By Steve Goddard and Anthony Watts
NCDC has done an first rate job raising Arizona summer temperatures, as seen in the graph below.
How did they accomplish this? – by magic! My favorite Arizona station is Ajo, near the Mexican border. Until 1984, temperatures were dropping – as seen in the USHCN (RAW) plot below.
Apparently someone at USHCN didn’t like that trend, so they made up homogenized an extra 25 years of data with a sharp upwards trend. This spreadsheet shows the USHCN data. Note that there aren’t any years after 1985 which have a full year’s data, and no years after 1985 with a full summer’s data.
For example, note this B91 form from the Ajo observer for July 1987, missing 10 out of 31 days of data:
Here is the adjusted monthly mean maximum data plotted from NCDC:
The image below shows Ajo adjusted maximum mean (black) on top of raw maximum mean (red.) Note that they are identical until 1970, when the magical adjustments kicked in. Click on it for a clearer image.
The station is not well sited. Note the MMTS temperature sensor is inside the white stucco patio wall enclosure at right:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=33437
Here’s another view:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=33463
Photos by surfacestations.org volunteer Bob Thompson
While the near A/C heat exchanger units are comical, wind sheltering and building proximity are also likely contributors. According to NCDC MMS metadatabase, in 2002 the station was switched from a Stevenson Screen to the MMTS sensor in the location shown above. Since NCDC does not make the site sketches that exist for all stations public, we can’t see the plan map showing where the Stevenson Screen was. However, the site survey from Bob Thompson tells us:
Site description and known history: The station was previously located on a nearby hilltop, but is now close behind a Phelps Dodge administration building adjacent to an open mine. I did not find any record of the relocation, but there is nothing any longer atop the hill.
There was a notation in the NCDC MMS Metadata remarks though, saying that the station had been moved 845 feet to the northeast.
The dates don’t match the date of the equipment change in 2002 though, and since the MMTS sensor requires a cable, it is likely that it was moved when the equipment change was noted in 2002.
Most likely the metadata citing the date of the move is wrong, and/or it took NCDC time to catch up with the change made by NWS personnel.
This Google Earth view, dated July 13th, 2006 shows the location of the temperature sensor at Ajo at the Phelps Dodge plant. Basically in the middle of an industrial zone:
In this more recent aerial photo from Bing Maps, it appears the facility has been closed down, and the buildings removed. They even abandoned 3 locomotives previously used to shuttle ore cars:
Note while the buildings are missing, the asphalt parking lot to the SE of the office is new.
Here’s a view with the GE ruler, showing where the Stevenson Screen likely was:
Here’s a closeup view of where the MMTS and rain gauges are:
Interactive view at Bing Maps is here
The point of all this is that this station has the following problems:
- Poor siting – building proximity
- Station move
- Sensor change from Mercury/Stevenson Screen to MMTS
- A nearby dynamic industrial environment with rapidly changing infrastructure and albedo as shown by aerial maps
- Missing/incomplete observer data over a long period, likely due to observer not recording data on weekends, holidays, vacation days, sick days.
- Incorrect/conflicting metadata at NCDC
- post facto adjustments to infill missing/incomplete observer data
That’s a lot of uncertainty added to the base measurement. Many stations have similar problems. The measurement environment is hardly static, yet we are looking for small variations in the climate in the midst of all this noise and uncertainty.
Other Arizona USHCN raw station data is below, showing about equal numbers of stations with declining and increasing maximum mean temperatures over the last 80 years. In Arizona, it’s all about the daytime heat, not the nighttime low.
Raising Arizona was probably Nicholas Cage’s best movie. In the end, they decided to be honest and give Nathan Arizona’s baby back. Can we expect the same?
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It goes on, and on, and on….
But we are supposed to believe.
Stay on it, Anthony. The truth MUST eventually win out.
This is appalling.
Would sticking a thermom back up on the hill sw of the present location be a good indicator of where the temp has been going? Maybe 2 doz loctions around the country could be manned by volunteers.
when in Gods name is someone or some big Law firm going to take this one on? The proof is overwhelming!
Wouldn’t it be great if Arizonians would just turn their ACs off for a few years? Then, we might be able to see ACs contribution to temperature measurements.
A quick look at Google Earth shows that there is in fact a hill just 960 feet SW (not 845 feet SW) of the station shown above. At elevation 1,845 feet it’s about 80 feet higher than the “new” station. For some reason not shown in the above photos, there’s a facility on top of that hill which appears in GE imagery going back to 1992. In the 2005 GE imagery, the facility appears to be surrounded by fencing and there are 3 or 4 spots within the fence that look as if they could have contained weather monitoring equipment.
Is it possible that the pre-1970 station was located on top of that hill, and then moved to the gravel parking lot of the current building later on?
Mike Haseler says:
July 10, 2010 at 5:27 am
“This is appalling.”
Agreed, and, sadly, all too typical.
It’s not my day today.
Everytime I enter my website through my homepage, the homepage is mostly blended out. Has anyone using WordPress ever had this problem? I’m lost.
When we hear the continuing litany of “hottest year so far” etc., how can we fight back? Where can we address this issue so that changes will be made to the siting as well as and especially concerning the “homogenization” of data?
[snip]
Actually most of this will become irrelevant as the predicted shocker is starting
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
I think the next 6 months will be the definite end of the AGW scam
Thanks to S Goddard for emphazising NH ice concentrations.
The next shocker will of course be a precipitous drop in Global temps as predicted by R Spencer.
God help us all if that Volcano blows
Man made global warming? No wonder they changed the name.
Irony can be so…er….uhm…ironic sometimes.
BTW is R Gates real name Mark Serreze? Jus askin is all.
Homogenized.
Pasteurized is a better term. Applied a little external heat.
Why don’t these folks just get it over with and starting siting inside of steel mills next to the blast furnaces?
Climate science is a most unusual science.
Who would have thought that you would adjust temperatures up to account for UHI?
The vast majority of these sites seem vulnerable to fairly standard discrepancies, while unscrupulous manipulation renders official records suspect. These problems seem inherent to large-scale bureaucratic enterprises, especially those masquerading as scientific endeavors whose politicized results in fact are matters of convenience only.
A private Advisory Board of dedicated but non-technical participants could set relevant standards, sponsor grids of valid sensor sites, monitor and supervise regional networks to ensure data continuity and integrity. Organizing and administering volunteers with requisite personnel backup –what is this “holidays and vacations” stuff?– would establish crucial baselines over time, perhaps enabling integration with halfway-decent historical inputs. A climate Call to Arms might find a surprisingly strong response.
In this as in most other areas, despite vaunted regulatory regimes centralized “big government” has proven worse than useless– corrupt and incompetent at best, subject to ruinous propagandizing at worst. Non-profit contributions, donations could support the enterprise, perhaps enhanced by “educational” grants-in-aid purporting to backstop Warmist claims. If the Salvation Army has managed since 1878, why not an Earth Patrol taking climate hysterics’ bleats and squeaks in hand?
Every time I see one of these obscene travesties reported here, I want to hit the tip jar again.
Thank you, Anthony, thank you.
This actually will be come less relevant as the real shocker seems to have arrived
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
and soon the temperature one re R Spencer
Thanks to S Goddard for highlighting the NH ice concentration so much previously the AGW ‘ers discounted it
NB tried posting previous so repeat here
When I had my first Stevenson screen in the 1960s this is the reference I used to find the best site in my back garden:
Handbook of Meteorological Instruments
Part 1 – Instruments for Surface Observations
Meteorological Office 1961
Chapter 3, Measurement of Temperature, Page 93
Location of the screen or shield
For general meteorological work the temperature required is that which is representative of the free air conditions over as large an area as possible surrounding the station, at a height of 4ft. above ground level. The height above ground level must be specified, as on many occasions large temperature gradients exist in the lower layers of the atmosphere. The best site for the screen, or shield, and thermometers is therefore over level ground, freely exposed to sun and wind and not shielded by, or close to, trees and buildings. The most unrestricted exposure available should be used. A site on a steep slope or in a hollow is subject to exceptional conditions and should be avoided. In towns and cities local peculiarities will be more marked than in rural districts, but the best site is an open situation with the screen at the normal height. Observations of temperature on the top of buildings are of doubtful significance and use, owing to the rapid variation of temperature in the vertical and the effect
of the building itself on the temperature distribution.
For air temperature at other levels and for other purposes the exposure would have to be modified accordingly.
That is the section in its entirety.
Where is the World Meteorological Organization and country or state organizations to validate, or invalidate, these woeful exposures?
REPLY: Surely you jest. The WMO is part of the UN. -A
NCDC was just doing its job as part of the Ministry of ClimateTruth. How ironic they chose 1984 as the year to do their dirty work.
As I understand it, you, Dr Watts, believe average near-surface temperatures have indeed risen over the last hundred years or so, although you question the trend’s anthropogenicity (if there is such a word?!). Given all these measurement issues/fiddles/errors/uncertainties, how certain can we really be that the putative temperature rise is real, anthropogenic or not?
REPLY: For the record, no Dr. here. The satellite record shows a bit of warming. I trust it more. -A
7-11 introduced the Slurpee in 1967, followed by the Big Gulp in 1980. These icy confections, for obvious reasons, caught on big-time in AZ. Hundreds of thousands of AZ citizens carrying around these frozen treats in public lowered average temps through this period and continuing today. The adjustments you’ve identified are simply accounting for the chill introduced by the ISBGCE (Individual Slurpee Big Gulp cooling effect).
I show these pictures to my wife, and she just shakes her head in disbelief.
Obviously, “temperature” is weather; not climate. “Temperature” has people involved.
Climate doesn’t have people involved, except for AGW.
Climate can only be “realized” on supercomputers; weather can only be “realized” by the talking head TV personalities.
(Problem is now fixed).
But as this weather station shows in Ajo, which isn’t really that far from Tuscon, it’s a real doozy, aint it! It’s the Wild Wild West of climate measurements
Do you have a Cat 6 to classify this one under?
With all the follies uncovered recently, perhaps Durkin ought to make a second “Great Global Warming Swindle”. It’s one sequel that would certainly be better than the first.
Actually the other one that stands out like a sore thumb is Miami AZ. Are you sure that they did not move the station to Miami Florida in late 1999?