NOAA: FUBAR high temp/climate records from faulty sensor to remain in place at Honolulu

Per the statement from the “official” link below, not just Hawaii is getting warmer.
The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for May 2009 ranked fourth warmest since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090617_globalmay.html
My favorite doublespeak on artic ice coverage is below.
May 2009 is 1.6% less than 1979-2000 average, but should be “on the average” down 7.5% (per the decade average decrease)
Arctic sea ice covered an average of 5.17 million square miles during May. This is 1.6 percent less than the 1979-2000 average extent. By contrast, Antarctic sea ice extent in May was 6.6 percent above the 1979-2000 average. Since 1979, May Arctic sea ice extent has decreased by 2.5 percent per decade, while May Antarctic sea ice extent has increased by 2.1 percent per decade during the same period.

Soylent Green is People! I’m afraid we’re screwed. Now the government is ignoring facts. It’s not going to change until the there is ice crossing the Canadian Border all the way to Texas.

This story is simply amazing. Honolulu has a faulty thermometer but all the records set there are kept. Meanwhile as soon as Illinois and Maine set all-time temperature records this past winter they were called into question the day it happened. In fact, so rigorous was the process in trying to ‘debunk’ these records the Illinois one was rescinded that very day. Meanwhile the Maine record took nearly a MONTH to verify and was buried in the news with quotes from alarmists “This does not prove global warming does not exist!”
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL
432 PM CST FRI JAN 16 2009
…REGARDING ROCHELLE`S LOW TEMPERATURE THIS MORNING…
THE AUTOMATED WEATHER OBSERVING SYSTEM (AWOS) AT THE ROCHELLE
AIRPORT RECORDED A TEMPERATURE OF -36F AT 745 AM THIS MORNING.
WHILE THE THERMOMETER ON THE AWOS WAS RE-CALIBRATED YESTERDAY
AND MAY INDEED BE ACCURATE…AWOS OBSERVATIONS ARE NOT QUALITY
CONTROLLED OR CALIBRATED BY THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AND
ARE ALSO NOT DESIGNED FOR CLIMATE PURPOSES.
THEREFORE…THE STATE CLIMATOLOGIST DOES NOT CONSIDER THIS
TEMPERATURE AN OFFICIAL MEASUREMENT FOR THE PURPOSE OF
DETERMINING WHETHER OR NOT AN ALL TIME RECORD LOW FOR THE
STATE WAS REACHED. FOR THE PURPOSE OF DETERMINING RECORD
TEMPERATURES FOR THE STATE…ONLY ASOS AND
COOPERATIVE OBSERVER OBSERVATIONS WILL BE USED SINCE BOTH OF
THESE OBSERVATIONS ARE QUALITY CONTROLLED BY THE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE.
So, I ask, where’s the quality control here for Honolulu?? The quality was found to be bad, but the control is lax.
The Honolulu ‘heat wave’ has already been picked up by media outlets but I seriously doubt a follow-up story will find its way through the editor’s office explaining how far off the temperature recording equipment was or that there may have been no records set once these errors were taken into account.
Here’s some articles written recently, with excerpts.
It’s Hot!

In the first fifteen days of the month the temperature at Honolulu International Airport has either tied or broken a previous record high. The 92 degrees registered at the airport Monday was yet another record, breaking the previous one of 90 degrees all the way back in 1982.
“We’re only a couple of degrees over the record highs but certainly that’s all it takes,” said National Weather Service forecaster Derek Wroe. Monday’s high temperature at the airport was the eighth day in a row a record has been tied or broken.
Oahu Swelters Through Record Heat Wave

Forecasters Say All Time Heat Reaches Eighth Day
HONOLULU — Honolulu has been experiencing unusually hot weather for this time of year, weather officials said.
It is the eighth day that temperatures have reached as high as 92 degrees. It is an all-time record for June — 5 degrees above average.

Early sizzle fries Oahu

Shave ice sales and AC unit rentals heat up as summer moves in
Honolulu has burned up records for eight days with sizzling temperatures.
“As far as the records go, it’s just a single digit that’s sending it to the record category consecutively,” said Vic Dejesus of the National Weather Service. “It’s still exceeding 90s or above most days.”
From June 8 through yesterday, the record for high temperature was broken on seven days, and tied on one. Temperatures consistently reached 91 to 92 degrees last week and will continue to be in the low 90s this week, according to the National Weather Service’s Web site.
All is not bad, however. There has been one met over there on Hawaii that seems to get it.
I Don’t Think You’re That Hot

We’ve done it again.
For the eighth day in a row, Honolulu has busted or tied a temperature record. Today, we melted the 1985 record. And I’m starting to think something is wrong.
No, not the global warming kind of wrong.
But perhaps there’s something amiss with the equipment taking these readings.
Have you noticed that Honolulu’s temperature has been about 8-10 degrees warmer than the rest of the state each day?
But 10 degrees warmer? It doesn’t add up.
Or perhaps the most compelling evidence of all: 91 in Honolulu, but 84 just seven miles away at Kalaeloa? Something’s up.
It’s time for someone from the National Weather Service to take a trip down to the Honolulu International Airport, and do a little check-up on the temperature machine.
Because there’s nothing cool about breaking records with broken equipment.

That is why hospitals started taking rectal temps. Less fudging the data.

Accuracy is always important, but temperature sensors need to be particularly accurate (and precise) in tropical areas, where interannual variation is very slight. In temperate continental areas, the frequency with which a sensor error of 1-4 degrees F would cause a new record to be set would be relatively low, because of the greater inherent variability in day-to-day and interannual temperature. In the middle of the Pacific, every sunny day at a given time of year has pretty much the same temperature. If the sensor is off, you will break records very frequently. They obviously need to delete those records. I’m not sure if they’re trying to support global warming, or whether they just want to cover their behind after the media made a big deal about the heat.

‘Peter Plail (05:37:28) :
The Beeb also has a wonderful grahic explaining how global warming works. See if you can spot what’s missing . You can find it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8107014.stm
‘
Is the quote from this article a record? I’ve only seen 11 degrees before! 🙂
“But if greenhouse gas emissions rise quickly, that figure could be as high as 12C, Mr Benn said. ”
cheers David

“TerryS (01:50:29) :
This BBC article should be titled “How not to measure temperature in Africa”
They are planning to deploy 5,000 automatic weather stations across the continent mounted on phone masts.
Of course, being attached to a steel structure, probably with nearby generators, wont introduce any form of bias into the record.”
Reply:Mobile phone base stations produce heat and have air conditioning to cool them. Also you are correct in Africa because the power grid is unreliable most sites use generators to power them. Question is will they sue the data for weather or climate

They’ve moved on from predictions/projections to absolutes now! That’s a big certian rise in just 30 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193847/Summer-temperature-rise-2C-2040-Britain-inevitable-warns-climate-report.html?ITO=1490
cheers David

Something similar occurred at SeaTac Airport from Dec 2005 – Feb 2006 where the ASOS temperature sensor was off by +2 to +3 deg F over a period of about 2 months. It would have gone on longer except some of us diligent temperature watchers brought it to the attention of the NWS who then diagnosed and fixed the problem. It makes you wonder if an overall warm bias may have developed in the ASOS temperature reporting. There also are some serious quality control issues with ASOS precipitation data. There are now many bogus reports of measurable precipitation where none occurred. For instance, take a look at the 0.01″ reported from Tucson today (18 Jun 2009).

OT: The Sarychev eruption is the greatest SO2 injection(to 50,000 feet) of the year, via Volcanism, Eruptions and Seablogger blogs.

Offtopic, but an excellent post-mortem on the economics of ethanol –
http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
The money quote:
“…this is an industry that has raised food prices, destroyed billions of dollars in shareholder value, and according to the CBO reduced US greenhouse gas emissions by only about 0.2%, even if we ignore offsetting global land-use changes.”
Saving the planet for fun and profit…..errr…..

Off topic but more global warming causing troublesome global cooling.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html