From the “we told you so time and again department”, Canadian weather data is a mess. It took an FOIA to get the “fess up” out in the open. Anybody got a copy of the EC report? So far all we have is press reports.
See our WUWT report below, it isn’t just Canada that is in the red with poor data. Though you can see a vast swath of red and lots of missing grey area in Canada.
GISS & METAR – dial “M” for missing minus signs: it’s worse than we thought
From the Financial Post
Sustained cuts to Environment Canada weather-service programs have compromised the government’s ability to assess climate change and left it with a “profoundly disturbing” quality of information in its data network, says a newly released internal government report.
“The common assumption among users is that the data has been observed accurately, checked for mistakes and stored properly,” said the report, printed in June 2008. “It is profoundly disturbing to discover the true state of our climate data network and the data we offer to ourselves and the real world.”
The stinging assessment, obtained through an access-to-information request, suggests that Canada’s climate network infrastructure is getting progressively worse and no longer meets international guidelines.
Key findings in the report:
• Automatic precipitation sensors are subject to significant and well-known errors, which have significantly compromised the integrity of Canada’s precipitation data;
• National coverage of certain climate elements, such as hours of bright sunshine, have been effectively terminated;
• Human quality control of climate data ceased as of April 1, 2008. Automated quality control is essentially non-existent. There is no program in place to prevent erroneous data from entering the national climate archive;
• Climate data, which could be gathered at minimal additional cost, is not being gathered due to lack of funds;
• Climate data, which could be gathered with minimal additional effort, is not being gathered due to lack of personnel;
• Some existing data, which needs to be interpreted and processed before being placed into the national archive, is being ignored due to lack of resources;
• A significant portion of the volunteer climate network will likely be lost due to a decision on the part of the Meteorological Service of Canada to discontinue processing paper forms and to emphasize electronic input;
• Clients of Environment Canada (both internal and external) cannot obtain the information they need. This has significant implications for programs carried out by all levels of government, the private sector and the international scientific community; and
• Lack of resources and delayed quality control of climate data have resulted in updates of Intensity/Duration/Frequency curves that proceed in fits and starts. Systematic and regular updates are desired by the engineering community in order to design public infrastructure (roads, buildings, sewers) that will be able to cope with severe storms and phenomena associated with changing climate.
• These issues are widely recognized by staff within the department, and are becoming increasingly obvious to outside partners and clients, damaging morale within and credibility outside the department.
Source: Degradation in Environment Canada’s Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage. June 2008.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m dumbstruck. If a country of Canada’s standing is in this much mess, do we dare even lift the lid to look at the quality of some countries’ data?
Since the temperatures have flat-lined since 1998, it’s expedient to let the measurements slide until they start up again.
At first blush, this sounds like the usual complaint that the evil government cut some of our funding, so now we cannot possibly accomplish any of the work we really, really want to do, so give us more money and everything will be wonderful again.
As a Canadian I am excited – Environment Canada has been in bed with Gore, Ignatieff etc for too long. Perhaps the much needed improvements will be forthcoming now.
The worse the data, the faster the warming.
The US and Europe have the best data in the world and even before correcting for UHI have essentially no warming.
Africa and the poles have the worst data and – surprise surprise – the fastest warming.
OMG, it’s worse than we thought!
Oh wait, it isn’t.
Perhaps this is the way forward, or rather the way out. Blame the data gatherers (volunteer and otherwise) and exit quietly through the side door of “insuffficient data” over the coming decade.
Of course gridding, anomolies, and teleconnection will save you – except you’ll be asked if that’s your IQ or your shoe size if you bring that sort of thing up once the exit has begun.
Canada has the best quality climate data in the world. His name is Steve McIntyre.
Eureka!
Ecotretas
Well, what else can you expect when budgets have been cut to the bone? Maybe this report will spur Parliament into providing a decent level of funding to Environment Canada.
I’m sure we have somewhere that can retrieve the situation with ‘value added’ quality. I’ll think of it in a minute.
I’d be happy with using this to force Hansen to pull Canada entirely out of his homogenization manipulations.
Who cares about REAL data anymore?, science as usual is better and btw one doesn’t get cold out there!. Lack of funding is right, productivity increases as they direct those funds to a few of cooperative researchers.
mikelorrey says:
August 23, 2010 at 2:26 pm
They are used to ask for homogenized massages.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
August 23, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Well, what else can you expect when budgets have been cut to the bone? Maybe this report will spur Parliament into providing a decent level of funding to Environment Canada.
———————————————
Cut to the bone?.
Take a look here:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/gc-sc/Index.cfm?lang=en&state=reports
So all that GISS and NOAA red in Canada is the result of a crumbling infrastructure?
How many other places have gone silent, but as of yet undiscovered?
The Southern Oceans turn up with major gaps, the Antarctic has poor coverage, and now Canada falls to pieces.
If major cooling is sneaking up on us, we’ll be the last to know. Sounds like a disaster is already in place, just add an event and stir.
Good Grief !!!
It might be time to privatize this department. We should stop providing this information for free. If people want to make money off of weather data (forcasting for the news, planning for future events etc.) they should nave to pay for it not the taxpayer.
Ecotretas,
No, Eureka has significant UHI.
I was a forecast meteorologist with Environment Canada for many years and I still to contract forecasting. The issue of degradation of the weather observing network in Canada is definitely a large issue. All of the key findings in the report have been concerns of forecasters for many years. Funding cuts started to really take their toll in the mid-nineties. Many, if not most, reporting stations were converted to automatic with little or no human intervention. Meteorologists are not sure if there is any quality control of data now. We know of numerous systematic errors and do not know what happens with them. I will give you an example that we always find amusing. In one location where it is often very windy, the wind will activate the precipitation sensor. So when the wind starts to really blow the station will begin reporting rain. Generally the weather condition under such a scenario is sunny and dry. Does this bad precipitation data make it into the database,…we don’t know. Another funny example is when it gets real hot and the heat coming off an airport tarmac interferes with the visibility sensors, which start reporting drizzle. The radio broadcasters do not know any of these problems and you often hear them advertising the hot temperature along with drizzle in some areas.
I could go one at great length with many of the problems with the automatic stations. These concerns have been brought forth to government officials many times, but there is no will to improve. In fact, more cutbacks are usually done. There was a time when a forecaster could call the observing station and talk to a real live person if they suspected an error in the observation. Those days are mostly gone.
The interesting additional aspect to all the cutbacks is that many of the forecasts are now automated. So you have automated data (which may have errors) input for automated forecasts, which ingest this data and produce erroneous forecasts. Kind of like a closed loop with no human intervention.
The point about clients not being able to obtain the information they need is certainly valid. It is hard to even talk to a meteorologist any more, there is little public access. In a lot of cases the meteorologists are just not able to access data like they used to. We have an inside saying “Due to technological advancements we are no longer able to provide you with that information”.
PaulH says:
August 23, 2010 at 1:57 pm
At first blush, this sounds like the usual complaint that the evil government cut some of our funding, so now we cannot possibly accomplish any of the work we really, really want to do, so give us more money and everything will be wonderful again.
———-
Agree entirely. Once the conservatives came into power, the science alarm-bells began ringing about an anti-science government that would fail to support science at the level which it deserves. The miracle is that this report did not emerge earlier! Who made the request for information?
This document leaves me wondering how far back the problems go? Do they predate the Conservative minority government, and if so, why is no indication given as to the approximate dates of the emergence of the different problems? How far back is data-quality compromised? More context is needed before this can be fitted into the climate ‘science’ and alarmism narrative.
Sounds like an appeal for more funding. They clearly need more money for more [personnel] advocates to skew [interpret] data than is currently available.
Research suggests their current “lack of resources and delayed quality control of climate data” has obviously led to an unsustainable drought of media-worthy catastrophism. The resulting data-stress is having an impact on the employment diversity required to maintain the recycling of their departmental grants.
Everyone should click on that link to the dial “M” piece. It’s long and well worth the read (or reread) as it shows how errors creep into the data. It’s one of the better pieces that’s been done on WUWT.
“Don’t bother me with reality; what I’m looking for is a good fantasy!”–Environment Canada.
Could this be a trial balloon to prevent any committment to an accord in Cancun?
MaxL says: “Another funny example is when it gets real hot and the heat coming off an airport tarmac interferes with the visibility sensors, which start reporting drizzle. ”
Yes, but the unfunny thing is the temperature sensor reading high from “the heat coming off an airport tarmac “.
A pound to a penny that this is not corrected for.