WUWT Commenter “Boy on a Bike” was inspired by Willis article on Darwin (See: The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero) to have a look at stations in his part of the world, he didn’t have to look far. He’s found what we’ve been saying for years on WUWT. Just have a look in our Weather Stations Category. One notable example, Lampasas, TX
He writes:
UPDATE: The writer has misidentified the lighthouse shown in the photos below. it is actually Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, not Cape Naturaliste. Not being familiar with Australian lighthouses, I did not catch this right away. But I have verified that it is Cape Leeuwin in Google Earth. The siting issue of the weather station at Cape Leeuwin remains a concern. I’ll add the temperature record at Cape Leeuwin as soon as I can locate it. UPDATE: Graphs have been posted in comments – Anthony
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Australian weather records – how much can we trust them?
After reading a few articles on weather stations in the
US and
Australia over the last year or so, I decided to do a random check on one station in WA [Western Australia] to see what the records looked like.
I chose Cape Naturaliste, as I have visited it several times, and the lighthouse has been there for around a century. I guessed that the weather station would be at the lighthouse – and I was right.
One glance at the annual mean maximum temp from around 1900 to today would convince most people that we are all about to fry. However, I decided to have a look for photos of the site to check out the location of the weather station.
The weather station is located between the two buildings on the far right – and it is about a foot from an asphalt road. Note that the asphalt is a dark black colour – the colour of fresh tar.
Here’s a side on view.
If memory serves me correctly, when I visited this place back in the 1980s, this was a gravel road – not tarmac.
If the weather station has not been relocated since 1901, what impact would moving from a gravel road to tarmac have on temperature readings? Undoubtedly, it would skew them upwards. The key question is when the tarmac was laid – or relaid – and what impact this has had on the temperature record.
Like this:
Like Loading...
[snip]
Setting up pair of Stevenson screens next to an asphalt-challenged weather-station, zero them, then move one to an area surrounded by white blankets, and MEASURE the difference.
Then submit it to peer-reviewed literature.
And do the REALCLIMATE “press release on submission” trick.
Fighting a running battle here because it bemuses me:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/jacktheinsider/index.php/theaustralian/comments/climategate_lame_by_any_other_name/desc#commentsmore
Actually got to the stage where the blog writer (“Jack the Insider”) called me “feeble minded” and an “idiot”. Disappointing because I always used to enjoy his cynical musings on politics but he has got the proverbial bee in his bonnet on the ClimateGate issue. as we Aussies say… he’s going off like a frog in a sock!
But on topic… Jack’s main gun (a Bsc in CSRIO called Marcus) claims the UHI is accommodated for in the data at GISS. How the heck would these guys know how to accommodate every change in the environment around every station in the US? and then by how much? It would be a tough job trying to keep one thermometer honest, let alone thousands. I smell poppycock, but would love some ammo to back it up.
I’d post the Youtube vid… but I doubt it would get much traction.
Bulldust says:
How strange. I spent 40+ years in Australia and I have never heard that saying.
The “snip” above was the suggestion that someone’s school science project should be to do the Stevenson screen benchmarking on asphalt vs white-blanket covered land.
Bulldust (14:00:06),
You could have some fun with them by putting one of these in your jacktheinsider posts.
Richard Sharpe (14:04:16) :
Beats me but I love that one… so evocative:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=going%20off%20like%20a%20frog%20in%20a%20sock
Also cross as:
http://www.australiablog.com/about-australia/aussie-slang-how-to-understand-aussie-7.html
PS> I think I may have heard it in Queensland… but then I spent 6 years in Kalgoorlie as well, so I picked up a lot there. I was born in Australia many moons ago (think just after Geelong won their previous flag, in that town even, but not 9 months after :p ) and returned to Kalgoorlie in 1992, in September, for a Geelong-WC Eagles GF. Somehow Australia felt instantly like home (despite leaving when I was 2)… no way I can explain it. Love the place.
Teaching at the School of Mines (WA) I ran into a chap called Peter Cook (from memory) who spoke wonderful Australian. I could understand every word … he spoke very clearly … but he used so many Aussie expressions I had no idea what he was saying 90% of the time.
It took me longer to pick up the Aussie slang than it did to understand Afrikaans as a Dutch speaker (but that is another story).
Thanks for the demotivator… I slipped in the first one (assuming Jack will allow it) for shits and giggles.
Off to work for moi – off to see a major resource company present on a waste recycling solution. Win-win-win. That’s real environmentalism.
Anthony,
How about issuing a call for some serious whistle blowing from some of the other major climate research centers?
The United States has some very protective whistle blower laws and they include whistle blowing for waste of federal funds, scientific fraud, violation of laws (such as FOIA), engaging in politics from one’s position as a federal employee, etc.
There must be a few honest and brave souls inside of NOAA GISS and the others alphabet organizations involved. The withheld code and data exists on networked computers. They can’t hide it forever. Someone must have a change of heart and let the cats out of the bag so this can be cleared up before our elected officials spend our grandchildren’s futures to gild their own pockets.
Can you issue an offer of safe harbor for these whistle blowers?
If you like lighthouses:-
Tim Blake-Crystal Machine:- Lighthouse
nice job. Know anyone in Alice Springs?
Keith (10:01:51)
I have the same question. So now they have two people to shout at.
Random variation may take care of station moves, but equipment changes may not be as random. Starting over with the raw data that would be a good beginning.
There was a post in the last couple of days where the author chose to homogenize the data by lowering the old temperatures. I would tend to leave old temps alone, because being an old fogey, I tend to trust mercury thermometers more than the new stuff, and urban heat islands should not have been as prevalent. However, that just shows my own bias and personal biases are what got us where we are: junk.
OT, but yet more MSM drivel:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/you-caused-it-you-fix-it-tuvalu-takes-off-the-gloves-20091210-kksq.html
There are temperature records back to 1887 for Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin at http://www.waclimate.net
There are also BoM official temperature data files on the page for download, and pop-up graphs based on the BoM data. I must say, based on the BoM records, Cape Leeuwin graphs as flat as a tack and Cape Naturaliste has increased but it doesn’t look anywhere near as dramatic as the BoM graph above.
BOM manual for siting of weather stations states that the distance a Stevenson screen must be set up is to be at least 5 times the width of a nearby non-conforming surface from it. Eg if the road is 5 metres wide the equipment should be 25 metres from it. So that one is definitely upter.
One of these days I’m going to check out the local station (Mackay).
Bulldust (14:00:06) : But on topic… Jack’s main gun (a Bsc in CSRIO called Marcus) claims the UHI is accommodated for in the data at GISS. How the heck would these guys know how to accommodate every change in the environment around every station in the US? and then by how much? It would be a tough job trying to keep one thermometer honest, let alone thousands. I smell poppycock, but would love some ammo to back it up.
OK, GIStemp does a rather poor job of UHI adjustment. It often ‘gets it wrong’ and makes the past record of a station cooler (it adjusts the past) thus making the slope more, not less, as a UHI adjustment ought to do.
For example, Pisa, Italy, gets a 1.4 C adjustment the wrong way in an early data point.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/gistemp-a-slice-of-pisa/
This is done via “The Reference Station Method”. It “looks nearby” circling out up to 1000 km looking for a “rural” station, then uses that station to adjust for UHI. Small problems: The station may be in a far different climate zone and may have an upside down relationship. The “rural” station may not be very rural. They are often airports. Quantico Virginia “The crossroads of the Marines” and Diego Garcia (a major air base on an Island) are two examples..
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/most-used-rural-airport-for-uhi-adj/
And the percentage of airports in the “raw” cooked GHCN dataset regularly rises over time:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/ncdc-ghcn-airports-by-year-by-latitude/
There’s more, but I don’t want to load this up with links. If this isn’t enough, well, give me a holler over at my place and I’ll put together some more. The “Islands in the Sun” posting covers the Diego Garcia issue (if you look under AGW issues on the right of the blog).
Hmmm … a higher-accuracy ‘fan controller’ chip via I2C bus … does not claim to be ‘instrumentation grade’.
a) going to need some ‘line conditioning’ (for the digital data) if this thing is more than a few feet ‘down the line’.
b) a micro/special control-box to ‘talk’ the I2C protocol and display the temp, also perhaps provide an interface to a PC (USB, serial, LAN, etc)
c) Lightning/transient protection in the design (aside from what native protection the chip comes with); a must if you want it to survive in the real world.
d) Not the most accurate temperature device available (accuracy limits ‘open up’ on then low end past 0 deg C, see pg 6 datasheet below) – see short treatise on RTDs, thermocouples and Thermistors for instance.
e) LM92 Data sheet
Disclaimer: we use the LM93 (a different, but similar function chip/fan control and supervision) in product, and it works as advert’d.
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In my opinion the high trend at Cape Naturaliste is probably due to the proximity of the city of Busselton and what looks like holiday house type real estate development close to the Cape.
Recently in an effort to determine the ‘pristine coastal site’ trend in Australia, I found that the following six stations have century long data and are nowhere near any urban development. These stations all have similar average trends (TMax + TMin / 2), the overall average being 0.59 degrees/century.
CAPE LEEUWIN 084016 trend = 0.54 degrees/century
CAPE MORETON LIGHTHOUSE 040043 trend = 0.74 degrees/century
JERVIS BAY PT PERPENDICULAR LIGHTHOUSE 068151 trend = 0.39 degrees/century
CAPE OTWAY LIGHTHOUSE 090015 trend = 0.58 degrees /century
GABO ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE 084016 trend = 0.65 degrees /century
WILSONS PROMONTORY LIGHTHOUSE 085096 trend = 0.65 degrees/century
The data was taken from the BOM historical database, NOT the supposed high quality homogenised dataset.
_Jim (21:46:39) :
According to the LM93 datasheet, accuracy of the on-chip sensor is 3ºC
I’ve not managed to find a sensor as cheap as the LM92 with similar accuracy (+/-1.5ºC) over its entire range.
Buffer/isolators for I2C are cheap too.
Look around for USB to I2C adaptors.
443Mhz I2C & USB adaptors are also easy to come by.
DaveE.
E.M.Smith (21:31:28) :
Thanks for the input, but it turns out Jack does not want my input anymore. I can no longer respond to his blog. I breached no rules, but clearly the temerity to oppose his opinion (wrong in fact) is enough to have a poster blocked.
The running debate I had with him was regarding search hits for “cliamtegate” which he insists returns hits for the words “climate” and “gate”. I countered with the fact that the searched increased from hundreds of hits just after the CRU leak to thousands a few days later, and then millions and tens of millions in the next weeks.
I must therefore assume, according to his logic, that there was suddenly a massive outpouring on the web regarding gates or climate, despite there being no interest in these subjects prior to mid November (at least on a search of climategate).
Odd that he sees my debating this point with him as a bannable offense. The is after HE called me feeble minded and an idiot… in violation of his own posting rules. Hmmm funny how that works eh? Perhaps a letter to the senior editor of The Australian is warranted.
PS> Sorry about the two typos… a little perturbed ATM as you can imagine.
PPS> Scratch that – he doesn’t allow the links in E.M. Smith’s post… submitting without (with credit of course).
Exact location of cape naturaliste weather station can be obtained from BOM
http://www.bom.gov.au
Its no where near any ashphalt or buildings, there are no nearby settlemnets as its in the middle of a national park.
The photos are of Cape leeuwin , the asphalt road has been there for at least the last 30 years. Please fix original article.
We do not have a tight requirement for temperature measurement using this IC. We *do* however need fan supervision/tach reading capability and PWM fan speed control, however, which this IC provides and that is the reason for choosing the LM93.
Going a bit further in depth, we actually employ a thermistor as external air temperature sensor on account of the wider, and somewhat higher accuracy over that range and ‘read’ that using a 17 bit DVM chip ( an LTC2481 ).
A little limited as to accucacy at the low end don’t you think? And the datasheet shows no ‘performance’ below -25 degree C (again, this little chip is intended for fan control and related purposes; again, it is not instrumentation grade)
It all depends on what you ‘need’ or perceive you need …
Will they pass lightning tests (NOT just human body ESD)?
RIght. Like the Aardvark pods? That’s driving up costs rather substantially and OF COURSE this is not the *volume* (in quantity) answer (an OEM answer inloves the TI MSP uC line or a Microchip PIC).
Are you proposing a one-of or something to be built in quantity? Does it have to work for more than six months of six years in the field?
Consideration of few more factors than just accuracy and dirt-cheap are required; what about sensor ‘drift’ over time? There might be better choices for a sensor than this considering other factors; the RTDs and Thermistors have come of age, some designs are offsetting as regards to cable length and ‘voltage’ reference (like the design we used with the LTC2481, the supply voltage is used as the ‘reference’ for both the IC and also used as excitation for the Thermistor with changes in one being the same ratio for the other and no effective change seen for Vcc changes).
For anyone other than an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) I would look to pre-packaged solutions. If one wants a one-of solution AND accuracy but has budget limitations – check eBay for industrial solutions at a bargain price!
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_Jim (17:25:08) :
We’re talking one-off for non-professional use here.
The LM92 is ideal for this, it’s dirt cheap & ‘good enough’
For total accuracy, you’re talking perhaps PT100 but it’s plain too expensive. I’ve used it extensively in a professional sense, but that’s not ‘home budget’
Yes, thermistors are accurate but non linear and expensive to implement.
DaveE.
dribble (07:44:24) :
In my opinion the high trend at Cape Naturaliste is probably due to the proximity of the city of Busselton and what looks like holiday house type real estate development close to the Cape.
Recently in an effort to determine the ‘pristine coastal site’ trend in Australia, I found that the following six stations have century long data and are nowhere near any urban development. These stations all have similar average trends (TMax + TMin / 2), the overall average being 0.59 degrees/century.
CAPE LEEUWIN 084016 trend = 0.54 degrees/century
The BoM official data (taken via Stevenson Screen recordings from 1910 to 2008) is interesting for Cape Leeuwin.
The BoM annual average mean maxima are at:
http://www.waclimate.net/max/cape-leeuwin.txt
The BoM annual average mean minima are at:
http://www.waclimate.net/min/cape-leeuwin.txt
Cape Leeuwin
The first 30 years of minima from 1910 to 1939 show an average of 13.1 degrees C, compared to an average 14.3 degrees C for the final 30 years from 1979 to 2008 – i.e. an increase of 1.2 degrees.
The first 30 years of maxima from 1910 to 1939 show an average of 19.9 degrees C, compared to an average 20 degrees C for the final 30 years from 1979 to 2008 – i.e. an increase of .1 degrees.
The average mean minimum from 1990 to 1999 was 14.38 degrees and from 2000 to 2008 it was 14.48 degrees. The average mean maximum from 1990 to 1999 was 20.1 degrees and from 2000 to 2008 it was 19.88 degrees.
i.e. the average minimum at Cape Leeuwin has increased for 100 years and continues to rise, while the average maximum has remained steady and has dropped by .2 degrees over the past decade.
The Cape Leeuwin recording station looks legit …
http://www.waclimate.net/cape-leeuwin-station.html
although it looks different from another BoM picture …
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/map/stations/009518.shtml
Cape Naturaliste
I doubt Cape Naturaliste is close enough to urban development to be influenced, the bitumen road being another question.
The BoM annual average mean maxima are at:
http://www.waclimate.net/max/cape-naturaliste.txt
The BoM annual average mean minima are at:
http://www.waclimate.net/min/cape-naturaliste.txt
At Cape Naturaliste, the first 30 years of minima from 1910 to 1939 show an average of 11.6 degrees C, compared to an average 12.9 degrees C for the final 30 years from 1979 to 2008 – i.e. an increase of 1.3 degrees.
The first 30 years of maxima from 1910 to 1939 show an average of 20.8 degrees C, compared to an average 21.4 degrees C for the final 30 years from 1979 to 2008 – i.e. an increase of .6 degrees.
The average mean minimum from 1990 to 1999 was 12.94 degrees and from 2000 to 2008 it was 12.82 degrees. The average mean maximum from 1990 to 1999 was 21.4 degrees and from 2000 to 2008 it was 22.02 degrees.
Cape Naturaliste is about 90 kilometres north of Cape Leeuwin and both are west coastal locations with most of their weather coming off the Indian Ocean and heading east.
The Bom site descriptions are:
Cape Naturaliste 109 m 0.5 km On hill at lighthouse
Cape Leeuwin 13 m On the coast On coast