of stations used by the German Weather Service.
A reference list of “climate change” material on the USA Freedom Forum is my contribution to spreading information.
It need the input of people such as those who read and post here to fill it out.
Stay warm, World… runs now to 16 pages.
Will you add to it?
http://www.usafreedomforum.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=308&PN=16
When are we going to see a temperature series computed from the existing class 1 and 2 stations only?
REPLY: I get this question a lot, and the answer is that we don’t have enough stations yet to do a meaningful analysis. There are just a handful of 1/2 stations with poor spatial distribution. Only 44% of the network has been surveyed, and it would seem that a majority would be required in order to get a realistic number of 1/2 stations given the 13% makeup we have now.
Get a load of this nutcase!
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_070504_1.html