In my 30 years in meteorology, I never questioned how NOAA climate monitoring stations were setup. It wasn’t until I stumbled on the Marysville California fire station and its thermometer that that I began to notice just how badly sited these stations are. When I started looking further, I never expected to find USHCN climate monitoring stations placed at sewage treatment plants, next to burn barrels, or in parking lots of University Atmospheric Science Departments, or next to air conditioning heat exchangers. These were all huge surprises.
I didn’t think I’d be surprised anymore. I thought I’d seen the weirdest of the weird, and that I would not be surprised again with bad station placement examples.
Then I saw this station, submitted from Fort Scott, Kansas:
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No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is an official NOAA USHCN climate monitoring station at a funeral home in downtown Fort Scott, KS
From a wider perspective, you can see all the things around it. Not only do we have a fountain (extra humidity), a nearby brick wall for heat retention at night, a large concrete driveway that curves around the station, a tree for shade in the late afternoon, a big brick building with a south facing brick wall, but we also have cobblestone streets and convenient nearby parking. The station is near the center of the city.
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This location has everything needed, except a BBQ. See the photo gallery here.
It seems that that station was moved into this location from the previous one about a block away on April 4th, 2002:
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Upon first examination. it appears that it “may” have been cooler at the previous location, once you get past the spike of the 1998 El Nino it seems the elevated step function remains. Though since the location was also downtown, about a block away, perhaps the UHI of the downtown has overwhelmed the station change.
From what I can tell of the towns history, most of the growth in buildings occurred during the first half of the 20th century. Many of the downtown buildings seem to date from that time. Certainly it appears cooler around 1900.
No worries though, GISS has “fixed” the temperature to reflect a cooler past:
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Of course, this GISS adjustment artificially increases the temperature trend of the last century. It appears to use the present as the hinge point.
Yes it probably was cooler in Fort Scott’s past, when it looked like this, when it was founded:
“A beautifully undulating prairie”. “An almost precipitous decent of fifty feet”. “A flat spur of high prairie”. “A small clear-water creek”.
In 1852, Assistant Surgeon Joseph Barnes used all of these phrases to describe the landscape surrounding Fort Scott.
reference here
Here is a recent view of downtown
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It’s official, it’s been nailed to borrow a useful phrase, ahem, as well, as causing it to get warmer CO2 can cause it to get colder, much colder.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4061092/Greenhouse-gases-could-have-caused-an-ice-age-claim-scientists.html
Here’s a plan for a Green Tea Party : Have cake, eat it, repeat.
Or haw about a different conclusion ?
It doesn’t matter much to the Earth how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere. The Earth warms and cools to the beat of a different drum or more likely set of drums.
Wow. That is amazing. How do you find these?
here is a must read article over at newsbusters concerning James Hansen:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/01/01/nasas-hansen-obama-use-global-warming-redistribute-wealth
Looney Tunes, part 4.
John Holdren: A recommendation.
————————————————————-
John Holdren: Obama’s science advisor.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/12/crackpot-john-holdren-will-become.html
John Holdren is the ultimate example of the pseudointellectual impurities that have recently flooded universities and academies throughout the Western world.
“…Holdren and Ehrlich may have narcissistically talked about “prestigious symposia” but it’s hard to change the fact that events where people compete who is going to propose a more absurd die-off scenario are just gatherings of pompous loons.”
In the particular Ehrlich-Holdren paper, they discussed five “theorems”, as they boldly call this retarded stuff. For example, the first “theorem” says that “population growth causes a disproportionate negative impact on the environment”. The last one argues that “theoretical solutions to the problem are often not operational and sometimes they are not solutions”.
These are great theorems! They’re so accurate, well-defined, rigorously proven, and universally valid! I am pretty sure that in insane asylums, the physicians would use different words than “theorems” to describe these manifestations of their anxiety disorders.
Nowadays, they equate “CO2 emissions” with a “great die-off”. Details have changed but the dishonest, unscientific, extremely ideological, and political essence of their movement hasn’t. These people evolve just like the RNA viruses of flu. You may think that you have already gained immunity against this intellectual trap but instead, the viruses have mutated just a little bit and they’re back. They will probably always be with us.
It’s very bad that people whose approach to the world is the exact opposite of science – because they prefer irrational phobias, “prestige” of symposia, and visible jobs paid by gullible manipulated folks over rational, humble, careful, and ever more refined, accurate, and justified scientific arguments and findings – are being linked to science, and it is bad that President-elect Obama is helping to distort the definition of science and its proper role in the society in this way.
“Wow. That is amazing. How do you find these?”
After looking at surfacestations.org, you’ll find that finding stuff like this is quite easy
Why is it weird that it’s outside a funereal home? These are volunteer stations, so I think you’d be likely to find them outside all kinds of different places. Of course, the headline — “Where do thermometers go to die…” — is hilarious, and all the wrong things at the site are appropriate to point out. But when you’ve got over a thousand of these things being run by volunteers (not to count the several thousand non-USHCN sites), I think they’ll likely be found in all sorts of weird places.
Happy New Year, Anthony, and congrats on the success of WUWT over the past year.
Basil
Pardon me, but I’m not seeing how they’re getting “moderately wooded” out of the current site. If one tree makes a city lot moderately wooded would two trees make it heavily forrested?
Looney Tunes, part 5
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Litter Offsets?
Those carbon offsets seem to be quite popular these days. So why not expand the concept to other forms of pollution?
@SteveM
Thank you. The website was very helpful.
Where human morbidity and mortality issues are at stake, such as in the manufacture of pharmaceutical drugs, operation of hospital laboratories, blood product collection methodology, automobile manufacturing, bridge construction, etc., there are normally very rigid rules regarding “quality control.” The backbone of “quality control” includes calibration standards, correlation studies, uniform methodology, standardized instrumentation, reproducibility, and documentation. “Quality control” is normally expensive, time consuming, and requires constant monitoring.
In this regard, we have the concepts of global warming and climate change, about which we are constantly bombarded with warnings of rising oceans, famine, species extinction, disease outbreaks, etc. — primarily based upon future predictions from computer models centered upon historical temperature records — all of which (if true) have significant implications on future human morbidity and mortality. Yet the “science of climate change” involving computer models utilizing past records of surface temperatures, as well as current recordings of surface temperatures, appears to be completely devoid of “quality control” regarding the primary data records. (Buried in “quality control” is urban heat island effect, which would be eliminated with appropriate standard methodology requirements.) Not only are you amply demonstrating that “quality control” in surface temperature recording is completely absent with your project, there is a second issue of “manipulating” data obtained from methods devoid of “quality control” overview. How can one “manipulate” (adjust) historical data that one cannot verify as being accurate and reproducible? Such “manipulations” cannot correct for previous lack of “quality control” and may actually introduce more uncertainty. This is not science — it’s “data fakery.” How can any reputable science journal publish studies where the primary data sets are “highly suspect” for being unreliable? Please continue your work in exposing this fraudulent science, if it can be called a science.
“This location has everything needed, except a BBQ.”
Actually, there is a BBQ…they do cremations.
See…http://www.konantz-cheney.com/services.html
Here we go…
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-scientists-its-time-for-plan-b-1221092.html
I still favour the boneless chicken cannon. (My design!)
Apologies for being a tad OT.
That’s a stiff one
The crematorium is probably not far away too!
True, the BBQ pit seems to have been misplaced…however, all may not be lost! Have someone check and see if they have a crematory…it would probably require a state air permit. cdl
Another of the hundreds of examples of bad measurement. The GISS corrections are universally rubbish. I know they tried to bulk correct based on light levels but it clearly didn’t work. With the low number of stations present in the early record the GISS data from the early part of the century cannot be trusted.
With so much money dumped into AGW why isn’t someone demanding a longer stick for the thermometers say 50 ft. GISS guys should at least be screaming for a better system.
The only thing keeping them in line now are the satellites and even those have experienced ‘adjustments’. Whether they are reasonable adjustments to the satellites or not, I don’t know.
Keep it up, Anthony, I know you will anyway but the more that is exposed the better it gets.
Anthony, your blog is fascinating, and one of the ones I find useful for someone like me (a computer geek whose statistical background consists of a few college courses many decades ago). Am trying to understand the adjustments that are being made to the data for UHI that are in the final temperature estimates that folks like Hansen publish. Can you point me at something that might discuss how those adjustments are made? I recall a posting (not sure if it was you or Jeff Id) that showed the UHI adjustment made at a specific station which actually pushed the number UP instead of moderating them, so was hoping to actually understand what their algorithm for UHI adjustment was…
Thanks in advance, Tom Bauch
Since Mr. Hansen loves to adjust numbers, I thought it would be fun to take the station data bias, UHI, from the US stations that have been examined on surfacestations.org, about 2.8 deg C, minimum, and apply that to GISS Global Temps plot. Since the US has 1221 of the approx 5300 world-wide stations, that is 23%. Assume there are no other stations in the world with a UHI bias, use 1985 as a hinge point which seems to be one of Hansen’s favorites, and move the end of the smoothed line and data points down 23% of 2.8=0.6 deg C, and voila we have a more real picture of glbal temperature.
http://i42.tinypic.com/5egxuo.jpg
Happy Chillier 2009 everyone!
Anthony,
I bit you get a little pit in your gut every time you find how bad temps are found, after the years you used these same ones to tell your audience what the weather is,was.
I CAN NOT believe how much fraud is being found, we need to start a fund to collect money to pay expenses for a good lawyer to go after the reduction of past temps like this one. WHY OH WHY DO THEY NOT LOWER CURRENT TEMPS???????
Thank you
Basil (07:06:48): You make several interesting and valid points. Still, it is apparent that overall management, supervision, technical oversight and assistance, training, and monitoring are obviously absent from the majority of USCHN sites.
When you add that in many cases NOAA is not even sure of the exact location of these sites, it becomes obvious that these civic minded ‘volunteers’ are left to their own devices regardless of their technical expertise, or lack of such.
Nevertheless, their product is clearly not an accurate measure of the local climate.
Note: The above statement assumes the absurd — that ‘climate’ can accurately be described/measured/predicted using a single parameter, temperature.
Wow! We lived just outside town on a large farm when I was a young boy in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I am waxing very nostalgic at seeing an entry on Ft. Scott – but I will spare you all my stroll down memory lane.
FWIW, I do wish to weigh in on the UHI factor. Since Ft. Scott was an important commercial and railroad center in the post Civil War western expansion, I believe most of the downtown and the brick streets were already there at the turn of the century (19th to 20th that is). There was some modest growth in the 20th century, but not enough to drive significant UHI effects IMHO.
Whatever artifacts may exist in that temp record would be more likely from equipment and siting issues.
It would be nice if our US neighbors would send photographs of their weather stations.
RE: (jim (06:56:07) 🙂
I’m beginning to wonder if Hansen wants Michael Griffin’s job? See (for instance):
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jc2d_p1DHvR8srpLfst9HA7oOBlQD95E2FN00
Tsk, tsk, Anthony. Those are not cobblestones, they’re bricks. You need to get out more often.
Hansen’s plan to keep the carbon-tax money in the public’s hands and out of the “commodities market” actually makes very good sense — if CO2 were actually a bad thing. I have to credit him on that one (however, I do not believe CO2 restriction is necessary or beneficial).
Thing is, politics is all about public policy being used to transfer money from ordinary citizens to the wealthy — so the wealthy can contribute (give it) to the politicians. Hence, I think Hansen’s plan will not be implemented.