USHCN Version 2 – prelims, expectations, and tests

This is beyond silly. Why have an algorithm ( a one-word oxymoron, by the way ) triggered on a 0.5 degree centigrade change threshold where direct annual or more frequent observation would be more effective in identifying circumstances that would alter the climatic observations? Why use a formula or model when direct empirical observation is so obviously superior? Laziness, perhaps?

The more adjustment I see, the more I believe in MAN-MADE global warming. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge

Here’s what I just don’t get–if you look at Anthony’s four plots at the top, the unadjusted trends are all cooler than the adjusted trends, pretty much everywhere in the country. Yet, it’s painfully obvious to anyone who looks at any actual data (pictures, individual temperature trends) of the USHCN stations that the predominant non-climactic influences on stations are urbanization and sighting (both positive biases), which should mean that the overall USHCN adjustments should make trends slightly cooler, if anything.
I think the TOBS adjustment is too large, and has the wrong sign in many cases, and the UHI/microclimate adjustments are too small. I’m betting the US temperature trend is 30-50% overstated, just as Michaels and McKitrick showed by correlation with economic indictors in their paper. And if NOAA would open their eyes they’d see it too, instead of burying their heads in computer modeling corrections instead of actual data.
REPLY: FYI the four plots at the top were provided by NCDC in the PowerPoint presentation available in the link in the article. I captured the image and presented it.

You can make your own graphs at their site with the USHCN 2 data here.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

Lets play around with NCDC’s graph maker with trend lines.
Let’s use the top 2 warmest years 1934-1998
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1322:53:081667785644.gif
Trend is 0.01 degF/Decade
1895-1933
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1322:58:106560974121.gif
Trend is 0.21 degF/Decade
1999-2007
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1323:00:306210327148.gif
Trend is 0.22 degF/Decade
1895-2007
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1323:06:482291259765.gif
Trend is 0.11 degF/Decade
Lets try this one.
1921-1980
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1323:20:243466186523.gif
Trend is -0.12 degF/Decade
1895-1920
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1323:22:589812011718.gif
Trend is -0.12 degF/Decade
1981-2007
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-May1323:25:454860534667.gif
Trend is 0.59 degF/Decade
Pick your cherry, just don’t choke on the pits.

Appears to be a small sunspot forming (Cycle 23?).
http://www.spaceweather.com/

Seems somewhat medieval and a waste of money/resources to insist on using ground stations in limited locations on land to attempt to determine global temperature.
Prior to the space age it was all we had, but since 1979 we have a better, more cost effective method. Why does NOAA and NASA, of all agencies, continue to insist on using ground based, limited coverage, easily biased systems in preference to satellites and take the measurements in preference to the available satellite data (three separate, and I assume independent, sources)?
Only reason I can think is that the ground data is more amenable to manipulation to allow them to provide the data they want.

I agree with Bill, you have to maintain the quality by having a look at what is happening to the sites.
And Crosspatch has a grea idea, put a fiberglass beam 100′ up every cell tower and mount a sensor that takes hourly readings and phones them in once a day to a central location. Each would have a known altitude above sea level to account for any problems that causes.

Off topic:
The April GISSTEMP anomaly has just been released. The figure is 0.41 . This is lower than their March figure of 0.60. (This had been previously announced as 0.67)

The presentation shows that the TOBs adjustment will add 0.2C to the trend (from 1920 on for both the Maximum and Minimum temperature).
The new Homogenization adjustment will add a further 0.45C to the Maximum temperature and 0.0C to the Minimum temperature trend (from roughly 1900 on).
The total adjustments will add approximately 0.65C to the Maximum raw data trend and 0.2C to the Minimum temperature trend.
I note the previous charts I have seen had only adjusted the average trend by 0.55F up to 1999 so these new adjustment add a further 0.25C to the previous adjustments (assuming I can do the math right when averaging the Maximum and Minimum. )
Given there is no increase in the adjusted average US temperature data since 1934, please show us the raw data as well (given the trend is artificially increased by approximately 0.5C to 0.6C.)
And Anthony, please E-mail NOAA and ask them to provide the average temperature data (and not obscure everything with separate Maximum and Minimum trends which are supposed to be averaged out.)

Sorry, I did the math wrong, the new adjustments add 0.45C to the raw data trend (not 0.5C to 0.6C as I wrote above) but still up 0.15C from the previous adjustment regime.

Any statistician will tell you 10 samples is a huge improvement over 1 sample. 100 samples is a modest improvement over 10 samples. 1000 samples has no real significance over 100 samples.
The point being we don’t need 1200 stations of questionable quality to tell us the temperature trend, we need a 100 good stations. The other 1100 stations will just tell us how badly they are corrupting the trend shown by the 100 good stations.

rex said: “This might keep J Hansen on the ball for May
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ go to 600mb graph and Gisstemp 0.32C with sea data and the correct 250 Km radius. 0.http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=4&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year
Rex, your URL’s don’t seem to work.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com

Replly to Philip_B (08:07:02) :
“Any statistician will tell you 10 samples is a huge improvement over 1 sample. 100 samples is a modest improvement over 10 samples. 1000 samples has no real significance over 100 samples.
. . . we don’t need 1200 stations . . .”
I believe your point would be valid if we were talking about samples from the same population. However, the station in Lampass may be different from a different population than the one at Detroit Lakes. Yes, they are both on the same planet, but climate trends in one place may not match climate trends in another place. I have not seen a good statistical discussion of how many “samples” are needed to determine global climate direction. Of course, that raises the question whether it is legitimate to talk about THE global climate when climate changes might be regional.

I wanted to add that in thinking about my suggestion that a network be built on communications towers, I put a lot of thought into why it is done as it is currently. I believe the methodology surrounding these observations got its start in the late 19th century. At that time there were no radio towers. The primary concern would have been to obtain a reliable stream of data. That means the data measurement had to be recorded by a person who could gain access to it safely in any weather. If an observer of the 1890’s were required to climb a telegraph pole in freezing rain, I have a feeling they might have missed some data points or possibly made up data for insertion into the record. So you had to make the placement such that it was reasonably accessible to the observer under all conditions.
Today we have electronic devices that can measure and transmit data either by wire or wireless communications. Those data can now be automatically recorded and stored by remote electronic devices and reviewed at the leisure of the observer. There is no longer any requirement that the data be accessible every day. Access would be required only in case of malfunction and having a pair of measuring devices in each housing would allow a visit to be scheduled.
So basically, being able to walk to the thermometer is no longer a requirement today and taking the measurement 100 feet into the troposphere might give a better idea of “climate” vs. local micro-climate.

REPLY: I already posted but thanks, see main page.
Off topic, but important.
THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE
19 South LaSalle Street #903
Chicago, IL 60603
phone 312/377-4000 · fax 312/377-5000
http://www.heartland.org
MEDIA ADVISORY: Polar Bear Decision Defies Scientific Evidence
Author: Dan Miller
Published by: The Heartland Institute
Published in: News Releases
Publication date: May 2008
(Chicago, IL — May 14, 2008) The U.S. Department of the Interior decided today to list polar bears as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act. The decision was based on predictions that future global warming will negatively affect polar bear populations.
Experts contacted by The Heartland Institute note global temperatures have not risen in the past 10 years, and scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict temperatures will cool for at least the next 10 years. Moreover, polar bear populations have been increasing during recent decades.
The expert statements below can be quoted directly, or the experts can be contacted for additional information at the telephone numbers and email addresses provided below.
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just taken its place alongside Miss Cleo and the Psychic Friends Network in terms of a complete divorce from scientific reality. FWS apparently believes it has the clairvoyance to forecast sharp declines in polar bear populations even though temperatures for most of the past 10,000 years have been warmer than today and polar bears have flourished. Moreover, global polar bear populations have been rising for decades, even as temperatures have recovered from the end of the Little Ice Age 100 years ago.
“The only plausible basis for ruling polar bears as threatened is blind faith in alarmist computer models that have been no more accurate than Chicken Little’s claim that the sky is falling. Compare the alarmist computer models to the real world. Global temperatures have not risen one bit during the past decade. Before that, for 30 of the preceding 50 years, global temperatures fell. And now even IPCC scientists are predicting global temperatures will cool for at least the next decade.
“Only by completely ignoring real-world scientific evidence and jumping head-first into the world of special-interest group propaganda can one justify listing polar bears as a threatened species.”
James M. Taylor
Senior Fellow for Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute
taylor@heartland.org
941/776-5690
“This decision represents a conflict between politics and science. Polar bear populations have been increasing in recent decades, so there is no current problem. The concern is based on forecasts. However, the government forecasts used to support the decision violate basic scientific principles, and thus provide no scientific support for the listing.
“There are no scientific forecasts that would suggest a reduction in polar bear populations. It would be improper, then, to designate polar bears as endangered. Application of proper forecasting methods suggests a small short-term rise in polar bear populations followed by a leveling off. We provide full disclosure to support these statements at publicpolicyforecasting.com and at theclimatebet.com. In the long term, science will prevail.”
Scott Armstrong
Professor
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
armstrong@wharton.upenn.edu
215/898-5087
“Canadians, who manage two-thirds of all polar bear populations, just reviewed their listing status and decided not to up-list the bear to a more serious status. Activists are attempting to politically interfere and change that reasonable and informed decision so today’s U.S. listing would not look extreme, unwarranted, and political, which it is.
“The listing is lunacy because carbon dioxide emissions–the real target of activists–are surging worldwide, and unless all other countries cut their carbon emissions, atmospheric concentrations will continue to rise even if the entire West shuts down its emissions. If the United States were to go 100 percent CO2 emissions-free, just the projected growth in China’s and India’s emissions would replace U.S. ‘savings’ in about a decade.
“The self-inflicted economic wound of making the use of carbon fuels more expensive in the United States than in China will merely transfer carbon emissions and jobs to that regime, which already has one of the worst environmental records in the world, and will deploy the profits toward the continued expansion of its own network of uniquely dirty, coal-fired power stations, to the detriment of the environment, without any benefit to the climate or polar bears whatsoever.”
Robert Ferguson
President
Science and Public Policy Institute
bferguson@sppinstitute.org
703/753-7846

giss is in. also note that march was adjusted downward.

The private weather station in Joseph, Oregon records that the current unseasonally (NOAA description, not mine) high temperature was still 3 degrees cooler than this same time last year. The NOAA prediction was 10 degrees hotter than it actually was (86 versus 76).
Are these stations that form the bulk of the data private? I don’t think the Joseph station is on the grid.

I am grateful to the reply from “The Inquirer”. I agree, I think, that the size of the sample needed will vary greatly depending on the task.
Imagine you were asked (in the days before planes and satellites) to produce a relief map of the United States – how many readings would you need to take? You would not need to measure the height of absolutely every square inch, but just make a sample. But, on the other hand, a sample of just 100 measures of height above sea-level would not give a decent map. I would guess that you would need a sample containing many millions of measurements before a detailed map could be produced .
Perhaps you were asked to work out the average height above sea level of the USA. In how many places would you need to take data in order to come up with a reasonable estimate? To my simple mind that problem seems very similar to trying to find the average temperature – except of course that, unlike height, temperature is constantly changing.