If you had the task of choosing where to put a climate monitoring thermometer here at the USHCN Climate station of record #469683 in Winfield, WV where would you choose to put it?
Certainly the parking lot would not be a good choice. Maybe up in the grassy area behind the security fence? That would be my choice. Winfield is classified as a “rural” station so the grassy area would be a bit closer to the representivity for the area. It would also remove the sensor from the heat sinks of the parking lot and the building.
But then there’s that cabling issue with the MMTS sensor which this station has, it is a bit tough to trench through the parking lot up to the grass. So that leaves only one “logical” choice for placement.
Click image for a supersized closeup view
Surefacestations.org volunteer surveyor Michael Caplinger captured this location in his recent survey of West Virginia stations. As NOAA has already established with their training manual for the Baltimore USHCN station, rooftops are a far less than ideal place, and tend to create new temperature records where none actually exist.
According to the survey form submitted by Mr. Caplinger, he says:
“The new lock and dam opened in 1997. Prior to construction the weather station was possibly located about 100 yards West-Southwest, on land removed/altered for new lock. Reported coordinates appear incorrect for current location.”
According to NCDC’s MMS database, it appears that the MMTS came into being in August,1986, as prior to that they list the equipment type as “unknown”. That’s a good bet for the conversion date from Stevenson Screen, as MMTS did not start being implemented until the mid 1980’s
Also from MMS, and indication of the likely date of roof placement when the lat/lon and elevation changed significantly:
[1999-09-22] 2007-06-10 38.527220(38°31’37″N) -81.916110 (81°54’57″W) GROUND: 611 FEET N/400/FEET PUTNAM 03 – SOUTHWESTERN EASTERN (+5)
Location Description: LOCK AND DAM, OUTSIDE & 1.2 MI SW OF PO AT REDHOUSE, WV
[1986-08-30] 1999-09-22 38.533330 (38°31’59″N) -81.916670 (81°55’00″W)GROUND: 571 FEET — PUTNAM 03 – SOUTHWESTERN EASTERN (+5)
Location Description: LOCK AND DAM, OUTSIDE & 1.2 MI SW OF PO AT REDHOUSE, WV
In looking at the temperature record from NASA GISS, one sees what appears to be a step function around 1986, when the station changed to MMTS, seen in the data plot:
Click image for original GISTEMP plot
I downloaded the data, and there is an entire year of missing data in 1986, and the data resumes in 1987. This coincides with the equipment change noted in the NCDC MMS record on 8-30-1986. When I plotted the data and ran some curve fits and baseline value analysis on the two data segments, the differences became more apparent:
Click for a full sized plot
The baseline values between the two curve segments pre and post 1986 differ by 0.51°C, The slopes also differ significantly.
Looking at the GISTEMP plot for Homogenized data, you can note that the data has been shifted upwards a bit in the past, but the step function at 1986 remains:
Click image for original GISTEMP plot
When I plot the homogenized data, it can be clearly seen that there has been no change to the 1987 to 2007 segment of data, but that the 1905-1985 segment has been adjusted such that the early 20th century is a bit warmer, dramatically changing the slope for that segment.
Click for a full sized plot
The baseline difference between the two segments is less, now at 0.31°C
Here is the complete data set, with before and after Homogenization adjustment applied by GISS:
Click for a full sized plot
Note that unlike some other adjustments of rural stations we’ve seen where the past has been adjusted cooler (such as Cedarville, CA) in this case the past has been adjusted to be warmer, resulting in a slight cooling trend for the last century.
It makes no sense to me why GISS would adjust the past warmer. What could account for it? Certainly population growth wouldn’t be a factor, especially for a rural station. UHI doesn’t make any sense either.
Just for fun, I thought I’d try an experiment in data adjustment based on what I know about this station’s history. That isn’t much, but we do know these two dates:
1986 – MMTS installed, and likely moved closer to building due to cable issues
1999 – MMTS moved to rooftop of new locks building, based on lat/lon and elevation change
So based on that history, and having a handle on some other biases I’ve seen at the 500+ USHCN stations I’ve examined thus far, I decided to provide some offsets, based on what I believe a reasonable estimate of the bias might be:
1986-1998 = 0.5°C for MMTS to building proximity
1999-2007 = 1.0°C for MMTS on rooftop
Applying those adjustments and comparing to the GISS Homogeneity adjustment we get this:
Click for a full sized plot
Applying my station history based estimated placement biases as offsets post 1987, I come quite close in slope to that of the GISS homogeneity adjustment. My slope (dark blue) is actually just a tiny bit cooler than GISS. Some might say that my method uses too much “guesstimating”. But how is it any worse really than applying a broad brush algorithm blindly to the data, adjusting the far past, and without dealing with the step function that was introduced when the MMTS was installed? While my method is spur of the moment, it does have something the GISS adjustment doesn’t; adjustments based on known history and known measurement environment. GISS certainly does not know the history or measurement environment in the period that their automated algorithm applied adjustments. NCDC doesn’t have the station history for that period online either.
Looking for another nearby rural station to compare to, the closest I found was Spencer, WV, at 58 kilometers away. It also has a cooling trend, a bit sharper, and most likely has not been placed on top of a concrete building, though the current location is also not the best, at a Water Purification Plant:
While Spencer’s placement at a water plant presently (since 2005) probably would take the “rural” portion out of the record, the previous portion of the station history appears to be truly rural. Up until 1995, it spent most of it’s life at USDA SOIL CONSERV, WITHIN & 0.5 MI SE OF PO AT SPENCER, WV. From experience, I tend to view places such as Ag farms like this as being fairly good sites that don’t get much if any encroachment. This I would tend to believe the Spencer, WV record as showing a true cooling.
So the question is, can we use station photographs and station history, combined with some bias estimates that should be quantifiable either by experiments or direct measurements on site to come up with a more realistic adjustment for USHCN stations? While this is only one example that appears to work, I think the idea bears exploring.
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This is a great site but those little pop up boxes that come up when you mouse over them are a royal pain in the rear.
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REPLY: You can disable them, just click on the little gear icon in the popup for options
Anthony,
To add support to your theory regarding the instrument change in 1986, the NCDC station history file lists the instrumentation as CRS and MN, MX from 1900 through 8/29/1986. It then switches to MMTS on 8/30/1986.
That squares with the info from NOAA. It also confirms your assumption that a Stevenson Screen was used prior to 1986.
Also on the NOAA MMS page under the updates tab for Winfield Locks it states “EQUIPMENT MOVED 100 FT N, 10. SHOW LAT/LON TO SECS, CHG REMARKS” under the date of 9-22-1999.
They sure do make it difficult to piece this info together.
GISS adds yet one [more] adjustment, Homogenization. It is that one which I’m questioning.
That’s when you shake up the data so hard all the discernible errors disappear.
i would place it on top of the flag pole protected somehow from direct sunlite.
You mean like the politicians?
I don’t understand why they haven’t changed to the remote data transmission (wireless) that we are capable of today.
The NOAA/CRN is supposed to do just that. It goes on line in a few months. We’ll have to wait and see. (They have photoed all the stations. We’ll have to see if those photos are available to the public.)
So the question is, can we use station photographs and station history, combined with some bias estimates that should be quantifiable either by experiments or direct measurements on site to come up with a more realistic adjustment for USHCN stations?</cite
Umm…. only if they confirm the AGW consensus. Otherwise, forget it.
Just compute the temp gain from the classes of stations individually.
There are plenty of class 1 sites to give you a good picture of what has actually happened to the temperature, and it would be interesting to see a graph of temp anomaly vs class.
Anthony
Just a suggestion to perhaps compare an analysis of the GISS surface temp data to Satellite data and the NOAA US surface temp data to Satellite temp data.
If I recall correctly, doesn’t the RSS data have numbers for the Continental US? How easy would it be to compare that to the US surface data from the NOAA for the same period..
It would be interesting to see if there is a significant correlation between troposphere temps and US surface temps, to possibly demonstrate how far out of whack the GISS surface temps are.
Hum – sorry, just kiddin’ – now I have an idea for a real good job for Jim Hansen.
He should join DowJones Newswires and take care of calculating
the DJIA. Should then be 25,000 by now.
On the other hand, maybe Jim was already contracted for the birth/death model
numbers within the unemployment data by the BLS. On a Richter scale of meaningless statistics it tops GISS by far.
Anthony, here is what is hard to understand. You have documented lots of really bad errors in siting, which seem to have a warm bias. Also the adjustments seem to have a warm bias. And yet, the US ground station record as a whole doesn’t seem to have that much of one. Would you not have expected it to have more, and show more warming?
It more or less corresponds to experience that recent weather is warmer and milder than (say) the fifties. In addition, it shows a degree of warming which is milder and more reasonable, and more in line with balloon and sat data, than the ROW records.
So how come, if there are all these warming biases built in, that it does not appear to greatly exaggerate the warming? And why does it do so, if it does, so much less than the ROW station data? Or do you take the view that, absent these biases, the US record would actually show static or cooling temps? Seems implausible.
REPLY: I haven’t taken any view on this yet becuase I’ve been waiting to get a majority of the stations in USHCN surveyed so that we have both spatial distribution and significant quantity of CRN1 and 2 rated stations to analyse
I love your website, Anthony. Much of the technical talk goes over my head, even though I’m an engineer (electrical). Or maybe *because* I’m an engineer.
I have to ask this question, though. Why do the officials who gather data, when confronted with obvious “oops” situations, then devise some unproven and often controversial adjustment without ever running some simple experiments to prove their validty?
AnonyMoose points out a little portable USB measurement stick. Leaving aside the unit-to-unit absolute accuracy (probably +/- 2 or 3 degrees C, but a simple all-at-once calibration would bring them all into line), one could buy a few of these portable devices, and place them in the various locations (on the flag pole, on the roof, on the lawn, on the building, etc.), gathering simultaneous data points at different locations. Gather the data, then actually SEE the temp deltas.
Instead, we have these fiats from some obscure, anonymous hack with zero data to prove the assertions. If you question one of the government nazis, then you’re “a denier.” Stop guessing and take the data! After all, isn’t this about “science”?
What am I missing?
REPLY: Continuing of funding and job security