I’m In Sydney at the moment, on tour. My first stop out of the airport was to visit the Sydney observatory, where BoM maintains an official weather station. Here it is:
Click thumbnails for larger images – quite a nice heatsink in the form of a brick wall that gets full sun just a few feet away. Note my previous story (Sydney’s historic weather station: 150 meters makes all the difference) where researchers found a bias due to a move to this location. Seeing it first hand, it is easy to see why. – Anthony
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Meteorologist Art Horn writes in Pajamas Media:
The following remarkable statement now appears on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) site:
For detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature — whether a station is reading warmer or cooler than a nearby station placed on grass — but how that temperature changes over time.
The root of the problem? NOAA’s network for measuring temperature in the United States has become corrupted by artificial heat sources and other issues. These problems introduce warm biases into the temperature measurements that are then used by the government and others to support manmade global warming. So as a reaction to criticism about these problems … NOAA now claims that the accuracy of the measured temperature no longer matters!
Let’s take a closer look at this amazing statement to see what it actually says:
For detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature …
Are they truly saying the accuracy of the temperature readings don’t matter? Yes, they are! But why?
The NOAA climate measuring network is so broken there is literally no way to fix it. Reacting to criticism of this annoying fact — and to cover up its significance — NOAA now says accuracy simply doesn’t matter, the temperature reading itself is not as important as the trend. This is clearly a deceptive political statement meant to distract the reader from the truth.
Of course the accuracy of the temperature reading matters!
Remember, a warming of only one degree Fahrenheit over the last 160 years is what the warmists claim to be evidence of manmade global warming. (And of course, half of that warming occurred from 1910 to 1945, before they claim the presence of any significant human influence.)
Temperature changes of tenths of a degree are being used to justify dramatic policy directives by the Environmental Protection Agency, dictums that would profoundly alter life as we know it: taxes levied on virtually anything that produces carbon dioxide. But it’s not only the accuracy of the temperature that is in play. If the temperature readings are off by a few tenths of a degree, this could significantly affect the longer term trend as well. If the temperature trend starts from an artificially elevated reading, the end result will be an artificially inflated measure of any global warming. The slope of the trend itself could be exaggerated by inaccurate temperature measurements.
So what exactly is wrong with NOAA’s temperature readings?
NOAA has five classes of climate measuring sites. The best sites, categories 1 and 2, require the site to be placed over grass or low local vegetation. According to section 2.2 of NOAA’s Climate Reference Network (CRN) Site Information Handbook:
The most desirable local surrounding landscape is a relatively large and flat open area with low local vegetation in order that the sky view is unobstructed in all directions except at the lower angles of altitude above the horizon. …
[For categories 1 and 2 there can be] no artificial heating sources within 100 meters (330 feet). …
[For the lower quality stations 3 to 5 there must be] no artificial heating source within 10 meters (33 feet).
The integrity of the site as a reliable climate measuring station is completely dependent on these criteria. Is the government adhering to its own standards?
In a landmark 2007 research project to determine the quality of the United States climate measuring network, meteorologist Anthony Watts set out to get some answers. He recruited more than 650 volunteers to photograph the climate stations around the country.
What they have found is astounding. A full ninety percent of the United States climate measuring sites do not meet the government’s own criteria for accurate temperature measurement!
Again, that number is ninety percent.
read the rest here at Pajamas Media
There’s a report in this week’s New Scientist saying that we don’t properly know how the Sun affects climate yet. Given that the sun’s quite big and most people can see it and feel its effects, if we’re not sure of its effects on climate, perhaps we should be concentrating on sorting this out and not resorting to climate stations, some of which are placed specifically to give high readings. But I suppose you can’t programme common sense into climate-change models.
That “remarkable statement” is just a straightforward description of temperature anomalies. Do you have data showing that in general they don’t work?
Anthony,
enjoy the trip! Looking at the photos I’d be more concerned about the protection from wind rather than the artificial heat sink. It looks like the station is guarded by all directions.
REPLY: yes that’s a factor too, it is also lower than the main observatory grounds, and does not get prevailing winds from the bay as much as before. – Anthony
Great news! The cause of melting ice caps has been isolated to a brick wall in Sydney. Get Obama onto it right away…
Accuracy doesn’t matter just the trend. PNS at its best.
Nice to see the sun out in Sydney. As Anthony pointed out before, the Observatory Hill observations are not relied on by the BOM for climate analysis.
And again, this information will be available to less than 1% of the population of the US who bother to go and look for it at places like this. Until the “push” media picks up the story, most Americans are going to believe it is some sort of fringe story not worth noticing.
The vast majority of people in the US know nothing beyond the “news” that is pushed into their car radio at commute time or appears on the TV.
That the US climate is being measured by faulty stations is not “news” as it goes against the agenda of the owners of most media outlets. A media outlet publishes only that which aligns with the agenda of the publisher. So don’t expect your neighbor to ever learn about this or be educated as to its significance.
If there was ever one photograph that laid bare a lie, it’s posted above.
As I said before, these “temperatures” are the last refuge of scoundrels. Now it’s not even the T, it’s the differential dT/dt!
Anthony, I know you are working on something falling out of the Surface Temps study. I hope, at some point, you can give us an annual “US average temperature” – you know, just like Hansen’s GISS does, smearing one reading over tens of thousands of square kilometers – based only on those stations that meet the specs listed above. If one station can make GISS’s entire Arctic or the Bolivian altiplano red-hot, well let’s see what a few “good” stations do for that most important chunk of the world – here, home, the good ol’ USA!
We need to call these people on the propaganda they are promulgating. This is not a joking matter. They are trying to give every bit of ammunition – real or invented – to those who would wrest freedom from our hands.
They claim that the absolute temperature doesn’t matter then “adjust” warming into the temperature record.
Here is NOAA’s own record of adjustments:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Note that while equipment changes should even out [ + & – ] all UHI adjustments should be down.
It looks to me like the chart shows that in 1900 0 ° F is added to raw temperature while in 2010 5 ° F is added.
I have proven to myself that UHI adjustments have not been done in Dallas. Has it been done adequately anywhere ?
Anthony, have you published your data on which sites do and do not meet criteria? It should be straightforward from there for anyone to test your hypothesis that below-criteria sites yield steeper trends.
Welcome to the land down under Anthony.
I hope the Australian public at your meetings extend to you the sort of welcome that the American people extend to Aussies in the USA. !
Your team are doing a great job.
netdr says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:34 pm
You didn’t expect them to actually SUBTRACT the UHI, did you?
Instant Global Warming, just add fudged data.
If I were to follow thier lead, I should drive around town with a USB data logger stuffed in my car’s tailpipe.
Gneiss says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:35 pm
What do you think the temperature is anonymous person?
How do you propose we measure it?
Just asking.
Only the trend would matter, if there had been no changes in siting or nearby UHI. I.e., if a station had consistent characteristics, it could be “off” by any number of degrees. But, if the stations have inconsistent characteristics, and the later characteristics are biased toward warming, then the warming trend will be exaggerated.
Horn’s statement implies, indirectly, that the only stations that should be used are very rural ones with as consistent a siting as possible.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: First to go are the
lawyersclimatologists.NOAA:”For detecting climate change,the concern is not the absolute temperature…”
Anthony Watts: “Are they truly saying the accuracy of the temperature readings don’t matter…?”
No,they are interested in the trend detectable over time in accurately calibrated,functional devices. Each weather station will show a different local ‘absolute’ temperature regardless of trend
“Are they truly saying the accuracy of the temperature readings don’t matter? Yes, they are! “
No, they’re not. Read it again:
“For detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature … but how that temperature changes over time.”
That’s just obviously true. Tautologous, even.
@Gneiss
You must be a new reader. Here’s a good place to start – http://www.surfacestations.org/
Anthony Watts has been cataloging surface stations for a long time, now.
Anthony – This remarkable statement appears to be designed to cut your coming paper off at the pass. This technique is standard operating practise for the Conservation Biology gang so I would expect the same from this gang.
The problem is, of course, what trend? Real science would demand to see the trend since each thermometer was as is. Thus they have actually created a problem for themselves because their older alleged trends are now obsolete.
Not that that matters to the drivers of this project.
Gneiss says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:03 pm
That “remarkable statement” is just a straightforward description of temperature anomalies. Do you have data showing that in general they don’t work?
Do you have any data showing that they do? If temperature monitoring stations are established with a multitude of potentially biasing factors there is no guarantee, or even likelihood, that those biasing factors will all act in a nicely uniform fashion which would allow for them to be removed by a statistical correction and still leave a temperature signal that accurately reflects what is occurring in the vicinity. If the deltas of the temperature measurements are as likely attributable to variations in the biasing factors as to actual changes in the local temps there is no reason for any confidence in either the long term baselines or any anomalies calculated from them.
Even more remarkable is how GISS extends these temperature readings over huge geographical areas and assumes that this is a realistic measure of global temperature. I find this quite remarkable as I look at the Aussie BoM site this morning and notice the range of temperatures on display for Perth:
http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/observations/perth.shtml
It is a very cool (by Perth standards) winter morning and all stations lie within a circle of probably 50km radius or so… we have everything from 1.7C at Jandakot Airport to 12C at Pearce, let alone the 13.3C at Garden Island and 15C at Rottnest Island. So which of these should we pick to represent a grid square of thousands of square kilometres?
BTW Anthony, if you get the chance you really should visit Rottnest Island.. it is gorgeous, and the quokkas are rediculously cute:
Rottnest: http://www.rottnestisland.com/en/pages/Home.aspx
Quokka: http://www.rottnestisland.com/en/About_Rottnest_Island/Flora_and_fauna/Pages/Quokkas.aspx
Gneiss says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:03 pm
That “remarkable statement” is just a straightforward description of temperature anomalies. Do you have data showing that in general they don’t work?
—…—…—
I am a little concerned that you don’t seem to understand the problem.
An anomaly is the difference between a single measurement (or yearly average of many measurements) compared to a chosen reference point. Not too complicated.
Now, if the raw data is wrong – not “randomly inaccurate” or “imprecise” but simply and completely wrong because of bad instrumentation location – what part of the anomaly can be correct?
If the entire century’s total temperature increase is less than 1.0 degree C, and bad instrumentation adds even 1 degree to 90% of the nation’s temperature records over the past 130 years, what part of the anomoly can be correct?
Further, if the UHI for even small towns (under 50,000 population is 1.0 degree C, and as much as 5 deg C for cities (over 1,000,000) what part of a 0.1 degree UHI correction (which is all that Hansen applies) is correct?
Anthony, once you have the Surface Stations report done and ready for release, I suggest a press conference with as much ballyhoo as you can muster (pre-announcements: “A startling revelation from a decade-long project: US temperature measurements don’t measure up! Global warming disproved!”). Wouldn’t hurt to have leaks ahead of time, too. As Crosspatch says above, you’ve got to make it ‘news’.
/Mr Lynn
What a steamy, aromatic pile of pungent horse****.
If the temperature is not accurate then how can these pretend meteorologists know if their much-touted trend is accurate?
Let me guess — if the trend is up it is accurate; if the trend is down it has to be adjusted to fix the error.
An easy solution:
1) Set quality stations dozens of miles from any built-up area in the rural countryside, according to standard.
2) Hire a staff of prople to travel around assigned regions collecting this data (as a back-up to having it transmitted to a central site) and check on the condition of each station to ensure continued conformance to standards. Can’t fit them into the bloated budget? Move some of the office staff out into the field.
3) If real work doesn’t fit into NOAA’s paradigm then contract the data collection and station siting and upkeep out to a private firm. Bet they’ll do more with better quality and more cheaply.