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
See also Monday’s Daily Express:
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214
It’s front-page news there!
Dear Mr. Puca. I have about 11,000 hr. of flight time. a little under half that in Douglas DC-6’s and 7’s most of the rest as an Instrument Flight Instructor,Flight Instructor, and Part 135 Air taxi and Charter pilot. Night, IFR, AirFreight, Commuter,and the last 10 years of my 28 year career, was as a Airtanker Pilot defined as:” Dropping slimy red mud on burning trees from antique aeroplanes. I was a NOAA certifed Weather Observer set up several SAWRS (Now ASOS and all automatic) Weather stations,I have scientific training, (BS-Biology)-No brag, just fact.
Now,I have been in the cockpit of a twin B-99 Commuter Airliner, as a DC-10
departed ahead of me, the ’10 was able to take off with less visibility than my
Beechcraft. Near 0-0 conditions at Portland Or. Airport(PDX) The Tower
Said;”Col Pac 25, RVR (runway visibility) is now 1800 ft-cleared for takeoff-hurry!. ” The Jet Exhaust warmed the air enough to raise the Visibility enough to depart. Yes I am _convinced_ that the Rome airport is a _real_ picture;
and yes the jet could indeed have a real effect on the temperature.
Denial cuts both ways here and Denial ain’t a river in Egypt,Pard…
Al Gore’s Brother (19:40:58) :
” We corrected for the abnormalities of the station data. Nice try!”
Would you lot stop it with the sarcastic comments! My laptop keyboard can only take so much coffee/beer (its been a long day!) liquid in one day!
stephen richards (03:21:20) :
Alan
150yrs ago it would have been (maybe) 288ppm = 0.03 = 3%
[0.03% of the atmosphere by volume. RT – Mod]
Thanks. That’s what I thought. I wanted to make sure of my arguement when I said this to my Met Office friend the other day. I got the impression that although they are ALL on message, there is a degree of disjointedness in the camp – he was not aware that global temps had gone down over the last few years for example, he doesn’t deal in those measurements, but in certain aspects of modelling, etc I suspect they are all a bit like that!
By the way Dan (03:51:09) :
Re the danger zone behind the 737-600/800:
I so wish NicL (22:15:48) : had stood that close to a Vulcan (UK Bomber) when it revved up to begin taxing! The power needed just to get moving was immense!
Okay, modern aircraft are lighter than the old stuff but there is absolutely no way the station could not be affected and as for saying it is perfectly placed for an airfield……..well, the guy (“I will continue to claim that the weather station is perfectly sited –
from an aviation safety perspective”) has absolutely no conception of a pilots main concern…wind sheer!
Engines are typically started from the APU, which is an engine in the tail. So figure 1 minute to start the APU from batteries, then running for a few minutes before starting the engines (running checklists in the meanwhile). Engines are started one at a time from APU bleed air, and it takes a minute or so each.
Warmup is required before takeoff thrust (5 minutes for a cold engine), but it is not required for taxi.
So assume that a parked aircraft will be emitting exhaust (with thrust) for no less than 5 minutes from beginning of APU start, to when it starts to move. 10 minutes would be more common.
Sorry, missed out typing my main comment (Sorry A!)
Harvey Puca (20:40:26) :
“Lie to me once, and I can’t trust you again.”
I think that is were we sceptics have been coming from for some time now!
Anthony
My sincere thanks to you and your helpers in uncovering the problems with the US temperature measurements and for this wonderful blog. I believe that you and your associates have played a major role in spotlighting the errors in the AGW thesis (and religion). Kudos to all.
Bill Yarber
New Smyrna Beach, FL
There are also unbelievable gaps in the station datasets. Chiefio announces further dying of the stations:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/2010-thermometer-langoliers-hit-list/
And I must confirm it – just check, how many monthly data are missing in the GISS station records for 2009. You barelly find there a station record without some 2009 data missing, sometimes 4 months are missing, but the annual mean – guess what -is there…
And not just that year…
The classical example for me is the station Praha Klementinum – one of the world’s oldest instrumental temperature record (and thus extremely valuable), having uninterupted measurements since 1770ies -courtesy of an old monastery – till present.
And what the “scientists” from GHCN, GISS and CRU did with this very valuable instrumental record?
They raped the record cuting the pre-1850 (or GISS even the pre-1880) values, then cut it again in 1940, leaving the whole 40ties out and then “connected/renamed” it to another station of Praha/Ruzyne (largest czech airport with the station just 0.44°C and thus if one subtracts UHI and compares decade 2000-2009 with decade 1790-1799 then one finds out the post LIA warming during last 200 years in Prague was less than 0,25°C/century!!! –
I don’t know if there is a “catastrophic warming around the globe”, but in Prague, central Europe, surely not. We have instrumental proof.
BUT what is maybe even more interesting -is the phenomena which one can call perhaps “PHANTOM DATA”.
– I’ll explain: Courtesy of the Phil Jones declaring the CRU raw datasets “missing” the CRU subsequently contacted among numerous others the Czech Met Office (CHMI) to send them the Czech datasets again. The Czech Met Office climatologist then was ?clever or dull? enough -so he asked CRU whether the CRU can send them (to CHMI) the data they (in CRU) have.
So the CRU (amazingly) sent them the data (even they before declared the data “missing”, “lost during moving”…)
Meanwhile I (and others) wrote in Czech some popular articles about the global temperature data manipulation in NOAA, GISS – sourcing information from Chiefio, WUWT, ICECAP and own research. The Czech Met Office climatologists then hastily published counter-articles, trying to prove the CRU didn’t manipulate the Czech data.
But with their articles they also published the Czech data the CRU have sent to them -together with the data the Czech Met Office has -in one xls file.
You can download here: http://tinyurl.com/y96e7fh -and see the differences.
And now it comes: I was then looking to this CRU datasets published by CHMI and immediately discovered they have there some data for stations Cheb, Brno/Turany, Ostrava/Mosno from 50ties -data which even the Czech Met Office (CHMI) doesn’t have (for their own stations).
A whole decade of data!
Subsequently I discovered even more amazing thing: the CRU has the 1953 data for the station Cheb – that’s for the PERIOD BEFORE THE STATION WAS EVEN FOUND! (late 1954) Subsequently, of course, I asked the Czech Met Office climatologist (I sometimes discuss with him at the internet) where the 50ties data come from. He was quite reluctant to react to my questions, but after some pressure in public forum he confessed the Czech Met Office has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where the 50ties data come from and subsequently promised me to find out what’s going on.
So far – even after several weeks – no word from him.
So that’s why I call it the “phantom data”.
And I’m considering to publish the whole story.
Did CRU fabricated the data? Are there more phantom data in their datasets? Is this the reason why the CRU doesn’t want to publish the data and rather declared them “missing”? (to avoid selfincrimination?) Or the data come originally from NOAA/GHCN and were fabricated there and CRU just tryies to help whitewash the whole thing?
I would think this question of phantom data maybe should be posed not in the Czech Republic (most probably the Czech climatologists have nothing to do with it), but at the British parliament inquiry into Climategate under the question 3…
Peter Plail,
Exactly what I meant to say.
In the danger zone you risk being blown over, obviously the hot exhaust will travel further, depending on wind of course.
In summer there will be natural hot “blasts” of air heated by the tarmac. Not insignificant, I would say.
” 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.”
Where’s the lie Harvey? Took me a few minutes to pull it up on Google Earth – According to the Google Earth’s ruler function the station is 96.4 feet from the edge or the tarmac. And it just so happens that there is a twin engine jet parked in the spot numbered as #11 – the ruler function says that the distance to the tail of the plane is 332.8 feet from a spot centered between the two instrument sites. Spot # 10 (using the plane parked at #11 as a guide) would be 285.4 feet away. Unless you think Google Earth “photoshopped” it.
Location Coordinates are 41 48′ 42.69N 12 34′ 58.23 E
So are you going to “man up” and admit you were too ready to accuse someone here of fraud? Or in reality you are not just an average person trying to check the facts – but a troll? Apologies are accepted anytime – live and learn.
Stick around you might learn something. But if you come and post on this site, you better be accurate either pro or anti AGW, you will see both opinions- and each side, debate passionately and with facts to support their opinions.
If you are horrified that you have been told that global warming is a fact and just can’t believe that the temperature measurements rely on such poorly sited weather stations you are really not going to like http://www.surfacestations.org.
I have wondered for a long time how weather stations were affected by jet exhaust – the sign of the effect can only go in one direction. HOWEVER
The example you show in Rome is actually a jet parking lot where the planes are TOWED.
Interesting that the article in today’s Daily Telegraph has EXACTLY the same quote from Trenberth as the Sunday Times article – must be a press release or the Telegraph has just lifted it from the Times story. And who is Heidi Blake, the author of the article? Probably not Georffrey Lean’s or Louise Grey’s best friend, I would wager!
BUT, great to see the article in the paper and for Anthony and Co to get mentioned – keep it up, lads!!
“richard (04:59:13) :
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.”
Richard, I have asked this several times before but Anthony has replied that we are likely to get ourselves arrested – for security reasons – if we try it. I am almost tempted anyway. I’ve said that I am close to Hern airport which is one of the UK stations used for recording temps and bearing in mind that it is now known as Bournemouth International Airport (LOL) and usage of these regional airports is increasing , one would expect warming to have increased temperatures there because of it. I was going to say because of UHI but perhaps we need to introduce a new tag – perhaps AHB (Aircraft Heat Blast) might be more appropriate. I also said the same of Stansted Airport which started off life as a runway built by the Americans during the war – now look at it!
So, we have two Stevenson screens located close, but in somewhat different temperature regimes. One is directly behind the exhaust, the other further away behind a building. Then we have an automated weather station very close to Stevenson screen #1, in the same general environment from a temperature standpoint. Which Stevenson screen is being used or is the automated one the official miscreant?
Is the raw data from all three of these instruments available? Although not a rigorous experiment, it could give some insight into Stevenson vs automated stations and/or stevenson screen 1 vs stevenson screen 2. I would be very interested to see that data. Anyone else?
Weather stations were designed and sited for the monitoring/reporting of local weather on a day to day basis. They fulfilled this requirement well, considering the limitations of past science and technology and still make a contribution today. They were never intended for climate monitoring, local or worldwide.
With the advent of satalites, able to read and record atmospheric and sea surface energy emmisions directly, the use of ground-based thermometers are no longer appropriate. After all, temperature is a proxy for heat. How ridiculous it is that we employ worldwide thousands of weather stations, many of them as we know inapproriately sited, in order to compare anomalous temperature variations against a hyperthetical global temperature base! No wonder the AGW disaster Sci-fi took off so easily – easy enough for an idiot to follow, yet sufficiently convoluted to be difficult to disprove.
Measurement of atmospheric and SSL heat energy emmissions should be conducted by satelites, with limited monitoring by surface stations. The satelites should transmit unajusted, raw heat energy data, not transduced to meaningless regional averages.
Any journalists reading? The fraud is easily exposed by even a 6’th grader.
Just have a look;
John Whitman (23:05:31) :
“What are your evaluations of other natural phenomena that can be used as indicators of globle change if (as you say) temperature records cannot be relied upon?”
John,
If there has been no warming since 1995, what is the problem?
Why should anyone come up with a theory?
Natural causes, yet to be explored.
The Boston temperature sensors are just as compromised.
The station is between two primary runways and two taxiways.
Hard to compare this data with the historical data that was taken at the old state house across the harbor.
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&rls=en&q=42.36056%C2%B0+-71.01056%C2%B0&sourceid=opera&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=%2B42%C2%B0+21'+38.02%22,+-71%C2%B0+0'+38.02%22&gl=us&ei=D2Z5S9-CI8jj8QbunfnzCQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ8gEwAA
DJ Meredith (22:59:17) :
Now wouldn’t it be interesting to see if the correlation between the Hockey Stick and the increase in jet traffic doesn’t give a perfect fit with airport-located temperature logging….
================================================
they used tree rings
As others have pointed out, Trenberth and Christy now seem to be telling us that the temperature record is not really that important. So don’t waste your time getting all steamed up about station locations, data quality, adjustments, UHI effects and the like, because it is perfectly possible to demonstrate runaway global warming by a host of other means and presumably without going within 100 yards of a thermometer.
Just for interest, it is now 3.30pm in the UK, light snow is falling and my outside thermometer is indicating 2.2C (or have I misread it – should that be 22C!?).
By the way, I just happen to live in East Anglia. Perhaps it’s not snow at all. Maybe they have emptied Phil Jones’ office and what I’m seeing is ash from the bonfire!
Somebody ought to go to that site with another thermometer, and monitor for any temperature anomalies that might occur when the engines start up. Surely someone from one of these multi-billion dollar climate monitoring centres would have done that, just to prove that the engines have no effect on recorded data.
I am in complete support of the idea that wx stns are sited incorrectly. I completely believe in Anthony’s surface station project.
IMHO that picture of the Roma wx stn has been doctored … I don’t buy the size of the “automated weather station.” What are the “van sized” boxes next to the screens? Because those boxes are not the screens.
Check out the larger version:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/rome_italy_airport_weather_station_large2.jpg
The concept is good, that picture is misleading. It looks Photoshopped to me and I’d advise being careful about how it s used.
Clive
Harvey Puca obviously thinks that any picture showing a weather station in this type of location at an airport must be doctored and photoshopped.
Harvey, the sad truth is that there are quite a few weather stations in many, many locations that are sited exactly like this. Perhaps you should go to the airport in ANY major city, so that you can see for yourself, rather than giving the tired wolf-cry of “DOCTORED! PHOTOSHOPPED!”
It isn’t necessary to doctor or photoshop this. I urge you to go to any large metro airport and use your own eyes. Of course, you may not believe your own lyin’ eyes either, but that would be a different issue entirely.
As a complete layman am I right in thinking that it had mattered little if the discarding of temperature stations had all taken place in one year, but that it is essential for the tricksters to do it in a gradual fashion, removing some unwelcome stations every year, since only in that way are they able to influence the trendrate over time? And if I am right, has this aspect been sufficiently stressed?
“By the way Dan (03:51:09) :
Re the danger zone behind the 737-600/800:
I so wish NicL (22:15:48) : had stood that close to a Vulcan (UK Bomber) when it revved up to begin taxing! ……… (“I will continue to claim that the weather station is perfectly sited –
from an aviation safety perspective”) has absolutely no conception of a pilots main concern…wind sheer!”
It was a very tongue in cheek comment I made intended to highlight the fact that a station recording local conditions and local anomalies for local use may not be totally suitable for inclusion in a larger scale temperature analysis as representative of median conditions within a greater area.
In short. Crap siting.