The Urban Heat Island effect on temperature records is real, despite what some people wish you to believe. Peter, a sixth grader, and his dad, thought so too, and take the data from NASA GISS and show in a simple video, what we’ve been saying for years here at WUWT. Urbanization, land use, and station siting matter.
Watch Peter’s excellent video below:
They used a simple pairing of rural and urban sites to show the differences. This shows why homogenization, which smears all the data from urban and rural sites together, is a bad idea, and gives trends that don’t exist in reality.
I like the ending where he says in the rolling credits “Peter’s dad is not employed or funded by any energy or oil companies”. It’s funny that they’d feel a need to say this. No National Science Foundation funding needed either.
This video appeared in comments on WUWT, if anybody knows how to contact Peter or his dad, please advise. We are in touch now.
One wonders what the response of the well funded Hadley Centre, Met Office scientist Dr. David Parker, might be to this video.
Parker’s 2006 paper published in the Journal of Climate titled: “A Demonstration that Large scale warming is not urban” claims:
The analysis of Tmin demonstrates that neither urbanization nor other local instrumental or thermal effects
have systematically exaggerated the observed global warming trends in Tmin. The robustness of the analysis to the criterion for “calm” implies that the estimated overall trends are insensitive to boundary layer structure and small-scale advection, and to siting, instrumentation, and observing practices that increasingly influence temperatures as winds become lighter. Furthermore, even at windy sites (e.g., St. Paul, Aleutian Islands, in Fig. C1), the calmest terce and especially the calmest decile will be strongly affected by occasions with very light winds in passing ridges or blocking anticyclones, and should reveal any urban warming influence.
…the results of the present study also suggest that they have not affected the estimates of temperature trends.
Steve McIntyre gave Parker’s paper a scathing review in 2007’s article:
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I just communicated with gjg as well.
There was a difference in our methods and his was a little better. Basically he filtered out any monthly data from rural/urban stations that didn’t have a corresponding reading in the urban/rural station.
For example: If rural station A has no reading for Jan 1901, then the corresponding reading for urban station B is removed from the analysis.
I updated my analysis to do the same and forwarded my updated spreadsheet to him. (I didn’t do this previously because I was trying to replicate his procedure as I understood it).
After updating my analysis, I now get these trends:
Rural: 0.57 degC/decade
Urban: 1.06 degC/decade
The difference is larger than I have found in previous looks at UHI, but the method seems reasonable. I am still not sure why his rural trend is so close to zero.
REPLY: I believe I know why, and when I get his spreadsheets tonight, I’ll be able to confirm or refute my hunch.
BTW that 0.49C difference in trends you found is quite significant in the context of the generally agreed upon 0.74C that is claimed for the last century.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming they say
Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century.
Citation: IPCC (2007-05-04). “Summary for Policymakers” (PDF). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf. Retrieved 2009-07-03.
– Anthony
Anthony (in response to your REPLY2 above):
Keep in mind that when I first looked at trends derived from your best stations in comments at Climate Audit (back in September 2007), you said:
“Hello John V.
Thanks so much for doing this analysis, your detailed effort is appreciated.
I had planned on doing something similar, and I know Steve McIntyre is also working on something along these lines.
…”
You encouraged my work for a while, but then changed your mind at some point.
REPLY: Yes, when I learned the sample at 25-30% was still inadequate, even though others insisted it was and that your analysis was being held up by alarmists as proof of falsification. BTW you’ve never lifted a finger to have other people remove the claim, who took that early rushed work of yours based on that inadequate sample and used as a basis for falsification of the surfacestations project, before it was even completed. Yet you come here and make demands. Not at all impressive nor convincing. It shows your intent.
Like I said, beat it up all you want when it is published. And put your full name to it. – Anthony
Hey, I really liked Pete & Dad’s work.
It was clean and simple and got the point across that the “professional scientists” are making some of this over-complicated.
I know the UHI effect is real. In 1985 I used to watch it when sailing 20nm down the coast and into Sydney Harbour. I could see the cloud formation neatly aligning over the central CBD and we’d sail into a totally different weather pattern and then sail out of it again and back up the coast. It appeared to me the city heat was causing this wonderful cloud formation. This was way before anybody had invented Global Warming and long before UHI was bandied around for lay people to hear about.
Now when I go into Melbourne city the heat is just blistering and returning to our bayside location the temperature drop is wonderful.
I think Pete & Dad’s work has been a fabulous post here and shows the depth of interest in the community. When the IPCC says UHI’s have a negligible effect and then we see pictures of the weather stations in friggin car parks, well no wonder we become, let’s say suspicious. And as for homogenization, well Pete & Dad’s work neatly dovetails with Darwin Zero and it doesn’t look real good for the “professionals”.
Thanks again Anthony, mods and contributors.
CodeTech (12:44:40) :
The best part is, getting “peer review” involves polling a few of his friends at recess 😉
Just cracked me up – Jack.
Oh and JohnV, yes my body is a highly calibrated thermometer, a few degrees C difference and it sure starts producing “readings”.
Anthony:
I just noticed your reply. I see you are upset with me for not stopping other people from making un-justified leaps based on my work. As I recall, a few people on sites that I had never visited re-posted a couple of my graphs.
Meanwhile, I was commenting at Climate Audit (the only site I had visited at the time) in support of the Surface Stations project. I said many times that there was a lot of interesting science that could come out of proper station rating. I said many times that the bad stations should not be used.
While you express outrage that I would post comments on a blog without waiting for all stations, you went ahead and published a report with the Heartland Institute where you say:
“the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature…during the twentieth century.”
How could you possibly know this? You’ve never done any analysis of your data.
Why are you publishing conclusions that can’t be backed up with *any* analysis?
Why are you so mad at me for posting comments (with your approval) that could be backed up with substantial analysis?
REPLY: See there you go again, making assumptions like with my online schedule, that I have not done any analysis. I don’t have outrage so much with your comments, but with what people did with them. You’ve not lifted a finger about that. And your Opentemp project has fallen by the wayside, neglected. But this is all another battle that has nothing to do with a 6th grader and his UHI analysis.
You might start by apologizing to him for demanding that I take his video down …in your words “do the right thing” and placing insinuations about me, before you had any data or procedure from him.
– Anthony
Anthony:
One more thing. I am not going to pre-judge your work without seeing it. If it’s done well there will be no need for me or anyone else to “beat it up”. I hope it’s done well and I look forward to the release of the data from your volunteers.
REPLY: Fair enough, thank you – end of discussion then – Anthony
Anthony:
I will apologize for not being as polite as I should have been last night. At some level I conflated the tone of the comments with you. And yes, the difference of 0.49 degC/century is quite substantial. It’s different than other results that I have seen and worked on, but the method seems reasonable.
My concern was and is with the near-zero rural trend. I’m curious how that will shake out.
[snip – as mentioned above, we are done with this discussion, I’ve explained it, wait for the paper.]
I have not had the time or energy to work on OpenTemp for quite a while. The constant attacks and inferences about my “intent” got to be too much. Plus real life got in the way. I may have more time in 2010, or maybe not.
REPLY: “Real life” gets in everyone’s way, especially those of us like you and me that do this climate work, unpaid, while we try to keep our private businesses running and our family life secure. I agree with you on that issue. I’d like to be further along than I am as well, but we both have balancing acts. I sincerely hope that you’ll revive the project and run my data on it when I publish the paper. – Anthony
Anthony:
Is there any way to be notified of inline replies?
Going back over the thread, I can’t tell when you replied. I was waiting for a reply in the main thread.
REPLY: Try the refresh button. -A
Anthony:
You’re snipping a quote from something you published? Weird.
REPLY: On one comment you say you want to wait for the paper and not pre-judge on the next you want to open it up again. I simply don’t wish to waste any further effort and promote an off-topic discussion between you and me that has nothing to do with Peter, his dad, and their project.
We’re done on that – Anthony
It’s cute when non-scientists pretend to be scientists.
[REPLY – A common (but unfortunate) illusion is that whatever scientists do is science and whatever non-scientists do cannot be science. ~ Evan]
This is outstanding science — the data and methodology are available, not like most of the AWG papers in the “peer reviewed” journels that I’ve read. Boy, keep up the great work!!!
In similar vein, there four weather stations within seven miles of my house.
Cannon AFB 5 miles west, Longhorn Estates (a small housing develement) 2 miles north of Cannon AFB, Fairfield subdivision 3/4 mile north of my house at the edge of town, and the Clovis city airport 6miles east of me. At night, most of them don’t vary by more than 1 or 2 degrees F. In fact 3 of the four are usually identical, with CannonAFB showing a high reading. On a sunny afternoon, the CannonAFB will often show as much as 10F more than the others.
CannonAFB is the sit used by The Weather Channel for their local weather reports.
Sorry Anthony, the local bus doesn’t go to any of those places, so I can’t find out if they follow the NOAA guidelines. I can’t walk there because I haven’t saved enough to pay my share of a knee replacement.
I was around at the time of John V’s original work. Not having the ability to go through the code etc. I assumed that it was an objective (although as Anthony mentioned, too early) effort.
I certainly reverse that assumption now after this episode.
—–
John V’s newest numbers are still
– 0.815C per Century
– versus 0.875C per Century before.
—
After updating my analysis, I now get these trends:
Rural: 0.57 degC/decade
Urban: 1.06 degC/decade
—–
While the:
– NCDC record for the US is 0.66C per Century
– the GISS (annual) data for the US is 0.67C per Century; and
– Peter and his dad came up with 0.59C per Century.
—–
So, I believe there is a major fault in John V’s code (which I assume he is still using in some fashion to come up with these numbers so fast when it should have taken several days or weeks to put together).
I don’t want to sound in any way patronising, but is this not what the Idsos have been demonstrating for years over on co2science.org? In spite of this, great work, guys! You are in great company. Independent thought and work are always to be admired.
Bill Illis:
I simply created a spreadsheet and copied the temperature data from the GISTEMP site into the appropriate columns. No special code was required. It took about 90 minutes.
As I said above, I think UHI is real. I also think the rural/urban pairing is a pretty good method of investigating UHI (I sent Anthony a very similar study a year or two ago). My concern is with the near-zero rural trend. That just doesn’t seem right to me.
Last night and this morning I didn’t realize Anthony was replying inline with my comments. (I don’t comment here very often). Reading the comment thread with his inline comments (that I didn’t know about), I see that I looked like a jerk. I apologized for that above.
Peter’s Dad and I have been emailing back and forth and constructively working together. I modified my spreadsheet to more closely match his algorithm (and posted my new results immediately). Now we are trying to figure out why our raw data doesn’t match. We’re collaborating to get the right answer. I think that’s a good thing.
JohnV (17:35:32) :
“I simply created a spreadsheet and copied the temperature data from the GISTEMP site into the appropriate columns. No special code was required. It took about 90 minutes.”
Seems some code was required (Bill Illis didn’t say “special”):
“I modified my spreadsheet to more closely match his algorithm”
What is the significance in the time you claimed it took to create a spreadsheet and copy data? Sometime after the station list was posted, you thanked gjg for posting it, then less than a half hour later you claimed you had “reproduced” Peter and gjg’s analysis.
You claimed to have “analyzed” the urban stations having “some time” on your hands, posted a half hour after your claim of rural stations analysis being superior.
Cleaning and matching data urban and rural would take anyone considerably longer than 90 minutes. Rural and urban stations include “999” month values, years must match…there are what, over 50 stations? Then analyzing trends…90 minutes?
You’ve accused and jumped the gun so many times, and there are so many inconsistencies in your statements, that no matter what you finally decide, you’re still going to be wrong.
But if your concern is truly with a US rural trend, then pull them all, do a comp analysis and report it, instead of trying to find fault with another’s, that is admittedly not based on a complete station record.
Glenn:
I mention how long it took me because Bill Illis assumed I was using my old OpenTemp code (otherwise he thought it would take days or weeks to do the analysis).
Thanks for noting the time stamps. That shows how long it took to reproduce the spreadsheet. That’s how long it took to copy the urban stations. It’s not a lot of work if you’re familiar with the website and with Excel.
There’s a thread over at lucia’s where I gave Bill Illis my whole procedure. Why don’t we move this discussion over there?
I did many analyses using the best-rated rural stations a couple of years ago at Climate Audit. Anthony has asked me not to do that anymore. He wants to publish first.
I attempted to replicate somebody else’s work. That’s how science is done. I am now working constructively with “Peter’s Dad” to reconcile the differences. Where’s the problem?
>> Icarus (13:15:52) :
>> Sure, the UHI effect is real. That’s why they adjust for it, isn’t it?
The IPCC refers to Jones et al. (1990) for its claim that the non-climatic bias due to urbanization is less than one-tenth of the global trend. That is UHI contributes less than ) .06 degrees
Of course we know that Jones is the No 1 ClimateGate scammer.
In the past 100 years, global population has increased by a factor of about 3.6, with most growth in cities.
Based on the results of this UHI study
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/seoz_uhi.pdf
… this growth corresponds to a UHI temperature increase of 0.8 to 1.6 degrees C over the past 100 years.
I feel it is likely that Briffa tree rings are correct in indicating a global cooling over the past 70 years.
JohnV (19:08:48) :
“I attempted to replicate somebody else’s work. That’s how science is done.”
Not quite how I would characterize your “contribution” in this thread.
“Where’s the problem?”
I just told you. Want it spelled out? Clearly you rushed to judgement, made premature demands, yet expect to be treated differently. You rushed trying to prove a prior belief, and here’s some evidence for that.
“Basically he filtered out any monthly data from rural/urban stations that didn’t have a corresponding reading in the urban/rural station.”
You didn’t.
“That shows how long it took to reproduce the spreadsheet. That’s how long it took to copy the urban stations.”
No, it doesn’t. It only shows when you made claims. All I’ve seen are a couple figures. Doesn’t seem like something to brag about, or use as a defense against Bill’s charge of rushing, since you have admitted to being wrong, what, twice now?
Glenn:
I admit I was overly aggressive. But were my conclusions presented any more forcefully than the many comments disparaging the IPCC and Parker in particular? And those comments were made by people who put no effort into validating the analysis.
I did have a prior belief. I ran the analysis to check it. I did not do the urban/rural matching because it was not in the original description of the algorithm in the video. “Peter’s Dad” and I exchanged a couple of emails and he pointed out the difference in the analysis.
Realizing that my first analysis was not an accurate reproduction, I quickly updated it and posted new results. Are you honestly upset with me for updating my results to correct a mistake?
Anyways…
My initial concern was around the near-zero rural trend. That disagrees with every analysis I’ve ever done of the lower-48 (and I’ve done quite a few). Anthony has a hunch that may explain the near-zero trend. “Peter’s Dad” may be able to explain it. They both have my work to see if I made any errors.
Thanks! I hope people watch this.
Nobel for you!
It would help me if you all would scale back the emotional/ accusatory comments. Peter and his Dad did an interesting piece of work. It has been challenged, fair enough. JohnV and Anthony have some prior history that got in the way, thanks for settling it. Now, let’s see where the science leads.
JohnV
Your type of comments that contradict the post are the most valuable. Even if it was not correct from start it points out the potential weaknesses and areas where the conclusions could be attacked.
The best debates are when you are proven wrong – because then you learned something new!
Hayek (01:05:40) :
‘JohnV
Your type of comments that contradict the post are the most valuable. Even if it was not correct from start it points out the potential weaknesses and areas where the conclusions could be attacked.
The best debates are when you are proven wrong – because then you learned something new!’
Yes. Science is a double edge sword. Something The IPCC and the “Team” have forgotten.
John V, my interest in this debate has always been what do the real numbers show.
It is not helpful when scientists manipulate the data so that the real numbers are obscured while at the same time, throwing out the raw data or making it unavailable so that no one can check.
I have seen many times, individuals with a pre-existing belief in global warming jump into various debates with even further obscurred data in order to short-circuit the discussion. And it often works. When I see this happening, I try to do my small part to put the discussion back on track.
Credibility is hard-earned, easily lost and harder to get back when lost.
JohnV could re-gain some credibility (and I will apologize) if he can show from now on that he is not in the camp of people trying to short-circuit important discussions.
I think folks should lay off JohnV. Yes, his tone was wrong, but he apologized. Good enough for me. Think of this as dynamic peer review. We’re seeing the future in action. Different people get different results and now they are trying to understand why. The true scientific process and results should come out soon.
Just think how long this would take through a normal peer review cycle. I commend all … JohnV, Peter’s Dad and Peter … for doing work and making it available for others to critique. Well done.