Yes, it’s back. Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. and I have started looking at the GHCN to document the siting quality of surface stations that measure climate in the Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN), the darling of NCDC’s Dr. Thomas Peterson who has recently added another level of processing to the mix.
I’ll be offering some instructions soon on how to participate. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this gem, the GHCN station in Tampico, Mexico, #76548. What is it with air conditioners and weather stations anyway?
NCDC has pretty much non-existent metadata on it. Even the start date is wrong.
The lat/lon is so coarse that it pretty much is useless, as Steve Mosher demonstrates, it makes Hansen’s nightlights UHI adjustment pretty way off-center. But hey, “close enough for government work“.
Hopefully, they’ll bother to put in a “GHCN” flag like they did after we embarrassed them into doing in the original surfacestations project for USHCN. As a results of the efforts of volunteers, we actually had better metadata than NCDC did, and they couldn’t have that, so they fixed their own problems by making the lat/lon more accurate and putting USHCN flags into the database. It is a far cry from their first response, which was to block the database for our use. I won that argument hands down.
Here are some other examples in Mexico:
Veracruz, 76692. I wonder if they have a cat on that tin roof at night?
Salina Cruz, #76833:
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Oh goody!
Does this mean you’ll have a repeat of the unsubstantiated accusations of corruption, premature conclusions of large impacts on the surface temperature record and then a paper showing the effects to be minor?
REPLY: No Mr. Thomas, it means that we are gathering the metadata to see what we find. As people like yourself are so fond of pointing out, the USA is only 2% of the landmass while making up the bulk of the observing sites. ROW may be far different. Logging the metadata for it’s own value is worthwhile, as is an ROW study of the character of siting. Be as upset and snarky as you wish. BTW, NOAA closed stations sited like this one after we made them known. Marysville, UofA parking lot station, and others. Actions speaking loudly. – Anthony
so is anyone still confident of the .7 rise over the last century using sterling sites like these ?
Kinda think they(NCDC) really want you to go away. LOL
Excedrin “Manmade” Global Warming Headache #76548, #76692, and #76833.
Anthony, you really enjoy being a burr under their saddle don’t you?
So do we. Keep up the good work!
I’m surprised they haven’t found a weekly Dutch Oven Cookoff beneath one of these weather stations–or perhaps the weekend flea market surrounding some of them (or am I speaking prematurely?)
These climate hysterics must have friends; or do they only gather together with each other for social comfort? If they do have friends, does anyone know if these climate hysterics exhibit strange behaviours in normal intercourse? Or do they, as with Superman, change clothes once they arrive in their offices/workplaces?
Ohai! I’m in your data collecshun, calculatin’ ur error barz.
Any thoughts on how much that air conditioner or tin roof might skew measured temps?
I don’t know about the weather stations in Tampico, but if the roads are any indication that picture doesn’t surprise me. Most people seemed to care too much about trying to make a living as opposed to keeping up with temperature data. I can’t say the ROW will be any better. Have to say, though, the food was great when I was there.
Why do you kick this ass in the butt? Because it’s fun. Do you think they will change their ways? NO!
Maybe we should turn it into an Olympic event.
Isn’t it obvious what their goal is, and it has nothing to do with accuracy or the data quality.
Funding for GHCN should be tied to them certifying their stations on site at least every 5 years.
Again, you guys seem to be having way too much fun! Keep it up, we’re enjoying the entertainment. A rising boat floats all tides…. 🙂 (reversal of boat and tides is intentional, for fun, ya know)
Weather stations attract heat sources like trailer homes attract tornadoes.
“What is it with air conditioners and weather stations anyway?” In this case it must have something to do with both being located on a roof, with the weather station being 82 feet above ground.
The people who chose that location for the weather station must have considered that an unobstructed view of the horizon was the primary objective that had to be met.
FredT says:
August 29, 2011 at 9:09 am
Oh goody!
(Idiotic blathering nonsense…….)
=============================================================
Fred, is it that you want inaccurate temp readings to base our decisions on? As Anthony pointed out, stations got closed that needed closed. Things got documented that needed document…… as far as accusations of corruption……. he had pointed many things out before people moved to correct the errors. So, maybe not corrupt, but laziness and incompetence were clearly demonstrated.
Did you expect that correcting 2% of the landmass records to have a significant effect?
Do we have another Kaboom on site?
The data you collect is only has good as the tools and methodology you use to collect them, no matter how smart the researcher or attractive the theory. Sitting of these stations and how well they meet the laid down requirements was always going to be a problem ,given the lack intention these received. Like a lot of stuff in climate science, in the past it did not matter becasue great claims of accuracy and great demands for change where not being put on their back but now they are.
“”””” Greg, Spokane WA says:
August 29, 2011 at 10:26 am
Any thoughts on how much that air conditioner or tin roof might skew measured temps? “””””
Absolutely ! The air conditioner and tin roof, are not wired into the measurement electronics at all, so we can say without fear of contradiction, that neither one of them can skew the measured Temps one iota.
However we can also be reasonably sure, that those “measured Temps” in no way reflect the actual climate temperature that would pertain to that station location. But the thermometers themselves; fear not; they are rock solid reading their immediate environmental temperature. It would be nice to get some instrumentation to read the general location Temperature; that shouldn’t be too difficult since according to Dr James Hansen, it is close enough if you are within 1200 km of where you want to know the Temperature
A list of all GHCN stations by country would be useful, I know quite a few of the ones in New Zealand well, but I am not sure which ones GHCN uses. I already have pics of some of them and I believe there is a book available in NZ with station history for most of them.
Here is the full list of GHCN-Daily stations (the GHCN-Monthly ones are a smaller subset, but I’d start with GHCN-Daily since GHCN v4 is going to incorporate pretty much all of these into the monthly set): ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ghcnd-stations.txt
Anthony, I wish you best on this effort, as the GHCN metadata is in dire shape at the moment and could definitely be improved. I’m not sure highlighting poorly sited stations will always give the right impression, as an image of the siting alone doesn’t necessarily tell you about the impact on the trend (e.g. Fall et al). That said, if its gets more attention paid to existing shortcomings (and potentially more resources; GHCN is run on a pretty shoestring budget at the moment, though the individual stations are in most cases the responsibility of the country in which they are located), it will likely serve to improve the temperature record in the long run.
The ideal case would be to get a global CRN set up with excellent siting and metadata, similar to efforts in the U.S. over the past decade.
I looked through the GHCN stations for the UK (all 35 of them). One I found interesting:
UKW00035036 52.85 0.7667 68.3 SCULTHORPE
This turns out to be an old USAF base (ex RAF WW II) – closed in 1992, and now derelict.
I wonder who’s looking after the weather station.
Further to that:
UKW00015035 53.1667 0.5167 72.2 WADDINGTON
UK000003377 53.167 -0.517 68 WADDINGTON GSN 3377
Same place twice? flipping over the meridian!
Yes Anthony I would start with GHCN Daily. WRT stations showing up in the water. Some of these will always be difficult because they are located on Atolls or frigates parked at sea. Methods for handling this are easy but time consuming. A typical reconciliation takes a few hours on my system. There is also the issue of the station being in the right location and the Geo datasets being off. For example, a 1km geo dataset is going to put the water in wrong places some of the time. The registration accuracy of the GIS data is also an issue so you have to consider that as an error source as well. with over 26K stations, however, I’m not that concerned about finding stations where the meso scale ( say 1-10km from the station) issues are not problematic.
Mark Thomas says:
August 29, 2011 at 1:27 pm (Edit)
Further to that:
UKW00015035 53.1667 0.5167 72.2 WADDINGTON
UK000003377 53.167 -0.517 68 WADDINGTON GSN 3377
Same place twice? flipping over the meridian!
######
yes you will find those simple types of mistakes which are easily corrected in the first step of any analysis. There is a wrong sign on the .5167
UKW00015035 53.1667 0.5167 72.2 WADDINGTON is in the water.
a simple cross check with WMO volume 9, section A shows the correct location
53 10 31N 00 31 24W for this WMO 03377.
Wrong signs constitute a very very minor source of error.