This is a small bombshell. I’ve been telling readers about UHI since this blog started. One notable example that I demonstrated by actual measurement is Reno, NV:
Click for larger image
The IPCC reports have minimized the effects of UHI on climate for quite some time.
From Warwick Hughes:
The IPCC drew that conclusion from the Jones et al 1990 Letter to Nature which examined temperature data from regions in Eastern Australia, Western USSR and Eastern China, to conclude that “In none of the three regions studied is there any indication of significant urban influence..” That has led to the IPCC claim that for decades, urban warming is less than 0.05 per century.
A paper in JGR that slipped by last fall without much notice (but know now thanks to Warwick Hughes) is one from Phil Jones, the director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK. The pager is titled: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China
In it, Jones identifies an urban warming signal in China of 0.1 degrees C per decade. Or, if you prefer, 1 degree C per century. Not negligible by any means. Here is the abstract:
Global surface temperature trends, based on land and marine data, show warming of about 0.8°C over the last 100 years. This rate of warming is sometimes questioned because of the existence of well-known Urban Heat Islands (UHIs). We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time. In the main part of the paper, for China, we compare a new homogenized station data set with gridded temperature products and attempt to assess possible urban influences using sea surface temperature (SST) data sets for the area east of the Chinese mainland. We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade−1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.
Even though Jones tries to minimize the UHI effect elsewhere, saying the UHI trends don’t contribute to warming in London and Vienna, what is notable about the paper is that Jones has been minimizing the UHI issues for years and now does an about face on China. And even more notable is that Jones result are directly at odds with another researcher at Hadley, Dr. David Parker.
It seems that Parker is looking more and more foolish with his attempts to make UHI “disappear” To back that up, the National Weather Service includes the UHI factor in one of it’s training course ( NOAA Professional Competency Unit 6 ) using Reno, NV.
In the PUC6 they were also kind enough to provide a photo essay of their own as well as a graph. You can click the aerial photo to get a Google Earth interactive view of the area. The ASOS USHCN station is right between the runways.
This is NOAA’s graph showing the changes to the official climate record when they made station moves:
Source for 24a and 24b: NOAA Internal Training manual, 2004-2007
What is striking about this is that here we have NOAA documenting the effects of an “urban heat bubble” something that Parker 2003 et al say “doesn’t exist“, plus we have inclusion a site with known issues, held up as a bad example for training the operational folks, being used in a case study for the new USHCN2 system.
So if NOAA trains for UHI placement, and Hadley’s Dr. Jones admits it is real and quantifies it, I’m comfortable in saying that Parker’s claims of UHI being negligible are pure rubbish.
Its all about location, location, location. And climate monitoring stations that are poorly sited and that have been overrun by urban growth clearly don’t give a pure signal for assesment of long term climate trends. This puts a real kink in the validity of the surface temperature data in GISS and HadCRUT and could go a long way towards explaining the divergence between satellite and surface temperatures in recent years.
Matt Bennett,
Please refrain from quoting, or referring to Realclimate again — until that ridiculously biased, agenda-driven and inaccurate propaganda site allows posters the same privilege of commenting without being censored as this, the “Best Science” site, allows you.
As everyone can see, it is Realclimate that exists in its own tiny corner of cyberspace; just compare the hits to WUWT. Realclimate is simply a propaganda site bought and paid for by George Soros. The science-oriented public that is interested in the causes of the very mild, natural global warming that has taken place has made clear its view that this site, which allows you to comment without censorship, is legitimate while RC is not.
Were it not for George Soros money, Real climate would not have even received the one-tenth the number of votes for “Best Science” site that WUWT garnered.
And Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ invention was deliberately based on bad data and on a dishonest methodology. It has been thoroughly discredited many times over. It shows no Medieval Warming Period, which is universally accepted as fact by mainstream scientists [which of course eliminates Realclimate fringe scientists].
Some of the central facts surrounding the alarmist global warming scare need to be pointed out:
1. Very mild global warming has occurred, but the causes are almost entirely natural. And that mild warming stopped in the late ’90’s.
2. The rise in global temperatures has been minor, and in fact the 0.6° rise since 1980 has essentially been entirely retraced.
3. The UN/IPCC has had to constantly back down from its projections.
4. The UN/IPCC is composed of 100% political appointees.
5. The AGW/CO2 hypothesis has been repeatedly falsified.
6. Both the UN/IPCC and Al Gore consistently tuck their tails between their legs and run away from any serious debate over global warming — proving conclusively that they have no confidence in their hypothesis.
7. Claiming that the debate is settled [“The science IS IN”] begs the question: when was that debate? Times and dates, please.
8. If CO2 caused global warming — the central argument for AGW — then that hypothesis has been decisively falsified: click
9. The UN/IPCC’s projections [ie, it’s predictions] have also been falsified: click
10. The planet’s temperature is following the natural warming progression due to its emergence from the last Ice Age. It is not conforming to the wildly inaccurate projections of the UN/IPCC: click
If I had attempted to post this comment on the biased propaganda site Realclimate, it would have never have been allowed to see the light of day. It would have been censored, as similar comments from many others have been censored. That tells you all you need to know about Realclimate’s agenda and lack of ethics.
Smokey, with respect, RealClimate is no more or less a biased site than this one. When “deniers” (a noxious term they are happy not to censor) chime in there, they are routinely dismissed. The place is a festival celebrating the tautology We Are Correct Because We Are Correct. (WACBWAC? hmm..) There is no skepticism, no urge to poke holes in AGW theory such as to understand it better. Its regulars simply know better than the rest of us, and the confirmation bias is palpable.
That said, as much as I might agree with many of the arguments and enjoy the newsflashes presented at WUWT, I can’t say that the level of bias here is much different or that the “alarmists” (another term I could do without) are treated with any more or less deference when they chime in. Kristof, whose columns I usually skim, wrote very well on the topic yesterday, I thought:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/the-daily-me/
For non-scientists like me who are interested in figuring out what’s going on, I suppose what we can do is read to the best of our abilities the literature, such as the IPCC reports and other papers, and try to decode the truth that usually lies in the middle by reading across the range of all these climate blog interpretations and discussions. I can’t say that I’ve found one yet that is a disinterested, non-advocacy source of information.
Regarding the hockey stick, here’s Monckton’s long paper describing the shenanigans behind protecting it from criticism and “verifying” it, followed (pages 16-29) by summaries of 21 published papers that provide evidence of warming during the MWP. (Ten papers deal with Europe and the North Atlantic, eleven scientific papers address the period elsewhere on the planet.) Each summary occupies about half a page and contains a graph that illustrates key data points.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/what_hockey_stick.html
Matt: Here’s and eighth book that will provide another perspective on the controversy, Red Hot Lies bu Christopher Horner. Here’s the link to it (on Amazon):
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Hot-Lies-Alarmists-Misinformed/dp/1596985380/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237571039&sr=1-1
Here’s a summary, from the book flaps:
“Red Hot Lies, an exposé of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that support them. Did you know that most scientists are global warming skeptics? Or that environmental alarmists have knowingly promoted false and exaggerated data on global warming? Or that in the Left’s efforts to suppress free speech (and scientific research), they have compared global warming dissent with “treason”?
“Liars–Al Gore, the United Nations, the New York Times. The global warming lobby, relentless in its push for bigger government, more spending, and more regulation, will use any means necessary to scare you out of your wits–as well as your tax dollars and your liberties–with threats of rising oceans, deadly droughts, and unspeakable future consequences of “climate change.” In pursuing their anti-energy, anti-capitalist, and pro-government agenda, the global warming alarmists–and unscrupulous scientists who see this scare as their gravy train to federal grants and foundation money–resort to dirty tricks, smear campaigns, and outright lies, abandoning scientific standards, journalistic integrity, and the old-fashioned notions of free speech and open debate. In Red Hot Lies, bestselling author Christopher Horner–himself the target of Greenpeace dirty tricks and alarmist smears–exposes the dark underbelly of the environmental movement. Power-hungry politicians blacklist scientists who reject global warming alarmism. U.S. senators threaten companies that fund climate change dissenters. Mainstream media outlets openly reject the notion of “balance.” The occasional unguarded scientist candidly admits the need to twist the facts to paint an uglier picture in order to keep the faucet of government money flowing. In the name of “saving the planet,” anything goes.”
The Amazon reviewer comments are worth reading too.
wmanny, you must be new here. The points covered in my post have been discussed many times. And yes, Realclimate is extremely biased, while WUWT is simply skeptical of many baseless claims. Saying “Show me” is not being biased, as you seem to believe.
Numerous others have complained on this site that their well-reasoned, polite, but skeptical views have been deleted by Realclimate without comment. Often they re-post their comment here to show that was not out of line, but was simply too uncomfortable for Realclimate to allow to be seen. [To be fair, Realclimate is just one example out of several pro-AGW sites that do the same thing; another site removes the vowels from skeptical posts.]
There is a glaring difference between the relatively few individuals who were deleted here. They were not banned because of their views on science — which is how RC operates — but because they violated site policy, and almost always disregarded repeated warnings.
You are clearly mistaken in your accusation of tautology [‘we are right because we are right’]. If I may repeat what has been pointed out many times here: no one has falsified the long accepted theory that observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability. If you see that as a tautology, then you don’t understand how the Scientific Method works.
It is those who insist they are right about their AGW/CO2 hypothesis, after it has been repeatedly falsified, that they are right because they are right. Occam’s Razor comes into play when natural variability completely explains the climate’s current fluctuations. Therefore natural climate variability explains reality better than a new hypothesis based on CO2, which improbably claims that the planet is on the verge of runaway global warming. Yet those putting forth the new AGW/CO2 hypothesis can not show where or how such a tipping point will occur. Their models fail to predict, as the past N.H. winter made clear. The AGW/CO2 hypothesis is all based on “what-ifs”. Disputing that doesn’t mean ‘we are right because we are right.’ It means we are skeptical. Show us your proof, or at least your strong evidence.
This site has a strong skeptical element, which you conflate with taking sides. Rather, the simple question is: if a steady rise in CO2 causes global warming, then where is that warming??
Show me where it is, because I’m a skeptic.
Hello wmanny 7 24 44
Nice to see what I think is your first post.
I think that climate realists (us) and irrationalists them) fail to realise there are a number of sub groups.
Many on this blog are either scientists or highly knowlegable and have thought deeply about the subject and read a great deal of material. We weren’t born a sceptic but have become that way BECAUSE of looking at the ‘evidence’.
On this blog (and others like it) we also have a number of posters where the term ‘denier’ could be used in its real, not perjorative, sense. They tend to dislike govt, or a particular person, or otherwise have some sort of deep seated dislike of ‘them.’ They tend to shoot from the hip and it is these that tend to get sceptics tarred with the same brush (hence my use of the term climate realist to signal some thought has gone into our position.)
On the other side are the serious minded people-some of whom you will find at Real Climate- and whilst some may be open minded many others tend to think they have all the answers. Generally they are great on their interpretation of science, but poor on history and don’t tend to like it when its pointed out that few things regarding the climate can be termed ‘unprecedented.’ They do however deserve our respect.
There is a sub group of climate zealots who would believe that man is responsible no matter what alternative evidence was shown to them and if the AGW bubble deflated would merely latch on to another cause in order to find the excuse to tell the rest of us how we should live our own lives
Zealots might include Al Gores climate shock troops described here
http://www.theclimateproject.org/
I have come across them in my local high street and their zealotry far exceeds even a basic knowl;ege of climate science (co2 apparently constitutes 30% of the atmosphere)
The point is that no one has ever managed to prove that doubling co2 will cause a rise of up to 4.8c without introducing all manner of exotic and equally unproven feedbacks.
I guess that is why this prize is still unclaimed.
http://www.ultimateglobalwarmingchallenge.com/
Most of us here are perfectly rational and if this doubling hypotheses could be shown to be provable, or it was demonstrated that sea levels will rise 15 times faster than they currently are doing, or that ice levels will fall below those that occur in the arctic every 80 years or ….the list goes on.
Show us the proof and we wil all be posting on real climate urging everyone to do something before its too late to stop unprecedented climate change. As was said in 1930 and 1912 and 1817 and…
Look forward to reading more of your posts. (ps we also have a sense of humour here)
Tonyb
Smokey and Tony,
I have been aware of this place for a long time, and I don’t post that often here or anywhere else. I read broadly through a range of climate blogs, and when I have extra time, I tend to post at RC because as an AGW skeptic, that’s where I feel I can learn the most. (RC is the tautological site I accidentally dubbed WACBWAC, by the way, not Watts Up.) Granted I have to tread lightly over there as they are notoriously thin-skinned about those whose points of view are off the reservation. My point, though, is that even though I think WUWT is smarter, because I believe what it believes for the most part and so my prejudices are flattered, it strikes me that AGW proponents who visit here just as often have their motives questioned and hominems added.
Walter
Walter
I think that on the whole irrationalists who visit here from say RC are treated much more gently than traffic in the other direction. Gavin et al can exhibit a level of vitriol and scorn not generally found here.
However you are right that some here do go at visiting irrationalists all guns blazing. Personally I welcome them as otherwise we tend to end up congratulating ourselves and singing from the same song sheet!
What gets me (and I suspect Smokey) are those who come here after reading a ‘how to deal with sceptics’ web site expecting us to behave like neanderthals, but then find we are really more rational than they thought.
I hope you keep posting in both places. Best regards
Tonyb
Gidday again waclimate, you say, “Western Australia is effectively cooler than ~100 years ago. If the pre-1900 data from the Government Astronomer was considered reliable, that’s an unexpected result, to say the least.”
I can understand you and many others finding that “unexpected”. However check out my graphic “Average of 25 Regional and Remote Stations”, scroll down at;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/
The result is weighted towards East and SE Australia, where most of the data is from. What you have found in WA data agrees with my contention that the late 1800’s in Australia were comparable in warmth to the 1980’s.
Warwich Hughes just the man!
Did you see my post 04 08 02?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/
it related to further information on Shaig who blogged you with information regarding the Maldives. If you see this it would be intersting to see your reply on the other thread.
The Aussie temperature sets look interesting. I did a follow up a little while ago on some of the records but gave up when one station in tasmania had only started recording 7 years ago and the high temperature was reported in the local paper as the hottest since records began. Technically true I suppose.
Tonyb
Oh my God – you guys seriously think this site is not biased?? At least the guys at realclimate have spent a lifetime studying the topic and actually know what they’re talking about. I think you’d probably be a bit snippy too if some ignorant punk …~snip~ Too many personal attacks. -mod.
PS – Roger I indeed had a look at that book you linked to and will definitely read it, esp considering it’s quite up to date. But having looked, as you recommended, at the reviews attached, I don’t hold out much hope of objectivity – did you read the reviews of scientists who were misrepresented, wilfully distorted or not even consulted?
And now we’ve had the moderator delete the gist of what I was saying, without having personally attacked anyone, and after offering a monetary bet to those who might want to back up what they sy.
Oh yes this is such an open-minded site.
[REPLY – We do our best. We aim to please. #B^1 ~ Evan]
Matt your angry display has earned you a 24 hour timeout. See you tomorrow when you’ve cooled down. – Anthony
Matt Bennett (19:15:43) :
I would like to draw Matt’s attention and everybody else’s too to these two plots
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png/400px-Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
where we see that the true prophecy is that the next ice age will be coming sometime sooner or later, and the expansion
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
of the holocene period, where one sees the slow cooling of the planet from an average optimum about a degree warmer than now, and also the fluctuations of +/- 1C as time progresses.
These are records which show no runaway warming, or tipping points, unless downhill.
Humans could predict that the sun would rise in the morning at the time when they had no idea what the mechanism was, and had invented gods and chariots as a theory. The predictions were quite reliable.
Predicting from the above plots has equal reliability, we are not at the scientific level to know for sure the why and exactly how the plots are driven, though there are theories better than gods with chariots.
p.s. Matt, I happen to be an ignorant punk of a physicist with over thirty years experience in fitting models to data, in another field to be sure ( particle physics). And yes, I took it personally.
Oh my God – you guys seriously think this site is not biased??
Matt, if this was one of those Alarmist sites or the Guardian you would be attacked personally on a constant basis or your posts would be deleted if a moderator thought your scientific evidence clashed with their world view. Be happy you found this site, it is a good place to learn and debate. There’s no thought police here because there is no political or religious approach to the subject.
wmanny (07:24:44) :
Are you not the tiny bit suspicious of studies emanating from the AGW grouping where the data to those studies is not made available to the wider scientific community, Manns Hockey Stick being an example. No such activity occurs within the skeptical community. I suggest you visit Climate audit to see how scientific data should be archived.
Do you actually believe without question the data emanating from the IPCC.
Rob, not in the least do I buy the fashionable AGW religion. I read CA all the time and I am quite familiar with the failings of the Team. Since I don’t know what’s going on with the climate, though, just as nobody does, I do feel obliged to check in on both sides of the debate as it evolves. Yes, the RC crowd is obnoxious in its high-handed treatment of skeptics, but they are winning the political war at the moment (in no small part due to the clever debating technique of claiming there is no debate) and they are naturally loath to concede any points, however small they perceive them to be. Thus you encounter the tortured logic, for example, of the paleo model being insignificant on the one hand, but rock-solid hockey on the other. Occasionally, though, they engage, and I find the site’s degree of defensiveness to be a good barometer of where the weaknesses in their arguments lie.
The IPCC is a political body that has advanced the climate ball, I believe, and you are obliged its reports, but its own confirmation bias is well established by now.
correction: you are obliged to read its reports,
For Warwick Hughes et al … Warwick, I’ve put a link to your pages at http://www.waclimate.net/bureau.html
Also on that page I’ve put a link to a 2005 report by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation titled “Building a future on knowledge from the past: what palaeo-science can reveal about climate change and its potential impacts in Australia”.
In that report, I’m particularly intrigued by a graphic on coral cores from the Great Barrier Reef re Sea Surface Temperatures from 1600, uploaded to http://www.waclimate.net/imgs/csiro-palaeo-temps.jpg
The report authors best summarise what the top of the graph means:
“Annual records of sea surface temperature for regions around northern and western Australia have been derived from coral records (Figure 4). Current integration of these records suggests that, in contrast to the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions (Mann and Jones 2003), SST in the tropical southwest Pacific during the latter part of the Little Ice Age (17th-19th centuries) were as warm as the early 1980s (Gagan et al. 2004).”
It looks remarkably similar to your graph re 25 Australian land temperature stations since 1882.
Gagan has interesting research re coral records and Australian climate history, including an abstract from one of his pages at the Australian National University: http://rses.anu.edu.au/people/gagan_m/index.php?p=abstracts
“Abrupt decrease in tropical Pacific sea surface salinity at end of Little Ice Age
Hendy EJ, Gagan MK, Alibert CA, McCulloch MT, Lough JM, Isdale PJ (2002). Science 295: 1511-1514.
Abstract:
A 420-year history of strontium/calcium, uranium/calcium, and oxygen isotope ratios in eight coral cores from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, indicates that sea surface temperature and salinity were higher in the 18th century than in the 20th century. An abrupt freshening after 1870 occurred simultaneously throughout the southwestern Pacific, coinciding with cooling tropical temperatures. Higher salinities between 1565 and 1870 are best explained by a combination of advection and wind-induced evaporation resulting from a strong latitudinal temperature gradient and intensified circulation. The global Little Ice Age glacial expansion may have been driven, in part, by greater poleward transport of water vapor from the tropical Pacific.”
Note below: “in downtown Phoenix. Some studies, Hedquist says, have shown that the core of that city, one of the fastest growing urban areas in the nation, is on average between 7 and 11 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding countryside.”
From new story http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/42196/title/Urban_heat says in part:
Cooking by day and night
In one sense, urban heat islands have been around as long as urban areas have: They just started out small and grew as cities did. Buildings and pavement typically are made of materials that have a lower albedo — that is, they absorb more of the sun’s radiation than does the natural landscape — and, during the daytime, reach higher equilibrium temperatures than surrounding objects do. At night, the buildings and streets release much of that heat. The boost in both daytime and nighttime temperatures raises the average temperature in the city.
Another often unrecognized factor that boosts urban temperatures is the proliferation of impervious surfaces, says David J. Sailor, a mechanical engineer at Portland State University in Oregon. As the proportion of rain-shedding surfaces such as roofs, pavement, sidewalks and streets goes up, the water that previously would have soaked into the ground — and later would have soaked up heat as it evaporated — simply drains away into sewers or streams (SN: 9/4/04, p. 152). Areas swaddled with impervious surfaces, in essence, heat up because the ground has lost its ability to sweat.
The size, shape and arrangement of buildings, particularly in a downtown core dense with skyscrapers, can also influence urban temperatures, Sailor said at the AMS meeting. If the heat-soaked facade of a tall building can’t “see the sky” at night — in other words, if it is surrounded by other tall buildings — any heat it gives off at night ends up warming nearby buildings rather than radiating back into space.
Finally, says Sailor, human activity generates immense quantities of heat. Burning a kilogram of gasoline generates about 45 million joules of energy, enough to melt 60 kilograms of ice and bring it to boiling. So, each car on the road with moderate gas mileage — say, 10 kilometers per liter or 24 miles per gallon — releases enough heat to melt about 4.5 kilograms, or a 10-pound bag, of ice for every kilometer it travels.
Much of the energy used in buildings — for lighting, heating and producing hot water, for example — eventually makes its way into the environment as heat.
As a rough guide, Sailor notes, one-third of the anthropogenic heat contribution to an urban heat island comes from transportation, one-third comes from buildings and one-third stems from industrial processes. Nevertheless, all cities are different: The heat island in Houston, for example, is substantially aggravated by the large number of nearby oil refineries.
Although urban heat islands are nothing new, scientists haven’t conducted many detailed investigations of the phenomenon, says Brent Hedquist, an urban climatologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. In April 2008, he and his colleagues used portable weather stations and thermal imaging cameras to carry out a round-the-clock study in downtown Phoenix. Some studies, Hedquist says, have shown that the core of that city, one of the fastest growing urban areas in the nation, is on average between 7 and 11 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding countryside.
A first look at the Hedquist team’s field data qualitatively confirms what many lab studies might suggest: Facades of dense concrete and brick, some of which reached temperatures of 45°C, or 113°F, during the day, retained heat well into the night, while glass and metal cooled rather quickly after the sun went down. The details of that warm-up and cool-down, however, will be the topic of intense analyses. “The situation downtown is very complex,” Hedquist notes, with daytime heat absorption and nighttime heat loss depending on factors such as the angle at which the sun strikes building facades, the distance between the buildings and the speed and direction of prevailing winds.