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
[~snip~ The d-word is not welcome here. ~dbs, mod.]
Noelene says:
June 12, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Be wary? Turn it up love, the man would not have tasted Australia UNLESS he has vegemite on toast washed down with Bushells tea in the morning. Lamingtons washed down with mango juice in the arvo and a nice thick Queensland T-Bone steak seared over a BBQ washed down with copious amounts of VB
From the replies, I get the impression that many folks have strong opinions about using temperature anomalies, but don’t actually know what they’re for. Is that true?
Welcome to Australia Anthony!
Please excuse the biased media, the state run and politically correct head in the sand wether (pun for woolly sheep) scientists masquerading as climate scientists.
A land of mixed up politicians, with opportunists preying on the gullible, who get quite nasty when someone is brave enough to expose them for what they are. It pays to have a thick skin here if you want to challenge those with a warmist agenda. You will be vilified, insulted, belittled and any attempt to introduce commonsense or good science will be ignored, sniped at, sneered at, sidetracked by those that control and have the ear of the media in this country to the point ,that you wonder how dumb some people are.
Apart from that, I hope that you meet some wonderful and warm people that will not only take you to their hearts, but fully embrace and understand the message of hope that you bring to a growing band of Australian CAGW sceptics. That growing band includes some brilliant scientific minds, that will eventually break through the media “firewall” of warmist propaganda and obstruction.
Beyond that there are many, the silent majority of older thinking Australians who know the warmist scare mongering is wrong, but they have been conditioned to trust the government and science and so torn between the two!! But make no mistake, that silent majority are waking up to the deceptions, recognising the agenda, the underlying corruption of science to support political objectives, and the great financial cost to each and every household should the warmist agenda prevail!!
So I am sure they too, will make you welcome. Forgive the younger ones, they have been heavily brainwashed in a biased and clever “educational” warmist propaganda war, where emotion rather than truth is the selling point gaining their initial support for the most radical eco warrior mentality but, they too have the freedom here to think and learn, and if given the opportunity to question are bright and intelligent enough to inevitably find the truth for themselves.
If you can be the catalyst for bringing that about, we are well on our way to restoring science to the trusted position it once held in this country.
Good luck!
The weather here in Sydney is at it’s very best at the moment. Around 16-17 degrees arcoss all suburbs with full winter sunshine and low humidity. Oh yes, and about 1 degree higher at the official BOM site at Observatory Hill due to it’s siting issue and associated UHI from all that concrete and bitumen.
Anthony, if you get a chance you should visit the new weather radar site at Terry Hills – about 10km north of the CBD. There is also an AWS situated nearby surrounded by lots of native bushland. It’ s generally about 2 degrees colder than the CBD due to elevation and less UHI affects.
Gneiss says:
June 12, 2010 at 8:03 pm
From the replies, I get the impression that many folks have strong opinions about using temperature anomalies, but don’t actually know what they’re for. Is that true?
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We know exactly what they are for, and we know many reasons why the NOAA’s simplistic foolish statement is 1.3 trillion dollars worth of dead (but politically corrupt (er, correct) wrong garbage.
Please tell me – since you failed to before – exactly how a correct anomaly is calculated from corrupt data.
Gneiss:
We are quite aware of what temperature anomalies are used for, and how they can be abused. While absolute temperature does not matter when using anomalies, maintaining a consistent measurement process and resulting bias is absolutely critical.
Check out this simple Youtube video for a simple experiment which anyone can conduct using GISS temp data which demonstrates the effect that NOAA is trying to discount.
Keith Minto
Already heaps of snow at Queenstown and Mt Hutt. The fields are open. So if you want skiing pop over to the South Island.
Well Anthony – free speech and free thinking is alive and well in Australia – unlike your blog – we have a robust democracy. The scam being perpetrated by d… dis-believers in science will be vigorously defended against all enemies foreign domestic. I’ll be interested to see if there is anybody except retired geologists and pensioners in your audience.
[Reply: You were snipped – by me, not by Anthony – because you repeatedly violated site policy. And labeling everyone else as ‘pensioners and geologists’ because they don’t think like you is wearing thin. ~dbs, mod.]
Wasn’t it Hansen who claimed he only needed a few thermometers to measure global warming?
How is it then, GISS needs to make up numbers from the Arctic to get their “global” anomaly?
I showed these pictures to my wife. (Not a scientist. She has an MBA.) She said, “Don’t these people understand basic Physics?”
Roger Knights said:
“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. ”
I understand what you are suggesting, but I don’t think it is necessarily the case. Perhaps we could rely on the trend alone if, in addition to consistent siting and characteristics over time, we could also be certain that the siting characteristics would not influence the trend. IOW, it is not necessarily the case that poor siting characteristics would influence the temperature in a simple linear fashion across the board and across time. It seems to me that part of the point of having good siting requirements is that there is greater comfort/evidence/experience that a well-sited station has the best chance of not introducing a spurious impact on the actual temperature reading. As soon as we depart from those good siting characteristics, we have introduced a significant unknown, not just to the temperature, but to the trend.
In order to use anomalies, one must necessarily assume that the underlying data is accurate, at least insofar as it purports either (a) to be the “actual,” or (b) to be a consistent and reliable step away from the actual. If you admit that you don’t have the actual, and if at the same time you can’t confirm that the data you have represent a consistent and reliable step away from the actual, then you don’t have good data to work with, period. Pretending that you can use the anomaly “data” rather than the “actual” is nonsense.
Why not? Replace all the numbers on a thermometer with a uniform scale and note the differences from day to day; month to month; etc. No actual temperatures are taken but the variation could still be measured.
wayne June 12, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Simple algebra? Yes, I’m very good at algebra. But this is elementary logic. Climate change -… temperature change. Get it? They’re related. One is a measure of the other.
They aren’t saying they’re not concerned about accuracy. That’s ridiculous spin. Apart from anything else, you can’t measure change without measuring accurately the underlying quantity.
Every site has something different. Some are on hill tops, some in valleys. Some get sea breezes. But if the climate changes, they’ll all be affected. And it’s the change that you need to focus on. That’s all they are saying.
It’s good to see luke and Nick here; the problem seems to be that UHI or poor siting or whatever effecting absolute temperature is irrelevant because it is the trend which is important; this is of course nonsense: UHI will change the trend, that is what it does.
Tamino also had a shot at this issue. Tammy said that Watts and D’Aleo are stupid for asserting that by getting rid of colder, rural stations NOAA has produced a cooler temperature trend; if indeed that is what D&A did assert they would be silly; what they did say is that by getting rid of the colder sites the average temp over the whole site range would be warmer; nothing about trends. Now the GMST is the benchmark of AGW; people can gesticulate and hand-wave about trends but if the temp, the GMST, is warmer then you have an argument which supports AGW. And that is what removing the colder sites accomplished. Tammy side-steps this by putting up a GISStemp graph showing no temp drop at the time of the removal of the colder sites; but this is a anomaly trend graph; it shows the change in temp of the remaining sites not the change in GMST created by the absence of the cold sites.
Now Nick, why don’t you comment on Miskolczi’s new paper?
Thanks for the tip. Looks like a return to ‘normal’.
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Gneiss says:
June 12, 2010 at 8:03 pm
From the replies, I get the impression that many folks have strong opinions about using temperature anomalies, but don’t actually know what they’re for. Is that true?
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NO!!! Simple enough?
Art Horn says:
I think you either mean that “the temperature trend ends with an artificially- elevated reading” or “starts from an artificially-lowered reading”.
A lot of commenters here are missing the point.
It isn’t about REAL temperatures or REAL climate change.
Temperatures only count when they can be cherry picked, homogenised and manipulated to show the REAL warming trend. Everything else is flim flam.
Just like a 2003 heat wave in Europe, causing some deaths due to heat stroke, is absolute proof of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and a stark illustration of why we need NOW to spend trillions of dollars / pounds to shut down cheap and reliable energy so we can change to enormously expensive renewables that don’t work.
And the extreme cold experienced in Europe and Asia in winter 2009/2010 is just “Weather”. No one is letting on how many excess deaths that “Weather” caused.
But can anyone doubt that we are safe in the hands of the pantomime horse Cleggeron we have leading our Government in the UK and their mate Buff Huhne? Or Obama and Lisa Jackson in the USA? Or little Kevin Rudd (the Genius of the Antipodes) down in Oz?
Is this statement in the article right?
“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.” I thought that we would get an inflated measure of “any global warming” only if the record started from an artificially lowered measure of temperature. There has been a lot of writing about the way temperature records have been artificially lowered before 1961 as it is more difficult now with independent satellite readings. Maybe it is just me who cannot understand the statement.
Here in Holland in the past, grapes were cultured against brick walls, though they were more strictly placed to the south then this one.
Nick Stokes says:
June 12, 2010 at 10:41 pm
wayne June 12, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Simple algebra? Yes, I’m very good at algebra. But this is elementary logic. Climate change -… temperature change. Get it? They’re related. One is a measure of the other.
Temperature is one aspect, and arguably not the most significant, of the planetary climate. Especially if you are limited to the essentially meaningless measure of global average temperature. If you were allowed only one source for daily weather information and one of your choices was a site that only offered none to reliable readings and forecasts of average daily temperatures, do you think you would consider that site as adequately providing all the info you required concerning the weather?
Could you, please, post the link to this funny statement:
“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.”
I do not find it on NOAA page.
@Nick Stokes
“Every site has something different. Some are on hill tops, some in valleys. Some get sea breezes. But if the climate changes, they’ll all be affected. And it’s the change that you need to focus on. That’s all they are saying.”
Many of the sites have changed with time. We have seen how a station is placed decades ago in a good location, only for that location to become urbanized in later decades. This produces the urban heat island effect – where a trend appears in the temperature becuase of urbanisation, not “climate change” and certainly not “man-made climate change”.
Now, some wold argue that we can remove the effect using statistics. But there really is no way to do that without pollution the measuring process with assumptions. They main one being the a-priori assumption that there is a warming trend. It is the same problem with the Hokey (pokey) Stick! Was it not shown that even a random input of data into the algorithm produces a Hokey Stick?
Nick, why are you soooooo worried abut such tiny temperature changes anyhow? This is what I don’t understand. Even if man cold heat the planet by a degree here or there, that is a tiny tiny change and we would barely notice it.
Do you die every day? Do you die every summer? Do you die every glacial terminata? No. No. And no! So why do you think you will die if the temperature goes up by 1 degree celcius?