Click for the Oberlin image gallery
This is the USHCN station of record for Oberlin KS. COOP # 145906 It was installed at this location in March 2008.
The idea behind the surface network is to measure the near surface temperature. Unfortunately, this one does it “nearer” to the surface than others.
Thanks to surfacestations volunteer Robert Edward Watson for taking this photo. Here is what he wrote about it in the station survey form:
Height of shelter above local surface: 40″ Last pole broke, curator
is waiting for government guys to come and fix.
The standard observing height is 1.5 meters (~ 60 inches). At 40 inches, this one is ~ 20 inches too short.
The GISTEMP plot for Oberlin has a curious step at the end:
Click for original source graph from NASA GISS
What is really curious about this USHCN station is the number of station move it has experienced in Oberlin since 1998. As indicated by the NCDC MMS database which tracks the location, it seems like this station has been a veritable hot potato:
Click for full sized table
I count seven locations since 1996. The MMTS was introduced in 1986 and this one in the photo looks a bit careworn. It kind of make you wonder if they keep cutting down the pole height for some reason with each location, because there is certainly no good reason for the MMTS post to be that short.
As we know, the closer to the ground the near surface temperature measurement is, the higher will be the average between the Tmax and Tmin.
Clearly the data quality is getting the short shrift with this installation and the constant moves. Each move places the sensor in a totally different environment. Sorting out the signal from the biases introduced by each new environment is not an easy task. In fact without knowing this history of each location, it may well be impossible.
At least the BBQs are at least forty feet away from the sensor this time 😉
I wonder if they simply cut the pole off at ground level rather than figure out how to extract it from its footing the last couple of times they moved it?
Could they have got it any closer to the building? I guess they are economizing on trenching and wiring……….
Certainly lots of asphalt around. The driveway (where vehicles most likely often park) and the street can not be more that 20-25 feet away.
I’d say this is yet another sloppy installation – with little regard given to getting quality data.
meanwhile back at Nasa .. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081121_Obama.pdf
As Stephen King would say sosdd.
Anthony,
How hard would it be to set up a volunteer temp network? At the very least a lot of your readers are spread out, we could accuracy check our local stations? All of the surveying has shown us how badly the current system works, could we really do much worse?
There’s only one word to describe this high quality facility. Unbelievable!
It does show quite nicely how warm the mid 1930s were.
In the chart, it reads that the station was installed at the observer’s residence. I’d be curious to know if the observer is a renter and moves every year or so, moving the station as well.
What permissions are required to locate a station on a site? Is it hard to get a person at a site to say “yes” to allow a station? Are stations sited using some form of eminent domain?
(BTW it looks like there are two BBQ grills in the photo. Is there some yet-to-be-discovered genetic link between charred meat and a person’s interest in weather?)
I think that it is interesting that this was installed just 6 months ago in May 2008. That answers a question I had. Is anybody with USHCN / GISS / NASA worried about this? I was wondering if they would be trying to fix bad stations before they were audited either by cleaning them up or moving them. Obviously not, May 2008 was about 1 year after this project started. They just don’t give a rat’s butt that the quality of their work sucks.
pkatt (02:07:41) :
I certainly agree with the end about the world needing an open and honest discussion.
That they say that suggests to me that the writers either:
a) don’t get it or
b) think they get it but don’t, or
c) are planting those words to suggest to the uninformed reader that the skeptics are not open and honest… and not planning for any open and honest discussion.
“pkatt (02:07:41) :
meanwhile back at Nasa .. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081121_Obama.pdf”
Where does this drivel originate from? I’m amazed that the author didn’t include their name or any reference of origin.
[snip]
Any course in critical thinking or aristotelian logic would have a lot of fun with that paper.
What a shame, and what a sham.
JimB
Being too close to a building is bad enough, but this? I can just feel the heat radiating off the white siding.
Keep pushing Anthony,
The AGW conspiracy is breaking up slowly:
Icecap.us
1. Nov 25, 2008
Fiery Czech Leader Klaus Poised to Be EU President—Called Gore an ‘Apostle of Arrogance’
By Dan Bilefsky, New York Times
2. Nov 25, 2008
Op Ed Comentary from a Television Meteorologist with a Broadcast Seal
The dismantling of The Weather Channel Environmental team is as much a public relations statement as it is a material policy shift exacted by General Electric. The timing of this action should be alarming to The American Meteorological Society, academia and other institutions funded by thinly disguised grant money gravy train.
Has anyone from this forum made an attempt to have a real dialog with the Real Climate people about the issues that they bring up in their threads. My finding about them is as follows. If you are a skeptic and you ask a stupid question they will post it and allow their fan club to hit it out of the park. They will allow the local fan club to insult you, but they will not allow you to return the favor. Retaliation will not be posted. If you stick to the issue and if you produce a post that the fan club and the moderators are unable to answer, then they will not post it, no matter how relevant, respectful, and to the point that it is.
The subject for the newest thread at RC is why people are still saying that warming has recently stopped. The author, Rasmus, presents his take on the dilema. I tried to answer this question for him, and I submitted my response, but it has not been posted – even though many other responses have been posted since mine was submitted.
Rasmus starts his article, called “Mind the Gap” with this:
“The misconception ‘the global warming has stopped’ still lives on in some minds. We have already discussed why this argument is flawed. So why have we failed to convince?”
I tried to answer that question with this:
Well, Rasmus, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are really interested in answering that question. If that is the case, then the approach that you need to use is not to throw up your own straw men, but rather to address the issues of people that make the claim that warming has stopped.
To begin with, people who make that claim have a period of time in mind. Most of them believe that there has been no warming since about 1997-1998. And I agree with that claim. So let’s do a little review of the arguments and counter arguments.
1. If someone wants to convince you about what has been happening for the last decade, it would seem to be very dishonest to use a temperature chart that begins in 1850 such that the area of interest is compressed into a half inch, as your first chart obviously does. It is this chart or a similar one that most of the warming sites consistently use when addressing the issue. The question is, if you are not trying to fool people, then why use a 158 year chart to talk about the last decade? Better to use a chart that covers the time period for which the claim is being made – like this one.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/10/updated-11-year-global-temp-anomoly.html
So when you ask yourself, why have we failed to convince, there is one of your reasons.
2. After the 158 year chart doesn’t do the trick, then warmers typically move on to the next rationalization – “the period is flat because there is a large El Nino at the beginning and a La Nina at the end.” The warmers conviniently leave out the fact that the period is covered by 7 ENSO events, 4 El Nino’s, and 3 La Nina’s. And they leave out the fact that the El Nino of 97/98 was followed by a long La Nina that basically cancelled out it’s effect on the slope of the trend line for the period. Gavin created a data set that did an ENSO correction for HadCrut3. I plotted that data against the uncorrected HadCrut3, and the difference was very little – as you can see here.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmidt-enso-adjustment-for.html
I also used a seperate method to judge the ENSO effects here.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ten-year-hadcrut3-enso-effects.html
So once again, we have a false argument from the warmers trying to justify the absence of warming.
3. Then we have the statistical significance argument that is generated by people like Tamino. He takes the assumed climate trend due to CO2 forcing and overlays it with noise. Then he shows, that for some period of time, this trended noise can also have flat temperature sections. This argument makes no sense for a couple of reasons. First, there is no noise in climate. Everything must happen for a reason. And when we look at the data after the fact, we should be able to explain the reasons. This is not the case with the absence of warming for the last decade or so. Second, he only uses one independent data set, and he finds the flat areas in that data set. But the flat trend that we are now observing is confirmed by several independent data sources, like the satellite data and the surface temp data. In addition, the information is also supported by the fact that there was no ocean heat content increase for the 4 year period from 2003 to 2006 (Willis et al). Sea level data from the University of Colorado shows no sea level increase for the last three years – and considering the close relationship between sea level and ocean heat content, it seems highly likely that there has been no increase in the ocean heat content for the last 6 years.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/university-of-colorado-global-sea-level.html
So it seems to me that if Tamino wanted to make a real point, he would have to generate three noise data sets and show that they could all have extended flat periods of 10 or 11 years, and that those flat periods could overlap for such a period. Of course he would have to take the first three that he generated. He couldn’t simply generate data sets until he found some that overlapped. Okay, so now you know why many people don’t find that argument convincing.
4. Then there is the argument that you presented above having to do with temperature extrapolations to the poles. I don’t find that argument convincing because I believe that the increase at the poles should be some multiplier of the increase in the tropics. But over a period of time when there is no increase at the tropics, there should be increase at the poles. X times zero is zero. In addition, temperature readings in the Antarctic do not support the theory at the Arctic.
5. You can make the argument that GISS temp still shows warming while others do not, but even the GISS temp increase is only half the predicted .2C for the decade. Also, for any number of reasons, and I don’t have time to go into all of them at this moment, many people believe that GISS is an outlier that cannot be trusted. For example – poor coverage of Northern Canada and Africa. Often high Siberian temperatures. While surface temp station quality control in the US is poor at best, how can anyone think that it isn’t even worse in Siberia. Then there are the wide variety of data “adjustments” that always seem to yield warmer results. Etc. etc.
6. The absence of warming is a problem because there are no natural elements of variation for the period that can explain it. The level of CO2 rose as fast as ever, and without other reasons for the lack of warming, the climate sensitivity number must become suspect.
7. The last 30 year period that many warmers insist is the minimum acceptable period for defining a significant trend can quite likely be explained by ENSO. This chart shows that El Ninos were hugely dominant for the period from 1977 to 1998 when all of the warming for that period occured. Prior to 1977 you can see that La Ninas were more dominant.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/ts.gif
So, rasmus, there are some of the reasons that you have failed to convice people about warming in the last decade. Hope that helps.
The government fixes the volunteer stations? Does that also mean that the government installs them? Has the government been doing all these interesting installations? I don’t think so, although some do look like a kind of government work; is there a Civilian Climate Corps?
Ross Berteig: “At least the BBQs are at least forty feet away from the sensor this time ;-)”
The beat goes on, eh?
When I was a kid there was a popular children’s magazine called Popular Highlights, which came out monthly. I remember that I would usually gravitate to its “hidden picture” graphic in each issue, especially in doctor’s waiting rooms, where this mindless activity seemed to keep my mind off cold stethescopes, needles, dentists’ drills and other unspeakable torments. In those days, I was often looking for a key, a wagon, a kite…
Of course, every new photograph Anthony releases here is a new hidden picture challenge for somebody, and an opportunity to revisit childhood anxiety associated with doctors’ waiting rooms, and the anticipation of something not-so-benign about to happen. The only difference is the sort of objects in the picture: a car, an air conditioning vent… and the ubiquitous barbecue.
The Horror!!!
The price of dissent on global warming
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24700827-7583,00.html
David Bellamy | November 25, 2008
Article from: The Australian
WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn’t believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.
According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that? The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming, I’ve not been allowed to make a television program.
Tilo Reber wrote:
Take a look at the discussion on the Is Gavin Schmidt Honest? thread at climateaudit (starting at post 441).
Most of the surface network is noise, as this post and many others illustrates.
Is that Aluminum siding?
This temperature station needs Enzyte!
And I thought my sister moved around a lot!
JimB – that drivel is from James Hansen. Your hard earned tax dollars being put to good use again.
Tilo Reber, excellent summary of the main points.
I gave up reading Real Climate some time ago, because of their pattern of misleading and outright deceptive practices in order to support the climate orthodoxy of the IPCC.
There is a case to be made that the last 10 years is a cyclical effect (PDO etc) masking the rising temperatures from CO2/GHGs, but that opens up the whole climate sensitivity issue (how much temperatures rise from a certain rise in CO2, such as a doubling). And that in turn, questions the core argument of the IPCC.
Real Climate only allows debate of issues that do not question the claims of the IPCC.
Thanks to surfacestations volunteer Robert Edward Watson for taking this photo. Here is what he wrote about it in the station survey form:
Your name on WUWT.
Congrats, Doc.
You made the bigtime.
Jonathan:
“Take a look at the discussion on the Is Gavin Schmidt Honest? thread”
I think it’s pretty evident that Gavin runs a rigged game at RC. The example that I gave above isn’t the first time that I’ve had such a problem. And the contributers at CA now confirm that this kind of thing is standard practice at RC. In Gavin’s house, the house always wins, no matter what they have to do to make that happen.
When I go to a blog I expect to follow their rules – as long as they are the same for everybody. But in Gavin’s case, selective censorship is simply a tool that allows him to run his site as a propaganda source while maintaining the illusion of free discussion.
Robert Coté (10:08:03) :
Is that Aluminum siding?
Looks to me like an inexpensive brand of Vinyl siding (who knows what it’s covering up?).