UPDATE: A second nearby station has been located, also showing a lower high temperature. See below.
First let me say that the Carefree, AZ Skypark airport, and the airport observer have not done anything wrong. I commend them for their service as a NOAA Cooperative Observer, a volunteer job done for the good of the country. The station was installed by NOAA/NWS Phoenix personnel and it is their responsibility for things like this difference in daytime high temperatures, such as I discovered below.
But after looking at the ground photos of the NOAA climate station, I have only one word to describe it: FUBAR
First some review; read my essay on what I discovered from metadata investigation of the station: A Carefree Record High Temperature in Arizona
I showed a map with all the new records plotted. But, there was a curious red dot record high temperature “anomaly” on it, 109°F in Carefree, AZ on July 8th, the only one for that entire week in the entire state.
From that essay, this image shows the station is surrounded by Asphalt tarmac:
click to enlarge imageAnd thanks to WUWT reader Glen Sheldon, we have photos from the ground (on 07/13/2010) that confirm what I suspected; the station temperature sensor is mounted directly over asphalt at roof level, both of which contribute to anomalously high temperature readings.
I don’t know how often the outdoor fireplace is used, but when it is, I’m sure it helps keep the cold away.
Seasoned surfacestation.org volunteers have seen worse sitings, but this one has severe siting violations worth noting:
- NOAA 100 foot rule ? – pfft!
- Over asphalt plus physically on a building – rates a CRN5 “worst of the worst”
- Wind sheltered on one side due to the beam – southerly wind, not so much
- At roof level – will pick up waste heat from the building when wind blows across the flat roof
- Incorrect height – WMO/NOAA standard is 1.5 meters – this is twice that
- Other heat sources nearby, Pepsi machine – waste heat like an A/C unit, nearby outdoor fireplace
- Nearby tree – listed as an obstruction in the NCDC metadata
- Nearby automobile parking – radiator inward, under the sensor
In case anybody wonders about NOAA rooftop stations that give erroneous high temperature readings, this one should provide an excellent primer because NOAA closed it in 1999 due to similar siting problems.
How not to measure temperature, part 48. NOAA cites errors with Baltimore’s Rooftop USHCN Station
NOAA then wrote an internal technical competency manual on it advising that it is not good practice. I guess WSO Phoenix never read it.
Reference: NOAA Professional Competency Unit 6 (PCU6) manual (PDF)
But the thing that really hit me was the data they compiled, comparing to other nearby stations, and thus proving the case for rooftop bias with this station:
They cite the table with:
The table to its right summarizes a comparison of 12 months of overlapping data that was collected on the rooftop and at the new relocated site (for data continuity), relocated several blocks away at ground level with other nearby standard, ground based stations. A combination of the rooftop and downtown urban siting explain the regular occurrence of extremely warm temperatures. Compared to nearby ground-level instruments and nearby airports and surrounding COOPs, it is clear that a strong warm bias exists, partially because of the rooftop location.
Maximum and minimum temperatures are elevated, especially in the summer. The number of 80 plus minimum temperatures during the one-year of data overlap was 13 on the roof and zero at three surrounding LCD airports, the close by ground-based inner Baltimore harbor site, and all 10 COOPs in the same NCDC climate zone. Eighty-degree minimum are luckily, an extremely rare occurrence in the mid-Atlantic region at standard ground-based stations, urban or otherwise. Temperatures can be elevated on roofs due to the higher solar radiation absorption and re-radiation associated with many roof surfaces including black tar, shingles, stone, and metal. During the colder months, ongoing upward heat transfer through the roof from the heated interior of the building also can contribute to the warm bias although stronger winter winds tend to create better mixing and minimize this impact.
The table shows that the rooftop station has Tmax >90°F more than twice as often as other stations and a Tmax >100°F 13 times where no nearby station achieved it. Similarly we have this station recording a Tmin >80°F where no other stations did.
But here we still find stations just like this in NOAA’s climate monitoring network 11 years after Baltimore’s station was closed for the same reason.
The Carefree Skypark COOP should either be closed, go to rain only, or relocated, as it is not used for airport operations, only for NOAA climate reporting. The station is polluting the climate record. NOAA needs to determine how long this has been going on and if the record is even worth keeping. I doubt it is. Also of note, this station is used to adjust other stations nearby in the “homogenization” process, further polluting the climate record.
I’m looking into doing some longer term data comparisons between the Carefree, AZ AP station and the nearby private observer station. If I’m able to obtaining the data, we’ll have a look in a future post.
Again I close with what I opened with:
The Carefree, AZ Skypark airport, and the airport observer have not done anything wrong. I commend them for their service as a NOAA Cooperative Observer, a volunteer job done for the good of the country. The station was installed by NOAA/NWS Phoenix personnel and it is their responsibility.
UPDATE: A second nearby station has been located, a MESONET station, and it’s high temperature on that day was also considerably lower, 4°F lower than the airport.
Data follows.
08 Jul 7:00 pm 93 49 22 NE 5G13 33 11% OK
08 Jul 6:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 6:45 pm 93 49 22 NE 5G15 33 8% OK
08 Jul 6:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 6:30 pm 95 49 21 E 4G14 93 20% OK
08 Jul 6:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 6:15 pm 99 45 16 E 3G08 93 17% OK
08 Jul 6:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 6:00 pm 100 42 14 SW 3G04 99 16% OK
08 Jul 5:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 5:45 pm 100 42 14 SW 3G08 99 14% OK
08 Jul 5:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 5:30 pm 100 44 15 NNW 3G08 126 16% OK
08 Jul 5:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 5:15 pm 99 45 16 SW 4G10 126 15% OK
08 Jul 5:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 5:00 pm 101 47 16 SSW 4G09 571 63% OK
08 Jul 4:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 4:45 pm 103 45 14 SW 4G15 571 59% OK
08 Jul 4:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 4:30 pm 103 38 11 ENE 4G08 659 64% OK
08 Jul 4:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 4:15 pm 103 38 11 ENE 3G08 659 60% OK
08 Jul 4:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 4:00 pm 100 44 15 SSW 3G13 714 62% OK
08 Jul 3:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 3:45 pm 104 44 13 SW 2G08 714 59% OK
08 Jul 3:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 3:30 pm 103 43 13 SW 4G14 802 64% OK
08 Jul 3:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 3:15 pm 105 42 12 SSW 6G15 802 62% OK
08 Jul 3:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 3:00 pm 101 41 13 SE 6G14 852 63% OK
08 Jul 2:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 2:45 pm 102 47 16 S 5G10 852 62% OK
08 Jul 2:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 2:30 pm 100 42 14 S 5G13 522 37% OK
08 Jul 2:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 2:15 pm 102 44 14 SSE 5G15 522 36% OK
08 Jul 2:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 2:00 pm 100 46 16 SE 2G14 923 63% OK
08 Jul 1:48 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 1:45 pm 101 48 17 S 2G15 923 62% OK
08 Jul 1:33 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 1:30 pm 100 46 16 SSE 6G17 945 63% OK
08 Jul 1:18 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 1:15 pm 99 45 16 SE 4G19 945 63% OK
08 Jul 1:03 pm % 0.00 OK
08 Jul 1:00 pm 99 45 16 ESE 4G10 951 63% OK
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Thank you again Anthony. One can’t make this stuff up, reality is more bizarre than fiction. We are supposed to scrap the world economy to fix this CO2 induced problem.
As has been written more than once, siting the temperature sensors at airports makes perfect sense for the purpose for which they were installed: giving accurate temperature conditions at the airport for the benefit of the pilots flying the airplanes that use the airport.
The fault lies in using those same data for climate studies.
I must check- I thought I read within the past few days that a new network of 50 (approx) weather stations has been established with care in siting the stations across the USA. I recall reading that the data over the next (!) 30 years should give an accurate picture of true climate conditions.
IanM
Don’t forget that nice hot motorcycle parked below either. They throw a tremendous amount of heat when they’re cooling down.
I once worked with a former US Navy jet jockey who had joined the service as an officer cadet straight from high school. He recounted that his first navy flying instructor gave a standard caution to all prospective service pilots;
“Remember that you will be flying aircraft supplied by the lowest tenderer and mostly assembled by high school drop-outs. Do your pre-flight checks as if your life depends on them… they probably do!”
Organisations are as bad as their laziest and most slipshod employee and if management don’t do the checks they should have formulated, nothing of value is acheived. The network of recording stations seems to be an example of how not to do stuff.
Seriuosly, though, with the availability of cell phones with cameras and digital cameras how much time would it take for NOAA to do photo survey of each and every site. It is my guess that within a weeks time, they would now the siting of each and every station. At that point in time, a plan of action could be set forth to re-site all out-of-compliance staions.
Makes perfect sense to me.
First, make sure that you are getting spuriously “reliable” warming data.
Second, enact draconian measures to reduce CO2.
Third, relocate sensors to “standard” sitings and easy as 1,2,3 AGW is solved as temperatures drop the amount that the models say and we are saved!
Don’t know how much it effects the entire temperature record but it makes you wonder. One thing for sure is that it and stations like it make the record high temperatures (day and night all year long) incomparable with old records.
“Also of note, this station is used to adjust other stations nearby in the “homogenization” process, further polluting the climate record.”
Good grief
But they know exactly how much that asphalt is artificially heating the sensor,
so they know exactly how much to adjust for it…
and then they do the “homogenization” process, right?
This really is a joke.
Interesting comment regarding continuous improvement and problem identification. Was at Disney in the spring and overhead either a new employee or an employee working a new process.
They had taken a picture with their phone of a less than perfect feature in the park and were sending it to service/maintenance so it could be repaired. The program they were using apparently identified where the picture was taken in the park provided the maintenance crew a chance to categorize the work and plan it.
Tarmac power:
Say there’s 50,000 square meters of tarmac at the airport. In full sun at solar noon it’s receiving in excess of 1000 watts per square meter. Tarmac only reflects about 10% of that.
So it’s fair to say that temp sensor is situated above a 50 megawatt heater.
The Pepsi vending machine cranks out heat even at night. Mine had the compressor at the bottom and when barefoot, you could feel a fan push out hear 20 degrees hotter than the air around it.
I see the black pavement and am surprised the readings don’t hit 120 degrees at certain times of the day.
More great research. I have a couple of questions and one comment:
Does the airport owned weather station have its own temperature sensor? What is the function of the airport owned weather station–it looks like they only report nearby fields in their AWOS. Are there any instances of airports that have AWOS/ASOS with a different set of equipment that report to the NCDC? It might be interesting to see the differences.
I don’t know if this is helpful, but I found this on the NWS website:
http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=sgx&sid=MACR&num=168&raw=0&dbn=m
Tim
The “rooftop” comments are misleading. It is not at all mounted like the Baltimore rooftop (it’s on the side, not sitting on the rooftop). Temperature measured at that height would be expected to be LOWER, not HIGHER, because it is farther from the surface below it than it should be. Certainly not a good location, but your reasoning is faulty.
REPLY: Normally, yes height would matter, and the extra 1.5 meters would be cooler, However I’ll point out the Baltimore rooftop station was over a tar and gravel roof, not unlike asphalt. In a wind from the SE or E, heat from the airport office roof will transported to the sensor. -A
Not sure if this was an issue here, but here in AZ it is common, very common, for outdoor eating areas to use portable propane heaters in winter to make it possible to use the area when it is cold outside.
Maybe they do here, maybe they don’t, but just pointing that out…
It’s a pity that short-range wireless transmission wasn’t legally available back when these new cable-connected stations were being installed. Then, practicality problems with trenching wouldn’t have forced poor siting. They should have waited until the laws were changed, or agitated for a special exemption using garage-door-opener frequencies, or something. Another case of institutionalized stupidity and short-sightedness.
======
It’s my impression that the gov’t. has site-photos, or was about to ask its sites to send in photos, in response to complaints about siting, but then canceled this data gathering for some reason, probably CYA-related. I also have the impression that it was Tom Karl who issued the cancellation order. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
You’ve overlooked the presence of the motorcycle, probably owned by one of the employees of the station. While relatively brief, the the ambient heat from the running engine plus the exhaust from the bike when it arrives, and when it’s started up to leave, would add extra heat to the area.
To describe this siting as FUBAR is being charitable.
Isn`t this link something worth as a seqence of Moshers artikel about global temperatures? I think its brilliant!
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Temporal stability of global air temperature estimates
Let’s say that there were systematic siting problems that resulted in a cooling bias. Activists would have made a stink about it (“I blame Bush”) and the gov’t. would have relocated them in a jiffy. You know it’s true.
Viewed in that light, the station-siting issue reveals a problem larger than a mildly biased temperature record: an untrustworthy climatological establishment. I.e., if they’re willing to overlook systematic bias in this matter, why not in other climatological matters as well? Why should we trust ANY of their data or inferences? We don’t need no stinking weathermen.
Anthony, Do you routinely report bad sites, such as this one, to NOAA?
REPLY: Yes, I sent this to WSO Phoenix, plus that I get dozens of hits per day from throughout NOAA, NWS, NCDC. They know. -A
As a pilot I wonder how many such stations report bogus weather information I might use in my flight plan. Density altitude becomes rather important for a number of flight calculations – this is pathetic and probably criminal. But exactly what I expect of government.
As IanM correctly notes above, the pilots who use the airport are perfectly happy with temperature sensors which show the effects of asphalt heating.
Their lives depend upon safely loading light aircraft for ambient conditions.
If you estimate field temperature and use that to calculate the safe load and operating conditions of your aircraft, and your temperature estimate is high, you are safe.
If you estimate field temperature too low, you could die.
If I were a pilot at the airport, I’d mount the temperature sensor exactly as shown.
As has been noted many times here at WUWT, its just too bad that climate measurement and flight safety are at crossed purposes.
I hope that there will, in the future, be a separation of these two types of temperature recording systems.
I can understand the usefulness of reading the max and min temperatures of the day for statistical pourposes.
I don’t really figure out how that two daily parameteres could really be useful in the AGW arena.
A daily integral of them computed as (Tmax+Tmin)/2 can’t be in any manner used to establish any causal relation to the CO2 concentration.
It sounds like to guess the winner of a Formula One grand prix using the fastest speed for the prediction.
For example, in last Silverstone race Fernando Alonso scored the fastest lap and his Ferrari’s team fellow Felipe Massa scored the 2nd fastest lap, but they finished that race only 14th and 15th (sigh).
Why is it that when people use this type of stuff to deny Global Warming, they fail to account for why correctly placed sensors still show an average increase in temperature?
In fact, all the sensors show anomalies in degree offset from the ‘norm’… So even if the temperature were to be 2 degrees higher, there would still be a noticeable upswing.
Do I deny that government will not try to take advantage of controlling Carbon emissions? No… Chances are they will. People should focus on this rather than trying to disprove data that shows our species is changing the environment. It’s ridiculous to think this is not possible. A major misunderstanding of science is rampant in these circles. People that claim that C02 isn’t capable of warming the atmosphere, etc. I can prove otherwise though a simple highschool experiment.
REPLY: You haven’t a clue about what you are writing about. Of 1067 stations surveyed in the USA (of 1221 in NOAA’s USHCN climate network) Only 1 in 10 of such sensors in the USA meet siting requirements, see http://www.surfacesattions.org With that sort of widespread FUBAR, how can we ” fail to account for why correctly placed sensors”. Nobody is “denying” anything. But the data they produce is most certainly suspect. – A
Hi Anthony,
Did you notice how fresh is the asphalt, and the white lines drawn on it ?
Could it be that the record is simply measuring how hot can be those big asphalt machines ?
By the way, I made a short french translation of this article in http://www.lepost.fr/article/2010/07/14/2152011_encore-un-record-de-temperature-entierement-fait-de-main-d-homme.html
We called it “garbage in, garbage out” in the olden days. So, even assuming the model was not gabage itself, the poor quality of the input data, again assuming the data were not manipulated to compound the problem, would compromise validity of the results. Again, though, we are picking at fly droppings since the entire basis of the AGW theory is flawed by the causation problem and lack of true scientific methodology and statistical validity.
We need to emphasize the socio-economic penalties we will all pay if these people succeed in implementing their plans to “fix” our environment. Particular emphasis upon how severe their proposed policies will impact the “poor” for whom the progressives weep in all of their fake care for the little people of the world. For instance, they have done a great job of killing thousands of Third World folks with their ellimination of DDT.