Quality Of Global Climate Surface Observing Sites
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
Anthony Watts, Evan Jones and the numerous outstanding volunteers have provided us with an effective, land breaking documentati0n of the quality of siting of surface observations that are used in the construction of the US Historical Climate Network. Anthony reported on this topic in the outstanding report:
Watts, A. 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? 28 pages, March 2009 The Heartland Institute.
Anthony’s research as led to our first joint paper on this subject
Fall, S., A. Watts, J. Nielsen-Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2011: Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146.Copyright (2011) American Geophysical Union.
On December 12 2006 I posted examples of photographs of observing sites outside of the USA in the post
Over the next few weeks, I will post the photographs that appear on that site as well as others that I am able to find. I encourage readers of my weblog to e-mail me information on other sites which I can post on the weblog. There is also a need to identify which of the posted sites are GHCN locations. This, hopefully, is a first step to extend Anthony’s analysis world wide. While these stations do not have the photographs from each cardinal direction, they are still very useful.
The first three stations are the following:
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Footnote: For all of its flaws, the USHCN has one big advantage over the ROW and GHCN – superior metadata. That said, even then it is difficult to find stations sometimes. For example yesterday I made a road trip to fix a station survey that had been identified as being at the airport in NCDC…except that it wasn’t anywhere near the airport. More on that later.
The locations of most of the worldwide GHCN stations are not well documented in metadata, and lat/lon values published are so coarse that it makes spotting one from Google Earth nearly impossible. That said, documenting the state of the GHCN is going to be an uphill challenge.
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In other words: We know the [meta]truth. Facts be damned.
It is interesting that R.Gates uses the BEST research to indicate that the science done by Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre on Surface Station siting doesn’t matter, when the testimony that was given by Dr. Muller to Congress said, “Without the efforts of Anthony Watts and his team, we would have only a series of anecdotal images of poor temperature stations, and we would not be able to evaluate the integrity of the data.
This is a case in which scientists receiving no government funding did work crucial to understanding climate change. Similarly for the work done by Steve McIntyre. Their “amateur” science is not amateur in quality; it is true science, conducted with integrity and high standards.”
See http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011
@ur momisugly LazyTeenager
I’ve read your recent post. The last time I was this bemused was when I heard a proposal that “we should abolish farms. Farms are cruel. We should just get meat from the supermarket.”
I will respond, but it may well take me a few days.
R. Gates says:
August 14, 2011 at 3:55 pm
“It’s true that skeptics would love to find out that the global temperatures are way off because of bad data, etc. Heck, maybe we’ve not been warming after all!
There is great value in making sure the data is as clean and uncorrupted as possible, but overall, it just isn’t going to make a huge difference in the temperature record. Don’t expect this to be a fruitful avenue if the refutation of AGW is the goal.”
On the contrary, this is an extremely fruitful avenue of pursuit.
Take Barrow for example, on the Arctic shore of Alaska. Here we have a situation where UHI is quite pronounced for a small city, and is extrapolated over a large area.
Population increased from 300 in 1900 to only 4,600 in 2000. Yet Barrow exhibited up to 2.2°C of UHI in the winter months (from December 2001 to March 2002) compared with the surrounding hinterland. UHI increases to 3.2°C when there’s no wind.
(Hinkel, K.M., Nelson, F.E., Klene, A.E. and Bell, J.H., 2003. “The Urban Heat Island in Winter at Barrow, Alaska.” International Journal of Climatology, vol. 23, pp. 1889-1905.)
The weather station at Barrow Airport is used by GHCN and GISS to determine “proxy” Arctic temperatures. However, readings are clearly “infected” with significant UHI and, therefore, inflate high-latitudinal Arctic temperatures.
So global temps are corrupted by bad data, and sufficiently to make it appear they are warmer than in reality. If you think that doesn’t make a difference you’re only kidding yourself.
David in Georgia: You make an excellent point. I completely overlooked it because I was focused on the difference between what Mueller did, and what R. Gates claimed he did.
And, of course, there’s that odd selectivity of corrections “required” to homogenize the data: it always turns out to emphasize “the warming trend”. Here we have true anthropogenic fingerprints. Most belong to Jones and Mann and Hansen.