Click image for a live interactive view of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC
Today started off terrible. I slipped in the bathtub last night at the hotel, and strained a back muscle and was so sore that just getting dressed and into the car was a chore. As a result, I was late getting to NCDC this morning. I’ve been popping Aleves today. Fortunately, they had slack built in so the day got started cheerfully with a review of the new Climate Reference Network with the principal scientists. It was a super meeting and I took many notes, I’ll have much to share later.
Next came a briefing on “Climate Science” from Tom Peterson, but I’m afraid I stole his thunder a little bit when I announced that I had already seen his presentation, which included an analysis of the Marysville USHCN Station. See the powerpoint he presented here:aapg-san-antonio-peterson
Then came a personal tour of the Asheville CRN station by Dr. Bruce Baker. In addition to taking visible light photos, I also took matching IR photos from many angles. Bruce and his team were quite impressed with the IR camera I use, and he says he plans to buy a couple in use for siting surveys. He also plans to post the IR photos I took today on the CRN site to show how well the design and siting is free of IR influences.
I’ll have much more on all of this but I still have 8 more stations to survey plus an unexpected customer detour service call Friday to WDNN-TV in Dalton, GA which has some trouble with our weather display system there. So stay tuned for more details on the visit and questions that were asked and answered.
But the big news came with Dr. Baker providing me with a press release (new today) to post here for you all to see. CRN is getting completed and USHCN modernization is starting:
NOAA today announced it will install the last nine of the 114 stations as part of its new, high-tech climate monitoring network. The stations track national average changes in temperature and precipitation trends. The U.S. Climate Reference Network (CRN) is on schedule to activate these final stations by the end of the summer.
NOAA also is modernizing 1,000 stations in the Historical Climatology Network (HCN), a regional system of ground-based observing sites that collect climate, weather and water measurements. NOAA’s goal is to have both networks work in tandem to feed consistently accurate, high-quality data to scientists studying climate trends.
See the full press release here:
press_release_042408_climatereferencenetwork
What this means: No more adjusted data, the raw data from CRN and from HCN-M is the real data and will be pristine, assuming the network is maintained. No more torturous gyrations of FILNET, SHAP, and TOBS. The downside is that a track record needs to be built up, the older data is also going to be revised with USHCN2 algorithms soon, and I’ll touch on that later.
One thing that Debra Braun said to me today in the meeting hit home: “our funding had been cut for the last two years, and we were unable to move forward until this year”. This made me think that perhaps some of the focus the surfacestations.org project brought to illuminating the deplorable condition of the network may have helped a little bit in convincing some legislators that it was time to get serious about allocating funding to complete the CRN and fix the USHCN. A little public embarrassment of the USHCN provided by all of us that have contributed to surfacestations.org may have helped. I’d sure like to think so.
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Baker, Debra Braun, Grant Goodge, and the entire CRN science team, plus Jeff Arnfield, and Steven Del Greco for answering all my questions and taking such careful time with me. Additionally I wish to thank Dr. Karl, and Assistant Director Sharon LeDuc for hearing my concerns and offering ideas.
Everyone there at NCDC made me feel welcome and appreciated.
Most importantly, I want to thank you, my loyal readers and volunteers, because without your help, the trip and presentation I made would not be possible.
I also found this: “…have been statistically corrected in the analysis…” claim completely premature. Methodology may improve in the FUTURE, but the data from the PAST still need to be dealt with. With this data, we’re still talking about a lot of rubbish, which must not be simply swept away under the rug.
Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it. After all, SHAP adjustments are UPWARD (if you can believe that). In other words, according to the NOAA, what has been happening to the stations is that they have been undergoing an artificial cooling trend effect of around 0.15C. [Pause to let the laughter die down.]
This is simply bureaucratic ass covering.
I agree with this interpretation.
And “Pigs is Pigs”.
I thought there was no one left in the world who remembered that one. Have you ever read “All Yankees Are Liars”?
At least some of the posters above got it! The guys at NCDC allowed this data disaster to happen, although some of them could justifiably blame the priorities that were nestablished at the top of NOAA in allocating funding for forecasting and modeling at the expense of insuring that a solid climate base was being maintained as well. Of course, this was before doomsday climatology became fashionable, borne on the reliance of a data record so imprecise that any outlandish projection of future climate could be rationalized with just a little fudging and cherry-picking.
I would be less expansive in letting the stewards of the data off the hook, at least not until their suddenly enlightened attitude toward what was really their job in the first place can be supported by their actions.
Money, as it confers power, corrupts. And the entire field of climate science from academia to industry has been corrupted. Gorebots won’t submit to reality easily, if at all. Anthony’s success in establishing a beach-head is outstanding, but just as I am a skeptic on the threat posed by AGW, I am also a skeptic on the sincerity of NCDC’s epiphany. Where is the confession…the mea culpa…that is usually a requisite for redemption?
I would have no problem in believing NCDC data from now on. I hope GISS temp follows and it should tie up nicely with RSS and UAH. I hope from now on they report their data with more gusto instead of 100th warmest month etc, LOL
Can’t help myself, but I had to comment a 2nd time. Saw the photo of the NCDC building on Patton, and it’s right beside the Fletcher’s dance studio where I took my daughter for 2 years for classical ballet training! I never even knew it was there! This studio is where the former Miss America from the early 60’s came from. If you’d come over I-26 into Tenn., we would have fixed you a big rib-eye, and homemade potato salad/baked beans. Good for that aching back. BTW, you’re my favorite website. Keep up the good work.
REPLY: Thanks for the offer Ron, I just spent the last two days in TN surveying stations along the way, flying out of BNA tomorrow. Sorry we couldn’t meet up.
They do the Anomaly Dance at Fletcher’s now.
Best folk remedy for bad back: resist temptation to rest; remain physically active and skeptical of quick cures.
Best folk remedy for error-prone climate monitoring network: (See above)
Anthony, this is a good move by the NCDC and I think a response to your measured approach to documenting and publishing the perceived problems. I think the most exciting thing about it is that there will be an un- “corrected” data set which I believe will put to rest the NH soaring temperature anomaly. Excellent job!
Clearly a step in the right direction. How about a certification program so that the relative handful of existing good stations can be added into the mix?
Reply – “Canada and Britain are likely next”
(factory workers can be useful..) Hint, hint.
I’ll drink to that.
Obviously not before a bath…Sorry couldn’t resist.
Best wishes on a complete recovery, as one who has suffered they can be really painful.
Backs that is, not future funding CONcerned “scientists”.
Hold on, is that a simily, or a pun, or the truth…
LOL.
but just as I am a skeptic on the threat posed by AGW, I am also a skeptic on the sincerity of NCDC’s epiphany. Where is the confession…the mea culpa…that is usually a requisite for redemption?
I think in this case we’ll have to be satisfied with:
“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so anyway…”
Anthony, press for the sensors to be read at eye level to avoid stooping.
Was anything said about Surface Sea temperature improvement?
Congrats geoff.
REPLY: Nothing on SST, whole different division.
Thanx for the gracious comment, but isn’t it the Song and Dance anomaly? I keep up with where you’re going, so I knew you were busy here. I surveyed Rogersville,Tn for you last year, and I knew that TN was a big void for you. BTW, that Miss America from 1962, Maria Beale Fletcher, lives out your way, in Tahoe, where you surveyed. Her father had a good back well into his 90’s, he could do a back hand-spring in his 90’s.
Will NOAA make the data from this new network directly accessible to the public and open source the code used to process it?
REPLY: The data will be public and I believe the source will be available on request. My experience with the CRN team is that they will provide most anything on request.
[…] has released the following press release [see Watts Up With That for more information on NCDC’s plans and NOAA Employing New Tools to Accurately Measure Climate […]
Peterson’s presentation argues that stations like Marysville are not a problem, since their anomalous warming is removed by the “homogenization” procedure that makes them look more like neighboring stations.
But doesn’t the same procedure mean that neighboring stations will have their “anomalous” non-warming trends equally adjusted by the warming trends of stations like Marysville? Doesn’t Marysville’s measured temperature end up having exactly the same weight it would have without the homogenization procedure?
Marysville probably does an adequate job of telling whether today is hotter than yesterday, or even the same day last year, all of which is worth knowing. But for climate trend purposes, such stations should just be identified and discarded, not made to look artificially homogeneous.
Anyway, congratulations, Anthony, for your success at getting NCDC to at least recognize that there might be a problem here! Does this mean that NCDC will now encourage local meteorologists to get out of their air conditioned offices and help complete the SurfaceStations project? Anthony’s volunteers have done a terrific job, but perhaps now it’s time to start shaming the pros into doing what they’re paid to do.
I’ve been of the opinion that the people involved in all this have wanted to do accurate meaningful work, had plans to improve things but were simply constrained by rules and policies, the “corporate culture” in place, funding and the like. When I first heard of this project, the complaints about the worth of photos and the mistaken impression that it was a bunch of “anti-warmers” trying to discredit things, rather than what I took to be a good-faith effort to find the truth, to improve things.
It has certainly been going as I would have expected; bringing more awareness and impelling positive action. To better know where we are so as to better know how to get to where we’re going. What I see is some people that are so convinced that regardless of the truth (anti-truthers?) immediate action to prevent some expected short-term catastrophe must be taken regardless of the means by which that goal is accomplished.
We know obviously there has been an understanding of the USHCN and its issues, because the CRN project is here to prove it. Now issues have been broght to the forefront, hardly surprising that the efforts of volunteers is having a positive effect, especially given some of the hearings on the subject, and the actions and reactions of the participants in them, etc.
Good Job, glad to see some reason on the part of the .gov
Now to see WHERE they put the new stations and HOW the use both sets of data.
this is very good news. a single set of measuring devices all working in different areas that have been selected and mapped to make a real instrument.
Anthony, you deserve a lot of credit
I apologize on behalf of the insensitive clods who, upon the news that you hurt yourself in a bathtub, promptly suggested that you go to a bathtub. 🙂