A UHI Tale of Two Cities

Does Ft. Colling vs Boulder follow the same pattern of the UHI showing the nightime temps (lows) rising where the daytime temps (highs) remain on a fairly level trend?

Dudes: you forget that the people in Boulder are, like, cooler. And so they would respond to this Urban Heat Island thing by saying, “Are UHI? Of course I’m high, man!”
Lame but irresistible try for humor.

But… BUT… all data this is homogenized and anomalized and fortified with calcium to make our bones strong so when it comes out the other side it’s all good right?
/sarcoff

This shows how valuable the Surface Stations project is.
When I started writing this story, I was under the impression (based on the CSU web site) that the Fort Collins station was very well sited – until Anthony straightened me out.

Will the boulder station be in the shade for part of the day. It is difficult to see from the images how close the trees are?

Or maybe it all corresponds to the number of people driving Priuses in the “bubble” vs the number of Priuses in Ft. Collins. All kidding aside, I have a friend who works at NCAR and she tells me Kevin Trenberth is an arrogant jerk. No big surprise there.

wayne (09:46:45) :
Anthony will have to answer your question. He researched the Boulder site and took the pictures.

Dear Mr Watts
Thank you for running an excellent site. I thought I’d mention some history which might be worth following up.
In England the Exchequer Pipe Rolls (Medieval tax returns) are very detailed for the whole of England and Wales. I understand, but have not verified myself, that they show clearly te tax returns from the great estates and monasteries in the North of England. These include proof of grape harvests and making of altar wine at places in teh Vale of York where even today growing of grape vines is not possible.
I further recommend you revisit HH Lamb’s books on Climatology. In one of his earlier works (I have it but cannot locate it just now, being in the middle of a house move to Singapore) he demonstrates, by reference to Exchequer returns and aerial photography, how the use of arable land in England today is different from that in the Middle Ages in the sense that the frost line has moved down slope since circa 1250 AD.
In short, physical evidence 800 years old demonstrates it was much warmer in Medieval England than it is now.
Until this and similar evidence is distinguished and explained (it cannot be refuted) by the Warmist Brigade, there can be no suggestion that the climate change we are experiencing at present is “unprecendented”.
On a separate note, if you ever want to get a Class Action off the ground against the Warmists, please do contact me. I will gladly assist on a costs plus basis – all to be negotiated. I’d love th eopportunity to cross-examine the fraudulent swine who perpetrate the AGW myth.
Best regards
Kevin Oram

Boulder is morally superior. They have removed autos from downtown and other endeavors. The geography is also different. Boulder is adjacent to the slopes and mountains and Fort Collins is 15 miles east of the mountains.

Here is the population graph going back to 1930
https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdElxNDA4Vlh2OGhvOUdEX1N0bm1CeWc&oid=3&v=1268331325501

steven mosher (09:22:43) :
The city populations at decade resolution is the first graph.

There is a most interesting graph on Chiefios’ site http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/germany-not-warming that shows what a well operated national weather service can do.

Thanks for a wonderful report. Now we are getting somewhere.
I am surprised that there is an UHI in Boulder or Colorado Springs. Both cities are on top the plateau and in the foothills of mountains. The wind is always moving there. If you want UHI, try cities in valleys. My favorite example is St. Louis. There you should find that the UHI is HUGE. The wind moves only when a weather front is coming through. In the city, the environment’s ability to cool itself is all but nonexistent.

A Very good study !

Lovely work, Steve and Anthony. I just loved how the different perspectives on the Fort Collins USHCN pictures told quite different stories.

Well both those town (the towns) are pretty nice places; the people I think all drink Miller Lite. Maybe they never got the yellow snow warning.
The 1941 glitch deserves some explanation; but it seems clear that the rising differential trend goes all the way back to 1930.
From the separate graphs, I would say that the glitch occurred in Fort Collins; not Boulder; so the State climatologist maybe should investigate if he thinks no changes were made.
And yep, looking at those two Fort Collins pictures, I would say they haven’t changed a darn thing ; well you can now walk out of the building over to the owl box without crashing into a fence, or getting your shoes muddy on the wet grass.
It’s a bit like Oliver Cromwell’s axe in the British Museum; it’s only had two new heads, and just five new handles since Oliver last used it.
Steve and Anthony, I would say you two guys deserve a beer on this one. But get a real beer; like Negra Modello or a Newcastle Brown Ale; maybe a Hefferweiss !

As a CSU grad I’m familiar with the site. Prevailing winds are from the north west, and starting in the 1940s the farm fields to the north and west were plowed up and covered with low cost housing for returning GIs. The same prevailing winds occur in Boulder, and the area upwind of the station has not seen the development as the area up wind of the Fort Collins station. When the transfer station was built on CSU there was talk of getting another station up and calibrated to the existing one for a year or two, but I cant find anything that would indicate this was done.

It is important to realize that the overlay graph is normalized. Fort Collins is cooler than Boulder by about half a degree. It used to be by 2-1/2 degrees.
The most important graph is the difference graph – the third one down.

Jim Cole (11:22:09) :
Fort Collins and Boulder are both right up against the foothills, and the topography and elevation is very similar. I ride my bike around both cities fairly often. Both cities are relatively flat, sloping up slightly to the west.

38,660,924 hits
The pace is accelerating … Looks like 40,000,000 will roll around next week sometime.
The blog is becoming more and more influential.

Boulder is intentionally surrounded by open space, which chokes off any growth. Fort Collins has unlimited room to grow on the North and East and is rapidly merging with Loveland to the South. The climate changes dramatically to the North of Fort Collins, where it is not protected by the mountains – and it is very cold and windy towards Wyoming.
Interesting info here :
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2008/top100/

jdl
I am a sailplane pilot and tend to think that you have hit on something. As cities grow, the winds diminish in and around them. I would be willing to bet that UHI is directly related to the change in wind speed due to the build up in the general area, especially at ground level.
It also occurs to me that concurrent wind speed measurements were kept alongside the temperature readings.

Very nice Post, Anthony.
I hope this will be a part of your coming paper on surface stations.
We need it all over the world as a part of the “Revence of the Science”, as Schmidt so nicely put it.

Ref – R. Gates (11:35:02) :
“Very interesting and well done article. No doubt the UHI effect has played some role in skewing temperature data, though I suspect it is not significant on a global basis…”
__________________________
Nuc bursts are not significant on a global basis either, unless there are enough over a period of time. Though UHI is no where close to the heat generated by a nuc blast for a similiar area, the continuous effect –even given the day-night up-down curve and seasonal variation– is cumulative on the seasonal environment: summers are warmer, winters are warmer, etc., etc.. Would seem to follow that the effects, although minor, can have an impact on weather. (Wonder what a Downwind Effects and Collateral Damage Message would looklike for NYC for a long hot summer:-)

Using Google Earth to look at Fort Collins Station:
Aerial imagery is dated Oct 14, 2002. Ot shows none of the up grade shown in the newer photo above (from GE street view). It shows construction of paved area to SE. It appears to be about an acre of concrete about 100 feet away. Their is no sign of the wide concrete sidewalks surrounding the station, nor the plantings nor the rock mulch that replaced the grass.
Streetview images (copyright of photos is 2009) show 6 foot sidewalk and a bus pickup station on the new concrete from 2002 imagery. “Eye altitude” is shown as 5012 ft. Parking spots adjoin the fenced area on the street south of the building and in a new parking lot to the east.
That would appear to be an impact on the Fort Collins station.

Isn’t this tending towards all cities are different? All weather station sitings are different. The population density and the industry nearby would have an effect on each weather station . For instance — If there were thousands of people who worked near the weather station site, I bet the UHI effects would be different than at a station site that was situated in a lighter populated usage area of the city.
The one conclusion I would draw is there are many factors that affect each siting, and likely each site would need detailed on site analysis.
It’s going to be harder to get accurate data than sitting in an office, I think.

During the 1970s a building boom took place but Boulder put limits on growth. For 5-10 miles in all directions around Ft. Collins changed to suburban neighborhoods from dry-land wheat. Both cities are near the foothills but I believe Boulder gets afternoon shadow earlier than Ft. Collins, so it may be more limited by daytime heating. The mountains rise more steeply next to Boulder than Ft. Collins.

wayne,
Most US states were as warm in the 1930s as they are now. Here is Oklahoma
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=02&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=034-00
and Alabama
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=02&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=001-00
and Pennsylvania
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=national&image=timeseries02&byear=2009&bmonth=02&year=2010&month=01&ext=gif&id=036-00
Any warming that has occurred has been out west. Southern states have cooled considerably.

UHI is similar to a teenager’s face.
If you map the global color of his face with color sensors located mainly on pimples (airports and city centers) and use them to make a gridded average, the face is pretty red. If you trend it from childhood the graph forms a hockey stick.
I think the climate scientists will experience global face redding as people figure this out.

It would be cool is surface stations also had metadata for things like
historical populations.
For small towns this is hard to come by using online information from US census.. but state census, library, historical societies.. neat work for the historically inclined..

Steven & Derek: “Coors brewery is in golden, colorado…”
Long term memory loss. I believe the Solar Energy Research Center was also in Golden. The bars we hit were in Boulder (a college town?), but not that far from Golden.

steven mosher (13:28:19) :
Thanks for the links. Those sites are interesting, but are up in the mountains and mostly on the other side of the Continental Divide. Boulder and Ft. Collins are very similar college/climate science towns with well maintained long-term records, which is why I chose them.

oMan: the coolness factor … nice one.
I guess that makes those of us up here in Canada WAY cool.
Your attempt at humor reminds me of a Canadian prairies inside joke:
Why is Saskatchewan so windy?
Because Manitoba sucks and Alberta blows!

“”” Anu (10:36:08) :
Kilroi1 (09:53:07) :
All kidding aside, I have a friend who works at NCAR and she tells me Kevin Trenberth is an arrogant jerk. No big surprise there.
Bill Gates was an arrogant jerk.
I hear all his work was a hoax, based on faked data. “””
According to legend, Mozart was an arrogant jerk.
I don’t see any point in attacking Dr Trenberth, based on a third party assessment of his personality. If we don’t like his energy budget cartoon ; which I don’t, we should address that; who knows, it might even stimulate those authors to revise it.

One more point.
The Chinook winds in Boulder will nearly blow you off your feet.
These winds also blow where I live, in Arvada, near the front range, about 10 miles north of Boulder.
I don’t know if they get them in Fort Collins.
Tom Moriarty
ClimateSanity

I should have said Arvada is 10 miles south of Boulder. Fort Collins is, of course, north of Boulder.

Perhaps we need to place most of our surface stations in large graveyards because they don’t change as much year to year.

I completely disagree with your conclusion that this is a population based UHI, but agree that this is a UHI issue.
First, the population divergence occurs in about 1990 but the temperature diverges about 20 years before.
Both stations have been located in about the same location for the period of record. Boulder has moved in and out of a residential neighborhood and is currently located on the border of the same neighborhood and a cemetery.
Fort Collins is located on a university campus.
Elevation of Boulder is about 5,500 ft and Ft Collins is about 5,000 ft.
The primary difference here is that Fort Collins is located at a growing University Campus and Boulder is located in more natural surroundings. So it seems to me that change in temperature more reflects the growth of the University, not the growth of the population.

George E. Smith (14:33:37) :
I don’t see any point in attacking Dr Trenberth,
———–
Comparing someone to Bill Gates and Mozart is not the type of attack most people would complain about.
But to be fair, here’s his take on a famous stolen email (“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”):
Kevin Trenberth is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. His email was referring to his recent paper.
The global mean temperature in 2008 was the lowest since about 2000. Given that there is continual heating of the planet, referred to as radiative forcing, by accelerating increases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses due to human activities, why isn’t the temperature continuing to go up? The stock answer is that natural variability plays a key role and there was a major La Niña event early in 2008 that led to the month of January having the lowest anomaly in global temperature since 2000. While this is true, it is an incomplete explanation. In particular, what are the physical processes? From an energy standpoint, there should be an explanation that accounts for where the radiative forcing has gone. Was it compensated for temporarily by changes in clouds or aerosols, or other changes in atmospheric circulation that allowed more radiation to escape to space? Was it because a lot of heat went into melting Arctic sea ice or parts of Greenland and Antarctica, and other glaciers? Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface? Was it because the La Niña led to a change in tropical ocean currents and rearranged the configuration of ocean heat? Perhaps all of these things are going on? But surely we have an adequate system to track whether this is the case or not, don’t we?
Well, it seems that the answer is no, we do not. But we should!
——————-
It’s a good point – exactly why was 2008 the second coolest year in the hottest decade on record ?
Exactly where is the extra radiative forcing going ? Improved measurements such as the thousands of ARGO floats have helped, but the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research argues that they could use even better measurements.

apparently ‘well sited’ is a relative term

Tom Moriarity,
The Fort Collins site is almost exactly 3 miles east of the foothills.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=colorado+state+university&sll=40.533894,-105.03582&sspn=0.168823,0.373878&ie=UTF8&hq=colorado+state+university&hnear=&ll=40.585278,-105.04921&spn=0.168694,0.373878&t=p&z=12&iwloc=A
The Boulder site is about 1-1/2 miles east of the foothills. Both cities border on a hogback ridge of the same geologic formation. Both cities are about 20 miles away from the high peaks.
I hike and bike the trails west of both cities all the time including Horsetooth Reservoir, Chautauqua, Table Mesa, Mount Sanitas. Your statement that there is a “huge difference” is simply nonsense.

Anu (10:36:08) :
Kilroi1 (09:53:07) :
All kidding aside, I have a friend who works at NCAR and she tells me Kevin Trenberth is an arrogant jerk. No big surprise there.
Bill Gates was an arrogant jerk.
I hear all his work was a hoax, based on faked data.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
There is no claim in the comment that because his personality is that way that it means his work is fake.
On Gates—- maybe you have something there since many claim he stole many ideas from Jobs. Also, Microsoft did lose a court case where a man claimed they stole his idea, bundled it for free with other software, and ran him out of business.

Tom Moriarity,
One more thing. You said “These winds also blow where I live, in Arvada, near the front range, about 10 miles north of Boulder.”
You might want to get a new compass to your house, because Arvada is south of Boulder.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=boulder,+co&daddr=arvada,+co&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=40.005725,-105.271511&sspn=0.042537,0.09347&ie=UTF8&t=p&z=11

Richard Sharpe (11:41:02) :
38,660,924 hits
…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
1/4 billion by 1/1/11 would be fine!

there is a commenter here who seems to think only the USA has UHI from growing cities. That would be a poorly thought out assertion.

(Mod: Video did not embed, not sure why)

11 March: Physics World: Concerns raised over Institute of Physics climate submissionby Michael Banks, news editor of Physics World
The hockey-stick graph, which is widely considered as a valid result in the climate-research community, was later included into the third assessment report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001.
The “trick”, as mentioned by Jones in one of his e-mails to Mann, Bradley and Hughes, is a statistical method that is widely accepted in the climate community and is applied to proxy measurements in the years since 1960. It deals with the problem that some tree rings in certain parts of the world have stopped getting bigger since that time, when they ought to have been increasing in size if the world is warming. According to physicist Rasmus Benestad from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and a blogger for realclimate.org, Jones’ reference to “hiding the decline” could have involved removing some tree-ring proxy data from the analysis after 1960 to produce a curve that agrees better with the evidence for global warming..
Arnold Wolfendale, who was president of the IOP from 1994 to 1996, says that the evidence is “not worthy” of the Institute and that the submission “further muddies the waters regarding global warming”. Oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf from Potsdam University, Germany, has gone further, calling on the IOP to retract the statement from parliament. “I was taken aback when I first read it,” he says. “The evidence is both misinformed and misguided.” ..
“I consider it not only inappropriate but highly irresponsible for a body like the IOP to appear to presume a judgment on what is clearly not a simple issue without having the full facts and without presumably knowing the full context,” says atmospheric physicist John Houghton, who is currently president of the educational charity The John Ray Initiative and is a former director-general of the UK Meteorological Office. Houghton has also been the lead editor of three IPCC reports. …ETC ETC
COMMENT BY BISHOP HILL AT BOTTOM OF ARTICLE
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41965

Ot but it seems climategate.com has been hijacked just to let them know. Will not put link here just in case

jorgekafkazar said:
R. Gates (11:35:02) :”More importantly though is the the trend in arctic sea ice on a year-to-year basis remains the same…down. See:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png ”
An obvious falsehood. The recent trend is strongly upward. The ice is, in fact, currently within one standard deviation of the “average.” Saying the arctic ice is now trending down is like saying someone from LA driving west out of Denver at 60 mph is “trending towards New York.”
Sure is funny how two people can look at the exact same graph, and one see a trend and one not. The arctic sea ice anomaly is obviously downward since at least 1998…a trend the above linked graph clearly shows. To deny the obvious trend is to show that either you don’t know how to read simply graphs, or you have some agenda not to see a trend where it is quite obvious.

OT but can I put this in here. In British Columbia we pay a carbon tax on our gasoline and it is going up this summer. A Dr. Andrew Weaver who has been mentioned on this site before has comments on Canada’s warm winter this year leaving out Eastern Canada, most of the States Europe and Asia. Also BC had a hot summer last year which he commented on but leaving out the rest of Canada which in most part had no summer. He is a main player in our carbon tax.
Read this article http://www.calgarysun.com/news/alberta/2010/03/11/13199301.html
This is what we are up against. He does not mention El Nino or PDO

Of course the interesting question is, what do the “adjusted” temperatures look like?

And I almost forgot; please do let us in, on your insider information about that famous stolen e-mail.
Has someone been indicted for that theft ?

Steve Goddard (13:57:44) :
Pearl Street Boulder ia 1.05 miles entrance from the entrance of Boulder Canyon.
Old Town Ft. Collins is 3.92 Miles from Hughes Stadium and the foot hills.
See? I can cherry pick too! I was not disputing your analysis, just making an observation for those not familar with the area since I live in between the two cities.
The measurement station for Ft. Collins is not at the stadium, it’s on the main campus which is over 3 miles east of Hughes stadium stadium and the foothills.
Due to the proximity and the topology of the foothills (all are not created equal) the Boulder station will spend much more of the afternoon in the shade. However, as I stated, that should not affect the trends.

did i miss this earlier? royal society to be on the review panel?
10 March: Vancouver Sun: Reuters: U.K. academy to review UN climate change science
Britain’s science academy said on Wednesday it would take part in a review of U.N. climate science intended to restore trust after a 2007 report was found to have exaggerated evidence for global warming.
“I can confirm that we are one of the parties (on the review panel),” Bill Hartnett, a spokesman for The Royal Society, said..
(LOL: Pic Caption: Polar bear photographed in drifting and unconsolidated sea ice in Kane Basin, off Cape Clay, in northern Greenland. Photograph by: Nick Cobbing, AFP/Getty Images)
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/academy+review+climate+change+science/2666267/story.html
11 March: ABC Australia: Independent body to review UN climate panel
He (Robbert Dijkgraaf) says the review will focus on what procedures were used.
“It will definitely not go over all the data, the vast amount of data in climate science,” he said
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/11/2843268.htm
(the only mention found online that CALLS were made Wednesday for Pachauri to resign)
11 March: The Hindu:Narayan Lakshman : UN to hold independent review of IPCC: Ban
The IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri has also recently come under fire for such lapses. Amid calls for his resignation on Wednesday he said, “We have received some criticism. We are receptive and sensitive to that and we are doing something about it.”..
http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article236910.ece

The UHI discussion would be enhanced if it was possible to extract the most relevant satellite records conveniently.
Since they aren’t calibrated, it would be another set of apples-to-oranges. But. When you’re comparing trends it would be quite handy to have some concept of how the gridcell was trending.

How quickly things remain the same – this heat island stuff was discussed in this 1969 publication:
http://tinyurl.com/yc2bmr8
The poor CO2 molecule was already on the most wanted list by then.

R. Gates (16:34:40) :
If you are correct that Arctic ice is in a shrinking trend why would it be important? Your implication is that it is because of pollution?
If it is you need to provide proof of this.
But if you look at the graphs it is quite clear that Arctic ice is in a growing trend for 3 years running. This cannot be denied.

Steve Goddard (14:03:39) :
steven mosher (13:28:19) :
Thanks for the links. Those sites are interesting, but are up in the mountains and mostly on the other side of the Continental Divide. Boulder and Ft. Collins are very similar college/climate science towns with well maintained long-term records, which is why I chose them.
**************************
Think the point would be to compare the TRENDS of the two rural sites
with the trends of these two that you have selected. of course the weather will be different.

Phil M (10:02:28) :
Okay, what am I missing:
– In 1970 Ft. Collins had less population than Boulder.
– In 1970 Ft. Collins had higher temperature than Boulder; and the the trends had already diverged.
Shouldn’t we conclude that something other than UHI was causing warming?
===
And what happened to the lows after the 1990’s? Both places just stopped getting as cold as they used to get.

The wide array of ideas and concepts put forth by the long list of commenters above in their efforts to explain or further question aspects of the comparative data about these two Colorado communities, dramatically demonstates the near endless factors that influence very local climates. In my town and I suspect in both of the communities in the study, there are a variety of microclimates. The diffrerences from spot to spot and in response to localized changes such as the growth of a nearby cluster of trees or building of a bridge are small, but in fact they are large enough to significantly skew the long term tempereature trends when we are working with tenths of a degree or even a degree and half or so.
A man who was the State Climatologist of Kansas had a theory that the dust bowl was the result of the burning of the prairie grass and plowing of the prairie as early settlers tried to turn range land into farm land. They changed the albedo of the land from the dark of prairie grass to the pale light tan of poor soil and conventive storms no longer formed and a drought followed; the dust bowl of the 1930s. He says that this was followed by the drilling of artesian wells and irrigation again changing the albedo and the rain returned. I do not vouch for his theory, but I point out how out that he illustrates in his theory how our activities can alter the climate. I cannot say what was taking place in and round these two cities through the years that altered the comparative increase in temperatures.
Now that we have thousands and thousands of thermometers on line all over the United States, I think we have the resourse to begin to do more studies of localized effects.
But, all of this underlines the difficulty in producing a meaningful scientific record from the occassional temperature readings that we have historically relied upon. Instead, I strongly think we should look a the bigger picture of temperatures as produced by the new satellites where we seen through average of the multitude of local effects blended together in a full atmosphere scan and where we break lose of from just surface temperature data in our average and consider the full depth of the atmosphere. This is briefly explored in my recent interview with John Christy, Ph.D. who with Roy Spencer has done the studies of full atmospheric temperatures from satellite data. I will post that full interview soon on my webpage.
And, that brings up, one more point. I just posted my full interview with our host Anthony Watts inwhich he gives his full powerpoint presentation on surfacestations.org. It is viewable at
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/87131742.html
Sorry about rambling on, so.

If UHI is the accumulated heat from the sun on asphalt and buildings, and one site is cut off from the sun even an hour earlier than the other, that site cannot warm as much with all else being equal. I am not saying they are equal, but Boulder has a higher population density than Denver according to Wiki. I lived on the front range from 1972-92 outside of Masonville, and have to disagree with you Steve about the mountain shadows falling on these respective cities.
These Google Earth shots each have a 5 mile horizontal line for relative comparison:
Boulder: http://i44.tinypic.com/212ze6x.jpg
Ft. Collins: http://i40.tinypic.com/2112hbo.jpg

The hijackers at Lucia’s blog have proven UHI is not a problem. Just ask them.

jonrgrover (15:37:22) :
Perhaps we need to place most of our surface stations in large graveyards because they don’t change as much year to year.
=========
Probably a good idea, except for the way the stations look. I like the idea of stations in National and State Parks.

Wren (20:44:25) :
The signature of UHI is the highs staying stable in their trends with the lows rising to meet them.
Natural rural signals are
a.) dry years – Highs rise as lows drop (greater diurnal range)
b.) wet years – Highs drop as lows rise (lesser dirunal range)
c) warm or cool years: Highs & lows rise or drop in unison
a & b are best viewed in separte yearly graphs.
UHI & c are best viewed in long-term graphs.
Unfortunately, we have climatologists who don’t bother to look and see what the stations/areas they are making big claims over are really doing.
They play with averages only, and totally miss the bigger picture.
Well, if that all one does, it’s easy to be misled.
And if one wants to mislead, cherry-pick the statistic that shows only what you want the world to believe.
AGW: Blindfolded science.

Wren,
It has been cold in Colorado in recent years. This winter in particular seems endless, after a non-summer in 2009. Winter started the second week in October.

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Oops… mod replace previous…
R. Gates (16:34:40) :
To deny the obvious trend is to show that either you don’t know how to read simply graphs, or you have some agenda not to see a trend where it is quite obvious.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Are a thousand days enough data points or when does your statistics say a trend is provably broken or do you even know?

Concerning
Steve Goddard (15:56:30) :
Steve said “The Fort Collins site is almost exactly 3 miles east of the foothills….I hike and bike the trails west of both cities all the time including Horsetooth Reservoir, Chautauqua, Table Mesa, Mount Sanitas. Your statement that there is a “huge difference” is simply nonsense.”
Steve, perhaps you will amend your conclusion that my statement is “nonsense” when you compare these two Google Earth images, which are on the same scale…
Boulder
Fort Collins
Best Regards,
Tom Moriarty

Tom Moriarty,
You keep bringing up the fact that the area immediately to the west of the Boulder weather station is not developed. Isn’t that the whole point of this article? Fort Collins has grown more and is warming faster than Boulder.
Thanks for confirming my point. The Boulder station is a little closer to the mountains, but who cares? We are talking about relative changes, not absolute differences. As long as the positions are fixed at each station. What a ridiculous straw man.
Did you figure out which direction Boulder is from Arvada yet?

Eric Flesch (19:59:24) :
I continue to be baffled by comments like yours. Here is the view from the west end of CSU. Looks like mountains to me.
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/
The west edge of town abuts the mountains just like it does in Boulder.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=80525&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=54.928982,95.712891&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Fort+Collins,+Larimer,+Colorado+80525&ll=40.456352,-105.644531&spn=0.834897,1.495514&t=p&z=10
It is an incredibly steep bike ride from Hughes Stadium up to the A, gaining 700 feet elevation in just over a mile. Try riding it and then tell me that Fort Collins is in the plains.

Tom Moriarity,
You are doing it again.
It is four miles from the Weather Station to the Reservoir, but the reservoir is on the other side of the hogback ridge – and hundreds of feet higher than city. Like I told Eric, try riding a bike up to the reservoir. You won’t make it unless you are a serious cyclist in excellent shape.
Your argument is both incorrect, and a pointless straw man.

Anu (10:36:08) :
Bill Gates was an arrogant jerk.
I hear all his work was a hoax, based on faked data.
Anu, Gates rightfully kept his proprietary materials, “data”, and code secret. It’s value then materialized as successful products serving an innovative need which actually created wealth, as determined by a free market of people risking their own money – by which the products are also continuously field tested.
On the other hand, Trenberth’s Climate Science “product” would require us all to buy it as is, even before any independent “laboratory testing” to assure its intrinsic value. Nor have questions as to Trenberth’s Climate Science product’s safety and efficacy been addressed by Trenberth’s Climate Science in any meaningful way.
Hence, agreeing with China and India, NO SALE!
But, Anu, given your own fear of the alleged CO2AGW disaster, I ask you again, what are you personally doing in terms of your own lifestyle to avert this alleged disaster? Since the alleged CO2AGW disaster is your own strong belief, surely you are obligated to take some very radical action to decrease your own “carbon footprint”?

rbateman (21:32:43) :
Wren (20:44:25) :
The signature of UHI is the highs staying stable in their trends with the lows rising to meet them.
======
Steve told me “It has been cold in Colorado in recent years. This winter in particular seems endless, after a non-summer in 2009. Winter started the second week in October.”
So maybe this signature is going away, and Boulder and Fort Collins will no longer have a UHI.
But how do you know for sure the low’s rising to meet the highs is a signature of UHI anyway?
It might be best to be non-commital. That way if the signature goes away, you can say you were never really sure it was a signature.

Steve Goddard (22:22:16) :
I guess I’m a serious cyclist in excellent shape then. 🙂
Actually, the first time I tried to bike up it, I had to stop for a break 5 times. 🙁 However, it’s much easier on me now (stay in low gear!) and I can make it in one go. It’s kind of fun to run it too, because then you can pass bikers on the uphill slopes. 🙂 (then they blow by you at 5x your speed on the downhills.)
Back on topic, since some people have disputed similarities between Boulder/Ft. Collins (I honestly don’t think you’ll find a much better pair of cities for UHI testing), has anyone looked at population growth/temperatures for Loveland (assuming they’re available) and compared them to these two cities? If the growth rate is significantly different from Ft. Collins, it’d make an excellent comparison as NO ONE should argue about the similarities of the two cities (assuming the monitoring sites are reasonably similar.) Just a thought.
-Scott

Steve Goddard (22:15:21)
I delivered mail one summer in Fort Collins (1975), substituting for carriers on vacation. The whole city is flat. Only rural delivery went uphill. The city will have grown since then, but that’s how it was in 1975.

Tom_R (13:40:17) :

A much bigger concern is that, in 15 years of taxpayer funding for climate reasearch averaging about $2B / year (in the US alone), there hasn’t been any effort by the professionals to do a site-by-site comprehensive analysis of the effect. This should be one of the earliest and most basic studies of climate research.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced it to the stage of science.
— Sir William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
— Dr Watson, the author, addressing Doyle, the author, in “A Scandal in Bohemia”

George E. Smith (14:33:37) :

I don’t see any point in attacking Dr Trenberth, based on a third party assessment of his personality. If we don’t like his energy budget cartoon ; which I don’t, we should address that; who knows, it might even stimulate those authors to revise it.

George,
You’re right. It works both ways. I’ve personally met people I strongly disagree with and really liked the person. I’ve also experienced the reverse.
It should always be the position/opinion attacked, not the person. Sometimes the person we disagree with is simply misinformed. Sometimes they are partially correct. And, quite simply, sometimes we are wrong.
Always make sure that crow your cooking up for somebody is well seasoned. You might have to eat some of it.

Steve Goddard
Re the stable USA states since the 1930’s.
I have forwarded a paper to Anthony abut a study of six Australian sites, widely scattered around the country.
I found that some have constant or slowly increasing temperatures, some others quite rapid warming.
The differece is in the monthly maximums – the minimums clump together quite closely.
Some records go back to the 1850’s.
My conclusion is that each location has its own long enduring micro climate.
You can get ant global temperature index you want by carefully selecting sites to suite your expectations – alarmist or denialist, or luke warmist in between.
I would like to see an analysis of the growth profile of the many stations dropped from the global indexes in the 1990’s – were they growing too slowly and so were considered to be not “fit for purpose”?

Wren (23:06:00) :
But how do you know for sure the low’s rising to meet the highs is a signature of UHI anyway?
Because when I look at these sites, I make sure I look at the data, all of it, in one big picture:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Med_AshAv.GIF
Steve told me “It has been cold in Colorado in recent years. This winter in particular seems endless, after a non-summer in 2009. Winter started the second week in October.”
The time of year most affected by UHI is also the time of year where the Sun angle is the highest and the area of buildings have the greatest daily exposure to direct sunlight. You need to do yearly graphs to demonstrate and test this. And make sure you plot daily highs and lows.

tommoriarty (22:11:49) : I agree with you, it is obvious to me that if you cut off heat, the sun, earlier in one spot than in another, it can not become as warm as the spot that is not cut off. I don’t understand why this is so difficult to convey!? The difference between Boulder and Ft. Collins is clear to me as well, don’t know what Mr. Goddard is so hung up on.

OK, first things first… you guys need to cut all the talk about topography and hiking, biking etc… YOU’RE MAKING ME FEEL TOO DAMN OLD!
Topography, elevation, and etc are all irrelevant because the mountain ranges have not changed over the last 100 years. What is there and has not changed in the past 100 years is not going to make a difference
change change CHANGE CHANGE change CHANGE
What has changed in the past 100 years is what is relevant.
Willis, you smoothed out the temperature graph too much, the yearly graph in the original post is fine.

A little OT, but here is a plot of raw, TOB-adjusted, and total-adjusted temperatures for Boulder:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4475/050848.gif
There was a big adjustment between roughly 1950 and 1970, but all three plots show a very small positive temperature trend. Actually, if you were to “fill in” some points in the raw plot, the trend would decrease slightly.
Anyway, back to the topic: from a UHI perspective, a flat trend in Boulder (little development to the west) and a rising trend in Ft. Collins (much more development to the west) makes sense since the prevailing wind at night (absent larger synoptic forcing) is from the west. From a “comparing the TRENDS” perspective, these two sites are very similar. All of the details about how far each site is from the foothills, etc. can be used to explain why the ABSOLUTE temperatures are different, but absent anything else, the climatic TRENDS should be very similar. Ft. Collins is affected by all of the same weather systems that Boulder is.

The article leaves out one very important factor. Boulder did not have an official climate station until 1990. Before that the Boulder record is from many different non-standard locations including the rooftop of the firehouse for many years. There is lots of missing data, including entire months. As a result we know there is a significant warm, dry bias in the pre 1990 data. The article is trying to make interpretations that simply cannot be made due to big inconsistencies in the pre-1990 data at Boulder.

Jack Simmons,
I agree that Colorado has a disproportionate share of whackos, including another school shooting in Littleton two weeks ago. It also has the highest rate of teen drug use in the country. I was in Boulder once on National Marijuana Day, and there were literally ten thousand stoned students walking from campus towards Pearl Street after a rally. Looked like a scene from Shaun of The Dead.
Apparently a lot of people take that “Rocky Mountain High” thing a little too literally.

Eric Flesch (01:21:28) :
The city of Fort Collins slopes away gently from the mountains, just like most of Boulder. Boulder does have some hills up near Jon Benet’s house in Chautauqua
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Boulder,+CO&daddr=City+Park,+Fort+Collins,+CO&hl=en&geocode=FYqUYgId7rK5-SnTr40nTo1rhzFYgBugfDs5yA%3BFVBKawId6Te8-SmdX-EHFUpphzEOX8AtiVxTfg&mra=ls&sll=40.303618,-105.166626&sspn=0.836792,1.495514&ie=UTF8&ll=40.033004,-105.249538&spn=0.105018,0.186939&t=p&z=13
Fort Collins similarly has hills up around Bellevue and Rist Canyon. In both cities, as soon as you hit the western edge of town, you are climbing steeply up into the mountains.

rbateman (05:06:57) :
Yeah I hadn’t gotten to checking that yet. I had done something similar to this for Temple Texas because John Slayton noticed something was wrong in a graph that Steve used: The graph had data after 2003 for that station but the station had closed down in 2003.
See: http://boballab.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/before-using-temperature-data-read-the-fine-print/
The B-91’s confirmed what John was saying it just took me awhile to figure out what was done. You have to jump thru hoops and look at the bottom of a couple of pages to see where you have to turn on flags and get data to see where USHCN is basically “estimated”. In Temple, Tx case it was 2003 to 2008.
The real nasty thing in all this is that they are suppose to put in any stations used to extend the record of another into the history section of the station list. When you check the station list for Temple Tx nothing is listed and its the same with Boulder. You can get data in the USHCN “raw” file from their ftp site for Boulder and in the data section on the web interface going back to 1895, but the B-91’s only go back to 1948.
Now besides Co-op stations USHCN is suppose to have some NWS first order stations and might on the outside chance explain the 1930 to 1948 time frame but I wonder where the data in the Raw file all the way back to 1895 is coming from.

Here is Google Street View of Mork and Mindy’s house.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1619+Pine+Street,+boulder,+co&sll=40.033004,-105.249538&sspn=0.105018,0.186939&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1619+Pine+St,+Boulder,+Colorado+80302&t=p&z=15&layer=c&cbll=40.021092,-105.274937&panoid=HepOdGbz47FxhQBhuSnCWg&cbp=12,354.79,,0,-0.81

Scott (08:37:45) :
My favorite ride in Fort Collins is up Spring Creek trail to the stadium, then up along the reservoir to Bellevue and back down the Poudre Trail. I used to let it run down the hill on the north side of the dam, but after having a couple of accidents I decided that going 45 mph on a bike probably isn’t a very smart thing to do at my age.
I did a moonlight hike up Horsetooth Rock last summer. Never tried cycling up there though. That is pretty rough terrain.

Steve Goddard,
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’d like to make one more comment about the topography of Boulder vs. Fort Collins.
I am no expert on the UHI effect, but I assume that two sites that are identical in every way, including population history, but with the single exception of ground wind speed, will have different UHI histories. This due to the simple notion that the wind will blow the heat away from one but not the other.
That is the reason that I brought up the Chinook winds that are so common in Boulder. NOAA says “Boulder has some of the highest peak winds of any city in the US.” I can attest to this, having lived on the west side of town (Bear Mountain Drive) just below the hill upon which NCAR resides, and quite close to the NIST site where the temperature sensor is located. The wind velocity drops off rapidly as you go to the east side of town.
Chinook winds aside, the difference in topography likely has other, less dramatic effects on wind speed, temperature and direction.
Stronger winds, especially on the western side of Boulder where the temperature sensor is located, would tend to mask the UHI effect.
I humbly suggest that because of its microclimate, Boulder may not be a good comparison site for UHI studies. Remember, the unachievable, but *ideal* comparison pairs would be the same in every way (including typical winds), except population history.
Best Regards,
Tom Moriarty
Arvada, Colorado
12 miles southeast of Boulder 😉

boballab (07:39:30) :
To answer that question for the missing B-91’s for Boulder, you need to go to Boulder station list:
050848 10 01 1893 02 28 1894 G S THOMSON
050848 03 01 1894 04 30 1894 R E CRANDALL
050848 07 01 1894 06 30 1895 W W REMINGTON
050848 05 01 1897 07 07 1910 S A GIFFIN
050848 08 20 1910 04 30 1912 O H WANGELIN
050848 05 01 1912 02 28 1913 J A HUNTER & C E CUMMINGS
050848 03 01 1913 08 31 1913 J A HUNTER & C E CUMMINGS
050848 09 01 1913 05 31 1936 J A HUNTER & C E CUMMINGS
050848 06 01 1936 09 30 1937 S L SIMMERING
050848 10 01 1937 10 28 1937 S L SIMMERING
050848 10 29 1937 07 20 1947 H A HOFFMEISTER
050848 07 21 1947 12 31 1948 E A JOHNSON
You might want to ask noaa what happened.