A new story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times puts the spotlight on surface temperature data.
Above: Rome’s airport weather station. Here is the interactive view
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.
These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.
Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.
“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”
The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.
The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.
“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.
….
I and the surfacestations project get a mention also.
Read the remainder in the Sunday Times
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In previous comment: Globle = Global
I must stop posting from my Blackberry (bad bad Blackberry). Or maybe I can blame it on being stuck in traffic in the NRT airport limosine bus bound for Tokyo.
John
A MUST READ:
POINTS OUT HOW THOSE ENTRENCHED IN THE WARMING ZEITGEIST ARE STRATEGIC ENOUGH TO EXHAUST AND OUTLIVE THE “GATES” AND THE ATTACKS ON THEIR CREDIBILITY. ALSO IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE AND CHECK OUT HOW OBAMA IS MOVING TO THE EXECUTIVE ORDER/DECREE POSITION ON CLIMATE AS WE SPEAK, TO BYPASS CONGRESS ALTOGETHER.
EU Referendum: The second front
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/second-front.html
@ur momisugly Harvey Puca (20:40:26)
Just keep repeating to yourself ‘It’s all a big lie. It’s all a big lie’.
Then look up ‘cognitive dissonance’ in a good encyclopaedia (avoiding Wikipedia as it may have erroneously informed your earlier contributions).
Harvey Puca (20:24:04) :
The picture is a TOTAL LIE.
Click on the link yourself and take a real look.
Someone did some really nice photoshop work.
You guys just make me sick.
Might as well lie and get a big headline, cause nobody will go check the facts.
BAH
No Harvey, its absolutely true.
Located at Roma Ciampino aereoporto.
Its even on google maps.
Just follow the link and zoom out a little….planes…tarmac and yes more planes!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/mm?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=41.808117,12.584952&spn=0.000834,0.001692&t=h&z=19
It is quite deplorable and shocking that scientists should have made such fundamental errors of judgement in selecting the sources for their climate data. Even if it is not seen as part of some campaign of disinformation, it does seriously undermine the belief that scientists can be trusted to use plain common sense in coming to conclusions.
It is quite sad that the only thing keeping this burst balloon up are some very committed politicians who discredit themselves as much as they do the whole principle of Global warming.
I’ve just been reviewing the issue of wind turbines, and the gloss is coming off them as you’ll note from this article which demonstrates quite an amazing phenomenon of off-shore turbine creating thei own eco-climate of streaming clouds. Something unforeseen by scientists, along with the incredible fact that no one thought of the loss of efficiency
by each turbine creating its own ‘wind shadow’
http://waweatherscience.com/recent-news/winds-turbines-produce-clouds-and-a-loss-of-efficiency/
Wind turbines generate power on average less than 25% of the time, with varying voltages that can lead to brownouts. Energy experts say that, under these circumstances, “wind is more a nuisance than a source of power.”
Phil Jones is on record now as stating that the warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940, & 1978 to 1998 was at the same rate. This is the fellow who presented a 1990 paper stating clealry that the Urban Heat Island effect was negligable & irrelevant. Dr Vikki Pope is also on record for stating that many would die by 2100 due to the UHI effects. Well it is either significant or it is not!
Slightly OT, I recently printed off WUWT post by J.Storrs Hall’s of 09/12/2009 “Hockey Stick observed in NOAA ice core data”, on central Greenland ice cores he made up from NOAA data. Just using a scale rule & eyeballing a line through rises & falls in temperature, the rates of rise & fall appear very similar to the naked eye, with no apparent significant change in them at all. Curiously the rate of warming in the 20th century appears to be less than during the 19th century, certainy in Greenland!
NicL (22:15:48) :
I will continue to claim that the weather station is perfectly sited –
from an aviation safety perspective.
In that it will accurately provide to a pilot the temperature of the artificially heated air above the runway that the wings will be trying to gain lift from, on a hot August afternoon
——————————————————
The lift of an airplane depends on the air density, the plane speed and the configuration of the wings, so the temperature is very important to decide speed. Agree with your take on weather station location.
From Times Online:
[Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the chapter of the IPCC report that deals with the observed temperature changes, said he accepted there were problems with the global thermometer record but these had been accounted for in the final report.
“It’s not just temperature rises that tell us the world is warming,” he said. “We also have physical changes like the fact that sea levels have risen around five inches since 1972, the Arctic icecap has declined by 40% and snow cover in the northern hemisphere has declined.”]
The recent excessive snow has caused some bafflement. Some warmists were quick to point out that all that snow is a sign of warming because warming leads to more humidity in the air, ergo heavier snow.
Trenberth says snow cover has declined. Wouldn’t it follow then that that decline is due to less humidity and actually a sign of cooling?
The warmists can’t have it both ways. In the warmist scenario less snow and more snow are both signs of warming.
Some Labour Days temepartures could soar to over 500 degrees C!
Be fair David Davidovics, it’s over 104 metres from where the plane is parked, probably has no heating effect whatsoever, in fact the gentle breeze from the engines causes evaporation, lowering the temperature which has to be compensated for, upwards. They keep telling us heating causes cooling don’tcha know.
P.S. And Joan of Arc died of frostbite.
Harvey Puca (20:24:04) Reply: Did they also photoshop Google Earth? have a look for yourself, and believe the TRUTH and not the make believe world you live in.
Also an article on your stations report anthony in the daily telegraph this morning
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100…
Since the major greenhouse gas is water vapor, and without it this would be a very chilly rock, I think the rise has been considerably more than 0.7 deg C.
Going with a charitable reading, that they are referring to the “excess” emissions of mankind up to the present age, that means over the next 90 years we will see an average rate of increase between 7.1 and 8.6 times greater than anything seen before.
And they wonder why people are not taking them seriously?
Re: Graham UK (Feb 15 00:40),
Thanks for the link, very interesting. In a “previous life” I was involved with a mechanical engineering design company working in the wind turbine industry.
During this time I attended a number of conferences, at which the most verciferous questions always came from the operators and their financial backers, and it was “how do we keep these things operating?” Apparently not only was the efficiency of the downstream turbines affected, but they also suffered from a greater amount of down time.
My involvement was a few years ago, things may have changed.
Forgot to ask, this is OT. Can someonedirect me to information on the “4%” CO2 contribution by humans, where I can find out what is meant by “4%”, is this gross over 150 years? Or is it relative to something else. I am aware that it was a rough calculation but that it is not significnatly disputed. I just want to tighten up my arguments.
Thanks.
AtB
Alan the Brit (02:51:31) :
Its now§ Look at the top of the page. There is a widget on CO² it shows 388.08ppm. = approx 0.04 ppm x 100 = 4% approx
[0.04% of the atmosphere by volume. RT – Mod]
Alan
150yrs ago it would have been (maybe) 288ppm = 0.03 = 3%
[0.03% of the atmosphere by volume. RT – Mod]
Re the danger zone behind the 737-600/800:
“Operating jet engines on the apron outside XXXX hangar is only allowed at idle power.
To use the Boeing 737 as an example, the danger zone behind the aircraft is then 100 ft or 30 meters.
If the aircraft is going to taxi, a “break away” burst of power is needed, this will increase the safety distance to 510 ft or 155 meters. This burst will come without warning.
At take off power the distance is 1900 ft or 579 meters.”
Sure seems to hit the temp shack squarely.
The Telegraph report is also in today’s printed edition. In the past the Telegraph’s climate change coverage was completely biased and one-sided, and they would never even mention the names of sceptics. Merely to see the names of Watts, Christy and McKitrick in a Telegraph report is quite amazing. How things have changed….
Chris
Alan the Brit (02:51:31) :
I saw the figure of about 7% of the total natural annual flux (emission and absorption) in a New Scientist article about a couple of years ago. The figures I recall were about 430 GT naturally emitted and absorbed and 29 GT emitted by man. The assumption was made implicitly that the system was at its limits of absorbing power and so the anthropogenic stuff just stayed there and added cumulatively to the overall concentration, a view I find highly improbable.
In addition, while all governments tax all fossil fuels and therefore the 29 GT figure is probably OK to 3-4 times accuracy, given the problems of accurately measuring the actual natural emissions I wouldn’t trust the 430 GT figure to better than an order of magnitude, if that.
This post at John Graham-Cumming’s blog questions the accuracy of the airport Stevenson Screen photo above:
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/climate-change-skepticism-youre-doing.html
Maybe he’s on to something here? Can this be verified?
Paul
There are stacks of poorly situated surface stations. If anyone’s got a list of UK stations, i’d be happy to donate an hour of my time to take a few snaps of my nearest one and I know many others would too.
I’m convinced that most, if not all are going to be subject to heat island effects.
Phil Jones has told us that the current warming is similar to the 1880 and 1940 events. BUT, now we are told (as we have all known for some time) that the current data has a warming bias.
The flawed 1960 Jones Wang China paper which the IPCC rely on indicates minimal UHI effect within the Global temps, this we know this is wrong.
Take away the warming bias from 1970 to the present caused through land use change and UHI effect and the current warming is significantly less than the earlier warming trend .
The IPCC have endeavoured to keep the UHI effect to a minimum and looked for any study no matter how old that supports this. It has been shown that UHI can account for 50% of the warming shown by ground stations and most of that since the end of the second world war. How do you show catastrophic warming when the warming of the latter part of the century is considerably less than the first part, the link to CO2 would be tenuous to say the least.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=11&ved=0CAYQFjAAOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Ficecap.us%2Fimages%2Fuploads%2FURBAN_HEAT_ISLAND.pdf&rct=j&q=wuhan+station+UHI+effect&ei=kj95S_atDaD80wSG5YCvCQ&usg=AFQjCNEzhQwBt7LcS9Oi7wrhp-w5lhG94Q
Dan
Just to emphasize the point, you are referring to a DANGER zone, the effect of lower level heating would extend considerably further under low wind conditions. As we know, fractions of a degree are significant!
Also I understand (from a retired 737 captain) that when engines are started they must be run at idle until working temperatures are reached, so it is not just a quick blast when the aircraft parks or starts up.
Harvey Puca (20:24:04) didn’t believed the station picture from Roma Ciampino – here is the Googlemaps> http://tinyurl.com/yjgnddg
Anyway it doesn’t much matter whether the thermometer station is directly behind the possible jet engine thrust/exhaust path (although surely it would then produce anomalous reads).
The contemporary jet engines have thermal output at order of magnitude as 100 million Watts (don’t confuse with Anthony Watts 😉 in the take-off mode – then if one considers there are usually two such engines per jetliner one can come to the conclusion that such a thermal power output is comparable with the total radiative solar input at several hectares of earths surface. And how many jetliners start normally at international airports…How many are taxiing…how much CO2 they produce…
Or, yes, if on considers CO2 thermal forcing be 1,4 W per sq. meter, then just one jetliner in takeof mode has a thermal output equivalent of more than 100 square kilometers of the CO2 thermal forcing.
Anybody can recount it for himself – it’s a ground school math.
That’s maybe why some take-off to speak about the AHI (Airport Heat Island)…