A couple of days ago there was a guest post from Russ Steele citing a California study “Feeling the Heat” on global warming that just didn’t seem to add up. One of the stations cited as having climate change related warming was Reno, NV. So, I decided to do a field experiment to test this. The results show clearly that UHI exists in Reno.
Here is what Russ wrote a couple fo days ago:
Feeling the Heat was published by Environment California a non-profit group a few weeks ago, claiming 2007 was the tenth warmest year on record and that the mountain west was experiencing above-average temperatures. Full report here: Download feeling_the_heat_ca.pdf One of the examples given for the high western temperatures was Reno Nevada with a average temperature of 55.3 degrees in 2007, four degrees higher than the 30 years average temperatures from 1971 to 2000.
…Up front in the EC report the author dispatches UHI as having any influence on the climate change, citing studies by Easterling, PD Jones and Parker…
Well I decided to test this myself tonight, since I’m driving through Reno on my return home, I arranged an overnight stay. With me is my NIST calibrated data logger, NIST Calibrated temperature probe, a vehicle mounted Gill IR shield, my laptop computer, and my trusty vehicle. See my previous post “Road Kit”
I chose Virginia Street as the transect route, since it remains relatively straight, level, and crosses all of Reno, including the built up southern suburbs and downtown. It is the original “main street” for Reno.
Here is the result of my South to North transect driving Virgina Street overlaid on a Google Earth image oriented to match the timeline of the transect:
Click for larger image
The weather tonight was perfect. Light winds, clear skies.
Here is the data from the Reno airport ASOS, which also happens to be a USHCN climate station:
Time Temp Dew RH Wind Wind Vis WX Sea Level Altimeter Station
Point Dir Speed Pressure Setting Pressure
(PDT) (f) (f) (%) (mph) (miles) (mb) (inches) (inches)
1:55 am 44 25 47 CALM 10.00 CLR 1023.0 30.30 25.788
12:55 am 48 24 39 CALM 10.00 CLR 1023.4 30.31 25.797
11:55 pm 51 23 33 WSW 3 10.00 CLR 1023.7 30.31 25.797
10:55 pm 54 23 30 S 6 10.00 CLR 1024.1 30.32 25.805
For those interested, I have the raw source data from my datalogger in CSV form for the South to North Reno transect here. (PDF)
Note the placement of the airport, which has it’s ASOS weather station used in many climate studies essentially in the north end middle of the airport. The Reno UHI bubble does extend into this area.
Click for a larger image
I also did a reverse transect, driving the same route in reverse immediately. Plus a route near the airport. I’ll have more tomorrow, its 2AM and I’m tired.
UPDATE:
Jeff Id inquired in comments “how is it mounted to the car?” Here is the answer:
The temperature sensor (inside the Gill IR shield) mounted on the vehicle using an improvised window mount.
Also, the time of night that I made the transect (11:15PM to 11:39PM) allowed me to maintain a nearly constant speed during the transect due to the lack of traffic. Plus Virginia street has stoplights set for all green unless there is cross traffic. I was fortunate to have to stop only once during the entire drive, and that was in the downtown area. I kept an eye on the temperature reading during the stop, and no change was recorded.
I’ll have a complete post in the next day, still catching up from my trip.
Troposphere, however, is supposed to heat faster than the surface. It hasn’t been.
And there’s a still controversy on how to convert satellite data into surface temps. At some latitudes, it’s a 1.4-1 conversion. At others, it’s 1.2-1.
(Having said that, satellites are probably more reliable than surface stations, which are poorly sited and ridiculously adjusted.)
Also, GISS is a bit of an outlier, and diverges from the satellite record over the last decade.
” evanjones (14:21:16) :
Troposphere, however, is supposed to heat faster than the surface. It hasn’t been. ”
Evan; obviously we’re not asking the right questions. Let me rewrite your statement for you.
‘ The troposphere hasn’t been heating faster than the surface; some theories claim it should; so they are obviously wrong, and should be dismissed.
Wouldn’t it make sense for the government to spend a little time and money to audit all the weather stations before we spend a lot of money on correcting a problem that is not there, or is exaggerated?
I know and appreciate what Andy has done along these lines, but what is wrong with making sure the surface stations are what we think they should be?
I have been thinking about proposing a state wide science project for all the elementary schools. Each school should have its own weather station, monitored electronically and manually. Teams at the schools could collect the weather data and then analyze and publish the results. Each school could publish the results on a single website. It would be interesting to see what we could learn about UHI from this study.
Big benefit: kids could learn about the real science of measuring and reporting results of those measures. Perhaps it might even stimulate some interest in science, math, and computers?
Another note along the lines of UHI. There were some references to a Jones on this topic earlier. It seems I recall the Jones paper was used by the IPCC to reject UHI as a major contributor to the measured temperature trends attributed to greenhouse gases. Wasn’t there some sort of scandal regarding the loss of the data used in the Jones paper? Does anybody else recall that?
Over at my blog I’ve made a simple graphical illustration of Reno’s population growth over the last 50 years and how this compares with the difference in Reno’s termperature and that of its neighbors (that latter image courtesy of Alan Cheetham @13:23:27.
I think this explains the reason why one can be highly suspicious of reported temperatue increases in Reno given the location of the temperature sensor
Where would a UHI effect precict most of the warming to be observed? I’ll guess India, China and Coastal sunbelt cities of America, Europe and Australia.
Where do the climate models predict most of the warming? Far northern wilderness areas of Russia Europe and Alaska.
Where does Giss show most of the warming? Far northern wilderness areas of Russia, Europe and Alaska.
How often have I heard the following from the AGW Camp.
“… natural variation can only explain a part of the observed warming, CO2 is the only thing that could have caused the rest of the warming – therefore CO2 is the culprit…”
If (as demonstrated by Anthony’s evidence) UHI is a much larger factor and the observed warming has been exaggerated then the actual warming may well be back in the range that natural variation is sufficient to explain.
I look forward to the arguments from the AGW Camp who visit this site to explain how and why the demonstrated UHI effect is “not relevant” to the AGW discussion.
Surely this impact of UHI is testable.
Table 1: All rural stations – map a trend over the 20th Century.
Table 2: All city stations – map a trend over the 20th Century.
Compare map 1 to map 2; If UHI is a factor – the trend lines should be different and capable of demonstrating by how much.
Also use the original raw data.
Has this been done?
I can confirm the UHI. I live downtown in Mannheim, Germany, a city with 300 000 inhabitants.
And in clear sky nights temperatures are easily 6°C above the temperatures of the airport that is outside of the city. On rainy nights its just about 1°C warmer.
Actually it works to grow subtropical palm trees on my balkon – something that usually doesn’t work in Germany.
“6:45 33F at the house
7:20 38F at the intersection of I85 and I77 in Charlotte (LOTS of concrete/asphalt)
7:50 29F in the parking lot at work.”
And again on the way home:
5:30 57F at work
6:00 60F at I-85/77 interchange in Charlotte
6:30 53F in my driveway
No UHI detected at all…..
REPLY: Maybe you’d like to be the next person to run a transect?
-Anthony
Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
Jack Simmons,
Yes. Jones said the dog ate his homework. [in essence] His excuse was that he didn’t save any of his data.
coby:
You can keep reposting that link all you want, but don’t you think a blog like that, with the heading “Whores To Industry”, might have a slight axe to grind?
Look at this map of major errors in surface station temperature data: click
Now explain to us why we should rely on data from surface stations that routinely have errors greater than 5 degrees C?
Evan; obviously we’re not asking the right questions. Let me rewrite your statement for you.
‘ The troposphere hasn’t been heating faster than the surface; some theories claim it should; so they are obviously wrong, and should be dismissed.
No, I haven’t said that. But it does call their conclusions into question. They could be partially right or wrong. (But they can’t be completely correct.)
Wouldn’t it make sense for the government to spend a little time and money to audit all the weather stations before we spend a lot of money on correcting a problem that is not there, or is exaggerated?
You are not the first to ask that. (And I hope not the last.)
Compare map 1 to map 2; If UHI is a factor – the trend lines should be different and capable of demonstrating by how much.
The problem is that the rural stations are even more corrupted by site violations than the urban stations. The effects (according to Leroy 1999, which are used by the NOAA/CRN) are quite similar to UHI.
Over six out of seven stations have severe violations (CRN3 or worse), quite apart from the UHI issue.
Patrick Henry (16:11:09) :
Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,”
It better start building soon as 2010 is not far away. I think Hathaway is getting nervous already. BTW, why bring up this old prediction? which seems to be less and less relevant for the [so far] anemic solar cycle 24.
Urban heat islands developing in coastal tropical cities, 2005
http://www.puc.state.pa.us/electric/pdf/dsr/dsrwg_sub_ECA-EOS.pdf
Thanks Evan,
How many stations would we have left, if we restricted the test to only those that were “in fact” well sited according to the defined standard?
Would the number be enough to allow for a reasonable test?
Perhaps the test can’t be run as there is insufficient quality data?
(More uncertainity surrounds the AGW Data…)
G
[…] adjustment for the UHI in Reno is -1 degree not -10 degrees. This is common. See UHI is real, in Reno at least for […]
Where does Giss show most of the warming? Far northern wilderness areas of Russia, Europe and Alaska.
How many weather stations per 1,000,000 square miles? 5? 10?
Go to this page.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
Click on Alaska
FIVE stations with 2008 data.
Chris Wright (04:51:23) :The presenter is a scientist and seemed a reasonable person. But it never seemed to occur to him that his own demonstration of UHI refuted his own arguments. Cynical me says that was a neat way of making the majority (who don’t check figures – and maybe that includes himself) believe that UHI WAS properly catered-for. It was adjacent to him showing Spencer had got the satellite temps wrong (as they seemed to show up “too much” cooling)… See how much misinformation is implied in this short space… that Spencer was “wrong”, that the satellite records are still untrustworthy, and that the high UHI he measured has been allowed for… so folks, temperatures are RISING…
“Maybe you’d like to be the next person to run a transect?
-Anthony”
Love to Anthony. I drive from rural, though a 1+million population city, back to rural twice each day. Email me if you’d like. I had just been going of the thermometer in the car. Accurate? Not likely. But you don’t need accuracy to measure a change. And the car thermometer changes 5-6 degrees everytime I drive through Charlotte and out the other side….
Hi, coby. Thanks for re-checking.
The reason I still think the EC report is using the un-homgenized data (red line) is that they say 2007 is about four degrees above the 1971-2000 average but only the tenth warmest year. Now the graph only goes to about 2005 or 2006, but if EC used the green line, a four-degree-above-average 2007 would be the warmest, or maybe second-warmest green-line-year; it would be a prominent spike on the green line.
On the red line, however, four degrees above “average” would still be below several previous measurements. So it still looks like EC is using the straight, unadjusted airport readings (they mention no corrections) and therefore not accounting for UHI. That doesn’t surprise me, because the green line just isn’t terribly alarming. 🙂
I wonder if the UHI effect is responsible for more than the skewing of GISS records.
If we add in 200 yrs of forest clearing could the planet actually be warming from our man made stored energy?
We had a sign in the calibration lab I worked in:
ONE TEST IS WORTH A THOUSAND EXPERT OPINIONS
The UN/IPCC relies on always-inaccurate computer models [their “expert opinions”], which explains why their Assessment Reports are so outlandish.
Here’s something refreshing: a young science student who decided to do his own urban heat island experiment: click
The apoplectic comments by the helpless alarmists are almost a pleasure to read.
I believe that there are more forests now than in 1900 (in the US anyway). The conversion from wood to fossil fuel saved the forests. New England was pretty well clear cut for building materials and firewood. Last time I looked, there were more trees than you could shake a stick at.
(So to speak)
Steamboat Jack