People send me stuff, some days my email explodes. Today I got all sorts of things about Obama and John Holdren and the new NCDC climate spincycle which Steve McIntyre has dubbed Chucky Returns Part IV. That one made me laugh out loud.
Something else that made me laugh today was this well done story (h/t to Andrew Walden) from reporter Tina Chau of KGMB-TV in Honolulu, HI. The NWS spokesman Tom Birchard was clearly flummoxed, and at the end of the interview said exactly what I’ve always said about the ASOS system and measurement of climate data at airports. Comedian George Carlin was right in his “Hippy dippy weatherman routine”: Why do they always give the temperature for the airport? Nobody LIVES there!
“ASOS…placed for aviation purposes…not necessarily for climate purposes.”
Yet, ASOS weather stations at airports worldwide are in fact used for climate, and are part of the official climate record. In the US alone, there are 64 ASOS stations (that I’ve found so far) in the official USHCN climate record, plus there are hundreds in GHCN worldwide. In my studies of the USHCN temperature network, I’ve found dozens of such poor siting examples even at non-airports. See my report here (PDF, 4 MB).
Our old friend the ASOS and HO-83 temperature sensors may be up to tricks again in Honolulu. It seems the temperature is a wee bit off and new records are being set by the ASOS weather station at the airport. I’m reminded of the similar situation in Tucson years ago that went on a long time before anybody caught it. I’ve found the HNL station, seen below. It is located at lat/lon 21.32403 -157.939467 There’s more than meets the eye. More after the news story.
Honolulu Temperature Records Questioned
Written by Tina Chau
The high in Honolulu Monday was 92 degrees. It was the hottest June 15 since the National Weather Service started keeping track and the 8th straight day we’ve broken or tied a record. But was it really that hot?
That’s what the experts at the NWS have been wondering. They settled their suspicions with a trip to the airport to check Honolulu’s official temperature sensor.
“We had one of our technicians visit the site and they did a side-by-side calibration and found the thermometer at the Honolulu International Airport was reading a little warmer than what his caliberation thermometer was reading,” said Tom Birchard, a meteorologist at the NWS.
It was two degrees warmer. There’s some wiggle room with the accuracy of the temperature sensor.
“Which means, if the reading is 90, the thermometer is only accurate to read within about two degrees so it could be anywhere between 88 degrees and 92 degrees.
Which means our records these past eight days may not be records after all.
“If it turns out, after further investigation of the thermometer the data were skewed,” said Birchard, “they could be stricken.”
Now see these ground level photos I’ve found of the HNL ASOS courtesy of NCDC’s photo library of ASOS weather stations.
Not only is there a faulty sensor at HNL, as indicated by the NWS meteorologist in the news story, take a good look at the site photo below. The HO-83 temperature sensor is the little white mushroom shaped device.
There’s an asphalt access road directly adjacent to the ASOS temperature sensor. Plus a heat generating power transformer, and the requisite air conditioner exhaust for the ILS electronics building.
As we know from common experience, temperatures are almost always warmer near asphalt than natural soil or ground cover. From a scientific perspective we can cite either Yilmaz et al (PDF 2008 ) and the measurements of temperature differences over such surfaces, or we can reference NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Handbook which rates the likely temperature error of such placements.
See the Climate Reference Network Site Handbook (PDF 2002) including explanation of the CRN 1-5 rating system used by surfacestations.org
How close is the temperature sensor to the asphalt? I decided to use Google Earth’s measurement tool:
The answer: 1.6 meters, about 5 feet.
But what’s a little asphalt when the temperature sensor is surrounded by a sea of it at HNL?
The 2 degree temperature error in the ASOS record was only found because it exceeded the June 15th high temperature record for Honolulu. It seemed “odd” enough for somebody to check to be sure.
So the question we have now is, how much of the data in the plot above from NASA GISS is from influences such as urban growth, airport expansion, etc. I’ve confirmed that GISS uses the Honolulu Airport for climate data since their ID of 425911820000:
Matches that of the National Climatic Data Center description for Honolulu Airport’s WMO code (91182)
Note the big step change in 1960 in the HNL airport data plot. Hawaii became the 50th US state in 1959. So it would stand to reason that 1960 would be a period of growth at the airport, or perhaps a station move to a warmer location. According to the National Climate Data Center, the ASOS station was installed on February 1st, 1998. Since then, the temperature swings appear to have been larger than in prior years.
But the nearby Honolulu Observatory temperature record doesn’t seem to have much of a trend, though it no longer measures temperature for climate records, a pity:
When dealing with climate change, it is generally accepted that the amount of temperature rise attributable is about 0.7°C or about 1.3°F. With errors of 2 degrees or more creeping into the climate record due to faulty equipment and poor station placement, are we so certain?
It would be interesting to plot 88 bad examples vs 88 good examples in similar geographic ranges, and clock the annual difference.
Note that the airports continue to be about the only component in the GIStemp data set for the US in the last 24 months.
I don’t know about the rest of the US, but the northeast, specifically Connecticut is experiencing an unusually cool spring and June, yet GISS shows us as being above average.
REPLY: Welcome back John! We’ve missed you. – Anthony
Hmmm, 1960’s about when the jet age in passenger travel really started. Jet’s are a lot hotter than props. I wonder if you could find out when jet service started in ernest at an airport and compare it against the temps?
Hold on. I have some swamp land to purchase in Colorado before all the Floridians come.
Lots of confusion between precision, accuracy, and sensitivity. But the most alarming thing is the “averaging” statements. Averaging can be helpful in the presence of random variation, but is useless with a biased or systemic error.
Whole discussion reminds me of the old statement “A person with one foot on a hot stove and one foot on a cake of ice is comfortable on the average.”
If it’s only the anomaly that’s important then there’s an implicit assumption that the baseline average from which the anomaly deviates is the norm. I’m OK with that but think that baseline ought to over be the entire interglacial in which we find ourselves, i.e. about the last 10,000 years. If that were the case I suspect we’d find we’ve been bumping along at a negative anomaly for quite a while and the whole AGW hypothesis, were it true, would appear at worst to be a reprieve from a return to glaciation.
BarryW (07:07:05) :
“Hmmm, 1960’s about when the jet age in passenger travel really started. Jet’s are a lot hotter than props. I wonder if you could find out when jet service started in ernest at an airport and compare it against the temps?”
Hickam/Honolulu International is a dual use airport, and military jets were operating there long before regular commercial jet air travel was common.
D. King (00:28:39) :
Great, K-Mart temp sensors. What’s next, wet finger wind
direction?
You can get a better sensor accuracy at K-Mart, or any store that sells cheap digital thermomoters. To the nearest 10th. The only caveat is calibrating to a known temp.
Now, if I were to take your photo using a digital camera that had 32 pixels x 24 pixels, then took a bunch of images, my best resolution of that set would be the equivalent of 48 x 36 pixels by using a dithering technique. I could then drizzle the 48 x 36 to get 64 x 48.
That temp sensor, over a time sequence can get to +-1 degree from +- 2 degrees.
In other words, you need to take a good number of samples from that +- 2 deg. sensor.
At least 5, preferrably 10 per hour. If the thing malfunctions (it’s electronic and we haven’t identified the exact type) and sticks on the high end, your sampling is useless, and so it the data.
You can do what I described because the operation is done at the numerical level. Any thing further and you inject artifacts.
The point I and others have made is valid: The sensors being used for airport purposes are useless for meterological purposes, weather or climate. The same goes for Fire Weather Stations that read to only the nearest degree. I equate the approach to using a sledgehammer in place of a finish hammer to trim out your kitchen cabinets.
rbateman (09:34:30) :
The same goes for Fire Weather Stations that read to only the nearest degree. I equate the approach to using a sledgehammer in place of a finish hammer to trim out your kitchen cabinets.
Yep, and electronic sensors have an individual linearity profile over the temperature range.
At last HadCrut3
5-2009: +0.40 °C. Rank: 5/160
Warmest May in this series was in 1998.
Average last 12 months: 0.38 °C.
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html
I am currently in Maui and about fell off my chair when I was watching the local news and heard the weather man actually say that he didn’t think the temp report was accurate as other readings in the area were showing 2 to4 degrees lower than that of the airport reading. He said it was hot but not a record breaking hot. It doesn’t feel any warmer or cooler here in Maui than normal other than the ocean which feels cooler but maybe that’s just from my sunburn. Aloha!
17
Rod Smith (08:22:12) :
BarryW (07:07:05) :
“Hmmm, 1960’s about when the jet age in passenger travel really started. Jet’s are a lot hotter than props. I wonder if you could find out when jet service started in ernest at an airport and compare it against the temps?”
From: http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/11/08/special/story8.html
1959: Hawaii officially becomes 50th U.S. state on Aug. 21: U.S. Senate approval occurs March 11, then the House on March 12, then signing of the law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 18; a plebiscite of residents OK it in June. In Hawaii’s first general election on July 28, Republican William F. Quinn is voted governor; Oren Long and Hiram Fong, U.S. senators; and Daniel Inouye, U.S. representative.
As a pact of statehood, U.S. transfers former Hawaiian Government and Crown lands to the state of Hawaii and puts the land in a public trust, to be used only for Hawaiians and specific public purposes. ALSO: Ala Moana Center opens. ALSO: First Hawaii-mainland jet service. ALSO: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at Punahou School.
Also:
1959
A groundbreaking ceremony for a
new jet-age airport at Honolulu
International was held on February
5. Construction started on
February 11.
Pan American Airways inaugurated
Boeing 707 jet service
between the mainland U.S. and
Honolulu. United Air Lines began
DC-8 jet service in March 1960
The station was probably moved to the new airport and hansenization began.
This thermometer is accurate within plus or minus 2 degrees? Not 2/10 of a degree but 2 degrees? What is the accuracy of the rest of the thermometers in the network?
And how much warming did we have last century? About 2 degrees?
Here’s some more stuff: If it’s TMI snipit
FY 1960
Commercial passenger traffic increased 33.3 percent over the preceding year. This increase was attributed to the effect of Statehood for Hawaii in August 1959 and the inauguration of jet aircraft service. Interisland passenger traffic increased by 32.6 percent due to more visitors coming to Hawaii and traveling to the Neighbor Islands.
Info HNL 1960-1969
A new airport was under construction in 1961.
1959-1960Construction of the jet age terminal facilities for Honolulu International Airport proceeded according to schedule. Stage 1, which included site preparation and rough grading work on the north side of the airport where the new terminal facilities will be located, was completed in December 1959. Work was immediately started on the next stage for building site development and construction of taxiways leading to the new terminal.
The HAC awarded contracts for the next succeeding construction stages. These included construction of all electrical, water, drainage, sewer systems and communications ducts; electrical distribution systems; the terminal buildings, and grading and paving of aprons and installation of related utilities.
Work was started in February 1960 for the construction of all electrical, water, drainage, sewer systems and communication ducts.
Construction of the new Terminal Buildings was started in March 1960, and the Interisland Terminal was expected to be completed by the end of November 1960. The Foreign Arrivals building was expected to be completed by the end of June 1961. Construction work on the remaining two units of the terminal facilities, the Domestic Arrivals and Overseas Departure-Administration buildings, were underway and completion of these buildings was expected by the end of August 1961. While all the construction activity was going on on the north side and a portion of the south side of the airport, aircraft activity, passenger traffic and related activities continued to increase, over-taxing the present inadequate terminal facilities.
September 1959
Pan American Airways inaugurated Boeing 707 jet service between the mainland United States and Hawaii.
December 1959
Stage 1 for the new terminal at Honolulu International Airport was completed. Stage two was begun immediately.
March 1960
United Air Lines began its DC-8 jet service between the Mainland and Honolulu.
FY 1960
Commercial passenger traffic increased 33.3 percent over the preceding year. This increase was attributed to the effect of Statehood for Hawaii in August 1959 and the inauguration of jet aircraft service. Interisland passenger traffic increased by 32.6 percent due to more visitors coming to Hawaii and traveling to the Neighbor Islands.
1959
Canadian Pacific Airlines initiated jet prop service to Australia from Vancouver via Hawaii in Bristol Britannia aircraft.
May 4, 1960
Ground breaking was held for the Hawaii Air National Guard fighter complex at Hickam AFB. Completion was expected in July 1961 at a cost of $1.847 million.
May 22, 1960
The entire Hawaiian Island chain was put on alert for a possible tsunami. Bellows was evacuated, aircraft moved to higher ground north of Runway 8 or to Wheeler. Hickam received the full force of the tsunami.
December 31, 1960
Commercial passenger traffic increased 33.3 percent in 1960.
January 13, 1961
Use of Dillingham AFB by privately owned aircraft was the subject of a meeting due to concerns about the increasing hazards of air traffic at HNL. When the privately owned Kipapa airstrip was converted to housing, the military was approached for use of Wheeler or Bellows. This was not considered feasible by the military so Dillingham AFB was offered instead and a proposed lease negotiated.
April 1, 1962
The Naval Station at Ford Island was decommissioned.
1962-1963 The new John Rodgers Terminal was sufficiently completed to be dedicated August 22, 1962, during the annual conference of the Airport Operators Council, held in Honolulu August 19-25, 1962. Several members of the Legislature, as well as aviation officials, participated in the dedication program. Keynote speakers were Najeeb Halaby, Federal Aviation Administration, and W. A. Patterson, United Air Lines president.
On the day of the dedication, Pan American World Airways delayed its Flight No. 843 from San Francisco for 50 minutes to preface the formal program with the first commercial jet arrival at the new Terminal.
All operations ceased at the old Terminal at midnight, October 14, 1962, and the first passengers from the new Terminal departed for Japan shortly after midnight the following day.
The new airport, more than 14 years in the planning and building, was regarded as a $34 million investment. With its opening, Honolulu had caught up with the Jet Age.
The roofed area of the new passenger buildings covered about 550,000 square feet, or roughly five times the area of the old buildings they replaced. The Crossroads of the Pacific at last had a facility that was appropriate to its rating as the nation’s ninth busiest airport.
The rating had been bestowed on Honolulu International Airport by the FAA on the basis of figures for the calendar year 1962. Aircraft movements, including arrivals and departures of all types of aircraft, totaled 266,561 for that period.
Travelers expressed concerns about the new airport, including: the access road system confused motorists; the system of signs and maps for the guidance of pedestrians was inadequate; and inter-line connecting passengers needed more frequent and more easily accessible ground transportation between the various arrival and departure terminals. The airport was studying solutions to these problems.
July 10, 1962
The widening of Taxiway X and restoration of P Road with a crossing over a new drainage ditch was completed at a cost of $113,463.82.
August 20, 1962
Construction of the U.S. Department of State office building was completed.
August 31, 1962
Construction of a wood and concrete building for 15 lei sellers was completed at a cost of $129,274.
September 1, 1962
The enlargement of a reinforced hollow tile building housing equipment for enplaning and deplaning passengers was competed at a cost of $47,869.
September 24, 1962
Construction of a interisland joint maintenance hangar building with 41,000 square feet for aircraft, excluding shop space, concrete walls, hollow tile partitions and a metal roof was completed at a cost of $1,229,223.
October 8, 1962
Construction of a concrete elevated walkway on the field side of the terminal and construction of nine rooms underneath the walkway for final ticketing and agricultural inspection was completed at a cost of $773,029.
October 15, 1962
Installation of amplifiers, wiring and loudspeakers for the overseas paging system was completed at a cost of $62,200.
November 13, 1962
Construction of the Ramp Control Tower and Aloha Airlines Lounges was completed. Cost of this project and the Department of State building was $117,410.
December 7, 1962
Construction of a rigid-frame steel building, 70 by 160 feet, with freezer and chill rooms, each 35 by 20 feet, was completed as a Hawaiian Airlines Cargo Building. Cost: $119,494.
January 22, 1963
Construction of nine pools (three with fountains and three with waterfalls), construction of a children’s playground, and landscaping of the overseas terminal area was completed at a cost of $633,808.54.
April 30, 1963
Construction of two general aviation light plane hangars, each 120 by 144 feet, was completed at a cost of $354,413.
May 9, 1963
Construction of a high-speed taxiway and a concrete apron on the Ewa side of the terminal, drainage provisions and taxi way lighting was completed at a cost of $3,279,746.28.
PaulHClark (05:18:14) :
Paul beat me to it, delete my post.
Tim
John Galt (12:25:30) :
This thermometer is accurate within plus or minus 2 degrees? Not 2/10 of a degree but 2 degrees? What is the accuracy of the rest of the thermometers in the network?
And how much warming did we have last century? About 2 degrees?
Yes, you heard it right. I am shocked over +-2 degrees, as I thought +-1 degree was as
bad as things got. Start looking at some RAWS data, for example, and you will see whole degrees. Look at other type of stations, such as CalTrans or Water Resources and you will most likely see outputs to the nearest 10th of a degree.
Good project now that most of the stations have been identified.
The warming of the last century (AFAIK) was 0.7C, or 1.26F.
+-2 F is ugly.
Nasif Nahle (22:41:56) :
REPLY: Typically it is crushed rock – Anthony
Thanks again, Anthony… Sorry for this question: what kind of rock? The total normal emittancy at environmental temperatures is 0.93 for crushed quartz, 0.9 for calcite and 0.83 for sandstone with 5% calcite.
If I understand your thread, you are discussing MIA (Miami International)….white gravel in south Florida is virtually always crushed shellrock/limestone, usually about 1″ sized…particularly on government locations as it produced locally….cdl
As an NWS co-op observer, I fail to be shocked by a two degree thermometer error. Until five years ago, our station used min/max recording mercury thermometers. There were two thermometers, one for the max reading, and one for the min. Either one was also theoretically useable for reading the current temperature at observation
Each thermometer had a special pellet in the mercury column. The max pellet was pushed ahead by the mercury, and stuck at the hottest point as the mercury shrank away from it by cooling. The min pellet, on the other hand was pulled down (cooler) by the retreating end of the mercury column. It somehow stayed put at the coldest point when the mercury expanded again by heating.
After observation, the max thermometer was spun like a propellor- it was mounted on an axle. The centrifugal force moved the mercury and the pellet to a low temperature position, hopefully lower than the highest temperature that could occur in the following observation period.
The min thermometer was reset by shaking the mercury and pellet to an artificially high temperature position.
These two thermometers never agreed closer than two degrees as to the current temperature at the time of observation. At first, I thought the thermometers were faulty, and requested new ones from our NWS supervisor. Well, the new ones were no different.
Now we are using a Nimbus electronic sensor and digital readout. It displays to the nearest 0.1 degree. However it is only accurate to 0.3 degree, per manufacturers literature. It has no stamps or stickers indicating calibration. Is it better than the old mercury sticks? Couldn’t prove it by me.
Accurate temperature measurement is not and never has been trivial. Don’t think that your Kmart digital with 0.1 degree precision means it’s accurate, unless you can calibrate it – more than once.
Sorry for the long ramble. It’s not much fun for me to think that weird government actions causing the degradation of our country’s energy supply could hinge on data collected in this way.
dh
What, no luau pit?
As the public becomes more aware of the greatest hoax of the last 50 years expect ever more hysterical claims and attribution of normal phenomenon to the CRISIS of AGW.
The left does not have much time left to get us all an order of magnitude lower living standard and pick our pockets clean.
Just heard on KITV news Honolulu that the thermometer at HNL was changed today but that the ‘records’ would still stand…huh?!?!?! Isn’t the change in equipment admitting faulty readings!?!? I don’t get it…
According to the Hadley CRUTEM3 data the 5×5 degree grid containing Honolulu has had no warming since the early 1970s (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/hawaii.jpg) Since the IPCC attributes warming prior to the 1970s to natural causes and there has been no warming in Hawaii since, it appears that CO2 causes no warming in that environment.
Here is a climate summary for the state of Hawaii (http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Hawaii.htm)
Some observations:
Hilo temperatures correspond almost exactly to the local SSTs.
Hilo temperatures correspond to the PDO.
Hilo sea level fluctuations match the PDO.
I just about fell out of my chair this evening when I read this story. This morning as I was getting ready for work, and as usual I had the Weather Channel on for the days weather forecast. The discussion turns to the prolonged number of days that Honolulu has had record highs. Dr. Greg Forbes then explains that the highs were due to a lull in the trade winds (I’m sure that may have been the case). No discusssion or explanation is given that the sensors or thier location might be the cause. But then again, I find the TWC continues to plant suggestions of AGW without saying it directly. By the way, what ever happend to Dr. Heidi Cullen. She was so blatently pro AGW that it was disgusting.
Alan Cheetham (22:04:21) :
“According to the Hadley CRUTEM3 data the 5×5 degree grid containing Honolulu has had no warming since the early 1970s (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/hawaii.jpg) Since the IPCC attributes warming prior to the 1970s to natural causes and there has been no warming in Hawaii since, it appears that CO2 causes no warming in that environment.”
I’ve made this point before … why aren’t there CO2 measurements being taken at all/most/a few of the temperature recording sites? It would seem like a study of the relationship would be essential to understanding the impact of CO2 on temperatures. With all the money being spent on climate research the cost would be low. I guess no one really wants to know.