WUWT readers may recall last summer when the ASOS weather station at the Honolulu Airport malfunctioned, giving a whole series of shonky readings that resulted in a string of new record high temperatures being set. What was even worse, is that NOAA, knowing the records were based on faulty equipment, let them stand anyway even when a nearby NOAA station demonstrated the records were false.
WUWT reader “Geo” alerted me to the issue at DCA in “tips and notes”, and I made some immediate screencaps of the data which I have below. The DCA ASOS station at Washington National/Reagan Airport is part of the COOP A network which makes climate observations. First, a look at the station itself.
By siting standards, it at first glance appears to be well sited, being over 100 meters from the nearest runway, in the grass, and on the bayside riverside:
But on closer inspection it appears to be sited over asphalt:
From the ground, NOAA has this photo and more:
Here’s the hourly data in question, note the big jump at midnight and the 87.1F recorded at the 6 hour preceding mark. What’s odd about it is that its a big jump compared to the readings in the hour before and after, plus it occurred during thunderstorms and light rain. It seems unlikely.
Nearby Andrews AFB, just a few miles away, doesn’t show a similar jump in readings. It shows 64F and light rain at midnight, and a 6 hour max of 73F.
The high 87.1F reading at DCA made it into the official climatological report for Friday May 28th, which places it at 12:25AM, in the middle of rain and thunderstorms. It seems pretty clear that the reading is erroneous.
http://www.weather.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=lwx
I recorded all the screen caps above last Friday, May 28th. I figured I’d wait to see if the NWS staff caught this and corrected it.
Sure enough, they did:
That’s the right way to do it. But is the 76F reading at 127AM valid? With a malfunctioning sensor, who knows for sure?
Now the question is: why does one NWS office fix an obviously faulty ASOS reading in the climate record while another ignores it and leaves it as a new record? Are there not standards for handling such things organization wide?
Another question is: how many events like this go undetected due to a lesser, non obvious magnitude, and remain in the climatic record?
Invariably, such events almost always (though there are rare exceptions) seem to embrace a warm error, be it electronic or human error, or even transcription error, such as “Dial M for METAR“.
And yet, there has been a large migration of GHCN to airport systems both in the US and globally.
At ICCC4, Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt came up to me after my talk to tell me that I was “spot on” with criticizing the use of airport sensors for climate, because they were designed for a different mission. It was a proud moment for me, having watched this man walk the moon as a boy in high school. He said to me (and I’m going on recollection):
“The only purpose of the ASOS system is to measure the runway conditions for flight safety. I’ve seen runway temperatures vary as much as ten degrees from other airport locations. These shouldn’t be used for climate.”
The data at Reno, NV airport, showed not just siting differences, but a UHI factor also.
I agree with Dr. Schmitt’s assertion, and given that ASOS continues to produce faulty data, perhaps it is time to look at ASOS data issues on a broader scale.
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So there is a new category, instead of UHI, now AHI (Airport Heat Islands) or THI(Turbines Heated Islands).
Once most of the thermometers left in the survey have already been moved into cities, airports and tarmacs, what do they do? The offset is static. Their target is dynamic.
[snip – for tips and notes, not here, but thanks]
[snip sorry, OT]
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere
REPLY: Perhaps, but let’s leave it out of this thread please. -A
Big headlines about scores of heat deaths in India. How is this new? Wonder how they figure what a heat death is compared to malnutrition or old age in the alleyways of New Delhi.
Forgotten are the clear-cut cases of freezing to death in Europe a couple of months ago. Thousands died in Poland and Eastern Europe; unpublished tens of thousands east of the Urals. This goes to the point of the warm-earthers who rely on short-term memory loss in the sheeple.
KevinM says there is a limit to the climastrologers constantly pushing the scales over time. I’m not so sure. The climate fundamentalist peachers rely on the short-term memory of the people and the mass media, so they can keep going back to the “averages” in the past, selecting new “normal” baselines, and thus keeping the old shell game alive. If that fails, they distract with new catastrophes for a moment, like malaria, ocean acidification, sunstroke, syphilis and varicose veins. Then it is back to the old saw.
If only there were thousands of Anthony Watts, Rick Moranos, Senator Inhofes and Lord Moncktons, etc. around. Since the climate cult leaders are relying on 1984 newspeak and similar contrived control of the masses, perhaps we can take a page from Brave New World and start cloning these good guys en masse?
Until then, it is we. Make sure we vote at the ballot and in person.
National Airport? I recall they have a curfew. They are in town and limit takeoffs and landings at night. I have flown in behind schedule and been diverted to Dulles.
Enneagram says:
June 1, 2010 at 9:39 am
So there is a new category, instead of UHI, now AHI (Airport Heat Islands) or THI(Turbines Heated Islands).
—
Perhaps UHIs should be renamed Developments Heat Islands (DHI) to account for the range of uses that heat releasing developments encompass, instead of trying to specifically name each one.
There have been a few different looks at airports vs. nonairports recently:
– My post over at The Blackboard: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/airports-and-the-land-temperature-record/
– Clear Climate Code’s version using the GISTemp code: http://clearclimatecode.org/airport-warming/
– Nick Stokes over at his blog: http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2010/04/ghcn-results.html
– The slide in Peterson’s recent congressional testimony: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/karl_senate_2010_pg23.png
You could also use the R script that Jeff Id/Roman M made to do a similar test, if you want validation from someone on that side of the proverbial aisle.
It’s worse than we thought.
Al and Tipper separating.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/06/al_and_tipper_gore_separating.html
Sorry, I didn’t see that it had already been posted.
I’ve been wondering ever since I took pictures of the ASOS in Baker City, OR, about the effect of placing these installations at the end of long access roads. Seems to me the daytime temperatures should be heavily affected by wind direction: when the wind blows straight up the road towards the station, I would expect a daytime spike as compared to wind from other directions. Has anyone studied this?
Yet another spike in the concept of truth and accuracy…
Thanks to Anthony for reporting the ‘scientific’ propaganda promoted to us at our expense.
Does the word ethical mean anything to these folks?
1,200KM smoothing vs. 0.1 degree changes after faking the data – what is going on anyway?
Oh, will we ever learn…?
This post reminded me of a chart I saw on this page a while back……
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/leftist-big-govt-types-believe-human-co2-causes-warming-theyre-wrong-actually-its-big-govt-that-caus.html
I leaning towards the congressional “hot air” that causes the D.C. warming 😉
I wonder how much the location of the airport itself changes readings.
Years ago when I lived near Milwaukee we all knew that the MKE airport readings were never that same as 80% of the metro area due to it being sited very close to Lake Michigan.
The summer would bring cooler readings on many days as the lake air conditioned them. Spring and fall brought hotter readings as the big heat sink moderated the weather. Sometimes they would get 6-12″ of lake effect snow that almost no one else got. It was not a good proxy for the city, but was the official one.
The point is, how does the siting of the airport figure into this. Is it fairly consistent with adjacent readings? Is it subject to offshore wind/weather anomalies?
Re ? 9.22 am Thanks A ,
the GHCN analyses for rural designation are unhelpful surely.., this does indeed beg the question is airport heat island a more interesting potential bias.
If you are in Spitsbergen but on tarmac it might seem far from a heat island effect but be quite create quite an anomalous, apparrently.
I am just back from new Delhi. Apparently these temperatures are not uncommon in May, but its a ten year high I was told. 45c most of the week! but its a concrete jungle with new builds everywhere covered by a haze of humid smog so how do you standardise that?
Most weather monitoring sites were not selected for the purpose of measuring long term climate change. The link below addresses this issue and shows quantitatively how much site location has altered Global Warming temperature measurements.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
REPLY: Actually, no it doesn’t. The data they used was
1. “borrowed” from me against my wishes
2. incomplete at 43%
3. had no error correction.
They were in such a hurry to discredit me they did this half assed job, and didn’t even put an author on it. Our upcoming paper does it correctly. and no I won’t share it now. – Anthony
@Anthony Scalzi,
The important aspect is the HI. I doubt a heat island represents any data beyond the “island”, regardless of what kind of island it is, man-made or natural.
Then again, a map with “HI there!” arrows all over it would look funny =)
Sigh. There’s just no end to this stuff.
“But on closer inspection it appears to be sited over asphalt”
Perhaps they will explain that this is that natural asphalt from off the California coast? And that they have “adjusted” for its effect? Yes, that must be it.
As for that apparent spike in hot air, was Biden in the vicinity?
In any case, now we’re learning what it must have been like in the USSR in the Lysenko era. Of course, they didn’t have the internet then and, sorry, Anthony, but you would have been in some Siberian gulag by now, as would everybody writing inconvenient articles and making inconvenient comments here.
REPLY: Nyet, I denounce you! 😉 -A
#
#
Myron Mesecke says:
June 1, 2010 at 11:22 am
It’s worse than we thought.
Al and Tipper separating.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/06/al_and_tipper_gore_separating.html
_______________________________________________________________________
HMMMmmmm
I wonder if SHE sees the writing on the wall and is getting her chunk of the millions before HE has his pants sued off by irate parents who’s kids were needlessly traumatized by having to watch his movie in school.
Here are the surface maps at 04 and 05 UTC 28 May 2010 showing the warm anomaly at KDCA:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/sfcplot.kdca.2010052804.gif
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/marka/sfcplot.kdca.2010052805.gif
This appears to be an obvious glitch in the ASOS system. I have seen many of these glitches from ASOS stations over the past couple of years.
It appears the temperature was below 70 throughout early morning of the 28th, but the temperature reached 75 later in the afternoon of the 28th and we indeed see 75 reported as the 6-hr high temperature at 00 UTC. But by 00 UTC (8 PM EDT) the temperature had cooled to 72. So it appears to me the correct calendar day maximum temperature for 28 May probably should have been reported as 75 observed at 4 PM EDT on the 28th. In summary, neither the max temperature nor the time of max temperature appear to be correct, even after the correction was issued.
A nearby weather observer recorded a high temperature of 74.8 on the afternoon of 28 May just one mile SW of KDCA:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KVAALEXA15&day=28&year=2010&month=5
T Td Tmx Tmn
28 KDCA SA 1952 8 39 10 1013.1 75 63 110 8 29.92 0
28 KDCA SA 2052 8 37 10 1013.1 74 62 140 6 29.92 6 09 0 0
28 KDCA SA 2152 8 28 10 1012.9 73 62 140 5 29.91 0
28 KDCA SA 2252 8 39 10 1013.2 73 62 130 8 29.92 0
28 KDCA SA 2352 8 30 10 1013.6 72 60 130 6 29.93 3 04 0 0 75 72
29 KDCA SA 0052 8 30 10 R- 1014.3 68 63 120 7 29.95 01
29 KDCA SA 0152 8 38 10 R- 1014.7 67 63 160 6 29.97 28
29 KDCA SA 0252 8 36 10 1014.9 68 62 0 0 29.97 1 13 T 29
29 KDCA SA 0352 8 35 10 1015.0 68 62 130 3 29.98 0
29 KDCA SA 0452 8 42 10 1014.9 67 62 130 3 29.97 0 Mx=87Mn=66
29 KDCA SA 0452 8 42 10 1014.9 67 62 130 3 29.97 0 COR Mx=76Mn=66
I will send an inquiry to NOAA to see what their line of reasoning was.
Mark Albright
Research Meteorologist
Univ of Washington
How about Anthropogenic Heat Island (AHI)? It would cover every case of poor siting.
But, but, but Anthony!
Even if NOAA did not have weather observing stations across the length and
breadth of the United States the impacts of the warming are unmistakable.
Think I’ll go out and watch the flying pigs.
In the first set of 24 temperatures, there are 6 readings with a decimal point, such as “75.9”. In the second set, there are 8, giving a total of 12. Probability would suggest that of the 48 readings, 43 should show a decimal point.
It is apparent that there is some form of manual intervention in this data. It also raises the question of accuracy of all temperature data, particularly when the tiny increase of 0.6 degrees per century is claimed. This is less than the recording accuracy defined by: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/dad/coop/EQUIPMENT.pdf (page 11)
What is the “probable error” of annual temperature measurement ?
Even before it became fashionable to exaggerate temperatures, faulty equipment would sometimes lead to unrealistic record highs. A friend of mine lived in Ft. Myers, FL in 1981. Temperatures there rarely hit 100 degrees due to the close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the preponderance of cooling PM thunderstorms in the summer.
That June, the official recording station came in with a week of 100 degree readings and 3 consecutive days of 103! My friend, a young TV meteorologist at the time, called the weather service office and told them that their thermometer was broken. (It was, I believe, a mercury thermometer.) They checked and found that it was broken. He asked them if they would revise their numbers and they said that couldn’t, because those were the only numbers they had! To this day, the records stand.