I’ve reposted this here in entirety with permission from Pierre Gosselin of “No Tricks Zone“, and it is well worth the read. Much of this work was inspired by posts that have appeared on WUWT. Ed Caryl has done a great job pulling various threads of info together. One generally doesn’t think of any Arctic circle outposts as being “urban” but the fact is that islands of humanity, essentially small towns, surround many of these stations. And in the Arctic, you produce a lot of energy (which has to go somewhere) or you die. What I find most interesting is the plot of “isolated” stations versus the Atlantic Meridonial Oscillation (AMO); a clear correlation of the driver for those temperatures.. – Anthony
By guest writer Ed Caryl
Arctic stations near heat sources show warming over the last century. Arctic stations that are isolated from manmade heat sources show no warming. The plots of “isolated stations” and “urban stations” below clearly illustrate the differences.
Stevenson Screen, Verhojansk, Russia
All the GISS temperature anomaly maps show the Arctic warming faster than the rest of the globe, especially northern Alaska and Siberia, but the satellite data shows a different pattern. See the 2 charts for 2009 that follow. The GISS surface map:
Satellite chart:
The baseline period selected for the GISS surface temperature chart is the 1933 to 1963 Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) warm period. This period more closely matches today’s temperatures than the default 1951 to 1980 cool period that GISS uses. The satellite data uses the average over the satellite period since 1979, the modern warm period.
The satellite data show cooling in central Siberia, similar to the surface anomaly map, and very little warming for most of Alaska. It also shows cooling for the Antarctic Peninsula, where the surface map shows warming. But there is a scattering of hot grid squares across the HISS surface station map for the Arctic. So what is going on?
I selected the stations that correspond to those warm grid squares, as well as other stations in the same latitudes. In this age of everyone carrying a camera posting all photos on the Internet, there is a lot of information available on these stations. For some I could locate the Stevenson screens, for most I’ve found pictures of the surroundings, while others have investigated many of these sites already, and so links to that research are included. I downloaded the raw temperature data from GISS for 24 stations closest to the North Pole, which are all classified as “rural”.
“Urban” Arctic Stations
Contrary to GISS claims, many of these stations are actually not “rural” with respect to their siting quality. Many are at airports associated with sizable towns or research stations with sizable staff and infrastructure. In the Arctic, any town of more than a few families can be a large heat source. In the case of many towns in Russian Siberia, “central heating” takes on a whole new meaning. These towns have a central power plant that provides electricity and steam heat to the whole town. Large pipes, both insulated and un-insulated, carry steam, water, and sewage, up and down the streets to and from each dwelling. These pipes cannot be buried because of the permafrost, so they are elevated, and at street crossings are elevated 4 or 5 meters. The temperature differential between these pipes and the surrounding air can be 140° C in winter, and even more for a pressurized system.
But GISS applies the same Urban Heat Island (UHI) criteria to all stations globally, regardless of the latitude or average temperature. They look at the satellite night brightness and population to judge whether urban or rural. By GISS criteria, all the stations in the high Arctic are rural; there are no corrections for UHI.
But let’s look at each of these “urban” locations. Each name is also a link to the GISS surface temperature raw data.
List of Urban Arctic Stations (see the annex at the end of this post for details on each station)
1. Kotzebue, Ral (66.9 N,162.6 W), Alaska
2. Barrow/W. Pos (71.3 N,156.8 W) Alaska
3. Inuvik (68.3N, 133.5W) Inuvik, Canada
4. Cambridge Bay (69.1 N,105.1 W) Nunavut, Canada
5. Eureka, N.W.T. (80.0 N,85.9 W), Canada
6. Nord Ads (81.6 N,16.7 W Northeast Greenland
7. Svalbard Luft (78.2 N,15.5 E), Norway
8. Isfjord Radio (78.1 N,13.6 E), Norway
9. Gmo Im.E.T.(80.6 N,58.0 E), Russia
10. Olenek (68.5 N,112.4 E), Russia
11. Verhojansk (67.5 N,133.4 E), Russia
12. Cokurdah (70.6 N,147.9 E), Russia
13. Zyrjanka (65.7 N, 150.9 E), Russia
14. Mys Smidta (68.9 N,179.4 W), Russia
15. Mys Uelen (66.2 N,169.8 W), Russia
The following graphic is a temperature chart for 10 of the above stations (5 of the shorter ones were left out to avoid over-crowding). All are warming, some faster than others. Barrow, for which we have the UHI study, is not the fastest warming.
Temperature trends of the “urban” stations.
Isolated Stations
Now let us look at the isolated stations, which are located at similar latitudes like the above “urban” stations. One important thing to note about these isolated stations – there is limited electrical power, and so incandescent light bulbs in the Stevenson screens is unlikely. Detailed descriptions of these stations are listed in the annex at the end of this report.
16. Alert,N.W.T.(82.5 N,62.3 W), Canada
17. Resolute,N.W. (74.7 N,95.0 W), Canada
18. Jan Mayen (70.9 N,8.7 W), Canada
19. Gmo Im.E. K. F (77.7 N, 104.3 E), Tamyr Peninsula, Russia
20. Ostrov Dikson (73.5 N,80.4 E, Russia
21. Ostrov Kotel’ (76.0 N,137.9 E), Russia
22. Mys Salaurova (73.2 N,143.2 E), Russia
23. Ostrov Chetyr (70.6 N,162.5 E), Russia
24. Ostrov Vrange (71.0 N,178.5 W) , Russia
Now here is the chart of the temperatures of these isolated stations, not subjected to manmade structures or heat sources.
Isolated Stations
Note that most of the trends are flat or decreasing. Only Resolute and Ostrov Vrange are increasing slightly. Both of those might be slightly influenced by UHI. The longest records clearly show warming in the late 1930’s and 40’s, and cooling in the 1960’s, and none show a hockey stick. The GISS data for Alert ends in 1991, though the weather station is still there, and still reporting. Data for Mys Salaurova and Ostrov Chetyr also ends at about that time, probably due to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Here is an average of all the isolated stations:
Isolated Stations – Average
Note that the peak-to-peak trend is nearly zero. The linear trend is about 0.4°C/century, but the R2 value (the statistical significance for the trend) is very low, 0.023.
Here is a plot of the AMO versus the average temperature of the isolated stations.
The temperature as measured at stations isolated from any UHI is simply tracking the AMO.
Looks like an awfully good fit. There is very little, if any, global warming. We need to wait until the bottom of the next AMO cycle to get a decent reading of global temperature change. That will be in about 2050 if the AMO cycles as it has since 1850.
———————————————————————————————-
Annex – station descriptions
The “urban” stations, nos. 1-15
1. Kotzebue, Ral (66.9 N,162.6 W),
2. Barrow/W. Pos (71.3 N,156.8 W)
These towns are of similar size, and are growing at the same rate. In 1940, both towns had a population of 400. In 1980 both had just over 2000 population, and now they both have over 3000 people. Both have airports of sufficient size to handle multi-engine turboprop and small jet aircraft, and both are served daily by regional airlines. Kotzebue is on a peninsula and the airport is across the middle of the peninsula, somewhat restricting the growth of the town. Barrow has somewhat the same problem due to a series of small ponds around the town and the airport. Barrow was studied for UHI effects in 2003. That paper was in the International Journal of Climatology here. That paper describes the UHI average temperature increase in winter as 2.2°C compared to the surrounding hinterland. GISS data indicates that Barrow average temperature has increased over the years as population has increased. (See below, or click on link above.)
Barrow, AK
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BRW-g.jpg
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OTZ-g.jpg
The Barrow NWS station (Stevenson Screen) is here. On the airport picture, it is at the base of the rotating beacon tower. Kotzebue NWS station is not visible in published pictures.
Inuvik is a relatively new town, begun in 1954. The population as of 2006 has grown to about 3500 people. Because it is a “planned” community in the arctic, built on permafrost, the water and sewage infrastructure is above ground in heated and insulated “utilidors”, like the heating systems in Siberia. The weather station, from weather reports, Google Earth and Google Street View, appears to be at the airport, in a compound just north of the entrance.
4. Cambridge Bay (69.1 N,105.1 W), Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada
There is a Wikipedia picture of Cambridge Bay here. The population has grown from just a few people in the 1940’s to about 1500 today. It also has an airport with daily regional airline service.
5. Eureka, N.W.T. (80.0 N,85.9 W), Eureka, N. W. T., Canada
There are the only four stations at or north of 80° latitude, Eureka, Alert, Nord and Krenkle (Gmo. I.M.ET). Only Eureka has an unbroken temperature record to the present date, and it begins in 1947. The population at Eureka has
Eureka station
never been high. In winter it has always been 4 or 5 men. In summer, the population increases to as high as 20. The station infrastructure though, has expanded through the years. Each year, some of those 20 workers add or expand buildings. In the beginning, it was one or two buildings, with water and sewage handled in tanks and barrels internal to the buildings. The Stevenson screen was originally placed where the blue New Main Complex building is now. When that was built, the Meteorological instruments were moved to the current location. Over time, the water supply, plumbing, and sewage treatment was upgraded and the outfall pipe installed. It, of course, must be heated to facilitate flow to the sewage lagoon. All the water pipes exposed to the outdoors must be heated to prevent freezing.
Image from a recent article by Anthony Watts on WUWT here.
6. Nord Ads (81.6 N,16.7 W, Northeast Greenland
Nord Station
Nord is the furthest north inhabited place on earth, on the Northeast coast of Greenland. It was built in the period from 1952 to 1956 as an emergency airfield for aircraft operating out of Thule. Access is impossible by sea because the sea ice never moves away from the coast there. Legend has it that “Blowtorch” Murphy, a mythic arctic construction worker, scraped the first runway, using a parachute dropped caterpillar tractor after he himself parachuted onto the site. His nickname came from his habit of wearing a lit blowtorch hanging from his waistband on a wire; a lit blowtorch being somewhat useful when working outside when it’s 40° below zero.
There are about 40 buildings at Nord. Not all of them are continuously heated, but those near the Stevenson Screen are. The winter population is 5 or 6 men. More pictures here.
7. Svalbard Luft (78.2 N,15.5 E)
8. Isfjord Radio (78.1 N,13.6 E)
These two stations are only 47 kilometers apart. But data for both is fragmentary for 1976 and 1977, and there is no overlap. Svalbard Luft (airport) has been discussed on WUWT here and here, so I won’t cover it in detail here. Warwick Hughes has an article on Isfjord Radio here that makes the case for warming of Isfjord Radio due to moving of sea ice away from the islands in summer since 1912. Neither station in Svalbard shows on the anomaly map because there was no common station in both the base period and the anomaly period. Here’s a map with 1998 to 2008 as the base period where Svalbard appears.
This is the Krenkel meteorological station on Hayes Island, or Ostrov Kheysa in Russian, in the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, Russia. Link The station has been moved or re-built twice since it was established. It was moved from Hooker Island (article in German) in 1957/58. A fire destroyed the power station in 2000, and it was rebuilt in 2004 closer to the shoreline. The GISS record is from 1958 with a gap from 2001 to 2009. The population was as high as 200 during Soviet times, but is down to 4 or 5 now. The population and the temperature seem to track roughly during Soviet days, and the move in 2004 was to a warmer location. In the picture you can see the old buildings on the ridge in the distance. The red grid-square on the anomaly map above corresponds to this station.
Source: http://www.sevmeteo.ru/foto/15/88.shtml
This is the town of Ust’-Olenek, Russia.
The town doesn’t look like much, but notice the Tundra Buggies parked next to the Stevenson Screens. It is on the Laptev Sea, on the northern Siberia Coast, but on a peninsula on a south-facing beach. The buildings are right on the shore. The wide view above was taken from out on the ice. This is one of the few places in Russia that the Google Earth satellite view actually has enough resolution to see the Stevenson Screens. They are much too close to the heated building.
11. Verhojansk (67.5 N,133.4 E)
This is one of the “centrally heated” towns in Russian Siberia. The picture at the top of this article is of the Stevenson Screen. Verhojansk is called the “cold pole” of the earth, but the measurements are too warm by far. Look closely at the picture. Any photographer will note that the warm glow inside the Stevenson Screen is just the color temperature of an incandescent light bulb. If the steam heat in the town isn’t enough, or the cattle in the pole-barns in the distance, the heat from the light bulb will warm up the measurements. This site was covered on WUWT here and here. Anthony Watts notes that warm anomalies would appear and disappear in this part of Russia “as if a switch were thrown”. Could it be as simple as the switch on that light bulb?
Also spelled Chokurdakh. The population has been dropping in recent years, but was still over 2500 people in 2002. The town is sandwiched between the Indigirka River and the airport. There is no way to tell where the Stevenson Screen is located, but the infrastructure at the airport blends right into the town. See an aerial photo here.
13. Zyrjanka (65.7 N, 150.9 E) Also spelled Zyryanka, another steam-heated town in eastern Siberia, well inland. The airport is in this picture on the north edge of town, along the Kolyma riverbank. This airfield was built during WWII as a stop for aircraft being ferried to the Soviet Union from Alaska. A second airport 7 miles west of town was probably built during the cold war for the military. The town was established in 1931. The population is currently about 3500. During the Soviet Union it was up to 15,000.
14. Mys Smidta (68.9 N,179.4 W)
Or Cape Schmidt. John Daly wrote a bit about this location in 2000 (scroll way down in the article). The population was nearly 5000 in 1989, but has dropped since the fall of the Soviet Union. The population now is probably less than 1000. It is on the north coast of eastern Siberia, nearly at 180° longitude. The airbase there was built in 1954 as a staging base for any bombers headed for the U. S. It is still used by a regional airline.
15. Mys Uelen (66.2 N,169.8 W)
Or Cape Uelen. This is on the easternmost tip of Siberia, across Bering Strait from Kotzebue, Alaska. The current population is about 700 people. It is also centrally steam heated. The town is restricted by the geography, on a narrow spit sticking out into the sea, backed by a cliff on the landward side. The airport is a helipad. Cargo and fuel arrives by barge in the summer.
Below is a temperature chart for many of the above stations. All are warming, some faster than others. Barrow, for which we have the UHI study, is not the fastest warming.
16. Alert,N.W.T.(82.5 N,62.3 W), Alert, Canada
Alert, Canada has had a weather station since 1951. The population has never been more than 4 or 5 in the winter, with a higher population in the summer. I could not definitively locate the Stevenson screen, but there are two possibilities in this photo, both well away from the buildings.
THE ISOLATED STATIONS, NOS. 16-24
17. Resolute,N.W. (74.7 N,95.0 W)
The population of this Canadian station rose from zero prior to 1947, to 229 in 2006. There is an airport here, and the Stevenson Screen can be seen across the aircraft parking area from the airport terminal at the left edge of the photo.
Pictures of the station are here, and a web site is here. The 18 people on the island live at Olonkinbyen, or Olonkin “City”. The meteorological station is 2.6 km away. The 4 people that work there live in Olonkin City. The Stevenson Screen appears to be well away from the station building, and the surroundings have probably not changed since the station was built.
19. Gmo Im.E. K. F (77.7 N, 104.3 E)
This is a Russian station on the Tamyr Peninsula at Cape Chelyuskin (Mys Chelyuskin). Nothing is visible at that location on the Google satellite view, but the resolution is very low. I found an article by Warwick Hughes dated September 2000 that speaks of cooling of the Tamyr Peninsula here. He also talks about “non-climate” warming of Verhojansk and Olenek.
20. Ostrov Dikson (73.5 N,80.4 E
Dikson, Russia airfield
This is Dickson Island in English. There is a town of Dikson 10 kilometers away on the mainland. The airport is on Dikson Island at the point called Ostrov Dikson on the map below. Pictures of the airport can be seen here. The town is pictured on this 1965 stamp.
Wikipedia link
21. Ostrov Kotel’ (76.0 N,137.9 E)
The full name is Ostrov Kotel’nyy. In English this is Kettle Island. The first documented explorer found a copper kettle, so obviously he was not the first person to find the island. A single building is barely visible on Google 3D mapsat the “settlement” known as Kalinina. This may be the meteorological station. No other signs of civilization can be seen on the whole island.
22. Mys Salaurova (73.2 N,143.2 E)
This also spelled Mys Shalaurova. The station is on the south-facing shore of an island and is visible on Google Earth here. There is a tide gauge, and the tide data is on that same page.
23. Ostrov Chetyr (70.6 N,162.5 E)
The full name is Ostrov Chetyrekhstolbovoy. This is a small island in the East Siberian Sea in the Medvezhy Island (Bear Island) group.
Map source here.
A description of the place is found: here. “A polar meteorological station and a radio station are situated on the shore of a small bay which indents the S side of the island.”
24. Ostrov Vrange (71.0 N,178.5 W)
This is otherwise known as Wrangle Island. It is about 125 kilometers off the Siberian coast on the 180th meridian. The weather station is at Ushakovskiy on a spit at Rogers Bay, at the right in this picture, well separated from the village. One building in the village is visible at the left. Link
The population in the village grew to as many as 180 people in the 1980’s, but when the Soviet Union dissolved, subsidies declined and the population moved to the mainland. The last villager was killed by a polar bear in 2003. The population at the weather station, when occupied, has always been 4 or 5.
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Well well well
looki what I found at Noaa
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/download/reliability-of-us-temp-record-central-region-meeting.ppt
hmm. its got todays date. I though I saw this before.
Hey Mosh,
It isn’t like he was going to submit this to Nature. The essay is exploratory and is meant as to shine light on the issues of Arctic stations, and it brings up a host of legitimate points and observations that need to be looked into. It’s a launching pad.
Perhaps the professional way of doing this would be to send an e-mail, and not barge and shoot off as Mr. Peer Reviewer.
The real analysis is still a ways down the road.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
September 22, 2010 at 10:58 am
A self refuting post! All you have to do look at the sat map to see that there is substantial high latitude warming.
A self refuting comment!
All you have to do is look at the sat map to see that it is for 2009 only.
J. Knight says: “Al, Ada and Pauls Valley are in Oklahoma, not Texas.”
I guess being a proud resident of second largest state in the US, I must be considering all adjacent territories as Texas as well. My bad. 🙂 But I also have examples of opposite trends near Canadian border, when I tried to reproduce the Hansen-Lebedeff correlations.
Ed,
Prof. Ole Humlum’s site http://www.climate4you.com/ has a page specifically on UHI and has a series of studies on Longyearbyen (Svalbard) that is worth looking at.
It shows very well the effect of proximity to the open ocean warming the temperatures in Winter, as well as the effect of weather, town and airport.
Steven Mosher
Yes, the base periods are different. No argument. But they are analogous. There is no satellite data before 1979, as you know. So I looked for an earlier period where the surface temperatures were similar. Note that the cooling spots on both maps are quite similar.
The average for the isolated stations was done by first normalizing each data set to the average temperature for all. This makes the “ends” where not all stations have data, a bit “noisy”, but it allows averaging without distortion.
I’ve read here on WUWT a couple of times — but I can’t remember the places — that soot has caused snow to melt, removing its insulating effect and exposing the tundra to the sun. FWIW, here are a couple of WUWT-post extracts about the effect of soot on Arctic ice:
Steven mosher says:
September 22, 2010 at 12:17 pm
So, what you need to do with this nice start is the following: …
I’m sure Ed Caryl will be very grateful for your lecture.
Satellites do not go back to 1933. Ed didn’t use the GISS 1950-1980 GISS baseline because that was a cool AMO phase. So he took the 1933-63 (warm AMO) period as a rough comparison to show that GISS probably is too warm.
Of course the 1979 -present satellite shows its warmer – right in line with the AMO trend. Who is disputing that?
Then he compared a set of rural stations with a set of “urban” stations and found there’s a difference. The methodology of selection is very important at later stages, but not so much when one is only in the process of forming a hypothesis – rough selection is where one starts out.
I don’t know anyone who forms a preliminary hypothesis using exact methodology. The first step is simple observation, which is what Ed has done. Are we not free to observe, and develop a hypothesis? And then look more closely, (which would be the next step)?
Let me guess,
Judging by the apparent color Temperature (as rendered on my screen), I presume that that Stevenson Screen “Owl Box” contains the same kind of 2800 Kelvin Long Wave Infra Red Radiation source that is used in those lab and 4-H club demonstrations of how CO2 heats the atmosphere.
But why don’t they place it outside the box, so that it can warm the local atmosphere, instead of the thermocouple inside the Owl Box ?
P Gosselin says:
September 22, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Hey Mosh,
It isn’t like he was going to submit this to Nature. The essay is exploratory and is meant as to shine light on the issues of Arctic stations, and it brings up a host of legitimate points and observations that need to be looked into. It’s a launching pad.
Perhaps the professional way of doing this would be to send an e-mail, and not barge and shoot off as Mr. Peer Reviewer.
The real analysis is still a ways down the road.
##############
P.
where possible I always choose to make my comments in public. All knowledge is a work in progress, and I dont hold prior mistakes against myself or against others. a mistake is just a mistake. everybody makes them. It’s only when we pass into the realm of politics and religion and love affairs where people seem to want to hold onto them. I prefer things open.
In any case, I think the approach of looking at sites has merit.
HOWEVER, the method must be sound. There is a little tidbit I got from an Oke paper that might change the way people look at urban/rural.
basically, UHI is modulated by the surrounding rural environment.
Like so: city A has rural surroundings B. City X has rural surrounding ~B.
the UHI you see in A will differ from the UHI you see in X because the UHI effect
is driven by the urban landscape AND specific characteristics is the rural landscape
surrounding it.
Interested folks probably know the Oke paper I am talking about.
My last comment directed at Mr Peer Riviewer wannabe.
It’s not like Ed is funded, has a scientific laboratory that’s equipped with a super mainframe to get the right answer right off the bat. I think using just the resources of PC and a lot of time in the internet he did a pretty damn good impressive job getting this started on this. That merits a lot of credit. I hope other readers here will not be deterred in investigating and forming hypotheses of their own.
I guess there are people out there will always dump.
Ed Caryl says:
September 22, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Steven Mosher
Yes, the base periods are different. No argument. But they are analogous. There is no satellite data before 1979, as you know. So I looked for an earlier period where the surface temperatures were similar. Note that the cooling spots on both maps are quite similar.
###############
the point is if a climate scientist tried to argue that way ( “analogous”) we would be all over them for being imprecise. Point being, you have to be more rigorous than those you criticize. Anyways, now you would have to show that they are in fact “similar” how similar? what is the rms? etc etc.
“The average for the isolated stations was done by first normalizing each data set to the average temperature for all. This makes the “ends” where not all stations have data, a bit “noisy”, but it allows averaging without distortion.”
to prove there is no distortion
you should take the anomaly approach. further you regressed a line through points
with different variances. I’m assuming that your annual regression was done on the average for each year, you dont say. But if you have “noisy” ends and you supress that noise by doing an average and then regress on the average, you are not exactly showing the trend in the data, you are fitting a line to an average yearly figure.
“”” Maud Kipz says:
September 22, 2010 at 9:08 am
the R^2 value (the statistical significance for the trend) is very low, 0.023
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. The R^2 value is a measure of linear dependence between two (random) variables, and nothing more. A trend with extremely high significance may still have a low R^2 if the trend is non-linear or if the observations are noisy. “””
All of which is very nice; as are the computations of any other (completely fictional) branch of Mathematics.
But NONE of it, establishes ANY Physical cause and effect relationship.
You can carry out the very same statistical analysis on the numbers in your local telephone directory; and derive the same quantities; and it still means nothing; unless the average telephone number in the book, happens to be your telephone number.
Steve Mosher 2.15
Yes, of course you’re right. That’s the next step. Ed’s work should be viewed as a first step in the process. So admit it. His work merits a lot of credit, and that it’s a good start.
Of course, the next step is to do it scientifically. Can you fund him?
Therefore the existing grid is _undersampled_ (by my estimations at least 100X)
So we would need over 120,000 stations? That’s a lot of stations.
Ed Caryl,
Appreciate your post. It was readable and logically constructed.
Thanks for helping my longish continuing education.
John
Ed
If you want to compare apples to apples, you need to select Giss base period to
1979-2009.
Then compare with the UAH
Giss average is .25C that is 2009 is .25C warmer than the average of all years from 1979-2009. UAH looks to match quite well if you do the analysis correctly.
your alaska hotspot vanishes
the cool spot in siberia matches
the cool spot in canada matches.
hot spot in africa matches
warm antarctic matches
cool patch south of south america.
Any you have to be careful because you are looking at TWO different measures
SST+Land
versus
Trop temperatures,
################
But still you do see that the spatial field displays coherence ( which why people who think undersampling is an issue dont get it. thats been studied to death. In the US, you need 600 stations to capture a climate trend of .05C per decade.. ) Folks can look up the station density studies conducted to size the CRN and the new modernized network if they think otherwise.. no links go look for yourself)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=0112&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1979&base2=2009&radius=1200&pol=reg
P>
“I don’t know anyone who forms a preliminary hypothesis using exact methodology. The first step is simple observation, which is what Ed has done. Are we not free to observe, and develop a hypothesis? And then look more closely, (which would be the next step)?”
the problem is its misleading. if you do the analysis the correct way you would put Giss on the SAME base period as the satillite. 1979-2009. Then you would look at the two maps for 2009.
When you do this, as I just posted, you see there is no problem to explain in 2009.
Now, the UHI analysis has issues of its own, mathematical and methodological.
So does the AMO analysis.
I dont buy everything that comes out of climate science unless I can check it myself and unless the analysis makes sense and is done in a clear replicable way. why would I suddenly change that ethic just because i happen to agree with the conclusions.
is UHI a problem? yup. is this the best way to show it? Nope. will we get better understandings by critcicizing each others work. yep, unless people insist I wear kid gloves. which I wont, so dont bother asking. for me this is just about numbers. no hard feelings and no pulling of punches even for friends or people I agree with. Sorry.
Stevensen screen showing in the picture on this website for Alert, Canada:
http://gaw.empa.ch/gawsis/reports.asp?StationID=61
http://gaw.empa.ch/gawsis/images/sites/61.jpg
But apparently the station operating from 1985 to present used thermistors:
http://gaw.empa.ch/gawsis/reports.asp
Meteorological Service of Canada sponsors the temperature measurements, I don’t know if GISS incorporates them.
Steven mosher
If you look at the Isfjord Radio discussion in the article you will see an anomaly map using the base period 1989 – 2008. I could do the one you suggest, but I can’t post it here.
Ed
Have you seen these U-tubes of Russian temperature records given at Heartland, which go some way towards quantifying UHI, by comparing temperature rises for different population densities?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfew9lgzz5o
One point these films make, is how well just four temperature records serve as proxy for all 400+ from the whole of Russia.
evanmjones wrote: “So we would need over 120,000 stations? That’s a lot of stations.”
Sure it is. But I am afraid you might need more. The example of stations 50km apart having opposite long-term trends means that we don’t know what trend is in between, and what is around in the same proximity. It means that the sampling grid must be less than half of 50km, or 25km at most. Given the Earth surface as 5.1E+8 km2, the 25x25km grid coverage would need about 800,000 equally-spaced stations to determine the average trend. Of course, you can try this oversampling on smaller regional areas, and assume that oceans are more uniform (although we don’t know this either). But for lands alone you need about 220,000 stations to begin with.
More, we still have no idea if the 25x25km is enough to capture complexities of local micro-climates, so be prepared to another half-scale, which would quadruple the number of necessary stations. Without this uniform sampling grid of data it is not serious to discuss any mathematics of subsets or else. This is what physical science says. Sorry.
That different stations show very much different temperature “trends” is a data inconsistency not confined to the Arctic. But in very cold climates, where thermal energy variations translate into very much larger temperature variations than in the tropics, that problem is brought out in spades. Anomalization of the data cannot begin to cure the corruptive effects of man-made heat sources, station moves, etc. , or accurately compensate for uncertain datum levels in relatively short, often fragmented records. While the desire to determine the trend is understandable, the results obtained from fitting a linear trend of a few decades to the average “anomaly” should not be mistaken for a secular trend in any region.
Having done extensive determinations of the coherence between long records at neighboring stations throughout the globe, I don’t buy the “spatial coherence” shown by GISS’ global maps. These are largely the artifact of the 1200km smoothing radius. Until we get a better grip on both the spatial and temporal variablity of climate from really long uncorrupted records, no one can prescribe the “correct” method for determining the regional “trend.”
BTW, the island of Jan Mayen isn’t a part of Canada, but belongs to Norway.
Steven mosher, Ed Caryl, Rattus Norvegicus, Billy Liar, P Gosselin: Here’s a gif animation with four north polar stereographic maps. You can download them through the KNMI Climate Explorer. The datasets are GISS LOTI (1200km smoothing), GISS with 250km smoothing, RSS TLT, and UAH TLT. The base years for all are 1979-80, the beginning of the satellite period. And the anomalies are for calendar year 2009. In effect, the four maps are showing the rises in surface temperature and TLT anomalies since 1979-80.
Do these maps confirm or disagree with your earlier comments?
http://i55.tinypic.com/2eq7sy1.jpg