UPDATE: A good photo of one of the Russian stations has been found, see below after the “read more” link.
As most readers know by now, the problematic GISTEMP global temperature anomaly plot for October is heavily weighted by temperatures from weather stations in Russia.
GISTEMP 11-12-08 – Click for larger image
Like in the USA, weather stations tend to be distributed according to population density, with the more populated western portion of Russia having more weather stations than the less populated eastern areas such as Siberia. To illustrate this, here is a plot of Russian Weather Station locations from the University of Melbourne:
Click picture for larger image, source image is here
Interestingly, the greatest magnitude of the GISTEMP anomaly plot for October is in these mostly unpopulated areas where the weather station density is the lowest. While I was pondering this curiosity, one of the WUWT readers, Corky Boyd, did a little research and passed this along in email:
…Posters at Watts Up have commented on the ongoing consistently high anomalous temperatures from Russia. I have noticed this too. In light of the erroneously posted data for October, I took a look at the monthly NCDC climate reports back to January 2007. By my eyeball estimate the results from Russia are almost all on the high side. . Some I classified as very highs are massively high. Of the 21 months reported, only 2 appeared to be below average.
Category 2007 2008 (9 months)
Very high 6 4
High 3 1
Average 2 3
Low 0 1
Very Low 1 0
Is there a way to validate or invalidate GISS data by comparing it to RISS? Does it strike you as odd that the verifiably erroneous data has shown up in the same area that was suspect in the first place? Could there be a pattern?
Corky also sent along a series of images depicting global near surface and ocean temperature anomalies from NOAA. Here is the most recent one from September 2008:
I was curious if indeed there was any pattern to the Russian anomaly, so I decided to animate the last year and a half worth of images. You can see this animation below. It is about 1 megabyte in size, so please be patient while it downloads.
Click for full sized animation
What I found interesting was that the January 2007 anomaly (the last time we had a “global heat wave”) was primarily in the northern Russian and Asian. According to January 2007 UAH satellite anomaly data, the Northern Hemisphere had a whopping anomaly of +1.08°C and the “northern extent” was even greater at +1.27°C, the largest anomaly ever in the Northern Extent dataset
Curiously though, the very next month, the Russian anomaly virtually disappears and is replacing with cooling, though a sharp boundary to warming now exists in Asia. It was as if somebody threw a switch in Russia.
Click for larger images
In March 2008, a very large positive anomaly returned in Russia, and again in April evaporated with the same abruptness as the Jan-Feb 2007 transition. Again almost as if a switch was thrown.
Click for larger images
Such abrupt repeated changes don’t seem fully natural to me, particularly when they occur over the same geographic location twice. I realize that two events don’t make a trend, but it is curious, given that we now have had a problem with Russian weather data again that caused GISS to announce the “hottest October on record”.
I also noticed that in the animation from the anomaly maps, there does not seem to be much of an anomaly in the summer months.
This made me wonder what some of those weather stations in Russia might be like. So I went to the Russian Meteorological Institute website at http://www.meteo.ru/english/
I know from John Goetz work as well as this artcle in Nature that Russian weather stations had been closing with regularity due to the trickle down effects of collapse in the former Soviet Union. Though some new ones are being built by outside agencies, such as this one sponsored by NOAA in Tiksi, Russia.
Click for a larger image
What I found interesting in the NOAA press release on Tiksi, was this image, showing weather stations clustered around the Arctic:
Click for a larger image
The interesting thing is that all these stations are manned and heated. The instruments appear to be “on” the buildings themselves, though it is hard to tell. One wonders how much of the building heat in this tiny island of humanity makes it to the sensors. The need for a manned weather station in the Arctic always comes with a need for heat.
I was hoping my visit to the Russian Meteorological institute website might have some particulars on the remaining weather stations that have not been closed. I didn’t find that, but what I did find was a study they posted that seems to point to a significant warm temperature anomaly in Russia during winters between 1961 to 1998:
Fig. 1. Linear trend coefficient (days/10 years) in the series of days with abnormally high air temperatures in winter (December-February), 1961-1998.
From the Russian study they write:
For the winter period 1961-1998, most of the stations under considerations exhibit a tendency for fewer minimum temperature extremes. Maximum (in absolute value) coefficients of the linear trend were obtained in the south of the country and in eastern Yakutia.
Whenever I read about elevated minimum temperatures, I tend to suspect some sort of human influences such as UHI, station siting, or irrigation (humidity) which tend to affect Tmin more than Tmax.
In Northern Russia Siberia, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of irrigation. So that leaves station siting and UHI as possible biases. UHI seemed doubtful, given that many of these Russian Stations in Siberia are in remote areas and small towns.
So I decided to put Google Earth to work to see what I could see. One of the stations mentioned in a recent post at Climate Audit cited the station of Verhojansk, Russia, which has temperatures conveniently online here at Weather Underground.
From the Navy Meteorological exercise I found that Verhojansk has a wide variance in temperature:
Verkhojansk is located in a treeless shallow valley. There is snow on the ground during winter months; it melts in the spring. Verhojansk experiences the coldest winter temperatures of any official weather station outside of Antarctica. Verhojansk has Earth’s most extreme temperature contrast (65oC) between summer and winter. Which of the following indirect factors contribute to this extreme seasonal variation?
From the GHCN station inventory file at NCDC I found that Verhojansk, Russia had a lat/lon of 67.55 133.38 which when I put it in Google Earth, ended up in a mud flat. The Google Maps link from Weather Underground was no better, also off in a field.
Looking in NCDC’s MMS station database yeilded better luck, and I found a more precise lat/lon of 67.55,133.38333 There was very little other helpful information there on the station.
The station appeared to be located in town, though I have no way of verifying the exact location. The lat/lon may be imprecise. But something curious popped out at me as I was scanning the Google Earth image of Verhojansk looking for what might be a weather station – it looks like pipes running across the surface:
Click for larger image
These “pipes” appear to go all over town. Here is a closer view, note the arrow to what I think might be the weather station location based on the fencing, objects on the ground that could be rain gauges or shelters, and what looks like an instrument tower:
Click for larger image
I was curious about what these pipes could be, it certainly didn’t look like oil pipelines, and why where they so close to houses and building and seem to network all over town. Doing a little research on Russian history, I found my answer in the pervasive “central planning” thinking that characterized Russian government and infrastructure. It’s called “District Heating“
From Wikipedia:
District heating (less commonly called teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating.
But for Russia there was this caveat:
Russia
In most Russian cities, district-level combined heat and power plants (Russian: ТЭЦ, Тепло-электро централь) produce more than 50 % of the nation’s electricity and simultaneously provide hot water for neighbouring city blocks. They mostly use coal and oil-powered steam turbines for cogeneration of heat. Now, gas turbines and combined cycle designs are beginning to be widely used as well. A Soviet-era approach of using very large central stations to heat large districts of a big city or entire small cities is fading away as due to inefficiency, much heat is lost in the piping network because of leakages and lack of proper thermal insulation [10].
I should also point out that district heating is not limited to Russia, but is in many northern European countries. It seems quite prevalent in cold Euro-climates, and even extends into Great Britain.
So I searched a bit more, and found some pictures of what Russian district heating looks like from the ground. Here is one from Picasaweb from somebody’s trip to Russia:
Click for source image.
Note the pipes in the photo above are not insulated.
I also found a very interesting picture of steam pipes, also uninsulated, from a trip report to the “hot zone” of Chernobyl:
And finally a picture of Krasnoyarsk thermal power station Number 1 that has recently been in the news, according to Reuters due to a burst steam pipe:
Click for larger image – Note the pipes coming out to the left of the power station. You can see steam pipes around the city in this Google Maps view here.
So all this begs the question:
If Russian weather stations are located in cities that have this district heating plan, and a good percentage of the pipes are uninsulated, how much of the waste heat from the pipes ends up creating a local micro-climate of warmth?
Remember when I said that the NOAA map anomalies centered over Russia seemed to be prevalent in winter but not summer? It stands to reason that as winter temperature gets colder, more waste heat is dumped out of these inefficient systems to meet the demand. Basically, we have an active UHI situation in the city that increases in output as temperatures drop.
In the areal photos above of Verhojansk, it appears that some pipes are insulated (white, what appears to be main lines) while others are rust brown, and appear near buildings and dwellings.
I got to thinking about why these pipes might be uninsulated. First there is the classic inefficiency and carelessness of Soviet workmanship, but another thought occurred to me: Russian people might like it that way. Why? Well imagine a place where you walk to the market every day, even in subzero temperatures. Since many of these pipes seem to follow streets and sidewalks, wouldn’t it be a more pleasant walk in winter next to a nice toasty steam pipe?
Steve Mcintyre wrote about this station at Climate Audit, citing a puzzle in the data, here is an excerpt of his post:
Verhojansk
Now there are many puzzles in GHCN adjustments, to say the least, and these adjustments are inhaled into GISS. Verhojansk is in the heart of the Siberian “hot spot”, presently a balmy minus 22 deg C. The graphics below compare GISS dset0 in the most recent scribal version to GISS dset 2 (showing identity other than small discrepancies at the start of the segment); the right compares GISS dset0 to the GHCN-Daily Average.
Over the past 20 years, the GISS version (presumably obtained from GHCN monthly) has risen 1.7 deg C (!) relative to the average taken from GHCN Daily results.
Left- GISS dset 2 minus Giss dset0 [[7]]; fight – Giss minus GHCN Daily
What causes this? I have no idea.
Maybe it’s the steam pipes. We need to send somebody to Russia to find out. Of the many station lat/lons I looked at, Verhojansk was the only one I found with enough Google Earth resolution to see the steam pipes. Maybe the heart of our Russian temperature anomaly lies in central heating.
George Costanza could be right.
UPDATE: The photo below shows the Verhojansk Meteorological station and it’s instruments. Hat tip to Jeff C. for the photo below:
Direct URL to the photo above here
Note the cable going to the Stevenson Screen suggesting automated readings. Also note the vertical plume at left.
The station can be seen from Google Earth here
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Missing ling to Khayysardakh from previous comment
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=67.56999969,133.39999390&ie=UTF8&ll=67.964058,134.74092&spn=0.005555,0.01914&t=h&z=16
Lucy Skywalker (02:05:13) :
I’m not convinced with your dismissal of Usoskin but it will have to wait!
I guess we are all waiting…
Harold Ambler (06:34:24) :
“unless you are an AGW client and need the Sun to be cooler then to explain the LIA, in which case you are a lost cause :-)”
Well, the faintly ad hominem response lets me know I’m getting somewhere.
Clearly there was no ad-hom intent here. I was just pointing out that there is no escape from the comfort of this circular argument, if one goes there.
You have even gone so far as to suggest that Jack Eddy, who named the Maunder Minimum, now regrets associating the Sun with climate trends
This is a misrepresentation of what I said [or intended to say]. What Jack pointed out in his dinner talk at the SORCE 2003 meeting was that the energy argument is no longer valid, not that he didn’t believe in other more subtle influences.
“that people want the Sun to be more constant and regular than perhaps it is.”
And this was his argument against people who dismissed the Maunder Minimum, which nobody does today. The sunspot number was without a doubt a lot smaller then. Our modern observations show however that that does not imply that TSI or the Sun’s open magnetic flux was any smaller then than now at solar minimum.
I won’t convince you of the scientific insight that led Dr. Eddy to study the Little Ice Age and name its most significant solar minimum.
We all knew in the 1970s what Jack was talking about, and you have, perhaps, the order wrong: Jack did not study the LIA first and then looked for a cause. He resurrected Maunder’s [actually Spoerer’s] suggestion of a pronounced minimum and linked it to the LIA because it was thought [based on Abbot’s – as we know today: faulty – measurements] that there was a significant variation of TSI over the solar cycle. No controversy [and convincing needed] on that point, given the premises.
would be well-advised to consider the next half century likely to be a time of cooling.
This may very well happen as the climate is constantly changing, and you will get no disagreement from me there, unless you wish to ascribe that change to only once facet of all possible causes.
I respect the fact that you adhere with such passion to Anthropogenic Global Warming climate modeling.
Except that I don’t [and have made that abundantly clear]
serving humanity by dissuading readers at this site of a solar-climate connection
The readers make up their own mind. The service to ‘humanity’ comes about by alerting the readership to ongoing, new solar research and results.
clear as we wind our way through a relatively quiet Solar Cycle 24 and work our way into an even quieter Solar Cycle 25 that not even the negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation will be able to explain the significant drop in temperatures around the globe.
First, we don’t know what solar cycle 25 will be, and second, the future ‘significant drop’ has not [yet] been observed and therefore needs no explanation so far.
real problem […] coming cooling
Alarmist thinking either way is always a danger. And since there is not much we can do about changing the climate, IMHO, the effort [if any] should be spend on improving the human condition, but in general I think that one’s attitude on this should have no bearing on the science [many people might disagree with this, but so be it].
In all the heat about motivations and attitudes, the science seems to have been forgotten. What we are [ever so slowly] learning is that TSI may not have varied as much as thought, that the magnetic field at solar minima very likely has not changed over historic time. My colleague, Ed Cliver, was just last Friday at GISS giving a seminar on the ‘constant’ Sun and was met with a fair amount of resistance from the AGW modelers who do not like to hear that the Sun was not the cause of the temperature increase in the first half of the 20th century, because that opens the door to admitting of other natural causes, and with too many other causes floating around it becomes hard to say that the increase in the last half of the 20th century is not due to these other [natural] causes.
The issue, for me, is that there are dogma on both sides of the debate. The situation reminds me of the discussion half a century ago of whether the craters on the Moon were volcanic or impact scars. The geologists, who knew a lot about volcanoes but nothing about impacts, held that the craters were not volcanic [thus impacts], and the astronomers, who knew about impacts but nothing about volcanoes, held that the craters were not impact scars [thus volcanoes]. If you cannot explain a phenomenon by staying within the bounds of what you know, you ascribe it to forces from another domain of which you know less or nothing at all.
I have repeatedly given the rationale for my assessment of the state of the Sun and shall here only give a link to the exhausting discussion [~4000 posts] starting here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470
Harold Ambler (06:34:24) :
studies done by cutting-edge solar physicists of the moment (certainly including yourself, as well as Livingston and Penn), would be well-advised to consider the next half century likely to be a time of cooling.
It is too early to pass judgment on L&P’s ongoing work, but should they turn out to be correct, there is a good chance that a spotless Sun might actually have a higher TSI, if the ‘spotless’ness is due to the spots being invisible rather than gone. The speculation goes like this: Observations show that areas of the Sun with a magnetic field above 1500 Gauss are dark, while areas with a magnetic field below 1500 Gauss are bright. The TSI we measure is [roughly] the sum of two competing effects: (1) the darkening due to fields larger than 1500 G, and (2) the brightening due to fields smaller than 1500 G; the latter effect being about twice the former and thus leaving us with a net brightening. Assume that L&P are correct, then the Maunder Minimum could be explained by most spots being below the 1500 G limit [and thus invisible, as might happen again in 2015 if the trend continues], but the magnetic field would still be there and the modulation of cosmic rays would therefore still take place [just as is, in fact, observed]. TSI would then have been higher than now. And if we return to such a condition in the coming decades, TSI might also become higher. If TSI is important for the Sun-climate connection, we would then expect warming during the MM and during the coming Eddy Minimum [as it rightfully should be called, honoring Jack’s contribution]. So, perhaps TSI is not important at all, just as Jack concluded in 2003.
The cosmic ray proxy of solar activity is fraught with unresolved problems. In a paper just out: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L21812, doi:10.1029/2008GL035189, 2008, Aldahan et al. write [abstract]:
“Reconstructing solar activity variability beyond the time scale of actual measurements provides invaluable data for modeling of past and future climate change. The 10Be isotope has been a primary proxy archive of past solar activity and cosmic ray intensity, particularly for the last millennium. There is, however, a lack of direct high-resolution atmospheric time series on 10Be that enable estimating atmospheric modulation on the production signal. Here we report quasi-weekly data on 10Be and 7Be isotopes covering the periods 1983–2000 and 1975–2006 respectively, that show, for the first time, coherent variations reflecting both atmospheric and production effects. Our data indicate intrusion of stratosphere/upper troposphere air masses that can modulate the isotopes production signal, and may induce relative peaks in the natural 10Be archives (i.e., ice and sediment). The atmospheric impact on the Be-isotopes can disturb the production signals and consequently the estimate of past solar activity magnitude.”
And:
“Accordingly, with the results obtained here, stratospheric/upper tropospheric intrusions can be a major source of noise in ice core
10Be-data. Additionally, the relatively higher altitudes in Greenland may intensify the atmospheric effect on the 10Be production signals, through enhanced interaction between the stratosphere polar vortex and troposphere [Baldwin and Dunkerton, 2001]. These effects, which alter the production signal, should be quantified or eliminated before accurate estimates of past solar irradiance variations can be made.”
And:
“Although not constant, the average difference in past solar total irradiance between low and high activity in the 11-year cycle is about 0.1% based on 10Be data, which can be translated to an average global forcing difference of about 0.25 Wm2 [Fro¨hlich, 2006; Beer et al., 2006]. Solar variability modification on beryllium isotopes production is expected to be stronger at high latitudes (>50N), where the production rate is high [Masarik and Beer, 1999] and atmospheric mixing less effective The intrusions we have observed add a further 10–20% variation to reconstructions
of past solar irradiance. The direct effect on past global surface temperature by minor irradiation variations may be insignificant, but amplifications by albedo effects on insolation due to changes in ice and cloud cover and stratospheric ozone are still not well-quantified parameters. We did find some indications of a connection between intrusion frequency and surface air temperature at the studied latitudes. Intrusion-free periods apparently show elevated average temperatures compared to periods with frequent intrusions (Figures 4 and S1). This discernable signal may offer further opportunities to model minute effects of stratospheric/tropospheric air intrusions on surface air temperature.”
So, there is a good chance that 10Be to a significant degree also measures climate rather than just solar activity and that simplistic interpretations of the 10Be data in terms of purely solar effects are in doubt. This just goes to show that a serious rethinking of some of the ‘standard facts’ in the field is in order and that is where I think I can play a role and provide a service to the readership as we progress along this rocky course.
Leif,
On Oct 31 you wrote:
Meanwhile, back at Oulu, the neutron count is still climbing
No, it is falling: http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
and at Moscow it has been falling for a while, too: http://helios.izmiran.rssi.ru/cosray/main.htm ,
so we may be past minimum. It is a cruel world.
I’m not sure any real trend is evident yet, but since you wrote that, the neutron count at Oulu has indeed been climbing:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/Request.dll?Y1=2008&M1=Jan&D1=01&h1=00&m1=00&Y2=2008&M2=Nov&D2=17&h2=00&m2=00&YR=00&MR=00&DR=00&hR=00&mR=00&PD=1
Since this is in spite of the gradual emergence of SC24 sunspots, which do seem to imply that we may be past minimum, could it be taken as a sign of general weakness in SC24?
I haven’t ascribed all the incipient cooling to a single cause. I mentioned the solar minimum, in which, yes, TSI does decline a bit. I mentioned the negative PDO. I mentioned Svensmark. I mentioned Livingston and Penn’s research showing the (presumably temporary) cessation of visible sunspots in 2015, work you’ve cited here and elsewhere repeatedly.
You’ve suggested in past posts that the Little Ice Age may have been caused by “internal variability” within Earth’s climate. Could you explain how that works exactly?
Until and unless you do, I will stay with the zany notion that the Sun had something to do with it.
I remember at similar points in this argument in the past asking whether you had found the time to read “The Chilling Stars,” written by your fellow Dane Dr. Henrik Svensmark. Your explanation that you had read all the papers that constituted its thesis does not suffice. The arguments laid out, the historical record presented, and Svensmark’s theory itself are all too elaborate, and too elegant, to be known by proxy. I would suggest a direct scientific experiment in which the book is read.
The Oct temp mess up made the ticker at Fox news. 🙂 Though small, its a start. Thats what we need, more national coverage explaining that temp variation will not cause the world to end. Dr H’s name is specifically mentioned along with a reference to temp fixing in the past. 🙂
As for the above solar discussion. The sun alone has its cycles. Add to that earth wobble, ocean currents, plate movement and volcanic activity with large sulfur dioxide or ash emissions. We do not have the full and accurate data to predict these events let alone prevent them.
IE. An eruption of a volcano NW of Erta Ale in Ethiopia’s Afar region began on 3 November. Satellite imagery showed a large sulfur dioxide cloud that drifted E over the Arabian Peninsula.
source: http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/usgs/
A certain amount of heating and cooling can be attributed to the sun. I am a strong believer in that. However I think when we see extreme climate situations such as the MM or Midevil warming, history has shown that a combination of events, not a singular one can be attributed to the cause.
My problem these days is this. Instead of heating and cooling being attributed to the natural cycles of our planet with the added influencing factors I mentioned above, someone somewhere decided that Co2 was the only factor that mattered. They put tunnel vision blinders on and basically gave up any hope of objective observation. Instead of focusing on adapting to our enviornment, the plan has become to control it. I have said this before and I will keep saying it loudly… Man cant even build a successful biosphere, how the heck do we figure we are capable of fixing our planet?
I also have a problem with scientists who choose to take a hard line when it comes to the study of their fields. The trend here seems to be pick the end point and tweek the data to prove it. I do not consider this science, its politics. Until such a time as climate study can be returned to people who are willing to study the changes without an end point agenda influencing the results we will be stuck in the new Dark Ages of scientific research. The truth is that often times scientists theorys are wrong or incomplete. Often times its only through observation that it is proven wrong. If there is no objectivity in observation these days, it may take a very long time for us to see any change in the climate change debacle.
Basil (12:36:45) :
I’m not sure any real trend is evident yet, but since you wrote that, the neutron count at Oulu has indeed been climbing […]
Since this is in spite of the gradual emergence of SC24 sunspots, which do seem to imply that we may be past minimum, could it be taken as a sign of general weakness in SC24?
The cosmic ray intensity is getting back to where it was in 1965:
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux3.png and if you look at Moscow: http://helios.izmiran.rssi.ru/cosray/days.htm you get a somewhat different perspective. Different stations see a slightly different picture [Nature is a messy place], and one can’t make a trend out of a few days worth of data. One think to mention is that modulation goes ‘downward’ so you have to compare the upper envelope of the graph.
On SC24: The cycle has barely started and it even may take a year for the changes to propagate through the Heliosphere, so looking at a few weeks of data is not telling much. I would expect the GCR flux to begin decreasing soon, but we have to take into effect the propagation delay.
Harold Ambler (12:49:13) :
You’ve suggested in past posts that the Little Ice Age may have been caused by “internal variability” within Earth’s climate. Could you explain how that works exactly?
Would earn me a Nobel Prize if I could, but I’m not going to do ‘exactly’, but it is a general property of complex system to have ‘internally caused’ fluctuations. An example may be found here: http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/~xie/clivar-rev06.pdf . This could similarly happen on centennial time scales as well. I’m constantly amazed by people unwilling to accept that it can happen to the Earth while at the same time happily accepting that the Sun does it [what causes the variability in the Sun?].
Until and unless you do, I will stay with the zany notion that the Sun had something to do with it.
Hey, don’t despair. They laugh at Bozo The Clown, too 🙂
Harold Ambler (13:02:14) :
Svensmark’s theory itself are all too elaborate, and too elegant, to be known by proxy.
The book is a proxy for the papers. If there is something in the book that he couldn’t get past the reviewers in the ordinary publication of scientific theories, then maybe that is a hint.
I would suggest a direct scientific experiment in which the book is read.
And how would that help? The recent climate has simply not varied like the cosmic ray flux, so how does it help to go back to a time when data was poorer and harder to come by?
Low clouds does correlate nicely with albedo, but neither of them has varied with the solar cycle, so I don’t fell like becoming a fellow zany.
An article from the WSJ, on Martin Pomeranz (1916 – 2008):
“Astrophysicist Turned Antarctica Into Hot Spt for Astronomy Research”
http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122671392903930401.html
Dr. Pomeranz pioneered the need for an observatory at the South Pole from which he did astronomy and solar research. I thought this a unique and curious career path:
WRT the Russian UHI steam effect: Sounds like you’ve done it again, Anthony.
It would be interesting to set up a winter-long experiment. Assuming those old Stevenson Boxes are the state of the art in Russia, locate one in the vicinity of some geothermal or steam heating pipes somewhere in N. U.S. with comparable temps. Set up the other as the control, well-away from the heating source.
(BTW, I think of “central heating” as a furnace or boiler heating system located centrally within a building or house. Maybe that’s wrong.)
Well, everyone else has posted a location. Try this one. The two buildings in Anthony’s photo are visible, as is the instrumentation field. From Google maps:
67.565295,133.41239
Appears to be way out at the very North end of town.
Leif Svalgaard (15:29:35): They laugh at Bozo The Clown, too
I must reallybe getting somewhere to be the recipient of a second ad-hominem attack from you in a single day.
Once again, you don’t know what other science is used in the construction of Dr. Svensmark’s argument, because you haven’t read the book.
It is published in Danish, btw.
“Contempt prior to investigation” (probably first said by William Paley) is never a becoming pedagogical vestment.
Once again Leif, your logic is ear candy. May I pick you brain? You don’t suppose that the Sun has about the same amount of influence on temps that CO2 does? I am beginning to think that (thanks to your pristine logic), but I also have a question further on. Yes, the Sun affects day and night temps, but that is because the Earth rotates, not because the Sun varies. And the tilt of the Earth changes the way it reacts to the Sun’s constant beams. And cosmic rays seed clouds here and there, as expected. But what if there is a perfect storm condition out there? What if cosmic rays during longer minimums seed clouds that are more numerous, or thicker, or wetter (read set up by a warmer climate, since warmer is wetter), resulting in consequent cooling, and then cooling oceans cycle into this condition at about the same time? Do you consider that the Sun may be involved in a perfect storm scenario? And that this scenario has a cycle? Much like the not quite timed beat of windshield wipers on the school bus?
To Anthony Watts,
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Russia in both summers and winters. Do not let go of the Russian story. It really cries for its own surfacestations project. This data after all represents up to 1/6th of the earth’s land surface depending on the time period. And it likely represents the largest data array after the USA, Canada and the EU.
Factors to Consider.
1. Of course district heating is widely used. These pipes run everywhere to every building in any community using it. Which is the bulk of them. Probably every town over 10,000 population has a central heating plant to provide hot water for building space heating and for bathing and washing. This stuff is called “technical water” and you don’t ever drink or cook with it.
The total steam flow is obviously much greater in fall/winter/spring when space heating is being employed. It’s greatly reduced in summer when it only needs to supply hot water for bathing and washing.
2. Urban Heat Island effects. Russian cities on average mimick Manhattan Island in the concentration of roofs and the percentage of surrounding pavement. “Green spaces” are often few and far between. Just seas of concrete and asphalt with steam rising up from leaking below ground piping. Some piping is above ground and some is below ground. Google Earth is ready for doubters.
The siting of Russian data stations is of as much critical interest as in the USA.
Mark
p.s. Do not assume that stations deep in Siberia and/or above the arctic circle are necessarily isolated rural stations. Norilsk (nickel mining) and Novy Urengoy (GAZPROM n-g town) are two examples of small arctic cities that also have district heating. They were designed and built according to standard Soviet urban planning and construction practices, complete with huge apartment building blocks and district heating plants.
Other such locales include the Kolyma, Archangel, Murmansk
Harold Ambler (17:33:42) :
I must really be getting somewhere to be the recipient of a second ad-hominem attack from you in a single day.
Once again, you don’t know what other science is used in the construction of Dr. Svensmark’s argument, because you haven’t read the book.
Come on, there are no attacks. Little smileys like this one 🙂 indicate that. ‘Zany’ was your word. If you have to put other ‘science’ in a popular book [or press release, or such] it is usually because it will not stand up in regular per-reviewed papers. Anyway, you are getting somewhere: I just bought the book for all of $3 [seems that it is not something that sells well or that people hang on to]. I’ll even waste a day when it arrives in a week and will let you know if I find anything significant that I didn’t know already [which I doubt, because otherwise I’m sure he would have published it in the usual manner].
You see, I take this seriously and look into things. Did you read the articles I referred you to?
The Russians will have a ball when Europe punishes her economies with a CO2 reduction. They will be building more solar farms and wind farms.
These farms will need back-up from gas energy plants (because you can start them up very quickly and shut them down very quickly and because gas is a relative clean fuel. This will make Europe more dependent on Gas from Russia.
So in a way the Russians currently have an interest in the continuation of the AGW fairy tail.
Therefore it is a good idea to have a close look at the temp data from Russia.
Pamela:
I have just put this info about CO2 as a comment on the “Questions on GISS Temp product” but I copy it here as well: (it’s from Hans Schreuder, Ilovemycarbondioxide.com)
Statement: NO CO2 forcing. CO2 is a trace gas, 0.0365% of our atmosphere.
Governments have spend over 50 billion US dollar to get the proof on the table that CO2 is causing AGW and what they have come up with is plain lies. There is 0 proof.
1.
The settled science that a greenhouse warms up due to re-radiated light (energy), as set out by Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), Arrhenius (1896), NASA (2008), et al., is false.
2.
Considering, therefore, that even inside an actual greenhouse with a barrier of solid glass no such phenomenon as a greenhouse effect occurs, most certainly there can be no greenhouse effect in our turbulent atmosphere.
Energy can not be created from nothing, not even by means of re-radiated infra red. Widely accepted theory has it that more energy is re-radiated to earth than comes from the sun in the first place, amounting to almost an extra two suns. All materials above zero Kelvin radiate energy, yes, but energy does not flow from a cold body to a warm one and cause its temperature to rise. A block of ice in a room does not cause the room to warm up, despite the block of ice radiating its energy into the room. Yet carbon dioxide’s re-radiation of infrared energy warming up planet earth is the preposterous theory hailed by not only the alarmists, but accepted and elaborated by most skeptics as well, with mathematical theorems that do little more than calculate the number of fairies that can dance on a pinhead.
The accepted carbon dioxide greenhouse theory is thus declared a complete and total scam, as more fully detailed in these papers, amongst many (and I salute all scientists who agree with these papers and will gladly publicise all papers on this subject) :
“Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Falsification_of_the_Atmospheric_CO2_Greenhouse_Effects.pdf and
“Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics”
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm
Hans Schreuder
Ipswich, UK
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/FAQ.html
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/carbondioxide.html
“Really new trails are rarely blazed in the great academies.
The confining walls of conformist dogma are too dominating.
To think originally, you must go forth into the wilderness.”
S. Warren Carey
“One definition of insanity is the compulsion
to make the same mistake over and over again
all the while expecting a different and successful outcome.”
Phil Brennan
The changes in climate are due to “the hot/cold bottle effect of our oceans warming or cooling the landmasses and the activity of the sun and variations in cloud cover.
As well as incidental volcanic activity.
See the three short video’s: http://gorelied.blogspot.com/2008/11/great-global-warming-swindle-6-part.html
In this video’s the whole case is explained and more…
For example why in one year at a certain spot in the ocean you can find haring in abundance and the next year they are all gone!
Very interesting stuff.
The whole AGW swindle has a political goal which I think is frightening.
Pamela Gray (17:46:17) :
You don’t suppose that the Sun has about the same amount of influence on temps that CO2 does?
If that amount is zero I might agree 🙂 . Well, they are both small [and, surely, not the same to the tenth decimal place…].
Do you consider that the Sun may be involved in a perfect storm scenario?
The variation of GCRs is also small, so I do not think that the coincidence of some small effects can make a perfect storm, and if they did, it would be [as perfect storms are] a rare event and hence not to be considered a primary or major climate driver.
You might think that if we get a very large Solar particle event that that might have an effect [be the trigger for a perfect storm]. Here is a recent paper on that:
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, A11311, doi:10.1029/2008JA013517, 2008
The effects of hard-spectra solar proton events on the middle atmosphere
A. Seppälä er al.
Abstract
The stratospheric and mesospheric impacts of the solar proton events of January 2005 are studied here using ion and neutral chemistry modeling and subionospheric radio wave propagation observations and modeling. This period includes three SPEs, among them an extraordinary solar proton storm on 20 January, during which the >100 MeV proton fluxes were unusually high, making this event the hardest in solar cycle 23. The radio wave results show a significant impact to the lower ionosphere/middle atmosphere from the hard spectrum event of 20 January with a sudden radio wave amplitude decrease of about 10 dB. Results from the Sodankylä Ion and Neutral Chemistry model predict large impacts on the mesospheric NO x (400–500%) and ozone (−30 to −40% NH, −15% SH) in both the northern (winter) and the southern (summer) polar regions. The direct stratospheric effects, however, are only about 10–20% enhancement in NO x , which result in −1% change in O3. Imposing a much larger extreme SPE lasting 24 hours rather than just 1 hour produced only about 5% ozone depletion in the stratosphere. Only a massive hard-spectra SPE with high-energy fluxes over ten times larger than observed here (>30 MeV fluence of 1.0 × 109 protons/cm2), as, e.g., the Carrington event of 1859 (>30 MeV fluence of 1.9 × 1010 protons/cm2), could presumably produce significant in situ impacts on stratospheric ozone.
————–
Energetic particles from the Sun have negligible effect on stratospheric ozone, unless you have a one-in-a-century event. So, I don’t think that ‘perfect storms’ need to worry us too much.
Anthony:
WUWT was named, along with Climate Audit, on Special Report with Britt Hume this evening…
I was in such a hurry to post the actual location of the station, I overlooked the steam pipe just across the dirt road ENE of the building and instrument field. It appears to be in some sort of industrial complex, and can be identified by the U expansion joint I asked about much earlier. Now I’m wondering what the other straight line is adjacent to the meteo building and instruments on that same side. The fence appears to be shorter than this line, which is also much narrower than the steam pipe. Anyone have a link to a winter satellite photo of this area?
GOOD WORK ANTHONY!!
Oh how I love this site.
There are some real exchanges going on here.
Love it.
Love it.
Love it.
Anyone else check the location referenced by “George M (17:25:05) : … The two buildings in Anthony’s photo are visible, as is the instrumentation field. From Google maps:
67.565295,133.41239 Appears to be way out at the very North end of town.”
The buildings do seem to fit the photo. Using
67.565295, 133.412590 moves the “A” marker to the right of the first building, and the second building seems to be about 35 meters to the NNW of the first.
I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank Dr. Svalgaard, whom I have also written privately to ask for a brief (!) reading list.
It was a relief to see this thread back on topic with Mark’s recent post:
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Russia in both summers and winters. Do not let go of the Russian story. It really cries for its own surfacestations project. This data after all represents up to 1/6th of the earth’s land surface depending on the time period. And it likely represents the largest data array after the USA, Canada and the EU.
Apart from the bit about spending time in Russia, I second all of that.
I lived in Western Siberia for years, not many if any Americans have lived there longer than myself. I doubt there is more of an Urban heat island effect anywhere in the world than in Western Siberia during the winter. As noted heating is done by a central city steam distribution network. There are no thermostats. It becomes unbearably hot in most dwellings in winter months. The only way to control temperature is to open windows. This style of energy usage can only be described as profligate but the Russians have lots of hydrocarbons and so it is. The Siberian winter of 2005-2006 was extremely cold (local weather reports claimed it was the coldest in 30 years). I was near Nyagan at that time and the temps were between -40 C and -52 C the entire month of January. It was still necessary to open windows to control the temperature. It is noticeably colder outside the cities than inside. Any thermometer close to a dwelling or in an urban setting during the winter will be impacted.
The hot water systems are also central and are turned off during summer months. Most people (other than those that install small electric water heaters in their apartments) have only cold water for showers during summer months. There are no contributions to temps during summer from these central systems-they are just switched off.
I have seen many steam line leaks but never touched nor measured the external temperature of the above ground lines.
I am at a loss to explain the January/February/March variation in 2007. I was not in Siberia at that time.