It has been awhile since we’ve looked at stations in the United States Historical Climatology Network. Last night I was doing quality control and updates to the database and came across this photo by Surfacestations.org volunteer John W. Slayton. He’s been surveying dozens of stations this summer and has been adding quite a number of USHCN surveys to the database. We all thank him.
This photo has been retouched to minimize the sun glare. Find the thermometer.
Give up? Here’s the photo labeled to point it out:
Here’s another view showing the rain gauge:
You can see more photos here at the Surfacestations.org gallery server
The tree shade and the junk makes for an interesting combination of exposure factors. This station is in the backyard of a private observer whom I won’t name. Certainly you can’t fault the observer for the measurement environment, people are free to do with and maintain their property however they wish. And as we’ve seen time and again, NOAA/NWS usually does not concern itself with the measurement environment. As long as the station produces data, they are generally satisfied. However, this sort of arrangement doesn’t always yield a controlled measurement environment.
For example the month the photo was taken, the observer missed only 7 days.
So the question in my mind is: how does the albedo of old tires compare to asphalt?
The surfacestations project is approaching the 90% mark now for the nationwide survey. I’ll post an update in a few days. Papers for peer review are still in process, but my goal is to have the first ready for publication by the end of the year. A combination of illnesses, business duties, and another paper by a co-author has slowed the progress.
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Garbage data in, garbage science out!
Since AGW is JUNK science, this station should well represent AGW !!!!!
Haha I thought it was a rubbish tip
I wonder if they have ever considered auditing it?
“Siting specs? We don’t need no stinkin’ siting specs!”
From the upcoming movie “The Temperatures of the Sierra Madre”
And speaking of measuring temperature, I can’t help but think that the Caitlin expedition should have used something along these lines:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/st_rivertemp
JimB
OT
I checked the national (contiguous U.S) Temperature at NOAA
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2006/ann/Reg110Dv00Elem02_01122006_pg-v2.gif,
To me it lookes like NOAA says that 1998 was the warmest year in the USA.
Did not Mcintyre prove that this was not the case?
Morgan
MMS reports that the sensor has been at this site for only a couple of years so there are two pertinent questions to ask:
1. What were they thinking when they found this site acceptable?
2. How did they get the cable threaded under all that junk?
Your tax dollars at work.
Although the state of a site is quantified, isn’t that for only a given point in time? Is there a record of changes to any given site? For example, sites which are adequate today, may have been less-than-exemplary 5 years ago, or visa-versa.
Additionally, should any sites prove to be adequate today, does not mean they will stay that way.
Isn’t there a calibration certificate for these sensors? Along with the cal. cert. shouldn’t there also be a site cert.? I don’t know, maybe this is covered, but when trying to measure variations of less that half a degree, through a short term variation of 50-odd degrees and more, regular certification seems to be a must if this data is going to be used for anything meaningful beyond growing tomatoes.
“The surfacestations project is approaching the 90% mark now for the nationwide survey. I’ll post an update in a few days. Papers for peer review are still in process, but my goal is to have the first ready for publication by the end of the year. A combination of illnesses, business duties, and another paper by a co-author has slowed the progress.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Excellent work Anthony. It will be interesting to see the response to the finished article….. and the flow on effect thereafter.
As bad as this site looks (and it looks very bad), I would bet its readings are closer to the actual temps, than the rooftop sites, or the ones surrounded by asphault parking lots.
It doesn’t take much common sense to see that the whole network is suspect, and the adjustments to the record, are more suspect, than the quality of the sites.
Tetanus-City….
Hillbilly Heaven in Utah? Who’d a thunk it?
YEEEEEE HAWWW!
“”” jorgekafkazar (22:08:38) :
“So the question in my mind is: how does the albedo of old tires compare to asphalt?”
I think in this case, tire albedo is not as relevant as thermal diffusivity and mass. Tires are good insulators, so they’re not very effective heat sinks, especially given that they are hollow. The trees, completely surrounding the site, are suspect. I wonder how much compost is under all that trash, perking away and giving off heat. And where is the BBQ? “””
The obligatory barbecue is staring you right in the face in the lower right corner of the first picture, and it is still there in the second picture.
“Isn’t there a calibration certificate for these sensors? Along with the cal. cert. shouldn’t there also be a site cert.?”
It wouldn’t be too much to ask the observers to provide a photo each month of the observing station??
REPLY: sadly, no on all counts. -A
It is such a perfect metaphor that it could be the opening scene for a novel:
The data collector was shown the yard where the sensor was housed. The gate hung precariously from one hinge and yielded only grudgingly as he dragged it open. A gentle breeze wafted an odor of rotting vegetation with a pungent scent of old tyres and oil. He moved carefully, placing his feet around the strewn rusting parts of old automobiles. He carefully sidestepped a puddle that glistened with rainbow colors and climbed over the pile of tyres. At last he spyed his goal – the stephenson box was just visible standing 5 feet on a rusty pole, half concealed by some overgrown shrubs that had not known a trimmer’s shears for many forgotten years.
He removed a cloth from his pocket and brushed the cobwebs from the lock, sending a spider scurring into one of the slatted holes. Without missing a beat, he pulled open the tiny door, shone a flashlight inside and scribbled some figures down onto a notepad. Then he closed the box and retraced his footsteps back out the yard and into the open. This was one of the worst he had come across, but not by much. No matter, he would take the results back to GISS and they would add this to hundreds of other datapoints and publish their global temperature anomalies, and these would be sent to the UN, and the world would be told how everything is getting hotter and everyone must change the way they live.
But what would the world think, he wondered suddenly, if the world found out that the data being collected was just as so much rubbish? He quickly put the thought out of his mind, climbed into his prius and drove off.
isn’t there something wrong in this picture? i know, there isn’t enough concrete around the temperature sensors to drive the temps to where they naturally should be.
Morgan T (05:38:46) :
S.Mc proved that GISS had made errors.
If you check the GISS site, you will find that US contiguous 48 temps now have 98 & 34 tying.
I suspect the problem with NOAA is the switch from USHCN1 to USHCN2, the latest version of which has done away with UHI corrections. TOBs alone can account for the warming in that set.
DaveE.
Something to consider:
Natural variation may result in sensitive zonal climate areas responding to natural warming to a greater degree than less sensitive zonal climate areas. For example, desert climates are very sensitive to natural variation, of note are the extreme temperatures between night and day. Is it possible that by mathematically assigned weighting factors unique to sensitive climate zones, the overall global warming trend would disappear?
My question is “Who wrote the program to correct for old tires?”
The reason why I say this is because the 98 El Nino temp rise is not evident in every backyard junkyard. Is there a climate zone pattern to this? With enough data across climate zones, the pattern may not be related as much to tires as it is to that zone’s sensitivity to natural weather pattern variations and trends. In sensitive zones, warmer may be lots warmer (just like at Meachum, Oregon, colder means lots colder) and thus weight the data when it is averaged into a single anomaly. For this to be determined, geologic parameters, both in terms of the general climate zone and the micro climate zones within each zone need to be catagorized and compared to sensor location.
I’m speechless. I am totally without speech.
fillmore Utah. I suspect on some severe snow days, he can’t go get a reading.
The tire may not matter. The trees could prevent a lot of sun from reaching them. The sensor is a bit close to the … um … shed?
Probably appropriate if you want to track the climate in junk yards.
Backyard ?
Looks more like my living room.
‘cept for the MMTS, of course. Actually, the BBQ is on the hood of the abandoned car.
A GORE (filthy) and Inconvenient Site indeed!