UPDATE: Another new record at BWI on July 7th:
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
522 PM EDT WED JUL 07 2010
...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT BALTIMORE MD...
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 101 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY.
THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 99 SET IN 1993.
A new record high temperature was set in Baltimore today…
RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC 0547 PM EDT TUE JUL 06 2010 ...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT BALTIMORE MD... A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 105 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 101 SET IN 1999.
The temperature is measured here at the BWI airport at this NOAA ASOS. It doesn’t look bad from this photo provided by NOAA. In fact with the exception of the building, it looks reasonably well sited. More photos here.
But when you look at this BWI ASOS station from the air, an entirely different picture emerges.
From Bing Maps, see interactive view here.
Here’s the East looking view:
Note how close the NOAA ASOS station is to the asphalt accessway, and how it is surrounded on 3 sides by runway and taxiways.
Here’s a ground level view showing the asphalt accessway:
But also notice the vent in the ILS instrumentation building. That’s an exhaust vent. When the wind blows from the NW, it will carry any waste heat from that vent (note it points downward) directly into the ASOS sensor array, as shown in this zoomed aerial view from Bing Maps below:
Interactive view of above here.
Note the direction of the wind when the ASOS recorded 105° F per this screen cap of the NWS hourly observations for BWI:
The ILS waste heat, combined with the asphalt proximity of the accessway, as well as the runway and taxiway on three sides contributed to the new high temperature record, in my opinion.
When you look at other stations high temps (which I plotted) in the area on the same day, the 105° F record high stands alone near Baltimore, though one other airport, Frederick, also with ASOS measured the same 105° F high. The Baltimore downtown Tmax (at the Museum/Science Center) was 103°F.
Source of observed high temps: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/observations.htm and http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lwx
From the website CCF, who also had an interest in the issue, it was reported that some other private stations nearby also didn’t hit 105.
Nearby Weatherbug stations, which are considered to be fairly accurate, were all lower:
- Columbia hit 102F at Clemens Crossing ES.
- Ellicott City hit 100F at Veterans ES.
- Owings Mills hit 100F at The Harbour School.
This suggests that BWI stands alone in the 105 temperature for this area.
Since the Frederick, MD Airport ASOS (nearly 40 miles away) also hit 105, let’s have a look at it:
Interactive view from Bing maps here. Note that this station while an older style AWOS instead of ASOS, also has it’s sensors sited near/over asphalt and near the waste heat of the ILS building and it’s electronics. Just like BWI. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.
And here’s the observations from Frederick:
While the winds at this time weren’t in the direction that would pull waste heat from the ILS building, I’ll point out that the KFDK AWOS sensors are sited directly over the asphalt, where the BWI ASOS has asphalt very close by. This is great for keeping weeds down and mowing, not so great for measuring temperature.
Washington National has similar siting over asphalt (or possibly dark crushed rock, but does not have an ILS electronics building nearby. It does have one feature though, the Potomac river is only 180 meters away.
Of course, the KDCA ASOS station isn’t far from a megaplex of tarmac, terminals, and aircraft.
If you wonder if tarmac/taxiway/runways are capable of generating a lot of heat, this story from Albany, NY yesterday, on the same day the new record high was set at BWI, might be of interest:
Oh, and by the way, Albany’s airport also had a new record that same day:
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBANY NY
958 PM EDT TUE JUL 6 2010
...RECORD HIGH MINIMUM TEMPERATURE TIED AT ALBANY NY...
THE LOW TEMPERATURE AT THE ALBANY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ONLY DROPPED
TO A LOW 76 DEGREES AT 509 AM JULY 6TH. THIS TIES THE OLD RECORD
HIGH MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 76 DEGREES SET BACK IN 1911.
It takes some time for all that tarmac heat to dissipate. You can bet they didn’t have tarmac there in 1911. The high temp also got pretty warm:
TEMPERATURE (F)
YESTERDAY
MAXIMUM 96 353 PM 97 1886 82 14 80
MINIMUM 76 509 AM 47 1961 59 17 51
Sources: http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=aly
While this certainly isn’t an exhaustive survey, it does illustrate that the two highest reading airport stations today at BWI and FDK have siting issues.The BWI ASOS went in in 1995 according to the NCDC MMS Metadatabase. It set a new record of 101 for this date 4 years later. We can be certain that in the years prior, the station was not sited just like you see it now. Airports are dynamic engines of change.
Also from the CCF website:
Records go back to 1880 for Baltimore, so this is an impressive feat, and it has been done before. A temperature of 105F has been hit four other times in the the area’s, and many long ago. So these numbers should quell the talk of Global Warming with this hot summer.
Here are the four other dates:
- June 29th, 1934
- August 6th 1918
- August 7th 1918
- August 20th 1983
Another mark hit many times in Baltimore was 104F on these days:
- July 3, 1898
- July 16 1988
- August 4th, 1930
- July 6th: 101F in 1999* BROKEN TODAY with 105F
- July 7th: 99F in 1993
- July 8th: 100F in 1993
- July 9th: 103F in 1936
- July 10th: 107F in 1936 * Hottest of all time for Baltimore
The question is, are airport stations like this at BWI climate-worthy? I sincerely doubt it.
I’d like to share a story that I’m proud of. At ICCC4 in Chicago this past May, I gave my presentation on what I’ve learned from the surfacestations.org project and what is about to be published. One member of the audience came up to chat afterwards. I was surprised to see Dr. Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut, and the only geologist to walk on the moon. He said:
Anthony, I want you to know that you are spot on about these airport stations. I’ve seen them read up to 10 degrees warmer than the surroundings. But that’s what they are supposed to read. Pilots need to know the runway conditions, and these stations measure that. Their primary mission is aviation, not climate.
A proud moment for me, having a man who was a hero of mine, whom I watched on Live Lunar TV in high school, giving praise, but also stating the base truth of the matter. Climate monitoring is not part of the mission plan for airports, but they get co-opted for the task.
For example, BWI also has problems with snow records, which I’ve covered before:
BWI snow record rescinded: Another reason why airports aren’t the best place to measure climate data
Here’s some related reading about Baltimore’s other high reading climate (USHCN) station (now closed):
Full story here:
How not to measure temperature, part 48. NOAA cites errors with Baltimore’s Rooftop USHCN Station
Another mark hit many times in Baltimore was 104F on these days:
- July 3, 1898
- July 16 1988
- August 4th, 1930
- July 6th: 101F in 1999* BROKEN TODAY with 105F
- July 7th: 99F in 1993
- July 8th: 100F in 1993
- July 9th: 103F in 1936
- July 10th: 107F in 1936 * Hottest of all time for Baltimore
Here in Utah it was in the upper 60s (Brrr!) over the weekend, 80 monday, 74 lovely degrees yesterday.
Nitpicking, I know, but I just don’t get it…
How is this a northwestern?? The wind then ought to come from the northwest right?
The arrow indicates a northeaster.
Never mind (just twist the map around and…) duh, sorry…
Muir Russell Review url: http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
Nice article Anthony. It’s very illustrative to see the nearby stations showing much lower temps at the same time and not hard to imagine this distorting the temp record by tenths of a degree over a hundred years.
If the signal shows seven tenths of warming, how much is construction related.
Whitewash !!
According to Dr David Viner 2000, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
That statement has the same truthfulness as the findings of this report
Simply to pay my respects for the coining of “asphaltic“.
Anthony,
Let me demo one of your UHI measuring kits. Send one my way and I will get to the bottom of the AHI (Airport Heat Island) effect at BWI. I work nearby.
One other note, BWI has had a pretty big growth spurt. They have added two new terminal piers in the past 10 years as well as two very large parking garages, a few new runway projects and resurfacing. I estimate that BWI has doubled in size since the last record.
JT
This record is BS. I was in downtown Baltimore (a huge heat island) and it didn’t hit 105. It was, at max, 101 with surprisingly low humidity for Baltimore. There’s no way BWI was actually hotter than here. So, complete BS, just like the failed record snowfall at BWI ast winter (if you can remember that far back).
Great work. The facts are hard to deny.
Driving from DC to home (35 miles west) the temperature on the toll road was
a pretty constant 104 F. I didn’t drive off the road to see if it was cooler.
Nice dissection Anthony.
Heat wave?
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/shortterm/day1/highsdeparture/uscentral.html?p=english
Surely the above map is covered (nearly all over) with negatives ?
or am I missing something?
Right on, Anthony! As usual, damn good, enlightening sleuth-work.
These surfacestations are so bad they reflect not only incompetence, but rather an agenda-driven malfeasance.
On the Washington National pictures, yeah the Potomac is going to be no help this time of year.
And the huge tarmac with runways being located to the west of the station is a witches brew for extraordinary readings, given they typical surface wind-direction in Mid-Atlantic heat waves of hot, downsloping west and northwest winds.
Here’s a fun GOES water-vapor image of our back-door upper level cyclone knocking at the North Carolina coast.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/flash-wv.html
It’s a battle, though, and that dolphin-shaped upper ridge is going to put up a fight.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
> Dr. Harrison Schmidt, Apollo 17 astronaut, and the only geologist to walk on the moon. …. A proud moment for me, having a man who was a hero of mine….
I made a point of meeting Dr. Schmitt at the ICCC. While some other astronauts have science degrees, he was the only one whose mission emphasized science and he came back with the most interesting rock samples of all the missions. While there was nothing about me worth praise, he did suffer this fool gladly.
BTW – you might want to fix how you spelled Schmitt….
Here’s a breath of cool summer air from flyover country:
“SALT LAKE CITY — There were no weather records set in the Salt Lake area over the holiday weekend, despite the unusually cool temperatures, but there were some records set in southern Utah.
The Bryce Canyon Airport dipped to a record low of 31 degrees on Monday. That broke the old record of 32 degrees for July 5, set in 1978.
Bullfrog also shivered with a 56-degree low that day, while the Cedar City Airport set a new low temperature record of 43 degrees.
Bryce Canyon was even colder on the morning of July 4, with a 27-degree reading, three degrees below the previous all-time mark for Independence Day, set back in 1956.”
the link:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700045922/Cooler-temperatures-record-lows-across-Utah.html
It didn’t feel that way as high temperatures were at record lows in San Diego County today, says the National Weather Service. It was quite a contrast from the East Coast, where such big cities as New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore experienced record highs.
A trough of low pressure and a thick marine layer kept most of the western half of the county cloaked in clouds for much of the day.
The temperature only reached 62 degrees in Oceanside Harbor. The record “low high” for this date is 65. That record was set in 2002. The harbor averages a high of 74 degrees this time of year.
They say record heat and permanent drought in the southwest.
I have a little temp gauge on my screened in back porch. Setting it right next to the screen (actually touching the metal screen) resulted in a temp reading of 114 degrees yesterday. Moving it just 3 inches away from the metal screen lowered the temp to under 90 degrees. Elsewhere near the house, the temp struggled to reach into the low 80’s during the day and we dipped down below 40 last night. Temp gauges for weather pattern variation and climate change are fraught with problems wherever they are placed.
In addition, that heat we are getting in the Eastern US is ENTIRELY explained by weather systems, as is the cold we are getting at night in the Western US. That these weather related temperatures are added to the global statistic and magically changed into AGW, is bogus science.
At best, local weather added/averaged/homogenized together can only become weather pattern variation within a climate zone, nothing more. Can it ever become indicative of climate change? Yes, when the climate zone temperature range and weather patterns are breached on a consistent basis. For that to happen to climate zones, it would take a lot more than heavy breathing in the back seat of an SUV.
Interesting idea, but how about some science to back it up. The asphalt heating certainly seems feasible but the exhaust air effect less so. What volume of exhaust air is coming from the shed and at what temperature? From the Bing map it looks like the shed is 25 ft away from the temp sensor. It seems to me the exhaust would have to be very hot indeed to raise the temp of a large volume of air from 100 to 105 degrees over a distance of 25 feet. Even allowing for asphalt heating and saying the exhaust air effect gives a 2 degree temp raise, that’s a lot of heating power coming from a small vent.
REPLY: I never suggested it raised it from 100 to 105 degrees, that’s an assumption by you. I figure it adds maybe a degree at that distance. It is part of several factors of the location, just one piece of the puzzle. I have stood nearby these before, and they blow at a pretty good clip, but I have no volume/heat measurements. My point here is to demonstrate possible issues in hopes they’ll be investigated. I can’t just walk on to BWI and do these things without being tossed into the pokey. – Anthony
While we are talking about weather station gaffes…..
Saturday’s edition of The Times (July 3, 2010) – the newspaper that believes that all AGW skeptics are ‘village idiots’ – has inadvertently allowed one of its university cronies to trip over an outstretched editorial foot. Reader Stuart H. Monard wrote to Sally Baker’s Feedback column that he was “increasingly concerned about the fictional, nay, mendacious nature of your daily met and temperature reports for the Isle of Wight”.
Bearing in mind that climate is not weather, I read on. Mr Monard demanded to know where the apparently erroneous reports were sourced. His problem, it appears, is that while the island (which lies just off the south coast of England) has been struggling through a sweltering heat wave, the Times has been reporting temperatures there of “a paltry, grudging, wintry 19C”. From his position, cowering in the shade, he demanded that the newspaper change its informants. “They are not to be relied upon”, he thundered.
The ever helpful Sally Baker handed the enquiry over to Steve Dorling at Weatherquest, the company that provides the Times weather page, unaware that the strange creaking noise she could hear was the unseen opening of a climate change trap door. After explaining that the data comes from the official monitoring station at St Catherine’s Point on the south coast of the island, Dr. Dorling pointed out that ‘at this time of year”, sea temperature struggles to keep pace with daytime temperatures over the land and so it is perfectly possible to see a difference of several degrees across the island in the afternoon.
Drawing closer to the edge of the abyss, he points out that “on a very hot day this difference is the reason we go to the coast, to escape oppressive heat”. (Gosh, who would have thought?). Then, he steps straight out: “It is useful to remind readers that temperature measurements are also strongly affected by whether they are made ‘in the shade’ (the official requirement) or in direct sunlight, and also by the height above ground”. Slam! The trapdoor shut, cutting off any screams from the unfortunate Dorling.
And which academic institution houses Dr. Dorling and Weatherquest? Step forward the University of East Anglia, proud defender of neutrally-sited weather stations!
…er…and one imagines….of the understated art of English irony……
ROTFLMAO!!!!! Gotta love Meacham in the Blue Mountains of NE Oregon.
Record Report
000
SXUS76 KPDT 061820
RERPDT
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PENDLETON OR
1120 AM PDT TUE JUL 6 2010
…NEW DAILY RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES FOR JULY 6TH…
NOTE: STATIONS MARKED WITH * INDICATE THAT THE STATION REPORTS ONCE
PER DAY. FOR CONSISTENCY…THESE VALUES ARE CONSIDERED TO HAVE
OCCURRED ON THE DAY THE OBSERVATION WAS TAKEN BUT MAY HAVE ACTUALLY
OCCURRED (ESPECIALLY FOR MAX TEMPERATURE) ON THE PREVIOUS DAY.
STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS
RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN
MEACHAM, OR 36 / 2002 31 1948
*MONUMENT 2, OR 39 / 1994 39 (TIED) 1961
I can give some comparison w/my rural site on July 6:
My rural site: High 97F (36C)
Low 60F (16C)
Avg 78.5 F (26C)
Hagerstown, MD Airport: High 100F
Low 76F
Avg 88F
Hagerstown, MD (city observer): High 100F
Low 70F
Avg 85F
Frederick, MD Airport: High 105F
Low 69F
Avg 87F
Baltimore, MD Airport High 105F
Low 75F
Avg 90F
From my location, the other sites are close in latitude & extend east from me — Baltimore is about 100 miles (167 km) east. It’s fair to say that all the other sites are urban. Since my altitude is 900 ft, there’s a correction for that — ~2F cooler due to my elevation compared to sea-level temps. Still, w/that correction, Baltimore is 9.5 F warmer than me under about as uniform regional conditions (light NW winds, high-pressure) across the mid-Atlantic states as you can get.
Is all of that due to UHI? Probably not, but if only 50% of it is, that’s still a very significant effect.
Gneiss, IMO you have reported on a “dress for weather” descriptor and weather pattern variations, not climate, with some of your “climate” data obtained from AGW graphs down right bereft in terms of information. There is no such thing as a single statistic for global temperature. It is the most misleading of all AGW statistics and should be shunned by meat and potatoes scientists. It is no more useful than reporting the averaged zipcode. Data rich, information poor.
Let’s not be data rich and information poor.
Anthony,
Consider this: In the last 100 years there have been 100 days of each day of the year. If temperatures varied totally randomly, there would be a 1% chance any given selected day of the year would be a record high for the last 100 years. Since there are 365 days in a year, the probability is that between 3 and 4 days of any given year will have record highs for that year. If you add to this the fact that the temperature has slightly increased in later years compared to earlier, the probability of record days in recent years is even higher. Thus a few record highs is no big deal. In fact, if less than 3 records are not made in a given recent year, this would be the odd fact.
Watch temps in surrounding areas in real time. The WMAR coverage area is about 75 miles west and 100 miles east of Baltimore and immediate surrounding areas about 20 miles north and south of the city.
http://web.live.weatherbug.com/Broadcaster/2/Home.aspx?no_cookie_zip=21212&no_cookie_stat=WMARB&no_cookie_world_stat=&zcode=z4241&list=1&lid=BSL
BWI has the lead so far today.