People Send me stuff. I get pictures of weather stations from all over the world. Here we have Henderson Field, serving the capital city of Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.
Hi Anthony, I thought you might be interested to see this weather station.
It is the main one for the Solomon Islands, good situation for the airport, but as you can see in the photos, not so good for accurate temperature measurement.
The planes land then turn down the road to the Terminal apron, as they turn onto the apron, the jet exhaust washes over the weather station.
I’m not a technician, but I’ve repaired enough damaged equipment in my time to think that the exhaust heat may cause some problems with calibration over time.
Google earth -9.430025° 160.047393°
I’m trying slowly to get some full size photos loaded into google earth at present, but internet here is sporadic at the best of times, and down right miserable the rest.
Thanks,
Warren Nash
Solomon Islands
Here’s the closeup view of the weather station at the airport, the instruments are inside the fenced in enclosure.
As weather stations go, it isn’t bad, as the Stevenson Screen is 30 meters from the taxiway asphalt. That would make it a CRN2, acceptable by NOAA siting standards.
Here’s a ground level view of the station taken from the terminal:
Here comes a plane!
Coming into the terminal…
Hey, park it over here!
Uh, oh, look where the jet exhaust is pointed:
Hmmm, a new high temperature today?
Back to normal.
Now in the defense of the global climate record, it doesn’t look like this station gets updated at GISS very much:
And here’s the plot of data from NASA GISS:
Source here
Hmmm, pretty crappy data set dontcha think? Why have it at all?
If only GISS could use Weather Underground:
Eh, but that would require a thousands of man-hours, and millions of dollars in grant money to pull off.
We can adjust for that.
Just add an ARTIFICAL trend…
Eh, but that would require a thousands of man-hours, and millions of dollars in grant money to pull off.
Don’t you mean wouldn’t?
Is the NASA GISS used in any of the reports?
Crappy is the best word for it.
Would like to see how it gets adjusted !!!!!
Aren’t they supposed to sink in a few years anyway?
(sarc/off)
Anthony, did you know that there’s a site mocking your site?
It’s called http://www.wottsupwiththat.com
Everyone- invade this Wotts Up With That blog, and show him that we don’t appreciate mockery- that’s what 5 year olds do!
REPLY: Oh, I’ve been aware of this adolescent guy named Ben Lawson in Toronto for quite some time. The best thing to do is simply ignore him, he’s a narcissist and loves the attention. Don’t give him any. – Anthony
Would like to see how it gets adjusted !!!!!
It’s all out there to find, according to GISS. You might be the first to actually replicate anything out of it. The name escapes me, but I think someone has spent years trying to put it all together. Someone other than the NASA Jailbird I mean. I’m not aware of anyone who has been successful in replication. Anyone know?
Oh wait, replication would be science. (that would kind of defeat the whole purpose).
Having spend quite a lot of time in military jet exhaust plumes, I’d say the exhaust that far away from the station is probably not very significant. It’s only for a few seconds, and the engines are likely only at around 40% . EGT is probably less than 500 deg. at the engine and it drops off quickly with distance.
REPLY: Yes, but a 1 degree error is significant enough. -A
The station location issue highlighted here gives rise to a thought — do the record high temps in LA occur around quiting time?
Anthony, do you ever wonder whether it’s deliberate?
While we are on the Solomon Islands it’s worth remembering:
AND
Anthony,
Please delete this comment if you think it has zero merit.
While looking at the aerial view of the airport I though about surfacestations. Have you considered the possibility of underground hot water pipes running close to the temperature stations and if they would have any influence on immediate temperature measurements? Just a thought.
All they have to do, is to install jet engines at all the other weather stations, and then
adjust the temps up or down as needed to factor in the JEEHGE ( Jet Engine Exhaust Heat Ghost Effect). Then it will all be equalised.
Problem solved.
Never saying much during most of my life, near his passing my dad told me stories about Guadalcanal and Henderson Field when he was there for 18 months during World War II. I had no idea growing up what a horrible ordeal he and his fellow marines went through and witnessed. Odd he wished he could go back and visit in his later years.
I wonder if there are any memorials and such there.
Sorry for OT, but it brings back memories.
O/T but good news:
29 Sept: UK Daily Mail: David Derbyshire: Back from the dead: One third of ‘extinct’ animals turn up again
The revelations come as the world’s leading conservationists prepare for a major United Nations summit on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, next month. ..
Dr Diana Fisher, of the University of Queensland, Australia, compiled a list of all mammals declared extinct since the 16th century or which were flagged up as missing in scientific papers.
‘We identified 187 mammal species that have been missing since 1500,’ she wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
‘In the complete data-set, 67 species that were once missing have been rediscovered. More than a third of mammal species that have been classified as extinct or possibly extinct, or flagged as missing, have been rediscovered.’
Mammals that suffered from loss of habitat were the most likely to have been declared extinct and then rediscovered, she said…
The mistakes cannot be blamed on primitive technology or old fashioned scientific methods.
‘Mammals missing in the 20th century were nearly three times as likely to be rediscovered as those that disappeared in the 19th century,’ Dr Fisher added.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315964/One-extinct-animals-turn-again.html
Anthony –
REPLY: Yes, but a 1 degree error is significant enough. -A
Agreed. However the assumption is being made that the temp station feels any additional heat due to jet exhaust. That would depend to a large extent on the direction and strength of any wind in the vicinity as well as the aircraft position, engine setting, etc. . I’d like to see some hard data to support that assumption, before I’d jump to the particular conclusion that the picture implies. Perhaps someone could stand at the station during a few of these taxi evolutions with a instant reading thermometer and let us know the result.
DR – thanks to your father for his service and sacrifice. Yes, I know OT.
Anthony
Don’t you mean 0.2 – 0.4 degs is enough of an error to suggest a significant (but only an apparent/artificial) increase i recent temperature trends.
DR “I wonder if there are any memorials and such there.”
My father also served in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal.
http://www.abmc.gov/memorials/memorials/gu.php
No surprises here, just take a look at the ‘extinct’ 65 million year old Coelacanth. It’s worse than we thought.
$100,000,000 and I’ll keep track of that for you!
DR says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Never saying much during most of my life, near his passing my dad told me stories about Guadalcanal and Henderson Field when he was there for 18 months during World War II. I had no idea growing up what a horrible ordeal he and his fellow marines went through and witnessed. Odd he wished he could go back and visit in his later years.
I wonder if there are any memorials and such there.
DR, there is the main USA War Memorial just to the south east of Honiara township, The Japanese memorial at the Gifu, buried in the back of the foothills behind Honiara, the Memorial to the Marines marking the front line during the Gifu Battle, the Memorial Gardens at Henderson Field, the rectangular green patch to the west and slightly north of the Terminal building. Add in the numerous ships, aircraft, and trenches and caves that are still laying about in the forest and sea, we do have a lot of WWII memoriabilia. We still find bodies at times when digging gardens, or building sites, live ammunition is a major worry, it can be hazardous having a beach fire when the buried cartridges, shells start exploding.
I have photos in Google Earth of the main Memorial sites, plus a lot of more general stuff around Honiara.
Use VWKombi to find my photos in Panoramio or browse the collection in google earth
Jimbo says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:07 pm Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea.”
ENN
AND
“Atolls are created by sea level rise, not destroyed by sea level rise.”
Willis Eschenbach – WUWT
There is also the replenishment of sand by the reef fish, predominately Parrot Fish, as Willis and Jennifer Maharosy have pointed out. Unfortunately, the coral reefs around Honiara and most of the inhabited areas of Solomons have been fished out, and there is a distinct lack of concern due to the windfall that is coming our way from AGW payments.
Which will have the effect of crippling this country even further and not providing what is needed, such as reliable and cheap electricity, clean water supplies, and education.
First thing I did was go to Goog Earth and establish it was a CRN2. Then I read the rest of the article.
Then I got to thinking that every CRN1 site in the entire USHCN is in an airport . . .
REPLY: Except for Cheyenne Wells, the only CRS that is a CRN1 – Anthony
“Curiousgeorge says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Perhaps someone could stand at the station during a few of these taxi evolutions with a instant reading thermometer and let us know the result.”
Exactly the point I was going to make. This can be tested, measured, verified and duplicated without bias. So far every bit of data, every document, every computer model, every statement from Govn’ts and the IPCC supporting the HYP(E)othesis that C02 is driving climate disruption cannot be tested, measured, verified and duplicated without bias.
Jets started taking over medium and long-term aviation in the late 1950’s (think Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8) and cemented that dominance by the mid 1960’s. It would be interesting to compare temperature trends from 1955 to 1965 at major airports versus nearby rural sites.
The issue is how far could the exhaust reach?
Looking at the sequential photos, the clouds are moving left to right, so on this occasion, the jet exhaust maybe pushed away from the S Screen.
What happens when the wind is from the other direction??
But then again, we’ve been told ad nauseum that UHI effects are minimal, if anything they are negative. Just ask over at Skeptical Science, they’ll tell ya.
Jet exhaust
I love you tube.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/directline/dl6_blast.htm
Figuring out the thermal signature of a jet engine plume is pretty straightforward stuff. With the right models. Typical work for IR suppression.
Simple unclassified example here with some numbers ( too hard to read axis)
so the data is either out there or readily calculatable.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dtic.mil%2Fcgi-bin%2FGetTRDoc%3FLocation%3DU2%26doc%3DGetTRDoc.pdf%26AD%3DADP023087&rct=j&q=signature%20engine%20plume%20idle%20power&ei=192iTIOFOJOCsQPfpaT6Bg&usg=AFQjCNEoIrAIQneWhP4iMhINXdzmi9lGag&sig2=Xt-tp5RkZ1ikJJzJGRI5nw&cad=rja
Start here to see if live testing is even necessary
http://www.thermoanalytics.com/products/thermal_analysis_software.html
or here
http://www.thermoanalytics.com/services/CFD_analysis_services.html
Any affect that the planes would have on the temperature is measurable and verifiable, but then climate calculations would suddenly need airport traffic flows to be factored in, as well as aircraft type. To record temperatures. Thats daft (?)
“DonB says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:04 pm
The station location issue highlighted here gives rise to a thought — do the record high temps in LA occur around quiting time?”
I second that. What about the WX-stations in LA?
Two definitions of anomaly;
1. any occurrence or object that is strange, unusual, or unique
2. a discrepancy or deviation from an established rule or trend
So plotting temperature anomalies against time would appear to (in)conveniently encompass both types. The question has to be: do anomaly temperature graphs show deviation from an established rule/trend or indicate events strange/unusual/unique? The surfacestations project is looking for noise in the signal but it could end up looking for signal in the noise!
(Or have I just embarrassed myself by revealing that I am the last to realise this?)
I’ll go along with Curiousgeorge.
A hundred feet back from engines running at breakaway thrust (enough to get a parked aircraft moving, much more than used to taxi) will have a warm breeze, but no blast. Temperature rise shouldn’t be more than plus 15 or 20 degrees above ambient. Windblown exhaust from a parked idling aircraft would give you a pretty high max temperature for that day.
Speaking of warmth and UHI. Today we heard that travellers to LA could expect 45 degrees C. I wondered how much of that extreme heat was caused by the surrounds. Anyone know?
Look at the air temperatures for the airports in the United States in the time period 10, 11, and 12 September 2001.
Now I know why Europe wants to combat warming by restricting flights! What better way is there (instrumentally)?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the siting of this weather station.
It would be doing a sterling job. So long as the data it produces is used solely for airport purposes and not in island wide historical records. Somehow I don’t think so .
It’s not just a problem of jet exaust going to the temperature sensor.
All that traffic inside the airport breaks up the nocturnal stable layer, mixing colder air with warmer air aloft.
And sure, early morning – night traffic has been on the increase in the last decades.
Quite normal for the adiabatic heating of the Santa Ana winds coming off of the high deserts and mountains into the Los Angeles Basin.
Mike McMillan says:
September 29, 2010 at 1:44 am
I’ll go along with Curiousgeorge.
A hundred feet back from engines running at breakaway thrust (enough to get a parked aircraft moving, much more than used to taxi) will have a warm breeze, but no blast. Temperature rise shouldn’t be more than plus 15 or 20 degrees above ambient. Windblown exhaust from a parked idling aircraft would give you a pretty high max temperature for that day.
—————————————————-
Sure, but why not have the screen moved AWAY from the runway to remove any chance or debate on what effect the exhaust will have?????
Ref – DR says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Not odd. Very, very human. Very.
One other thing: Guadalcanal is not exactly a commercial hub. I doubt there are more than 2 flights per day in and out.
REPLY: all it takes is one, the thermometer records the highest temperature of the day and does not discern whether it is from a sunny day with light winds or a Boeing 737 – Anthony
Sorry Anthony. This IS how to measure temperature, at an airport and for the purposes of flying. As airports have needed weather stations on site it has made perfect sense for communities close to airports to piggy back of the service provided. Extracting long term trends for climate is not so reliable and that is not the fault of these weather stations. It is the fault of those who would use this data while dismissing affects such as UHI as inconsequential.
Looking at the Google Earth picture the whole area surrounding the airport has changed with housing and roads to tree clearing which as we all know will change the way the area responds to heat from the sun. This change includes the way water is drained which means the land can dry out quicker which will add to UHI.
If I can tie this in with the other WUWT thread re Kilimanjaro, it would appear there is a reasonable amount of tree clearing going on in the Solomon:
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Solomon_Islands.htm
77.6% —or about 2,172,000 hectares—of Solomon Islands is forested.
“Change in Forest Cover: Between 1990 and 2000, Solomon Islands lost an average of 39,700 hectares of forest per year. The amounts to an average annual deforestation rate of 1.43%. Between 2000 and 2005, the rate of forest change increased by 17.0% to 1.68% per annum. In total, between 1990 and 2005, Solomon Islands lost 21.5% of its forest cover, or around 596,000 hectares. Measuring the total rate of habitat conversion (defined as change in forest area plus change in woodland area minus net plantation expansion) for the 1990-2005 interval, Solomon Islands lost 21.5% of its forest and woodland habitat.”
Tarmac, concrete (airports don’t have a monopoly on this material), tree clearing, land drainage, all good for raising the temp. Jet exhaust I’m not so sure of.
REPLY: If you’ve read my previous posts on airports and weather measurements, particularly this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/01/hot-air-in-washington-dc-more-asos-failures/
…you’d know that the first sentence was unnecessary – Anthony
Curiousgeorge says:
September 29, 2010 at 4:50 am
One other thing: Guadalcanal is not exactly a commercial hub. I doubt there are more than 2 flights per day in and out.
HIR ARRIVALS
Date: Thu 30-Sep-2010
Departures Arrivals
Airport: (HIR) Henderson International Airport
Honiara, SB
Flight Carrier Origin Arrival Status
IE 531 Solomon Airlines (AKS) Auki 08:15 AM
IE 345 Solomon Airlines (GTA) Gatokae 09:45 AM
PBI 169 Pacific Blue Airlines (BNE) Brisbane 02:10 PM
DJ 169 ^ Virgin Blue (BNE) Brisbane 02:10 PM
IE 353 Solomon Airlines (GZO) Gizo 04:00 PM
IE 533 Solomon Airlines (AKS) Auki 05:15 PM
IE 845 Solomon Airlines (GZO) Gizo 06:00 PM
With the internet it doesn’t take much to find out.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 28, 2010 at 6:02 pm
“Having spend quite a lot of time in military jet exhaust plumes, I’d say the exhaust that far away from the station is probably not very significant. It’s only for a few seconds, and the engines are likely only at around 40% . EGT is probably less than 500 deg. at the engine and it drops off quickly with distance.”
Agreed but this is not a military jet. This is an Airbus with high by pass ratio engines. I’m sure you know but for those that don’t, most of the air coming out the back is cold. Perhaps as much as 4/5ths. Also the wind sock is showing a reasonable breeze away from the weather station.
Steven Mosher says:
September 28, 2010 at 11:24 pm
“Jet exhaust
This is an Olympus engine and industrial not aviation. The aviation version was used on Concorde. Other aircraft with engines that give out a lot of power at idle is/was the SR71. This supposedly will accelerate quite happily in idle. However, as stated above the plane in the Solomon islands photo uses high by-pass ratio turbofans. The Olympus is a turbojet. There is a world of difference.
Just digging around it seems the plane in the photograph only comes once a week. There are a handful of other airlines but some are smaller turboprops. One airline operates the bigger A330 and the runway is about long enough to get one in and out but I can’t find anything that says they go in there.
and now I am going to have to see if? I can get into the local airfield where they have OUR weather station:-) I suspect its locked unless planes are using it, but fences were made to be jumped:-) and its for science after all..
REPLY: Do NOT jump fences at airports, it’s an immediate recipe for arrest. Try this new invention: telephoto lens – Anthony
I read Ben’s site every day. He is good at cutting through the noise and revealing the real agenda.
Out of interest I thought I’d take a look at the weather stations in England and Wales used by GISS to see if the temperature trends might be contaminated by the ‘Airport Heat Island’ effect. Post 1995, all of the temperature data for England and Wales used by GISS comes from stations located at international airports (5) or large RAF airbases (3). By comparison, of the 26 weather stations used for 1965, 14 are classified as airports, and only 7 of these could be considered large (the others being small airfields). GISS appear to have a selection bias towards the largest airports and airbases in England and Wales, increasing over time. Besides this, all five international airports now used have undergone expansion over the last 20 years.
This is only a casual observation and I’m no climatologist- perhaps there are good reasons why GISS would only use data from these locations to help demonstrate the late 20th century ‘warming’ period, and I don’t know if they make any adjustments to data coming from stations located next to or on top of asphalt runways, but it might be an interesting starting point for further investigation..
amicus curiae says:
September 29, 2010 at 7:18 am
and now I am going to have to see if? I can get into the local airfield where they have OUR weather station:-) I suspect its locked unless planes are using it, but fences were made to be jumped:-) and its for science after all..
REPLY: Do NOT jump fences at airports, it’s an immediate recipe for arrest. Try this new invention: telephoto lens – Anthony
——————————————————–
Or ask for an invitation !!
JJB MKI says:
September 29, 2010 at 9:04 am
“Out of interest I thought I’d take a look at the weather stations in England and Wales used by GISS to see if the temperature trends might be contaminated by the ‘Airport Heat Island’ effect.”
Why are you demonstrating a bias in this way. Is airport concrete and tarmac warmer than the same material in motorways, car parks and buildings. The absence of urban weather stations means that in most cases the UHI affect is only measured at airports. I recall a post here where an airport weather station was moved from the end nearest the local city to the end furthest away, because the city was affecting the temp readings.
“Post 1995, all of the temperature data for England and Wales used by GISS comes from stations located at international airports (5) or large RAF airbases (3). By comparison, of the 26 weather stations used for 1965, 14 are classified as airports, and only 7 of these could be considered large (the others being small airfields). GISS appear to have a selection bias towards the largest airports and airbases in England and Wales, increasing over time.”
Nothing suspicious here as pilot weather briefings are only from larger airports. If GISS take their information from the same source its probably because its easy and consistent in format and there isn’t any other. One can of course argue about what is inferred from that information.
“Besides this, all five international airports now used have undergone expansion over the last 20 years.”
Airports are not the only type of expansion in the UK. The amount of runway in the UK is significantly less than 1945 and many airfields have disappeared under housing and industrial development. Heathrow used to have 6 runways and now has 2. Those 2 are the same length they’ve been for at least 30 years. Manchester got a new runway some years back. For those 5 airports total runway length is around 15 miles. Meanwhile we have over 1700 miles of road. Yes, there has been expansion but mostly to cater for larger planes and more passengers. The 1st flight out of Heathrow was 1 pilot and 1 passenger. That ratio has changed dramatically and continues to change in favour of more passengers. There are about 18,000 airliners in the world and over 30 million road vehicles in the UK. Unless there is something magical in the jet engine I can’t see how it can extract more heat from burning a litre of fuel than other forms fuel burning. Compared to the 18,000 airliners, there are over 800,000,000 road vehicles, projected to increase to 2.5 billion. And I can’t see how the limited amount of airport runway can put out more heat than all the rapidly expanding urban areas.
Sorry. The UK has over 1700 miles of motorway. It has around 200,000 miles of road.
Stephen Skinner:
Ya I know. But the video was funny as heck.
Thanks for educating people on the high bypass ratio. I’m not sure everyone appreciates that. I’m pretty sure with a little work one could explain why the airplane exhaust will not impact the temperature. I look a little bit more at airports from a different perspective entirely.. here
http://stevemosher.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/cooling-stations-a-uhi-hint/
simpleseekeraftertruth says:
September 29, 2010 at 12:23 am (Edit)
Two definitions of anomaly;
1. any occurrence or object that is strange, unusual, or unique
2. a discrepancy or deviation from an established rule or trend
So plotting temperature anomalies against time would appear to (in)conveniently encompass both types. The question has to be: do anomaly temperature graphs show deviation from an established rule/trend or indicate events strange/unusual/unique? The surfacestations project is looking for noise in the signal but it could end up looking for signal in the noise!
(Or have I just embarrassed myself by revealing that I am the last to realise this?)
##############
reporting the “anomaly” of a temperature is a method of ‘standardizing” the measure according to a rule that does not distort the trend signal.
very simply:
Temperature: 15, 15, 15, 10, 10, 10, 15, 15, 15
To turn that into an “anomaly” you select a “period” That period can be any period or the whole series.
lets pick {10,10,10} You take the average = 10.
you substract the anomaly from the original series
Anomaly 5,5,5,0,0,0,5,5,5
And there you get Deviation from the normalizing period. take the slope of either the temp or the anomaly and you get the same answer. And we care about trend not absolute temperature
By taking the anomaly we dont have to be concerned about adding or dropping stations that are cooler or warmer. As long as you take the anomaly of the station you have no issues. you do have issues if you add or subtract stations with different TRENDS.
So dont get frazzled by the word anomaly. understand the basic math and you will see exactly why they need to be used in data series were you have data drop outs ( like a station that stops reporting )
How about putting a data logger in the screen, measuring temperature every 10 seconds, and then seeing if you can tell when a jet goes by.
Snowlover123: I beg to differ: I happen to enjoy mockery very much. You been drinking sour Maple syrup? Let this kid have his fun, and more power to him. If WUWT readers go over there give the guy a pat on the head in the spirit of Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”.
Stephen Skinner: Thanks for your comments
I agree that the jet exhaust issue is highly unlikely to be a cause for concern here.
For the following reasons:
1. The plane in the photograph comes in once a week as you note.
2. As you note the high by pass ratio means that most of the intake air is passed
around the combustion chamber.
3. The plane would have to arrive or depart in certain time windows to impact either Tmin or Tmax. if its 80F outside and the plane raises the temp 7-8 F that will not necessarily raise the Tmax for the site. Simply, if its 80F at 9am ( see the WU chart) and the plane raises it to 87F, thats really not a problem. Why, cause later that day the temp hits 89F at 2pm, when the plane effect is long gone and 89F gets recorded as the TMAX. For the climate we only care about tmax and tmin. So an airplane that raises the temp briefly will have no effect on TMAX. The only way it can impact TMAX is if just happens to exhaust the right amount of excess heat AT THE RIGHT TIME and PLACE. so, if it blew hot exhaust at 2PM, then you might have an issue.
( looking at the flights looks like there are a couple 2:10 flights )
Tmin is almost immune from the kind of effect a single jet like this could have.
Tmin occurs between 5 and 6 Am. somewhere from a temp of 72F at 5AM over the course of an hour it drops to 71.6.
Ok. Walk out to the thermometer at 5:30 and heat it artifically to 85F .
That Wont impact Tmin. cause Tmin happens at 6am. so if the temp goes from 72 F at 5AM to 72F at 5:29, to 85F at 5:30, you’ll be back down to to 71.6 by 6AM. It would take prolonged heating around the times of the day when Tmin and Tmax occur to creep into the records. And if it did infect Tmax by 1 degree, on one day of the week. That would effect Tave by only 1/2 a degree for that day, and when you average those 4 days with the 26 other days, the impact of the chance ocurrance is even smaller.
D. Patterson says:
September 29, 2010 at 2:25 am (Edit)
Look at the air temperatures for the airports in the United States in the time period 10, 11, and 12 September 2001.
That’s been done in the study on contrails. very famous study
Stephen Skinner says:
September 29, 2010 at 7:09 am
Just digging around it seems the plane in the photograph only comes once a week. There are a handful of other airlines but some are smaller turboprops. One airline operates the bigger A330 and the runway is about long enough to get one in and out but I can’t find anything that says they go in there.
The plane in the photo lands every day Monday to Friday at 14.00 approx, departs at 1500 approx.
Arrival times are staggered around 1400 for all airlines flying into Henderson Field from Brisbane.
Pacific Blue arrives approx 1410, departs 1445.
Solomon Air has a morning run, and an afternoon run.
There are also the weekend flight schedules, usually 3 – 5 planes landing Saturday and Sunday.
The inter island services use turbo prop aircraft, Solomon Air are upgrading to A330 from reports in the Solomon Star, and I believe Pacific Blue have A330 aircraft operating now on the Brisbane/Honiara service.
If I can convince someone with the Met Dept here I will try to get permits to go airside and check for any effect from the exhaust with a digital thermometer. The hardest part will be finding a thermometer in Honiara.
Steven Mosher says:
September 29, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I enjoyed your apparently successful attempt at self-delusion.
Go stand behind a modern jet. The relatively well-mixed air a hundred yards behind a high bypass engine is still warmer than the air that went in the intake.
The jet is 180 metres away from the weather station at the point it starts turning in front of the airport buildings.
Billy.
You still dont get it.
I’m granting that the air may be warmer. Here is what you miss.
Tmin for this location appears to happen on this day at 6AM
from 5AM to 6AM the air temp drops from 72 to 71.6.
Suppose your plane raises the temp 10F. suppose that. question, for how long? 5 minutes? Lets say 15 Minutes. lets say that blast of thust gives you a lingering 15 minute warm spot.
5AM 72
5:15 82
5:30 72
5:45 72
600 71.6
And when the climate guys get the data what do they look for Tmin. NOT THE BLIP.
they dont integrate temps, they take the max and the min.
To “infect” Tmin the jet would have to land at just the right time to infect Tmin.
Same goes for Tmax.
Now, if you have a bunch of different landings landings thats another story. I still think it doesnt matter in those cases, but in this case its just plain stubbornness to hold the position that you can tell from the photo that the plane will impact the temps. Every bit of evidence we have argues otherwise in this case.
if you are going to raise individual cases as examples of contamination, then you have to accept the fact that sometimes you cannot make a good case on the facts. The video is a good clue. but when you assemble everything you know, the grounds for concern diminish. You do better by focusing on the good cases, rather than throwing up weak cases just to muddy the water
I dunno but with arrival times and departure times and with the weather underground chart of hourly temps it would seem a easy matter to look for any blips
Rememeber how ghcn calculates an average Tave = (Tmin +tmax)/2
go find the blip in the hourly reports and you got a case to look further.
otherwise there are BETTER cases to look at and other more pressing issues.
Gday Anthony:
You said: As weather stations go, it isn’t bad, as the Stevenson Screen is 30 meters from the taxiway asphalt. That would make it a CRN2, acceptable by NOAA siting standards.
That may be fine in America, but Solomon Islands aviation regulations and meteorological standards, I am fairly sure, would have been set up with Australian or perhaps New Zealand assistance. The Australian specifications are:
A3.5.2.3 Clearances on airports:
A3.5.2.3.1 Turning areas and aprons 150 metres
A3.5.2.3.2 Runways 120 metres
A3.5.2.3.3 Taxiways 75 metres
So the siting is abysmally non-compliant!
Jet exhaust wash would have a minor effect compared with the heat from nearby tarmac.
Ken
For the folks saying the high bypass fan will be cool air:
1) It’s going through a hot engine and mixing with hot exhaust. We’re worried about a 1/2 C “anomaly” as Global Warming, so it doesn’t take much. Far less than you would feel on your skin.
2) Don’t forget that the “cold” air being sucked in is coming right off the tarmac. FOD (Foreign Object Damage) is from turbines sucking up bolts and stones off the runway… plenty of suction to pull in surface air. So that ‘cold’ air is both tarmac and compression heated, just not by 500 F …
3) As has been pointed out: Pilots NEED to know the temperature over the tarmac. that is where the wing goes, and to get off the ground your density altitude calculations must have that over the runway temp, not some ‘in the forest nearby temp’. To use these stations for “climate” records is exactly wrong given their design goal of accurately reporting RUNWAY temperature.
4) Aiports ARE hotter than non-airports. (I’ve been at enough of them…). Between snow removal, de-icing sprays, fuel burn, ground vehicle heat, tarmac heat, building heat, and surrounding traffic and parking area heat, they are just darned hot places.
5) Airports consistently have grown over time. We went from nearly no commercial traffic and small prop planes in 1950 to the Jet Age and a gazzillion flights a year with everyone and their cousin flying somewhere. They are NOT a step function heater.
JJB MKI says:
Out of interest I thought I’d take a look at the weather stations in England and Wales used by GISS to see if the temperature trends might be contaminated by the ‘Airport Heat Island’ effect. Post 1995, all of the temperature data for England and Wales used by GISS comes from stations located at international airports (5) or large RAF airbases (3). […] Besides this, all five international airports now used have undergone expansion over the last 20 years.
This is only a casual observation and I’m no climatologist- perhaps there are good reasons why GISS would only use data from these locations to help demonstrate the late 20th century ‘warming’ period, and I don’t know if they make any adjustments to data coming from stations located next to or on top of asphalt runways, but it might be an interesting starting point for further investigation..
Yes, it was…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/an-easy-airport-heat-island-audit/
Using SJC and 95050 that gets a Santa Clara station (San Jose Airport has one side basically against Santa Clara) gives SJC at 74 F with Santa Clara at 71.9 F (Santa Clara is measured 43 minutes after SJC, so there is a chance of a TOD error). Barryessa, California, on the other side has 72 F and the same TOD as Santa Clara.
North Willow Glen, just south of the airport past a couple of freeways has 76.3 at the same 8:35 pm time as Santa Clara but SJC has a S wind indicate with “calm”, so my guess would be that we are getting our usual evening ‘cool’ drift in from the bay sending the SJC heat island breeze toward North WIllow Glen. Sure, it could be plain old UHI added in from downtown San Jose (right on the other side of the airport…)
But what it’s not is that SJC is pristine and accurate while Santa Clara and Barryessa have just decided to get cold for no good reason.
Oh, and GIStemp treats many (most?) airports as “rural” and often uses them to “correct” for UHI in other stations (which may explain why half the time it has UHI “correction” going the wrong way…)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/of-jet-exhaust-and-airport-thermometers-feed-the-heat/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/most-used-rural-airport-for-uhi-adj/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/ncdc-ghcn-airports-by-year-by-latitude/
Yes, it’s that bad. Our major global temperature data set basically is measuring the UHI and growth at Airports and in their surroundings.
Steven Mosher says: By taking the anomaly we dont have to be concerned about adding or dropping stations that are cooler or warmer. As long as you take the anomaly of the station you have no issues. you do have issues if you add or subtract stations with different TRENDS.
This would be true for the simple model you present, but you know darned well that the temperature series codes like GIStemp DO NOT do anomalies by comparing a single thermometer against itself. They do a host of machinations and create a fictional “Grid/ Box” temperature with one set of thermometers in the “baseline” and a different set in the present. This is, IMHO, broken. There is no ‘thermometer trend’ in this case, just blended box average temperature fictions.
It is similar to me saying that the average top speed of my high school era VW and Ford Fairlane is slower than the average of my Mercedes SL and BMW 325is today, and that clearly there is a trend of cars speeding up over time.
While I appreciate your giving a trivial anomaly example (and saving me the trouble of doing it) you really DO need to avoid giving the impression that this is how the temperatures are actually handled when they are not.
So dont get frazzled by the word anomaly. understand the basic math and you will see exactly why they need to be used in data series were you have data drop outs ( like a station that stops reporting )
And it would be really nice if the temperature series DID use simple self to self anomalies instead of what they do. When the temperature is looked at with a simple thermometer to itself only anomaly, a much different pattern emerges, one where the temperatures have a clear “hockey blade” in about 1990 when all the station dropouts happen and the airport percent skyrockets to near 90%.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/the-world-in-dtdt-graphs-of-temperature-anomalies/
So unless all the CO2 did nothing through the entire industrial revolution and suddenly got switched on in 1990, it’s not a CO2 problem, it’s a data and processing problem.
And part of that problem, IMHO, is the use of “Grid / box” anomalies with varying box contents from year to year (with boxes often having very few, sometimes only ONE thermometer in them; so sometimes you really are comparing ‘apples to oranges’ as ONE thermometer is in the baseline and some OTHER thermometer is in the present “grid / box”. VW fastback vs Mercedes SL so cars today are going much faster…)
Oh, and per the “does too, does not” on can the airplane “infect” TMIN and TMAX, for many airports it certainly can.
At SJC, for example, TMAX comes mid-day, as does a boatload of flights. TMIN comes early morning just before sun up fairly often, right when maximum departures are scheduled for business travelers.
Does that happen at Solomon? Don’t know. But I do know that the tarmac and concrete will hold heat from the daytime into the night (helping to raise TMIN) and will be much hotter mid day (and definitely raise TMAX on sunny days) and having an airplane deliver that heat to the box with a big fan will not make it cooler…
I’d not be so quick to dismiss that as a possibility.
Oh, and it doesn’t have to be EVERY day. Remember we are dealing with a MONTHLY MEAN in most cases, so depending on how that monthly mean is calculated it could be only one per month that needs a little ‘help’ to warm the planet… So that ideal timing of the airplane need only happen once a month to shift the whole thing. (I’m pretty sure the USA does average of daily (min-max) average so would only get a small ‘lift’ from one day; but other nations data may be handled differently. I could find no statement of a standard, but did find discussions of possible variations. But even raising just a few days a month by a few degrees can get us to our 1/2 C AGW Panic Point.)
Steven Mosher doesn’t know what a stable nocturnal layer is.
EM:
“Oh, and per the “does too, does not” on can the airplane “infect” TMIN and TMAX, for many airports it certainly can.”
I am not arguing that it CANNOT. I am merely pointing out this.
1. certain conditions have to obtain for this to happen. The right amount if excess heat, at the right time. Clearly, if Tmin happens ( for THIS LOCATION) at or around the early dawn and if TMAX happens at or around 2PM FOR THIS LOCATION, then this seems obvious:
A. if all the planes took off and landed between 5pm and 10PM you wouldnt even have a CHANCE to infect the measurement.
Do you agree or disagree. Simple question
2. For the “infection” to show up as a significant factor in monthly means, you have to have relatively frequent flights. For example, If you had one flight a month that only infected one day’s Tmax, the impact would be 1/60 in the monthly figure.
Simple question: the more flights, the higher the probability of infection and the larger the impact. True or false.
3. For the infection to be significant the temperature of the air exiting the aircraft
needs to be higher than the ambient temperature around the thermometer.
True or false
4. An jet engine with a high bypass ratio, generally puts out cooler air than an jet engine with a low by pass ratio? True or false
5. on a taxi way into the gate, the plane is typically at idle and the EGT is lower than at full power. True or false.
6. The temperature increase created by a single pass of jet will diminish with distance from the jet? true or false?
In short, if your looking for a GOOD CASE to show, to demonstrate the impact, this case is not a good one. That doesnt mean you cant demonstrate or find a case. Just this: this airport, this airplane, these conditions, you aint gunna find something CONVINCING. and when you throw up UNCONVINCING CASES, you destroy your credibility.
Paolo M. says:
September 30, 2010 at 6:46 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher doesn’t know what a stable nocturnal layer is.
#########
sorry Paolo, You might want to look at a couple things first. the collapse of ABLs at coastal locations at nightfall and the critical windspeed for mitigating UHI.
Who knows you might be able to make a case, but that would require a hypothesis, and a test that you would be willing to accept as definitive.
“Does that happen at Solomon? Don’t know. But I do know that the tarmac and concrete will hold heat from the daytime into the night (helping to raise TMIN) and will be much hotter mid day (and definitely raise TMAX on sunny days) and having an airplane deliver that heat to the box with a big fan will not make it cooler…”
I’ll suggest you do some calculations on the heat capacity of the material and how quickly it starts to give up that heat after sundown. It would make a better case than ‘i dont know” Also, glad you mentioned sunny days. When you look at UHI you find that it is mitigated by two factors windspeed ( do you know the critical windspeed) and cloudiness.
In any case, there is one study I know of that did compare a pristine station with a nearby busy airport. go read that.
You should be able to figure out very easily if the solomons uses a (tmin+tmax)/2 figure. In any case, you don’t make a better case for this location by pointing at things you don’t know. As the GHCn document you obliquely refers to mentions there are many methods for calculating a mean. you should list them.
Many of you fail to get my criticism of this case. You want strong cases. cases where you have all your facts lined up and all objects/explanations answered. You want better science than the science you are criticizing. Not conjecture and speculation and hand waving. Those types of appeals ONLY WORK on the people who are already convinced. If you want to get the attention of the people who need to be convinced, if you want your words and numbers to matter, then more needs to be done than pointing at the possibility of errors. You have to find real errors and document them. completely and thoroughly. and learn to take constructive criticism. In other words, raise your game above the game of climate science.
Anthony showed the way with surface stations.
Oh, EM,
that station looks like it is in GHCN daily with Tmax and Tmin, ( need to confirm differing numbering systems) so GHCN would calculate a (tmax+tmin)/2. but check
if the stations are really the same or just in the same location.
And who knows maybe more data will come from these folks, where it looks like the solomon islands is on the list.
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aocpXV/A_13.4_wcdmp_climate_data_rescue.pdf
Steven Mosher says:
September 30, 2010 at 1:05 pm
“In any case, there is one study I know of that did compare a pristine station with a nearby busy airport. go read that.”
Can I have the link please Steven?
And one final thing
In the above example you have two sources that will be combined into one longer record. ( see the dup flag )
And The solomon islands would be surrounded by SST measurements.
In a global temperature average that takes land area into account, the solomon islands figure would be scaled by the land area in the grid. So that particular 5 degree cell has .0178 of land in it. If it was all Land the value would be 1.
BUT, since it is .0178 Land, we calculate the average for the cell like this:
First we get a land mask using land area
d <-getMask(5,"land_percent2_qd.asc")
Then we find the cell that conatins the lon/lat of the solomons
solomon <- cellFromXY(d,c(160.1,-9.4))
then we pull the fraction of the cell that is land
fract 1-.017875
[1] 0.982125
So, to calculate the temp for that cell, we do something like this
TEMP + (SST*0.982125)+ (Land*0.017875 )
So, if SST was 75 and Land was 75, the average would be 75.
And, it was asserted that a 1 degree difference was all it would take…..
well “infect” tmax by 2 degrees every day of the month and you end up with a
final corruption for that grid cell of…… 0.01788F
TEMP + (75*0.982125)+ (76*0.017875 )
Which is why, this is a bad case.
But if you like I can take the global map, I can change the solomon islands down a few degrees and you can see that this is a bad case to argue. or you could compare it to UHA and see how the sat looked over the same period.
Basically, all of those will show you this. On the vanishingly remote possibility that there is an effect here, the effect is not measureable, and if it were measurable, would have no measureable effect on the average.
Stephen,
sure. There are also a bunch of studies on using Lidar to look at aircraft plumes
and temperature profiles of plumes and exhaust ( for example, in the plume you drop from 950F to 500F in the first 40cm)
But the study you want is this: Its very limited but does give the only figures I know of. there could be more but I dont have access behind every paywall ( lots of stuff on the verticle heat profiles over different materials.. building science stuff )
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/research/Sun.pdf
toward the end of the article as I recall.. errr lemme look
section 6, last paragraph.
Theoretically, since ASOS data is near continuous you could go get some and look specifically at the temperature profiles as planes take off and land. As it stands, this the only paragraph I have ever read in the past three years that said anything of substance ( thin as it is ) about airport/non airport differentials. FWIW.
Steven Mosher says:
September 30, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Paolo M. says:
September 30, 2010 at 6:46 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher doesn’t know what a stable nocturnal layer is.
#########
sorry Paolo, You might want to look at a couple things first. the collapse of ABLs at coastal locations at nightfall and the critical windspeed for mitigating UHI.
Who knows you might be able to make a case, but that would require a hypothesis, and a test that you would be willing to accept as definitive.
###########################################
Sorry Steven, but after several years of meteorological job activity, it is possibile that I think some facts are obvious.
One of this is that, if you perturb a stable layer of surface cold air, you rise the T of the layer.
Airplanes and buses and cars in a airport are those perturbations.
Or, have you ever seen those ventilators within citrus fields?
If you wish to stay strictly to facts:
“At the Asheville site, the effect of siting difference
between the ASOS and CRN led to a ΔT local effect of
about 0.25°C”,
just from your reference! 0.25°…. quite a lot!
And it’s very easy to infer that if environmental conditions change at an airport, i.e. much more traffic, also ΔT increases.
I can’t know, of course, what’s the particular situation at Solomon islands’ airport, but as it is written in the title of this post, this is a way “not to measure temperature”, unless you take into account all confounding issues when assesseing temporal trends.
Paolo M. says:
“f you wish to stay strictly to facts:
“At the Asheville site, the effect of siting difference
between the ASOS and CRN led to a ΔT local effect of
about 0.25°C”,
just from your reference! 0.25°…. quite a lot!”
I prefer to stick with the facts, as you note. You claimed that I knew nothing about the stabel nocturnal boundary layer. You said that without any evidence about my history in aviation, my employment with companies who pioneered studies in things like boundary layers and turbulence, without any evidence of my own study of the micro climate of urban environments over the past three years. And while some prattle on about the effect that HAS to be there, I’m actually the only one willing to find actual evidence and consider all the aspects of that evidence. You should note and know that effect of increased heating from different heat capacities of surface material is modulated by several factors:
1. Rain events
2. Wind speeds over the critical wind level. ( depends somewhat on the location)
3. Cloudiness.
4. The relative wetness of the surrounding landscape.
So that .25C difference is not a constant everyday thing. by the time you look at it on a global yearly average scale it is vanishingly small. ( remember, it gets factored by the rate of occurance, by the percentage of airports, by the length of airport service in the record, by the number of surrounding sites, by the percent of land in that area, and finally by the overwelming power of the SST numbers.
So .25*Rc*Pa*Pl ( just simply)
Rc = rate of occurance lets say, 50% of the days are sunny, no wind, no rain
Pa = percentage of stations which are airports, agin just 50% for illustration
Pl = percent of land records in the global average 30%
.25*.5*.5*.3
mousenuts.
steven mosher says:
October 1, 2010 at 11:08 am
So that .25C difference is not a constant…
…mousenuts.
############
Steven, that is a mean value.
What are you talking about?
That each location is different from another?
That’s a novel suggestion!
There are a lot of issues with airports.
And if you use those T readings, you need to account for them in trend assessment. Period!
Great effort, easy to judge that you have worked really hard to grab all the pictures!!! Keep it up!