A couple of days ago, I located the “long lost” Honolulu Observatory GISS weather station on the Island of Oahu with just a couple of hours of digging. That one apparently got “lost” because the station name changed, and the inter-agency communications seemed to be the cause, and nobody at GISS bothered to look to see if there was still current data coming from the station.
Today I found one in under 5 minutes. I wasn’t even planning on looking for one, it happened by accident. I was watching the Discovery Channel TV show this afternoon “Deadliest Catch” where crab fishermen brave the worst imaginable weather to keep crab shacks running nationwide. They are based out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
While watching a scene where they were coming into the docks, I saw an ever so brief flash of what looked like a Stevenson Screen off in the distance near the docks. I hadn’t expected to see one and I wasn’t 100% sure, but I thought I’d check NCDC’s metadatabase (MMS) for Dutch Harbor, AK. Sure enough, they have a COOP station there with a Stevenson Screen there that is “current”.
When NCDC says “MAX-MIN THERMOMETERS”. that means mercury thermometers in a Stevenson Screen.
The MMS Location description tab had this:
Topographic Details: TOPO- STN NEAR WATERFRONT, ACROSS HARBOR FROM DUTCH HARBOR ARPT IN VILLAGE OF UNALASKA. MNTOUS ISLAND. STN EXPOSED TO STRONG TURBULENT WINDS AND TEMPS INFLUENCED BY SURROUNDING WAT
I assume the last word was to be “WATER” and they ran out of characters in the database field. The MMS database also mentions it to be located at REEVES TERMINAL, which I assume is the ship terminal/dock.
Here is where the lat/lon given by NCDC places it, I seem to recall my brief glimpse was closer to the docks visible near the top of the image, but the lat/lon given by NCDC is not always accurate:
So I was curious to see what the temperature record looked like in this very remote part of Alaska. I figured if it was an active weather station, GISS would have a plot of it. They did indeed but it was not what I expected to find:
Here is the link to the GISTEMP graph above.
Huh. Big data hole. But NCDC said it is current? WUWT?
So I decided to look at the COOP section of NCDC, and sure enough it WAS current to April 2009. I found the most current B91 form and downloaded it.
Here’s the PDF of the form: Dutch_Harbor_April2009
Seeing the big hole in the GISS data, I decided to look for the data forms backwards, and sure enough, it is current all the way back to 1985 where it picks up in January and appears to have every month through April 2009.
So why does GISS not have this data? Remembering the name change which happened in Oahu, names again come to mind. I can’t be sure, but it might have something to do with the station name spelling.
- I spell the station name this way: Dutch Harbor
- NCDC MMS spells it this way: Dutch Harbor
- NCDC B91 selector spells it this way: Dutch Harbor
- The station COOP observer spells it on the B91: Dutch Harbor
NASA GISS spells it on the graph header and web page station selector:
Harbour? WUWT? It’s an American port!
I checked this guide for differences in British, Canadian, and American spelling, and sure enough:
Note to Gavin: change the spelling in the GISTEMP database and the station data might automatically kick in on the next data pass.
Glad to help! Got any more lost stations and station data you need found? We’ll look for the last 20+ years of Dutch Harbor data to show up in GISTEMP real soon.
UPDATE:
In comments “timetochooseagain” writes-
I’m reminded of this from John Christy:
“the use of a few popular stations for which the data are easy to find, leads to too much warming when the averages are constructed. I have published research for North Alabama, Central California and in a few months East Africa, in which I went back to the original sources of data to augment the number of stations by roughly a factor of ten – indeed, ten times more stations. This effort requires significant time in searching for and manually digitizing the records for scientific purposes. In each case, I’ve found that the data sets based on a few popular stations overstate the warming by up to a factor of three.”
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy/ChristyJR_WM_Written_090225.pdf
Update2: I’ve removed a sentence related to Gavin Schmidt and British spelling of the station name, since he’s not at fault, GHCN managed by NCDC is the source of error -Anthony
Maybe this is why I can’t find a ZED ZED TOP album when I shop in the States 😉
OT, but big changes in Equatorial sub-surface temps show up today. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/
Interestingly, the anomalous cool spot present at 100m, 160e, is common during El Ninos. fm
Philip Johns (04:05:36) :
“Or would you expect Gavin to personally check the spelling of every one of the NCDC weather stations vs the GHCN file ….?”
He’s getting paid isn’t he?
As per Steve Mc, there is no reason that a consistent alphanumeric station ID system cannot be maintained across all databases. But we’re supposed to trust the people who can’t be bothered to put in the time, as Anthony did here, to maintain their database. Slackards.(American South spelling)
Just Want Results… (00:24:29) :
Gavin who?
Gavin Schmidz!
OT: Looks like this is going to be a record wet June in the US. Looking at the NOAA precipitation records for June 19/09 some 130 records were broken and 5 were tied. On June 18/09 some 188 records were broken and on June 20/09 some 135 records were broken.
Where could all those clouds come from ? GCRs due to Grand Solar Minimum ala Svwensmaark ?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/records/index.php?ts=daily&elem=prcp&month=6&day=20&year=2009&submitted=Get+Records#recs
Hey! Little ol’ me gets mentioned in a WUWT post! My heart swells with pride. Thank you.
The flavour of this post is most thoughtful and colourful!
As a place name the spelling of Dutch Harbour should not have been affected by dictionary changes although it appears that it has been changed by common usage.
As for the S v Z thing, common usage has led to S being accepted by British dictionaries but serious linguists and boring old pedants like myself still use the ‘correct’ British spelling with a Z in most cases.
Is this a case of correct categorization or not?
Inconvenient, indeed.
Slightly OT: As one who for several years gathered and disseminated world wide weather observations for the USAF, handling observations in a computer by the station name rather than by their WMO Block/Station number or ICAO call sign is at best very clumsy, and at worst beset by simple errors.
To be blunt about it, in my opinion it is absurd, and I am very surprised that both NCDC and/or GISS wouldn’t include a Soundex field in their records and station library.
Soundex is very useful in handling names “as encountered,” from whatever source. The system would also have to handle handle things like “FT” for “Fort” and other common abbreviations in place names.
Soundex would have reduced both Dutch Harbor, and Dutch Harbour (or for that matter DUTCH HARBOR and DUTCH HARBOUR), to “D320 H616”. It would even produce the same results had all the wrong vowels been used. DOTCH HuRbeeR would also reduce correctly.
Soundex, as far as I know is used in all Airline Reservation systems and law enforcement computers. For example, Smith, Smitty, Smythe, Smyth, and Schmidt all reduce to S530.
It shouldn’t take very long to produce the foundational routine(s). Exceptions like FT, take time to dig out.
We did find Soundex wasn’t much help for “John Doe” in law enforcement systems though!
For Trillions of dollars in tax increases and the wholesale destruction of our economic base I would expect every last pencil mark checked many times over.
No doubt, but this post aims at the wrong target. As I understand it, the data flow is
NWS Co-Op/NCDC ==> GCHN ==> NASA
Now the station name mismatch is at the first transfer, so any suggestions for imptovements in procedures should be aimed at GCHN, and snarky remarks about Gavin Schmidt’s nationality do nothing for this site’s presumed aim of being taken seriously…
REPLY: It wasn’t snarky, it was a suggestion as to the source of error. Read Steve McIntyres comments. – Anthony
Perhaps to avoid confusion they should call it “Haven”. (That’s Dutch for Harbour)
Well what’d you expect they are a Hockey Team, not Fishermen.
I suspect that USHCN/GISS will do nothing to bring the Dutch Harbor record current, because it lacks intact data for the 1951-1980 “base period” that is used to compute anomalies.
Anthony, I think you have found the key to some nagging sceptic problems. If we can just rename the city New Yorke, maybe GISS positive UHI temperature adjustments will be lost forever. Hell, they might not even be able to find their way to “work”.
I vaguely remember a sci-fi story in which the pilot says ” This is tricky!”, the navigator replied “You’re right.” The pilot immediately yawed to the right. BANG
Take possible ambiguities out of the picture: use proper scientific nomenclature.
By the way when we Brits visit the colonies we do feel it is incumbent on us to help you keep up decent standards, don’t you know!
Seriously (please note the “u”), great work. We are all indebted to you. Keep on exposing ineptitude and bias.
But , do I really have to spell it out? Gavin works for GISS, GISS do not own the GHCN list of Stations. It is in that list where the station is ‘misspelt’, therefore it is not plausible that Gavin (or anyone els at NASA) is responsible for the problem or is the source of the error.
In fact there is really no such thing as a ‘NASA GISS Station’, GISS are simply data customers of NCDC and others, and it is these agencies who are primarily responsible for the stations and the data quality from them. This comment
Note to Gavin: change the spelling in the GISTEMP database and the station data might automatically kick in on the next data pass.
is nonsense. The change needs first to be in the GCHN Inventory file – it is there that the problem exists.
REPLY: Rubbish. You are defending the indefensible.The issue here is that GISS has not done due diligence to find out and correct why the systemic station dropout has occurred. The first job of a customer getting shorted on an order, be it data or sundries, is to complain and get the problem solved. The station name is Dutch Harbor, not Dutch Harbour. NOAA
It boggles my mind that GISS is so lax in their concern that they can’t take a few minutes as I did to find out why their data order keeps getting smaller and smaller and complain to NCDC.
The problem is confirmation bias, so they don’t bother. EXCEPT when one station threatens their studies, like “Harry” in Antarctica. Gavin reacted like greased lightning to that one. See Steve McIntyre’s comments.
As we’ve seen in the past, GISS has so little care of quality control, that this sort of thing is systemic in their database. GISS can’t even find clear errors in the surface data such as occurred in Lampasas, TX and Miami, AZ.
If you go to a restaurant and order live lobster or crab, do you at least expect the restaurant to separate the dead lobsters from the live ones? The fishermen at “deadly catch” have to do just that. They don’t get paid for the dead crabs, they dump them back at sea.
And as a customer, if you get an obviously “dead” lobster advertised as Live/fresh by the restaurant and you end up with a puddle of goo on your plate is it not your duty to complain? Why does GISS accept “dead” stations in their database? Too lazy to complain perhaps?
Though, they seem to spend plenty of time adjusting the data, dead stations and all.
Well listen up “Mr. Johns”, I’m the American taxpayer, and I’m complaining. The “lobster” GISS served up to the American people is not as advertised.
Further, if GISS KNOWS the data is terribly incomplete with dead stations, why keep this veg-o-matic bit of data like Dutch Harbor in GISTEMP? Or maybe they don’t know? Maybe they have no QC procedures to check for the completeness of data.
Maybe they are sausage makers as demonstrated by John Goetz. – Anthony
This illustrates again the difference between two mindsets – the mindset of those who are officially in charge of the data and the mindset of Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre and others on the outside who probe, analyse and question the data (and, in cases like this of course, the lack of data.) The outsiders display a fundamental curiosity, a questioning attitude, persistence and an interest in solving these mysteries that seem to be oddly lacking in those on the inside. It’s as if the insiders feel they know enough and have no particular thirst or motivation to know more. They don’t seem to be curious about these discrepancies, or want to follow the clues to find out where they lead. So my (rhetorical) questions are: what’s up with that? And who are the real scientists?
A note of interest about past climate of this area, since Deadliest Catch shows us current conditions. It is not only a story about climate change in the not-so-distant past, but how people adapted to the changes.
The small region around Dutch Harbour & its airport on Unalaska has been occupied by people for at least 9,000 years, the longest record of anywhere in the Aleutians (must have had good things to offer even then). A large archaeological site (I do Canadian spelling) near the airport was excavated a few years ago (called Amaknak Bridge) & our company got the contract from MOT (Ministry of Transport) to identify & interpret the animal bones recovered (food refuse from animals hunted, discarded bone tools & bones modified on their way to becoming tools).
This was the most interesting piece of work so far in my 30 year career. A peer-reviewed paper is available summarizing the results. The site itself has now been destroyed by construction but research on the data recovered is ongoing.
In short, the site was occupied from about 3500 to 2500 years ago, during the height of the so-called Neoglacial period, when temps were colder than now. The impact of this cold on the people who lived here was pronounced: ringed seal, bearded seal, walrus & beluga were available to hunt nearby (their skin boats could not travel more than 4 hours or so at a time, so hunting can be assumed to be local).
Some of the bearded seals they hunted were newborns (up to 3-4 weeks of age), which today are born mid-spring (April) on sea ice. So there must have been sea ice just off Dutch Harbour on a regular basis (we cannot tell for sure if the sea ice came close each & every year but it must have been fairly regular). Sea ice does not come this far south today, even in cold years (see Deadliest Catch folks working the ice edge).
Ancient Aleuts at Amaknak Bridge during the Neoglacial had all of the equipment that Inuit living in the true Arctic possessed & did many of the same things to survive the cold, like making bird skin & gut clothing using tiny bone needles. They carved ivory & whalebone. They had Inuit-style harpoons. Their houses were semi-subterranean, 3-4 feet below ground level, lined with loose rocks. Some bones from large whales were used in construction.
The Amaknak Bridge people developed a truly unique & remarkable style of fireplace. Inuit in the high Arctic did not have wood, they burned oil in lamps for light & heat. Amaknak Bridge people burned mostly whale bone in open fireplaces built into a house wall, each with a short true chimney made of unconsolidated rock. Leading out from the base of each firepit is a V-shaped pattern of channels in the floor leading out into the room (covered with flat rocks). This style of construction is not seen before or after in North America.
Although those of us involved in this project argue about the reason this particular style of fire pit was chosen, my personal opinion is that the wind at that time was so strong that a fire would not stay lit without the draught provided by these floor channels. We know that wind is the primary determiner of sea ice extent in the Bering Sea today: while there must be a certain amount of cold, winds essentially PUSH ice formed in the Arctic down into the Bering Sea. More north winds, more ice.
So, I suggest it was not necessarily remarkably colder 3000 years ago in the eastern Aleutians, but it was much windier. Adjust temps for wind chill & it would have been close enough to Arctic conditions to require Arctic adaptation. I do not believe Dutch Harbour is currently classified as having an Arctic climate.
Big fan of the DC show. It’s interesting that Discovery never asks the captains whether they notice any climate change, some of whom have fished there with their fathers for decades.
This season it looks like the ice and cold moved down aggressively in the Bering Sea (NSIDC was the only one who didn’t notice this).
Meanwhile, the Steve Irwin on Whale Wars (Discovery’s Animal Planet) was almost trapped and crushed by the ice in the Antarctic.
Look for a Discovery Special on Arctic melting this Summer.
Huh? With all the stuff on Anthony’s “plate”, i.e. Surfacestations Project, WUWT, the day job, family responsibilities, etc., I’m having a hard time picturing him ever couch potatoing it watching Deadliest Catch. Didn’t the lawn need to be mowed? WUWT? 😉
REPLY: I have a TV next to my computer, watching while computing. – Anthony
I just donated $50, Anthony, so you can go ahead and get the data. I’m curious.
REPLY: Thanks! I still hate paying twice for publicly funded data, especially when the COOP observer in Alaska gets nothing for braving the cold, winds, and snow to get it in the first place. I’ll let you know. I’m not sure if they deliver it online or via CD and snail mail. Will advise. – Anthony
The name confusion affects not only data updates, but station locations as well. By using GISS’ map to search for records, in past years I’ve downloaded data that was placed not only in the wrong country (e.g., St. Paul in the Pribiloff Islands vs. St. Paul in Canada), but in the wrong hemisphere (e.g., Oran, Algeria vs. Oran, Argentina). How’s that for data management by civil servants?
The information on this site on NCDC/NOAA data issues reminds me of my time with BC Environment developing waste discharge standards for the mining industry. Historically waste discharge data (water quality, air quality etc.) had been submitted by the mining companies to the government in the form of monthly paper reports. Ministry staff then manually input the data into the ministry’s database. On starting the project I dug into the data recorded in the database and found a horror story. Problems included missing data, input errors, duplicte data etc. etc. I spent months fixing obvious errors, removing dupicate data, finding missing data etc. The basic problem was that no one “owned” the data and thus no one was responsible for it’s accuracy.
Because of the staff time required to input data the ministry then spent millions developing a new super database system which would allow the mining companies to directly input their data into the system in a digital format using a telephone modem. (Few, if any, mine sites had internet service at that time.)
For the regions that the regional staff took the time to work with the mines and labs to iron out the glitches the system worked as the companies “owned” the data and had the ability to insure that it was correct. Some regions decided that they liked the monthly paper reports, didn’t work with the companies to insure the input/output worked. When I retired from government no one with authority was interested in ensuring the data in the new “foolproof” database was complete and correct. There were huge gaps in the data and many companies had given up on digital reporting.
I suspect that no one in the NCDC/NOAA data chain has the responsibility and authority to insure the the surface station data is complete and correct. Everyone can truthfully say “it’s not my problem” and as long the data can be used to generate the answers they want it will remain some one else’s problem.