Many of you have followed my “how not to measure temperature” series showing many examples of the folly of thermometer placement in the USHCN network. But what about the rest of the world?
One of the most important things we look for is finding weather stations that are as far away as possible from human influence, so that they can resolve the “climate signal” unhindered and without need for retroactive data adjustments.
Weather stations on a remote mountaintop would seem to be a good candidate. Fred Harwood writes to me with one such example of a remote mountain station: Pointe Helbronner, Mont Blanc in the Alps, near the France/Italy border at 3462 meters high, about 11,358 feet.
Fred trekked to the top, to get this photo for us:
The temperature sensor is properly mounted inside the round louvered white radiation screen on the left side of the mast. The remote weather station also has a live webcam, as you can see in the photo (inverted glass dome) You can see a live webcam of this view here:
The latest image is a few days ago, so there may be a transmission problem.
The remoteness of such a station surely is impressive. Getting an accurate temperature measurement devoid of human influence would almost certainly be guaranteed, and we would not have to worry about nearby objects, people or buildings at such a remote location.
Well, maybe not….
And you can see more of the station and how it is situated (on the roof of a building) here in this YouTube video:
I suppose I’m not surprised. I’ll point out that this likely is not an official climate station. I don’t see it listed in GISS or NCDC. But the point remains, why go to all the trouble of a research quality temperature shield if you put the temperature sensor on a rooftop within reach of tourists? I’m sure that wood has an albedo of consequence and dozens of tourists also create a warm air pocket.
Anthony:
Way off topic, but you are always on about the influence of volcanos on the Antarctic Sea Ice
I think this image is a good illustation of this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/antarctic.jpg
– it would be interesting to see the positions of the volcanos relative to the ice-free areas…
The first image had me cheering – but I did wonder at how long the cable might be to power it considering the sensors are so close to buildings because of this issue.
However subsequent images showed me the error of my perception. Actually, what do they use – a generator or solar ?
I too hope that your fire hazards are resolved, Anthony.
Actually, the snowfields are troublesome! When you climb high mountains on a hot day, even cold but rather slow winds, sweeping up or down from large snow or ice areas can be very cold indeed and can force you from a state of transpiration to a state of high demand for protective clothings!
Can’t help but to smile. I had a barbeque at this station a few years back. The wine, the entrecôte and the lettuce was excellent. The temperature reading at that particular day may not have been excellent…
Okay, with the possible exception of satellite data, it is really tough to get high quality & consistent readings of historical temperatures. However, how much do care about the specific average temperature, up or down a degree or a small fraction? Are we not more concerned about temperature’s effect on climate? And can we get a handle on that through means other than specific temperature readings? I have often thought that the length of the growing season would be a good indication of trends — at least for places that winter visits. I once did a google search for a comprehensive and understandable analysis of growing season lengths, I came up empty. Any thoughts on this?
Anthony, you say: “There are published World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standards for thermometer placement. This violates them, simple as that. Those standards exist for a reason, and the reason is so that the data is free of any potential bias and therefore free of arguments like this one over whether or not the data is or is not biased and to what degree. Adherence to standards negates the issue. Unfortunately we keep seeing this poor placement again and again. – Anthony”
But you then say:
“I’ll point out that this likely is not an official climate station. I don’t see it listed in GISS or NCDC.”
So, you point out there are (rightly) standards for official stations, and then you complain a non standard station is non standard??? Huh??? Run that by me again will you 😉
REPLY: The standard applies to stations whether they are used for synoptic forecast analysis (such a s a standard USA COOP station)or if it has been chosen to be a climate station. I’ll point out that the USHCN network was hand picked from what was considered the “best” USA COOP stations in the early 1990’s. Unfortunately they only examined the length of record and number of station moves as the criteria for making it USHCN. GISS and HadCRUT also have not examined station instrument placement characteristics.
So having instrument placement right in the first place is key, since you never know what someone will do with the data later. The standards exist to ensure accurate readings, and should be followed.
Interesting, thnx for the post.
Quality has a price.
I bet it costs the hell to do maintenace on that station.
Still, better a few quality stations and quality data, then a load of rubbish.
Seen this yet ??
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1562
Hi Anthony,
Did you see this blurb from NOAA? Any truth to it or is it another example of choosing data to get an end result? Thanks for any info.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/16/america/SCI-120.php
OT from sayanything:
http://www.policynd.org/Blog.asp?ID=39
Seems ethanol may not be economically viable at yesterday’s corn prices. Who da thunk.
An Inquirer,
ecos are complaining bout this continually. Of course, this varies from area to area almost on a yearly basis. In general, the growing season HAS lengthened in the last 30 years. Of course, more CO2 helps plants grow better in harsher conditions, so, all that lengthened season is not necessarily temp based.
A better idea is altitude (which is also affected by co2) and areas of historic farming. Areas like Greenland, Alps, and others around the world show that, while we have currently warmed, the Medieval Optimum and Roman Optimum were both warmer.
This site references a load of geo and bio type current and paleo studies:
http://www.co2science.org/
This newest image from Icecap is just too good to pass up:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SOLAR_HATHAWAY.jpg
Is this how anyone can keep on saying their forecast is accurate?
Jerry (00:26:37) :
Re, FatBigot’s (Wonderful name, Sir) query about the errors in measurements. Basically there are two types of error, random and systematic…
Thank you kindly, Mr Jerry. I knew I was right to don the dunce’s cap. It will remain atop my balding pate for the foreseeable future. But fear not, my ignorance will be no handicap to my bigotry.
The more I research global warming, the more I believe its a massive and carefully orchestrated con job.
Thanks for the post.
Brent from Calgary – I’ve only had one previous summer in Saskatchewan, but this one defintely feels cooler – only one, maybe two days with a temperature in excess (and not by much) of 30 C so far. But the farmers that have farmed here since the first farms on the prairies told me the same – this is a cool summer (so far).
Re The Engineer’s post
I have read a couple of Stephen Wilde’s articles and this one is singularly clear. I posted a couple of days ago asking for comments from the scientific community on his article suggesting that with a negative PDO and weak TSI we may expect to see the AGW theory put to bed and it would be great to hear what people think about this latest article “Greenhouse Confusion Resolved”. Perhaps a grand title given the complexity of the climate but certainly one of the most lucid articles I have read. Moreover it seemed to fit with much of what I have read on this blog and over at CA.
The weather station isnt the only problem with this installation.
Notice all those funny looking things mounted all around the weather station? Those are radio and TV transmitting antennas. So now we have two more issues.
First. How accurate are the weather station instruments in a high Radio Frequency environment? Have they even been tested for an RF environment?
Second. If this was the United States and I as a site manager allowed the general public this close to transmitting antennas I would get a severe reprimand from the FCC. Reprimand as in, fine and loss of license.
Anthony, this is OT, but you might find this article at CO2Sceptics by Stephen Wilde to be interesting GREENHOUSE CONFUSION RESOLVED
To Paul H.
My thoughts exactly.
Leon Brozyna:
How can they keep their job? And they would not have put any real confidence in the date of minimum.
The maximum count is what all the predictions are about. So the abyss of their embarassment waits until, say early 2013 when that peak is reached.
The Russians and Clilverd, perhaps an continental Indian or two, not all of whom are recognized as making ‘scientifically verifiable’ predictions, are the only potential winners left standing.
Somehow, all this fight regarding AGW vs long term climatic cycles reminds of another war within the scientific community – that one was about math –
in the late 18xx years was a fight between the supporters of the quaternion algebra vs the complex algebra – the supporters of the complex algebra won.
I allways had the impression that the quaternion expression of Maxwell’s law
is better to understand than the complex expression .
After nearly 150 years of the wrong way gone, the quaternian algebra is preferred again (since about 1990)
From Wikipedia: ( when it’s about math, wikipedia is OK so far)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_quaternions
(Quote)
Quaternions are often used in computer graphics (and associated geometric analysis) to represent rotations (see quaternions and spatial rotation) and orientations of objects in three-dimensional space. Certain fractals can plot in quaternion coordinates. They are smaller than other representations such as matrices, and operations on them such as composition can be computed more efficiently. Quaternions also see use in control theory, signal processing, attitude control, physics, bioinformatics (see: Root mean square deviation (bioinformatics)), and orbital mechanics, mainly for representing rotations/orientations in three dimensions. For example, it is common for spacecraft attitude-control systems to be commanded in terms of quaternions, which are also used to telemeter their current attitude. The rationale is that combining many quaternion transformations is more numerically stable than combining many matrix transformations. There is also less overhead in using quaternions compared to using rotation matrices, because a quaternion has only four components instead of nine, so the multiplication algorithms to combine successive rotations are faster, and the result is much easier to renormalize afterwards.
(Unquote)
Hi, I’m just a dog guy, but is it even possible to find some small corner of our little planet, that hasn’t been influenced by humans ?
Obviously, the more remote a place is, the less influence we will have on the findings. But isn’t weather global. Meaning, although major metropolitan areas can be thousands of miles away, they still must have some minute influence on that region.
I’m serious, can somebody explain this to me. What effect if any, do we have on these remote areas.
Thank you
Alan
John in Oregon (12:12:39) :
“Notice all those funny looking things mounted all around the weather station? Those are radio and TV transmitting antennas.”
Are you sure about that? The high power antennae I’ve seen are more like those at http://www.chrisbazil.com/broadcast.htm . What I see in the photos are microwave links (the round dish reflectors), directional UHF antennas (the bar with the vertical elements) which are likely for communication with the building, and maybe a lowish power omnidirectional antenna like those used for police and fire radios in the USA.
The transmitting antennae likely aren’t putting out much power, the receiving ones aren’t putting out much of anything.
There’s a fire tower a few miles from my home with a bigger cluster of antennae that are used by public radio to link to remote transmitters, transmit seismic data from a nearby seismometer, relay telephone traffic, etc. There’s enough to significantly interfere with the view from just below the lookout cabin on top.
In working with wireless instrumentation, even a a few milliwatts, we saw disruption in some analog circuits, usually as an increase in DC offset. The gurus at ADI explained that this was due to geometry, fabrication techniques, and black magic. The last part made it hard to determine what would happen under all circumstances. You don’t need a lot of RF power to mess up a sensitive measurement. Nor can you easily predict the outcome.
Answer: Don’t put radios near low level sensors.