Stevenson Screen placement in relation to heated buildings- click for larger image
Today I received an email that contained some startling revelations about the Weather Stations that were put in place on the DEW Line, a network of cold war era radar monitoring stations in Canada and Alaska, that have now been abandoned. It makes for interesting reading. The sender Robert J. Chouinard was stationed at one of these and responsible for the weather observations. I don’t doubt the accuracy of his report.
You see, in the early to mid 60’s, during the height of the cold war, I was stationed in the Canadian Arctic as a radar and communications technician on the Distant Early Warning Radar Line (DEW Line). Besides our main objective of spotting Russian bombers coming over the pole to drop atomic bombs on North American cities, we were tasked with making weather observations and synoptically reporting to a data collection center somewhere down south. This was well before satellites and maybe even before mainframe computers were employed for this task. The synoptic reports were compiled by elves and analyzed by someone who was supposed to know what they were doing. Their objective was to forecast the immediate weather which they didn’t do very well. The whole process was considered a joke by everyone who was involved in the process but we had to play along with the charade.
For numerous reasons many reports were fabricated. No one imagined their fabrications would comprise a data set that would, in future years, be used to detect minor global warming trends and trigger a panic in the world.
Some of the reasons why the reports were fabricated:
1. Their purpose was only to help with, what was considered, the futile efforts at weather forecasting, not studies on global warming. (The significance of the difference between -55F and -45F was not appreciated. Both temperatures would freeze your balls off. So why split hairs?)
2. Often, this activity interfered with our primary objective. This was because of manning problems which would take a lot of explaining and which I will not go into.
3. Some of the other reasons for fabricating reports:
(a.) physical discomfort of leaving a warm environment and venturing out into the extreme weather conditions to read mercury thermometers located about 200 ft. from the living modules.
(b.) fear of frost bite, getting disoriented by limited visibility, or being mauled by marauding polar bears. (Did you know that more Eskimos get killed from polar bears in Greenland than die of heart attack? I have always been stoic about dying, but being mauled by a polar bear was my greatest nightmare.)
(c.) plain old laziness.
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When you feed this tainted old data into computers for analysis, well GIGO. I realize that the referenced study covered a later period but I doubt that the human element changed much. What more can I say?
Indeed, the human element has always been the weakest point of any of our temperature measurement systems, otherwise NCDC would not need FILNET to “fill in” missing data from stations by interpolating other data from nearby stations.
Missing data happens even when polar bears aren’t prowling between you and the thermometer. For example, look at this B91 form provided by the Marysville California observer (PDF format). Note all the missing days. Thanks to NCDC’s FILNET program, those missing days get made up into a complete data set much like the data on the DEW line did. With a “best guess” programmed into a data sorting and analysis program.
Fabricating or guessing data is usually met with serious repercussions in other fields, yet the current state of climate science seems to accept FILNET created data or data from remote outposts like these without question. My question is, if the human network is this unreliable, how do you know that the data from nearby stations your are interpolating from isn’t a product of “just plain laziness”?
I wonder how well the Russians did with their temperature data gathering in similar remote outposts?
UPDATE: Name of DEW line observer added with permission, and new photo added at 7:30AM 7/18/08
UPDATE2: Some clarifications from the original source have been added below.
Dear Mr. Watts:
Here is some follow-up information which you can do with as you wish. Maybe you could post it as a comment.
Robert J. Chouinard
All DEW line radar and communication technicians (radicians) used to receive a two week crash course in weather reporting, which included identifying and naming various types of clouds. It is this familiarity with clouds that alerted me to the strange cloud formations resulting from weather modification programs such as the laying down of chemtrails. For some time I have been reading of other peoples observations which confirmed my suspicions until finally I read an article on the net based on an anonymous individual blowing the whistle on the extent, purpose, and science of this illegal and secretive experiment.
I reported this article to Fred Singer who forwarded it on to Tim Bell who graciously replied to me what he knew about this program. He finished by remarking about how difficult it is to figure out what is happening naturally with the weather when it is being manipulated. I remarked about resulting erroneous data and offered my experience on the DEW line as another example of erroneous data. Fred Singer passed my comments on to Anthony Watts who took an interest in reposting it. I didn’t expect this old post which originally evoked a ho hum response to be as well received as it has been on this blog.
However, judging from the responses to this post, I fear that I have left some distorted impressions. First, most of us radicians started out being quite fastidious but priorities have a way of getting in the way. Liquor was never the problem. We were on shift when we did our weather reports and drinking during working hours was never allowed. Remember our first objective was a very serious one – to detect enemy aircraft during the cold war era. I arrived at Fox-1 one year after the photo of the polar bear was taken, in the summer of 1962, at the start of the Cuban missile crisis. None of us were in a mood to fool around. Being stuck on the DEW line after a nuclear exchange did not appeal to any of us.
I alluded to manning problems so maybe I should offer some details. Our employer, Federal Electric of Paramus, N.J., was the sub contractor to the USAF. They were not a nice company to work for and consequently when I arrived there was an ongoing attempt to organize a union, which went nowhere during my subsequent 4 ½ years of employment. Because of the tension resulting from the Cuban missile crisis and company related morale problems there was a mass walkout which meant that the rest of us were pressed to work double shifts for which we were promised to be paid overtime. (We never were paid). Weather reporting was a low priority for which we didn’t have the manpower so reports got fabricated. Once bad habits are formed it’s hard to break them.
I cannot speak for other people at other sites or in better times but the low priority of the task, I suspect, prevailed and inspired compromised reporting.
About polar bears:
I said “Did you know that more Eskimos get killed from polar bears in Greenland than die of heart attack?” Someone doubted this so I tried to find my source, to no avail. I have a son who is a doctor in Denmark who is contemplating working in Greenland for a few years. He grew up hearing stories of his maternal great-grandfather during the Klondike gold rush and my DEW line stories so he got the idea of carrying on the family “tradition”. I relayed this information about polar bears to him along with an Internet reference which, unfortunately, is no longer active. So, take this information with a grain of salt, if you like.
Polar bears were always a threat on the DEW line, especially at certain times of the year. I thought I was about to be devoured by one at Fox-1 on a very cold, dark night in 1962. I was concentrating on reading the thermometer from the Stevenson Screen when the station chief’s pet husky came up behind me and jumped up on my back. I had a minor heart attack on the spot. I’m happy to say that that was my only “polar bear” experience.
Bob Tisdale (02:35:23) :
“This thing with the SSTs reminds me of the revelation after the Cold War that in many Russian cities, mayors or other local leadership would have their ‘official’ daily temperatures exaggerated in order to make it look as if it were really colder than it was, in order to get more money for fuel from Moscow. After 1990 we see a sudden jump in Siberian temperatures-coincidence?”
Sigh. Anthony, perhaps you need to add another field to the surfacestations metadata, to wit, the motivation of the station’s keeper to provide accurate data. I would expect that farmers would want good data so they could track the various growing degree days for each crop, ranchers less so, airport personnel moderately so (though wind, barometer, and hot temperature data would be of more interest).
Perhaps you can use siting issues as a proxy for motivation. Sites in shrubbery and next to air conditioners imply poor motivation.
Or maybe we should just burn all the data that was never meant to be used to measure climate change. It may be the only way to stop Garbage In, Gospel Out.
Just so you know , our story on the APS editor is gone already from The Drudge Report. It was below Gore’s latest insane remarks, of course that’s still there.
Seriously, what is there to do up in those outposts but drink. That goes for any isolated station in the world and to break up any boredom you mess around with data, just for laughs. Yes, what is the difference between – 45 and – 55? I wouldn’t have cared at the time either.
Anyway gotta go camping and freeze my butt off and catch some rays coming out of another cloudy day.
Brent in Calgary
You cannot overestimate the effect of drug and alcohol use at these stations on record keeping. They have been traditionally abused at remote military outposts. Especially prior to Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign.
3. Some of the other reasons for fabricating reports:
(a.) physical discomfort of leaving a warm environment and venturing out into the extreme weather conditions to read mercury thermometers located about 200 ft. from the living modules.
LOL — at least they knew enough to put the thermometer a decent distance from the building.
My first Canadian contract was as a fisheries technician during the Beaufort Sea Project 1974-75, taking inventory of fish populations in Yukon coastal waters, in view of planned offshore oil production (hasn’t happened yet…). Our base camp was on the already abandoned Stokes Point DEW Line Station, but we were frequent guests at the still active Shingle Point Station (close to MacKenzie Delta) and the DECCA navigation station on Herschel Island (before GPS…).
Visiting these stations even in Summer was a surreal experience – cannot imagine that any weather data were reliable – if it wasn’t for Polar Bears and blizzards, there were Grizzly, stampeding Caribou and mosquitos… not to mention many other distractions typical for pioneer attitudes far from civilization.
Nevertheless, an unforgettable experience!
Arctic perspective is a great teacher for understanding global climate processes
Comparing one station to surrounding stations only works when few of the stations have faked data.
When the amount of faked data grows to be non-trivial, you have as much chance of modifying real data to match the fake, as modifying fake to match the real.
As usual, sod takes the position that the data must be good, therefore it is.
Lol, not just remote stations…
Ah yes, brings back recollections of my days in the Air Force at Loring AFB, in northern Maine.
It was surely warmer in Maine than anywhere along the DEW line, but come winter the outside work was done with a lot less diligence. People routinely fudged the log books on vehicle maintenance as those inspections had to be performed outdoors.
It seems we only have accurate climate data since 1979. Everything else is unreliable. It beats me how some scientists still want to use surface station data instead of satellite.
I can remember times when investigations were made to the amounts of alchol being imbibed at remote locations or at sites with very restricted access. That aside I can see it now—–
Officer “airman go out and read the thermometer” Airman goes out the door around the corner and smokes a cig. Comes back in and reports “heavy snow and 55 below” officer it has to be right!! Airman ” Yes sir go check for your self.”Officer ” ok I guess it is ok sure is cold out there”
Yep the officers care as long as they didn’t have to go out and read the thing.
I wonder if the other sites were the same. I think probably so as these folks all trained together and worked together. I know they talked back and forth on the hoop and holler net. I bet they even compared temps and such.
There are some things that were never meant to be used as we do now and the
temp reports from some of these site were some of them. There are times when
I wouldn’t have sent one of my men out as a Sargent but the officer would insist
We never had to do the weather part but would see it done. from our site in Europe. I can remember once when the young PFC came in to report “sir I can’t fine the tower.” and he faked the report. the snow was blowing to hard and no one should have been sent out any way.
We now have remote sensing and should use it. both satellite and surface. We just need to have good siting for the surface sensors.
Lots of early data is skewed for human reasons and I can’t believe that there is any way to correct it with any amount of certainty. IMO if we cant tell for sure what the temp was 50 75 100 or more years ago how can we model to predict 50 75 or 100 years from now.
Bill Derryberry
Sod.
Which other stations? go on, find them
Although I never was involved in taking temperature readings during my time in the US Army my colleagues and I were often asked to provide various types of statistical data that was intended to be used to create “figures of merit” to better measure enemy capabilities in various national security topic areas. Since many times the data itself was ambiguous, at best, and perhaps even artificially manipulated at its source for the enemy’s own reasons and almost always estimated or interpolated in some fashion any way, we provided the best information we could but never dreamed it would be used to support serious decisions regarding both national policy and the spending of vast sums of money.
An example.
I hasten to add that the data was not intentionally made inaccurate on our part it is just that without an objective way of measuring many of the datapoints you just ended up saying something like “North Vietnamese SAM-2 missile sites employing Fan Song-C radars could typically acquire target lock against an F4 size target at xx NM. Since we couldn’t tell for certain that the site actually had lock, nor did we know just what the slant range was since we didn’t know the exact altitude of the friendly aircraft (much less a precise location for the radar van itself) the xx NM we wrote down in no way represented an absolutley accurate figure of merit.
In a later hqs assignment I was astonished to discover that these types of data from the field were amalgamated into large and impressive datasets and used by think tanks like the RAND corporation as the basis for all manner of amazingly complex and involved trend analyses. Our term for these sorts of efforts was “Double precision arithmetic operations against estimated data.”
When I tried to explain to the data aggregators and highly paid contractors the unintentional spuriousness of the underlying data sets I was very pointedly uninvited to any future involvement in the process.
As an aside. In the cold war period the Soviets were constantly practicing various forms of what they call “maskirovka,” which is denial and deception to hide their true intentions/capabilities. Well one area they used to do that in was to deliberately falsify their weather reporting from many of their weather reporting sites in the central Soviet Union and the areas bordering China. They assumed we were collecting their weather data being relayed by HF radioprinter back to Moscow and wanted to deny the US forces access to information that might help us make better weather forecasts in support of strategic strike planning against the Soviet Union or, especially during my era, weather over Southeast Asia in support of our operations in Vietnam. Although never proven, from observations of the amazing number of Soviet aircraft lost to weather during training flights over their own territory we suspect that they were actually using the falsified weather for their own predictions. Perhaps their weather twinkies hadn’t been told that their own synoptic data reports were not reliable.
Now, forty years and more later I am sure that hordes of unsuspecting worldwide climatologists are actually using those deliberately corrupted datasets to make profound judgements on global weather trends.
Sigh,
John S.
It is time to stand up and be counted.
All science loses when one doctrine gains a majority of funding. Any scientist in any other field needs to voice their concerns NOW. Every member of a concerned public who prefers truth over scary fiction must ask for debate.
AGW, and the policies proposed in its defence, if allowed to continue to subjugate truth and propogate the false premise that CO2 is a pollutant and harmful, will devour nations, enslave individuals and is in any case futile in the face of a blossoming Asia.
The perpetrators of this fakery and its attendant baggage will slide off with their ill gotten gains whilst the majority, including academics, politicians and future generations will pay dearly.
This fundamentalist control exercise will set back the advancement of mankind, through burden of taxation if nothing else, by a hundred years – the very same one hundred years we have “in hand” where we can rely on our adequate supplies of oil, gas and coal to propel us toward a clean future power supply technology that works while it protects us from the ravages of the coming cold.
Free fertilizer for all is a benign byproduct of our present dependence on the cleanest energy sources we have so far utilized – we would be in serious respiratory trouble if we still relied on wood, or dung, to fuel our modern economies. CO2 rising to 800ppmv, whilst unlikely due to the coming cold period, would only be a boon to the biosphere just as it is in a real greenhouse.
NOW is the time to make your voices heard:
We, the people, demand that science must triumph over fantasy.
Dear Mr Watts, Anthony,
Sorry for posting off-topic but I didn’t find an emailadress on this page.
I’ve been reading yor blog for a year now and I have a question about radiative forcing.
Inspired by the articles of Stephen Wilde I started thinking about the way radiative forcing works: CO2 absorbing infrared radation and dispersing it in all directions, this would slow down the radiation of heat into space and thereby warm up the atmosphere.
I think that the radiative forcing would give the biggest effect in conditions when the atmosphere is loosing heat through radiation.
During the day the predominant actor is the sunlight which is absorbed by the ground and turned into infrared-radiation.
Some of the energy radiates into space in the form of infrared radiation.
But there is more energy coming in the atmosphere than radiating outwards into space.
In the night however (especially when there are no clouds) the atmosphere loses most of its heat through radiation.
And this is precisely the proces that is hindered by the greenhouse gasses.
When more greenhous-gasses are present, less energy can radiate outward into space (this is what the greenhouse-theory is all about).
The best way to maesure the greenhouse-effect (in my opinion) is during the night when the sky is clear.
If the warming in the 20th century is really caused by an enhanced greenhouse-effect, that would be reflected mostly in the minimum-temperatures, measured just before dawn.
My guess is that radiative-forcing would also diminish the difference day and night temperatures: more greenhouse-gasses would give the same effect as clouds, cooling down by radiation is prevented.
Does this make any sense so far ?
I have asked the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) about this. They answered that they haven’t looked into this and I could try for myself if there was a difference between the first 2 decades of the 20th century and the last 2 decades.
I downloaded their data and found no change in the mean difference between day and night temperatures.
Holland is close to the sea and the difference between day and night depends also on the temperature of the seawater and the windspeed and wind-direction.
I hope that you can tell me if others looked into this effect of radiative forcing and what they found.
Greetings from Holland
Hans Verbeek
“It beats me how some scientists still want to use surface station data instead of satellite.”
One will “believe” the data set that validates their hypothesis to the greater degree.
If this story is true, it sounds like some of these temperature measurements must be regarded as WAGs (wild ass guesses), not even rising to the level of SWAGs (scientific wild … ….)…….lol.
You put enough clowns together, and sooner rather than later, a circus will break out…..
Compliments to Anthony for another interesting thread. Can’t remember the last time I heard reference to the DEW line. Once or twice since the good old “duck and cover” drill days.
Also, here’s to the internet. I can’t imagine such an investigation – of surface monitoring stations – or a similar discussion of it, taking place even 10 years ago.
John, you almost answer your own question. Imagine using data that need not be manipulated, I mean “adjusted”.
Haha get temperature and get mauled, or stay inside and make something up.
I get something similar to that choice a lot in college and I have always chosen the latter 😡
But in the area of climatology, standards don’t seem to apply. They can cook the books with impunity. — Leon Brozyna
As an accountant, I’m held to pretty high standards in regard to an audit of projected financial statements (which I use for comparative purposes here). All assumptions made must be fully disclosed, must be reasonable, and must be strictly followed….otherwise, the client isn’t going to like my opinion, assuming I don’t decide to completely withdraw from the engagement altogether.
Yet everything I have read over the last few years seems to indicate an irresponsible and flat-out reckless lack of disclosure in regard to this subject in its entirety — especially with climate models and their baseless prognostications of climate conditions decades from now.
Compare the end users of these research studies versus a report I would issue. It’s not like the rest of humanity is impacted by anything I would be expected to do; but the same can’t be said of this daily bombardment about global warming and kidney stones, obesity, increasing storm intensity, you name it. Governments around the world are enacting laws based on all of this, and it impacts all of our daily lives — which is why I think I have a right to claim damages for my own elected representatives’ reliance on all of these bogus studies, fabricated data, subjective adjustments, etc.
Your Enron comparison is right on the money.
Possibly if they had kept the vodka bottle inside the Stevenson Screen they might have gotten more frequent readings. Although the accuracy might have suffered.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm
“By measuring changes in winds, rather than relying upon problematic temperature measurements, Robert J. Allen and Steven C. Sherwood of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale estimated the atmospheric temperatures near 10 km in the Tropics rose about 0.65 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970—probably the fastest warming rate anywhere in Earth’s atmosphere. The temperature increase is in line with predictions of global warming models.”
What a surprise. Then lets don’t rely on problematic temperature measurements at all, and say that we haven’t the foggiest idea whether the earth has warmed in the last 50 or hundred years, or whether it is still warming or getting colder, and just “blow with the wind” to find out. Sheesh.
Would you want to do this every day?
I wonder if Brian ever triple-dog dared anyone else to lick that Stevenson Screen….lol….what else would you do for entertainment?
The original measurements taken from the instruments are the “data”, accurate or not. Unlike in a laboratory situation, the “day” cannot be rerun to obtain an accurate data set, if the existing data set is determined to be inaccurate or incomplete.
However, once the “adjustment” and the “fill in the blanks” process begins, the numbers are no longer “data” or “data sets”. They become merely sets of numbers which have been “adjusted” so as to approximate what the data set should have looked like had all the data points been collected properly from accurate instruments.
Therefore, referring to the sets of temperature numbers reported by GISS as “data” is generous in the extreme; and, woefully inaccurate. Also, the significance of the figures in each of the “adjusted” temperature numbers cannot be improved by the adjustment process. Arguably, any figure affected by the adjustment process loses its significance in the process. I won’t even address the (in)significance of the numbers inserted in the set to “fill-in” for uncollected data.
In the US natural gas company in which I spent my career, performing a “drive-by” meter reading was grounds for summary dismissal, even though the next actual reading would compensate for any estimation inaccuracy in the “drive-by” reading. Apparently, in climatology, “drive-by” readings live forever. Charming; and, so reassuring.
“Faking” information is not unknown in organizations outside of the military, either. I’ve worked in various occupations after leaving the military and was not shocked or surprised to find that branch offices often send falsified information to the main office, particularly when the information requested seems to have no pertinence whatsoever to the position that the employee that has been tasked to gather it is being paid for.
I am not at all surprised by the revelations, about non careful measurement reporting.
What made you expect anything different? As another poster said, the only reliable reporting is
The only other might be the balloon measurements as they were taken by meteorological teams whose prime objective was weather data, not some preripheral task, viewed as a pain the butt, make work.