UPDATES: A number of feckless political commentators have simply missed this response I prepared, so I’m posting it to the top for a day or two. I’ll have a follow up on what I’ve learned since then in the next day or two. Also, NCDC weighs in at the LA Times, calling the BEST publicity effort without publishing science papers “seriously compromised”
Also – in case you have not seen it, this new analysis from an independent private climate data company shows how the siting of weather stations affects the data they produce. – Anthony
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As many know, there’s a hearing today in the House of Representatives with the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and there are a number of people attending, including Dr. John Christy of UAH and Dr. Richard Muller of the newly minted Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project.
There seems a bit of a rush here, as BEST hasn’t completed all of their promised data techniques that would be able to remove the different kinds of data biases we’ve noted. That was the promise, that is why I signed on (to share my data and collaborate with them). Yet somehow, much of that has been thrown out the window, and they are presenting some results today without the full set of techniques applied. Based on my current understanding, they don’t even have some of them fully working and debugged yet. Knowing that, today’s hearing presenting preliminary results seems rather topsy turvy. But, post normal science political theater is like that.
I have submitted this letter to be included in the record today. It is written for the Members of the committee, to give them a general overview of the issue, so may seem generalized and previously covered in some areas. It also addresses technical concerns I have, also shared by Dr. Pielke Sr. on the issue. I’ll point out that on the front page of the BEST project, they tout openness and replicability, but none of that is available in this instance, even to Dr. Pielke and I. They’ve had a couple of weeks with the surfacestations data, and now without fully completing the main theme of data cleaning, are releasing early conclusions based on that data, without providing the ability to replicate. I’ve seen some graphical output, but that’s it. What I really want to see is a paper and methods. Our upcoming paper was shared with BEST in confidence.
BEST says they will post Dr. Muller’s testimony with a notice on their FAQ’s page which also includes a link to video testimony. So you’ll be able to compare. I’ll put up relevant links later. – Anthony
UPDATE: Dr. Richard Muller’s testimony is now available here. What he proposes about Climate -ARPA is intriguing. I also thank Dr. Muller for his gracious description of the work done by myself, my team, and Steve McIntyre.
A PDF version of the letter below is here: Response_to_Muller_testimony
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Chairman Ralph Hall
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
2321 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Letter of response from Anthony Watts to Dr. Richard Muller testimony 3/31/2011
It has come to my attention that data and information from my team’s upcoming paper, shared in confidence with Dr. Richard Muller, is being used to suggest some early conclusions about the state of the quality of the surface temperature measurement system of the United States and the temperature data derived from it.
Normally such scientific debate is conducted in peer reviewed literature, rather than rushed to the floor of the House before papers and projects are complete, but since my team and I are not here to represent our work in person, we ask that this letter be submitted into the Congressional record.
I began studying climate stations in March 2007, stemming from a curiosity about paint used on the Stevenson Screens (thermometer shelters) used since 1892, and still in use today in the Cooperative Observer climate monitoring network. Originally the specification was for lime based whitewash – the paint of the era in which the network was created. In 1979 the specification changed to modern latex paint. The question arose as to whether this made a difference. An experiment I performed showed that it did. Before conducting any further tests, I decided to visit nearby climate monitoring stations to verify that they had been repainted. I discovered they had, but also discovered a larger and troublesome problem; many NOAA climate stations seemed to be next to heat sources, heat sinks, and have been surrounded by urbanization during the decades of their operation.
The surfacestations.org project started in June 2007 as a result of a collaboration begun with Dr. Roger Pielke Senior. at the University of Colorado, who had done a small scale study (Pielke and Davies 2005) and found identical issues.
Since then, with the help of volunteers, the surfacestations.org project has surveyed over 1000 United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) stations, which are chosen by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) to be the best of the NOAA volunteer operated Cooperative Observer network (COOP). The surfacestations.org project was unfunded, using the help of volunteers nationwide, plus an extensive amount of my own volunteer time and travel. I have personally surveyed over 100 USHCN stations nationwide. Until this project started, even NOAA/NCDC had not undertaken a comprehensive survey to evaluate the quality of the measurement environment, they only looked at station records.
The work and results of the surfacestations.org project is a gift to the citizens of the United States.
There are two methods of evaluating climate station siting quality. The first is the older 100 foot rule implemented by NOAA http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/coop/standard.htm which says:
The [temperature] sensor should be at least 100 feet from any paved or concrete surface.
A second siting quality method is for NOAA’s Climate Reference Network, (CRN) a hi-tech, high quality electronic network designed to eliminate the multitude of data bias problems that Dr. Muller speaks of. In the 2002 document commissioning the project, NOAA’s NCDC implemented a strict code for placement of stations, to be free of any siting or urban biases.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/program/X030FullDocumentD0.pdf
The analysis of metadata produced by the surfacestations.org project considered both techniques, and in my first publication on the issue, at 70% of the USHCN surveyed (Watts 2009) I found that only 1 in 10 NOAA climate stations met the siting quality criteria for either the NOAA 100 foot rule or the newer NCDC CRN rating system. Now, two years later, with over 1000 stations, 82.5% surveyed, the 1 in 10 number holds true using NOAA’s own published criteria for rating station siting quality.
Figure 1 Findings of siting quality from the surfacestations project
During the nationwide survey, we found that many NOAA climate monitoring stations were sited in what can only be described as sub optimal locations. For example, one of the worst examples was identified in data by Steven McIntyre as having the highest decadal temperature trend in the United States before we actually surveyed it. We found it at the University of Arizona Atmospheric Sciences Department and National Weather Service Forecast Office, where it was relegated to the center of their parking lot.
Figure2 – USHCN Station in Tucson, AZ
Photograph by surfacestations.org volunteer Warren Meyer
This USHCN station, COOP# 028815 was established in May 1867, and has had a continuous record since then. One can safely conclude that it did not start out in a parking lot. One can also safely conclude from human experience as well as peer reviewed literature (Yilmaz, 2009) that temperatures over asphalt are warmer than those measured in a field away from such modern influence.
The surfacestations.org survey found hundreds of other examples of poor siting choices like this. We also found equipment problems related to maintenance and design, as well as the fact the the majority of cooperative observers contacted had no knowledge of their stations being part of the USHCN, and were never instructed to perform an extra measure of due diligence to ensure their record keeping, and that their siting conditions should be homogenous over time.
It is evident that such siting problems do in fact cause changes in absolute temperatures, and may also contribute to new record temperatures. The critically important question is: how do these siting problems affect the trend in temperature?
Other concerns, such as the effect of concurrent trends in local absolute humidity due to irrigation, which creates a warm bias in the nighttime temperature trends, the effect of height above the ground on the temperature measurements, etc. have been ignored in past temperature assessments, as reported in, for example:
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.
Steeneveld, G.J., A.A.M. Holtslag, R.T. McNider, and R.A Pielke Sr, 2011: Screen level temperature increase due to higher atmospheric carbon dioxide in calm and windy nights revisited. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D02122, doi:10.1029/2010JD014612.
These issues are not yet dealt with in Dr. Richard Muller’s analysis, and he agrees.
The abstract of the 2007 JGR paper reads:
This paper documents various unresolved issues in using surface temperature trends as a metric for assessing global and regional climate change. A series of examples ranging from errors caused by temperature measurements at a monitoring station to the undocumented biases in the regionally and globally averaged time series are provided. The issues are poorly understood or documented and relate to micrometeorological impacts due to warm bias in nighttime minimum temperatures, poor siting of the instrumentation, effect of winds as well as surface atmospheric water vapor content on temperature trends, the quantification of uncertainties in the homogenization of surface temperature data, and the influence of land use/land cover (LULC) change on surface temperature trends.
Because of the issues presented in this paper related to the analysis of multidecadal surface temperature we recommend that greater, more complete documentation and quantification of these issues be required for all observation stations that are intended to be used in such assessments. This is necessary for confidence in the actual observations of surface temperature variability and long-term trends.
While NOAA and Dr. Muller have produced analyses using our preliminary data that suggest siting has no appreciable effect, our upcoming paper reaches a different conclusion.
Our paper, Fall et al 2011 titled “Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends” has this abstract:
The recently concluded Surface Stations Project surveyed 82.5% of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations and provided a classification based on exposure conditions of each surveyed station, using a rating system employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). The unique opportunity offered by this completed survey permits an examination of the relationship between USHCN station siting characteristics and temperature trends at national and regional scales and on differences between USHCN temperatures and North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) temperatures. This initial study examines temperature differences among different levels of siting quality without controlling for other factors such as instrument type.
Temperature trend estimates vary according to site classification, with poor siting leading to an overestimate of minimum temperature trends and an underestimate of maximum temperature trends, resulting in particular in a substantial difference in estimates of the diurnal temperature range trends. The opposite-signed differences of maximum and minimum temperature trends are similar in magnitude, so that the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications. Homogeneity adjustments tend to reduce trend differences, but statistically significant differences remain for all but average temperature trends. Comparison of observed temperatures with NARR shows that the most poorly-sited stations are warmer compared to NARR than are other stations, and a major portion of this bias is associated with the siting classification rather than the geographical distribution of stations. According to the best-sited stations, the diurnal temperature range in the lower 48 states has no century-scale trend.
The finding that the mean temperature has no statistically significant trend difference that is dependent of siting quality, while the maximum and minimum temperature trends indicates that the lack of a difference in the mean temperatures is coincidental for the specific case of the USA sites, and may not be true globally. At the very least, this raises a red flag on the use of the poorly sited locations for climate assessments as these locations are not spatially representative.
Whether you believe the century of data from the NOAA COOP network we have is adequate, as Dr. Muller suggests, or if you believe the poor siting placements and data biases that have been documented with the nationwide climate monitoring network are irrelevant to long term trends, there are some very compelling and demonstrative actions by NOAA that speak directly to the issue.
1. NOAA’s NCDC created a new hi-tech surface monitoring network in 2002, the Climate Reference Network, with a strict emphasis on ensuring high quality siting. If siting does not matter to the data, and the data is adequate, why have this new network at all?
2. Recently, while resurveying stations that I previously surveyed in Oklahoma, I discovered that NOAA has been quietly removing the temperature sensors from some of the USHCN stations we cited as the worst (CRN4, 5) offenders of siting quality. For example, here are before and after photographs of the USHCN temperature station in Ardmore, OK, within a few feet of the traffic intersection at City Hall:
Figure 3 Ardmore USHCN station , MMTS temperature sensor, January 2009
Figure 4 Ardmore USHCN station , MMTS temperature sensor removed, March 2011
NCDC confirms in their meta database that this USHCN station has been closed, the temperature sensor removed, and the rain gauge moved to another location – the fire station west of town. It is odd that after being in operation since 1946, that NOAA would suddenly cease to provide equipment to record temperature from this station just months after being surveyed by the surfacestations.org project and its problems highlighted.
Figure 5 NOAA Metadata for Ardmore, OK USHCN station, showing equipment list
3. Expanding the search my team discovered many more instances nationwide, where USHCN stations with poor siting that were identified by the surfacestations.org survey have either had their temperature sensor removed, closed, or moved. This includes the Tucson USHCN station in the parking lot, as evidenced by NOAA/NCDC’s own metadata online database, shown below:
Figure 6 NOAA Metadata for Tucson USHCN station, showing closure in March 2008
It seems inconsistent with NOAA’s claims of siting effects having no impact that they would need to close a station that has been in operation since 1867, just a few months after our team surveyed it in late 2007 and made its issues known, especially if station siting quality has no effect on the data the station produces.
It is our contention that many fully unaccounted for biases remain in the surface temperature record, that the resultant uncertainty is large, and systemic biases remain. This uncertainty and the systematic biases needs to be addressed not only nationally, but worldwide. Dr. Richard Muller has not yet examined these issues.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this to the Members.
Anthony Watts
Chico, CA
Initially, I cautiously gave the BEST project team the benefit of the doubt status.
I am removing the benefit and becoming more doubtful.
I have seen many project teams in my professional career. Their project team leadership looks weak based on their handling of the House Committee hearing.
John
I learned early on, that research is a dog eat dog rush to kill your opponent. And it matters little what methods you use. Steal it, beg for it, play nice for it, then beat your opponent to the punch. I learned that the nicer the face, the darker the motivation. The exceptions were so rare that I ended up trusting no one. And ended my not-yet-off-the-ground science career.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 2:57 pm
While some of your observations on micro-siting may be correct, they are mere side-issues. Your invocation of the Law of Large Numbers really misses the crux of the issue when sampling from a HETEROGENOUS population with severe biases that are unknown a priori. When there are more bad records than good ones in a data base, the mean of independent, random sampling trials will almost surely converge to the mean of the unknown biases. The solution lies in AVOIDING demonstrably biased records altogether, not in increasing the uncertainty bounds, which cannot be determined accurately in any practical case. BTW, if you Google the Berkeley Statistics Dept. portal on LLN and perform trials with low probabilities of success (as in finding a good record by chance), you might learn something pertinent to the problem.
I came late to WUWT this day and am very disappointed by this news. When I just now described this double-cross to my husband, he exclaimed “Ah, post-normal science!” I guess he has been listening to my climate rants.
Condolences to you, Anthony. This must be a bitter pill.
It is unfortunate though that they are removing some of the worst sited stations with the worst errors….when they should be keeping them for comparison to newer nearby better located stations to correct the data error and be able to repeat the process on how the data was corrected….
But I guess that is what happens when politics trump science….you get ass covering.
You do not go before Congress and present preliminary results … if you have integrity.
I don’t care how many caveats they toss in. A person with integrity simply states they don’t know.
mikelorrey said at:
March 31, 2011 at 4:47 pm
I know all that. I didn’t say he was a member of the team or even that he won. His report is favorable to the team and they will exploit it. It is not favorable to those how believe the data have been tortured into compliance by the team.
However, I am now willing to add his name to the list of active team members who will advocate to their death the CAGW mantra.
For Steve Mosher and his excellent thoughts:
Prof. Muller found that with his small 2% sample, without the additional work he has yet to do, that there has been about 0.1 degree less increase in warmth than in the “establishment” land based record. That 0.1 degree reduction vs. the “establishment” is in the last 15 years (see the figure in his testimony). This is the time period of the satellite record. So in a broad brush sort of way, if Prof. Muller’s 2% sample is about right in the end, it kind of corroborates the 32 year satellite record difference with the land based record — 0.1 degree difference in just 30 plus years is a big difference. It may mean that the trends from the satellite record are more reliable than the trends for the land record — in the last 30 years. So now, what happens when you project the satellite temperature trends?
This is back of the envelope. Steve, anything you want to say about the satellite record vs. what Prof. Muller testified, and about the trend in the satellite record (1.4 degrees warming per century)?
Mosher’s curious satisfaction with random selection from data largely compromised is precisely the kind of statistics-for-first-year-psyche-students that has built a climatology house of cards held up by duct tape blodges (definitely a climsci term). The intelligent course is to take only the best stations and then do your random selections. If you can agree with this my luke warm friend, you may find yourself shifted at least to neutral (which is, of course, recognizes there has been warming out of the little ice age as the main part of the show with a minor contribution from co2 and some from land use changes. Hey were talking about what a rise of what? A degree C in 150 yrs. Tell you believed it would be a lot warmer by now 15 years ago (a sixth of a century ago) .
I’m not quite this cynical, but it almost makes you wonder if his YouTube rant was a “false-flag” performance, done to give his “re-do” of the research which then marvelously comes to the approved Consensus Conclusions look like a rigourous 3rd-party validation, at last, hurrah, hurrah!
Nah, a prominent Berkley liberal scientist would never stoop so low. Hardly ever.
In reading Anthony’s post and all the comments, 2 items stuck out in addition to others mentioned.
1. Why did Muller use ‘1957’ as the reference year for ‘warming since’? Did he really mean 1977 instead of 1957? Do any of the major temperature indicies show warming starting in 1957?
2. How is it even possible the initial BEST research could determine that 0.6 degree of the total 0.7 degree warming is due to humans? Did Muller really state this or is this what is being inferred by others?
Anthony
If and when you stand before the pearly gates, and you are asked about your admission ticket, I think this particular post is sufficient. I wish I had something even remotely comparable on my CV. You have identified the crux of the matter, you have given voice to people like Lubos Motl and Steve Mosher, so that we have an interesting debate. Anything you do after this is just cream in the coffee. And I wish you many more coffees with cream (just hoping).
I am reluctant to challenge Steven Mosher, yet I feel that I must.
He says that it is established that UHI has a very small effect and that in addition, it is the trend that is important, not the absolute temperature and that UHI does not affect the trend, other than by a step wide rise, I presume.
Well Steve, I have examined a very small sample of sites in Australia, both urban and Rural.
In particular I can point to two major cities, where for very special but different circumstances, the impact of UHI on maximum temperature can be observed very clearly.
At each of these sites, there was no discernable UHI impact before certain dates and the temperatures before then were trendless at each location, although fluctiating, for one hundred years or thereabouts.
After certain changes occurred for two completely different reasons (20 years apart), UHI stepped in and the temperature began to rise in each location in steady linear trends. These trends can by no means be described as minor or of no account.
I have raised this issue on several occasions already.
I will be pleased to provide my data and my explanations to Anthony on request.
Because of my own work on temperature data, I am very sceptical to say the least, when anybody claims that UHI is not a major factor in the rising numbers measured by the major climate indices. I will NOT call these numbers true indicators of global temperature!
When it comes to UHI even the UK Met / BBC show a 3°C difference between London and other town and a night time difference of greater than 5°C at some locations and on clear nights. London has grown relatively slowly (extent) in the last 50-100 yrs when other towns have grown rapidly. Norwich, for example, tends to have a temperature about 1-2°C lower than London in the day but about the 3°C at night. This trend has accelerated of the past 50yrs. At one time, Norwich was as populated a London.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 2:57 pm
A few notes.
There is nothing wrong whatsoever with Muller and company releasing preliminary results to congress or the public or to private citizens. That is the whole point of TRANSPARENCY and OPENNESS.
I can agree with Steven that openness and transperancy are important an an element of that has been demonstrated by Muller. I can also agree that the release of prelim results can sometimes be useful but Sorry Steven, I can’t agree with you here even though my disagreement is probably not important.
Prof. Muller should not have released either his opinion (which is known to be biased toward AGW) or parts of his data to this committee. Why? Because this is a release of data to a political entity which will in all probability distort or misinterpret what he has to say. This situation required discretion and he has failed that miserably. What’s worse, in my experience, the full and final results will be ignored by those people who have received the result or opinion they wanted from the preliminary release. Finally, I believe he released data which wasn’t his to release in the form of an opinion into a political environment and that is fundamentally wrong BUT understandable from a scientist.
John says
This is back of the envelope. Steve, anything you want to say about the satellite record vs. what Prof. Muller testified, and about the trend in the satellite record (1.4 degrees warming per century)?
Over the past 30 yrs! Trend of previous warming by surface thermos 1.4°C/cent ! Trend since 1650 who the hell knows.
May I suggest a very simple confirmation of UHI?
If your car has an outside temperature display, the next time you park your car in a large parking lot (Home Depot, Lowe’s, Kroger), note the temperature when you drive out. Now drive to a place where there are trees and shade (home, if you are lucky). Note the temperature difference.
REPLY: I have a solution for that here – Anthony
Roger Knights says:
March 31, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Hansen, Schmidt, Mann, Schellnhuber….and Muller???
Schneider, Romm, Steig, …
(But the numbers don’t add up and it wouldn’t mean anything if they did.)
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Currently the History channel is airing a show about Hilter’s scientists.
As a land surveyor back in the seventies we used to have thermometers on our steel tapes so we could adjust horizontal measurements. We would see increases of up to 10 degrees F on asphalt and concrete surfaces. It is also true in wheat fields just after harvest when the stubble is decaying and the dark soil is exposed.
I must challenge steven mosher’s statement that @ur momisugly Steve Mosher “We have known for quite some time than ANY collection of 100 sites picked randomly gives you the same answer.”
Picked Randomly how?
In one Country?
One Continent?
One Hemisphere?
Or do you mean that no matter what data you put in to the “massaging” programs used by the teams that you always get the same Trend answer out?
Did you note that the graph presented by Muller shows their historical data is strangely different to the “old” historical data.
What happened to the very warm 1930s in his graph, which was recognised as being present in the “Raw” data prior to it being homogenised.
Other people on this and many other Forums have analysed the raw data from many many sites and found completely different results to the Trend shown in the Graph prsented by Muller.
But does it matter?
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 2:57 pm
… We have known for quite some time than ANY collection of 100 sites picked randomly gives you the same answer.
Steven Mosher, having roughly 39,000 global stations available, you are saying that any 100 randomly picked stations will give the same results. My Congressman will be VERY interested in this information from you. I am assuming this is after homogenization, for the raw data does not appear to show this pattern. You seem to be pointing directly at the big-boy climate data collection centers.
Do you mind me asking by name who the “we” are you mention that have always known?
Feeling a bit suckered are we, Andrew? Welcome to the world of vested interests. Yours were compromised the day you agreed to participate in a scientific “mainstream event”. I don’t blame your for trying, but in the competitive world of “recognition” you need to understand that “truth” and “intellectual integrity” are impediments to the game of “recognition”. Try and fathom Al Gore’s “recognition” for a primer to the game.
Drats! I called “Anthony” “Andrew” again. This dyslexia is just debilitating.
Just a simple question here.
Mr Watts seems to suggest that the ‘weather station’ at Ardmore is operated by the US Historical Climate Network and that ‘they’ ‘removed it’. Correct me if I am wrong here but aren’t meteorological stations operated by the US Weather Service? If USHCN (or joe public) want data from USWS, they can ask for it. But they have no control over what data is available.
This isn’t so surprising really is it? Its all in a name really. US HISTORICAL Climate Network.
They don’t run meteoroligical stations. They simply collect old data previously recorded. They don’t deal with the thermometer. Rather with what someone else recorded the thermometer as saying.
Yet Anthony thinks ‘they’ are fudging something! Based on what?