By Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts
Fort Collins, Colorado is most famous for Balloon Boy, and Boulder, Colorado is most famous for Jon Benet and Ward Churchill.
Both are hotbeds of Climate Science, with familiar names like Roger Pielke (Jr. and Sr.) Walt Meier, William Gray, Kevin Trenberth and Mark Sereeze. Both are of similar size (Boulder 91,000 and Fort Collins 130,000) and located in very similar geographical environments along the Front Range – about 50 miles apart. The big difference is that Fort Collins has tripled in size over the last 40 years, and Boulder has grown much more slowly. Fort Collins population is shown in blue and Boulder in red below.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado
Until the mid-1960s, NCDC temperatures in the two cities tracked each other quite closely, as you can see below. Again, Fort Collins in blue, and Boulder in red – with Fort Collins temperatures shifted upwards by two degrees to normalize the left side of the graph. Since 1965, temperatures in Fort Collins have risen much more quickly than Boulder, paralleling the relative increase in population.
Source: NCDC Boulder Temperatures NCDC Fort Collins Temperatures
The graph below shows the absolute difference between Fort Collins temperatures and Boulder temperatures since 1930. There is some sort of discontinuity around 1940, but the UHI imprint is clearly visible in the Fort Collins record. The Colorado State Climatologist, Nolan Doesken manages the Fort Collins Weather station. He has told me that it has never moved or changed instrumentation. and that he believes the increase in temperature is due to UHI effects.
Roger Pielke Sr. further commented:
“the Fort Collins site did have the introduction of the CSU Transit Center a few years ago, although this is well after the upturn in temperature differences between Boulder and Fort Collins started to increase.”
From the promotional photo on the CSU website, the Fort Collins USHCN weather station (below) seems reasonably sited.
However when you look at the Google Earth street view, you realize that it is surrounded by concrete, asphalt, nearby parking, and a building just 7.5 meters away (By the GE ruler tool). It would rate a CRN4 by the surfacestations rating. It also appears to have been modified since the promo photo was taken as there is a new fence with shrubbery and wood chips surrounding it.
Besides the pressure of CSU expansion, Fort Collins has seen an increase of about two degrees since 1970, corresponding to a population increase of 90,000. This is probably a little higher than Dr. Spencer’s estimates for UHI.
The Boulder weather station is similarly sited since the concrete path is just under 10 meters away.
It is at the campus of NOAA’s and NIST’s headquarters in Boulder. Anthony Watts visited the station in 2007 and took photos for the surfacestations project. Like Fort Collins, it gets similar expansion pressure due to nearby construction as seen in this aerial photo.
Here are the temperature records fro these two USHCN stations:
NCDC Fort Collins Temperatures
There is some UHI effect visible in the Boulder record below, but much less than Fort Collins.
Conclusion:
We have two weather stations in similarly sited urban environments. Until 1965 they tracked each other very closely. Since then, Fort Collins has seen a relative increase in temperature which tracks the relative increase in population. UHI is clearly not dead.
Shevva,
Mork and Mindy lived just east of downtown Boulder. There used to be a sign at the house. My kids went to elementary school a couple of blocks east of there.
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.
Wren (22:41:13) :,
Good question. One data point is the ice cover on the lakes. I have a friend who has lived on the south side of a lake in Fort Collins for 45 years. It is mid-March and that side of the lake is still frozen solid. She says that she has never seen it frozen over this late. Normally the ice is mostly gone by mid-February.
There also are no crocuses, daffodils or green grass yet, which is very unusual for this time of year. The weather just refuses to warm up.
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.
Scott (23:42:18) :,
Good idea. I don’t know of any long term temperature records in Loveland though, and Loveland and Fort Collins are nearly merged at this point.
Do you ride up to the reservoir from the north, or the south? Either way is a killer. I broke a chain last spring on the way up and didn’t have any tools with me.
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
Steve Goddard (07:43:19) :
Steve, I normally ride up from Hughes Stadium and go north. I’ve gone up on Harmony once or twice, and definitely only gone up on the north end once (my “birthday ride” with my wife last spring…bike about 26 miles (including Centenniel road along the reservoir and get Dairy Queen as a treat!), but in my opinion, going up on the north end is more difficult. I also broke a chain once – the day before Thanksgiving 2005…but I was biking up on the trails by Horsetooth Rock! Some cyclist saw me on the road on the way home and fixed my chain for me…lucky me, it was getting dark!
It’s too bad that there’s no adequate Loveland station record, that would have made an interesting comparison, depending on station siting.
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.
“”” Anu (21:33:22) :
George E. Smith (18:15:33) :
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 ?
————-
If they don’t catch the person that steals your car, does that mean it wasn’t stolen ? “””
Well now you have me thoroughly confused. First you say it was stolen; well to be pedantic, you just described it as “stolen”. So I asked if the thief had been indicted; after all if it was stolen, there WOULD be a thief. But if it just ended up “some place else”; that’s not evidence that it was stolen.
So then out of the blue, YOU come up with something about a whistle blower; seemingly suggesting that a “whistle blower” is someone whose caricature is printed on the cover of Time Magazine. In stark contrast to that; the “Climategate” thief/whistleblower/whatever; merely dicombobulated a whole United Nations International Conference; that was calling for panic situation drastic action to be taken to reverse a problem, whose existence has yet to be proven; (s)he/them/whoever only succeeded in getting the head of the Institution, from which the “stolen” e-mail was stolen/whistled/blown/whatever, to resign in disgrace; although the British Parliament did interrupt its running of the United Kingdom, to investigate the whole matter; so far to no conclusion, as to the theft/whistle blow/whatever, of the “loss” of taxpayer funded information; which despite being “stolen”/whistleblown/whatever, was still there in plain view for all to see. But the thief(ves)whistlers/blowers/whatever, di have some satisfaction in getting worldwide major scientific societies to agree to investigate the event, and even got the United Nations to have an independent review of the practices of the entire UN IPCC climate science reporting, and international government advisory panel.
But I agree none of that turmoil is on a par with having a caricature printed on the front cover of a weekly magazine.
But speaking of having my car “stolen”, but never catching the thief; well as it happens, that occurs all the time; quite embarrasing actually; because quite often, I go out to get in my car, to drive home, only to find, it has been “stolen”; it’s not there any more. Well I haven’t actually ever had it whistleblown or whatever; but most of the time it turns out that I just parked it somewhere that was different from where I thought I had parked it. Well I even parked my son’s car once, so he had his mother drive him over to his brother’s place to get it, and it turned out that I had actually parked it at the repair shop 12 miles away from his brother’s place..
Not too difefrent really from creating a compact file of damaging e-mails, so they can be quickly fed to the dog in an emergency; and then accidently putting them on a public server where anyone could read them; well not that I’m suggesting that happened in this case; it’s just that that is like forgetting where I parked my car, and thinking it was stolen.
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 😉
Willis Eschenbach (01:27:43) :
Interesting willis. interesting to compare the trends, pre 1950 and post 1950
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.
boballab (07:39:30) :
Oh, one other thing: Just because a station ‘officially’ closes down or is no longer included in the Global Temp Models does not mean the town no longer takes it’s temperature. Check the Boulder, CO newspapers.
It’s a lot of work to do, but one can be quite surprised at what one finds out.
Monkeybusiness, monkeyfingers, monkeymess.
Tom Moriarty (09:19:01) :
We were trick or treating on the west side of Boulder around 2002 in hurricane force winds at 75mph. There was also a large brush fire that night. Boulder normally does get Chinooks several times a winter, though sadly none this year. Fort Collins also gets Chinooks, but not as strong.
But the important point is that we are measuring relative changes at each station, not the absolute difference between stations. Downtown Fort Collins has a strong UHI component which is very apparent on my bicycle thermometer. During windy days, it disappears.
Last night I posted a real time temperature stations link to Weather Underground, showing a strong UHI effect across Fort Collins. 15 minutes later the wind picked up and the temperatures leveled.
Willis,
This is what I see in the Fort Collins graph. Flat until 1970 and rapidly up since then.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddw82wws_465qwp7dgc7
Steve Goddard (08:55:25) :
Obviously this is off-topic (OT) at this point, but your favorite ride is pretty much the same as the ride I mentioned in reverse. We start at Edora Park, take the Poudre trail all the way to LaPorte and then continue onto Bellevue. We then head back south and return on the Spring Creek trail (making a pit stop at Dairy Queen). I think it’s ~25 miles and would make a nice marathon course. 😀
-Scott
rbateman (10:13:04) :
Thats what I mean they have a nasty habit of using things without being up front about it. Example was that Temple Tx station which you can look up on surfacestations. John Slayton did a follow up on it in 2003 and talked to the manager of the waste treament plant and confirmed it was shut down, but you wouldn’t know that by just looking at the data or using the USHCN plotting tool that Steve used. You got to jump through hoops like I did with that one by going over to the NWS site and finding out there was a NWS automated system at the regional airport just outside of town.
J.Peden (22:43:52) :
Anu (10:36:08) :
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”?
———-
What makes you think it will be a disaster ?
I think there is still enough time for enough people to figure out what is going on to mount an effective response – I think summertime ice-free Arctic sea ice will be an “aha” moment for many of the scientifically slow. AGW is a very slow moving problem – to think it has stopped is an error, but I’ve seen what 100’s of millions of people can do when mobilized.
Is buying a Prius “radical” in your circle of friends ? I’ve done that, years ago. It doubled my MPG. I use CFL and some LED’s, some solar power, but I have no delusion about singlehandedly changing the course of history. I support, in the marketplace, technologies I would like to see further developed – for instance, I have been looking into the new Chevy Volt car. Lithium-ion batteries will soon allow very interesting hybrid and electric cars, and as I’ve said elsewhere on this site, things like wind, solar and nuclear power can quickly ramp up and supply a substantial part of American electricity.
I think nuclear fusion R&D is underfunded – is that “radical” ?
Better living through technology.
“Life’s Good” as the Korean chaebol LG says.
Well, to drag things back to the topic of this thread, I have shown that there is a 0.6°C step change anomaly in January 1942.
I have also shown what the temperature difference between the two cities looks like once the anomaly is removed. There is a surprisingly constant warming of Ft. Collins with respect to Boulder of ~ 0.2°C/decade, which has been present for over a century.
So my question is … to what can we ascribe this differential warming?
This is why I love climate science … there are so many unanswered questions.
w.
Willis,
I can tell you what has caused the warming since 1970. Fort Collins has grown rapidly and has craated an Urban Heat Island. The State Climatologist who manages the station agrees. The thermometer on my bicycle agrees.
Look closer at this graph. Boulder and Fort Collins tracked each other quite closely until about 1970.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddw82wws_467qdth7xf7
There really isn’t any mystery, other than you claiming to remove a discontinuity without a physical explanation for the cause.
Scott,
When we go your direction, we always catch the wind in our faces going south on Overland!
George E. Smith (09:05:05) :
Well now you have me thoroughly confused.
———-
Yes, I can tell.
http://www2.vietbao.vn/images/vietnam2/phong_su/20566207_images965949_time.jpg
Look into “the Pentagon Papers”, “whistleblower”, and “Daniel Ellsberg”.
Are you suggesting that Phil Jones or some other insider accidentally zipped up more than 1000 emails and 3000 other documents not belonging to them, put them up on an FTP server in Tomsk, Russia for ‘safekeeping’, and also hacked into the RealClimate site (using a proxy server to appear to be in Turkey) and tried to put another copy there for ‘safekeeping’ and then used a proxy server to appear to be from Saudi Arabia while telling the climate-skeptic blog The Air Vent to go grab the zipped file because these documents are “too important to be kept under wraps” ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
Yes, you are thoroughly confused.
The UEA described the incident as an illegal taking of data. The police are conducting a criminal investigation of the server breach. The criminal was either motivated by money, or conviction.
If conviction, they would be a “whistleblower” and publicly state why it was so important to release stolen documents (again, research “Daniel Ellsberg”).
If a common criminal, they would lay low and enjoy the money they made.
I haven’t heard any whistleblower come forward, have you ?
Anu (13:06:13):
“I haven’t heard any whistleblower come forward, have you?”
Nope. But Phil Jones – CRU’s boss – is out of a job. And it’s not because he was being too ethical.
So quit using your misdirection, and explain why the alarmist crowd is so corrupt.
Smokey (13:13:29) :
You are obviously desperate for a response after a week, and although vastly ignorant about AGW and other matters, you are not much worse than many I’ve seen here:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/
Phil Jones is not out of a job; he’s still on the Academic Staff of CRU, as he temporarily steps aside as Director. There is an “Acting Director”, Prof. Liss, as the CRU goes along with the politically motivated investigation.
When people are found to have committed crimes or professional misconduct, they are fired:
http://gothamist.com/2010/02/15/new_york_times_reporter_fired_for_p.php
Care to explain why Phil Jones is still on academic staff ?
“Misdirection” is another word for your own confusion as to facts.
Anu (13:33:51),
So, Phil Jones, head of CRU, was not pushed out of his job? Is that what you’re telling us?
Who are you trying to kid?
Next thing you’ll be telling us is that CRU didn’t fabricate entire temperature data sets.