Jim River, AK closed in on the all time record coldest temperature of -80°F set in 1971, which is not only the Alaska all-time record, but the record for the entire United States. Unfortunately, it seems the battery died in the weather station just at the critical moment.
While the continental USA has a mild winter and has set a number of high temperature records in the last week and pundits ponder whether they will be blaming the dreaded “global warming” for those temperatures, Alaska and Canada have been suffering through some of the coldest temperatures on record during the last week.
For example in Circle Hot Springs, AK on Sunday, 29 Jan 2012 the HIGH temperature was a blistering -49°F, breaking the -44°F record which has stood since 1917. It gets better.
That same day in Circle Hot Springs the low temperature was -58°F breaking the old record of -52°F set in 1941 by six degrees.
Here’s a list of temperature records in Alaska from the past week:
Brrr!
While all that was happening, the weather station in Jim River, AK closed in on the all time record coldest temperature of -80°F set in 1971. That’s not only the Alaska all-time record, but the record for the entire United States. Unfortunately, the weather station stopped reporting at -79°F.
Here’s the data feed at that moment:
2012-01-28 14:20:00,1028.30,-75.0,-87.6,39,,,1021.19,-55.3,-57.7,85,1.5,155 2012-01-28 14:35:00,1028.00,-77.0,-89.5,39,,,1021.19,-54.2,-65.3,48,1.5,155 2012-01-28 14:50:00,1027.90,-75.0,-87.6,39,,,1021.84,-54.2,-67.8,40,1.5,155 2012-01-28 16:05:00,1027.40,-77.0,-89.5,39,,,1022.74,-57.0,-68.2,47,1.7,160 2012-01-28 16:35:00,1027.10,-77.0,-89.5,39,,,1022.74,-54.6,-59.0,75,1.7,160 2012-01-28 16:51:00,1027.10,-77.0,-89.8,38,,,1022.74,-54.6,-59.0,75,1.7,160 2012-01-28 17:05:00,1027.20,-77.0,-89.5,39,,,1022.10,-56.0,-67.2,47,1.4,163 2012-01-28 17:20:00,1027.20,-77.0,-89.8,38,,,1022.10,-56.0,-67.2,47,1.4,163 2012-01-28 17:49:00,1027.20,-77.0,-89.8,38,,,1022.30,-54.7,-66.0,47,1.4,163 2012-01-28 18:04:00,1027.20,-77.0,-89.8,38,,,1019.33,-55.8,-67.2,47,1.7,174 2012-01-28 18:19:00,1027.10,-79.0,-91.6,38,,,1019.30,-55.8,-71.0,36,1.7,174 2012-01-28 18:34:00,1026.90,-79.0,-91.6,38,,,1019.28,-54.6,-67.9,41,1.7,174 2012-01-28 18:49:00,1026.90,,,,,,1019.30,,,,, 2012-01-28 19:04:00,1026.80,,,,,,1019.39,,,,, 2012-01-28 19:19:00,1026.80,,,,,,1019.39,,,,, 2012-01-28 19:34:00,1026.60,,,,,,1018.84,,,,, 2012-01-28 19:49:00,1026.30,,,,,,1018.84,,,,, 2012-01-28 20:04:00,1026.20,,,,,,1018.45,,,,, 2012-01-28 20:19:00,1026.20,,,,,,1018.46,,,,, 2012-01-28 20:34:00,1025.70,,,,,,1018.46,,,,, 2012-01-28 20:50:00,1025.70,,,,,,1018.46,,,,,
Note at 18:49 on 1/28/12 it stopped reporting all data except barometric pressure.
Some background on the equipment tells us the likely cause.
The station is the venerable Vantage Pro2 by Davis Instruments, arguably one of the best weather stations available to consumers. I have deployed several myself and put them online, for example here and here. They are hardy, accurate, and well constructed, being manufactured in the USA in Hayward, CA instead of some Chinese gadget mill. They also have NIST traceability on sensors.
The Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS) communicates wirelessly with the console below, and the console has an optional PC and/or standalone Internet interface (for DSL/Cable modems) attached.
This station at weather station in Jim River, AK was recording temperatures in conditions way out of its design spec, it only goes to –40 F
From: http://davisnet.com/product_documents/weather/manuals/07395-249_IM_06152.pdf
Appendix B: Specifications Complete specifications for the ISS and other products are available in the Weather Support section of our website at www.davisnet.com. Cabled ISS Temperature range: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -40 to 150° Fahrenheit (-40 to 65° Celsius) Power input: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Console Cable from Vantage Pro2 console Optional Vantage Pro2 AC power adapter Wireless ISS Temperature range: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -40 to 150° Fahrenheit (-40 to 65° Celsius)
While they operate on solar power during the day, these units have an internal lithium battery for operation at night and through extended cloudy periods.
I suspect the internal CR123A Lithium 3 volt battery in the outside ISS died. Note that on 2012-01-28 18:49:00 the data for barometric pressure is still reporting after temperature and other values die. At that temperature, the battery likely could not sustain enough voltage to keep the transmitter running.
The barometric pressure sensor is in the internal LCD console, inside the house/office where the unit is connected to the Internet. All other sensors are outside in the ISS.
The CR123A Lithium 3 volt battery specifications are:
3V 1400mAh Lithium Battery
Wide operating temperature range: -40°C to 85°C
So it was operating way out of spec as well.
Some people have emailed me wondering about why the readings at Jim River, AK stopped just shy of a new all time record. I don’t see any nefarious motive here, just simple equipment failure under extraordinary extreme conditions combined with Murphy’s Law.
Let’s hope the observer there has a backup thermometer, but who’d want to go outside in cold like that to read it?
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue and Joe D’Aleo
BTW, if you want one of these splendid weather stations, you can get them here. Details here.
UPDATE: The NWS in Fairbanks moves quickly to disavow the temperature report. I suppose the Drudge link has the phones ringing off the hook. But here’s the interesting thing, the nearest other “official” station, PAPR at Prospect Creek Airport, AK only 0.9 miles away, is also offline.
Data Status
Over the last 28 days, no data was seen on the following dates: 2012-01-04 to 2012-01-16, 2012-01-18 to 2012-01-20, 2012-01-22 to 2012-01-29.
It would be interesting to see how they defend an official airport station failure.
NOAK49 PAFG 302352 PNSAFG AKZ219-222-311200- PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FAIRBANKS AK 252 PM AKST MON JAN 30 2012 ...CLARIFICATION OF TEMPERATURES FROM JIM RIVER DOT CAMP... TEMPERATURES THIS PAST WEEKEND AT THE ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION JIM RIVER MAINTENANCE CAMP AT MILE 138 DALTON HIGHWAY...STATION JMTA2...HAVE BEEN REPORTED AS LOW AS 79 BELOW. THE TEMPERATURES ARE NOT CORRECT. THE WEATHER STATION IN USE AT THE JIM RIVER DOT CAMP IS A PERSONAL WEATHER STATION THAT IS NOT RATED FOR TEMPERATURE COLDER THAN 40 BELOW. THE UNREALISTICALLY LOW TEMPERATURES ARE BELIEVED TO BE A FUNCTION OF THE BATTERY FAILING AT VERY LOW TEMPERATURES. THERE ARE NO OFFICIAL...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STANDARD... TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS AT JIM RIVER DOT CAMP.$$ RT/JL JAN 12
UPDATE2 1/31/2012 9:30AM PST
According to Gladstone and NCDC MMS, PAPR (Prospect Creek, just 0.9 mile from Jim River DOT station, and holder of the low temperature record from 1971) is an AWOS station, part of the “B” COOP network.
https://mi3.ncdc.noaa.gov/mi3qry/identityGrid.cfm?setCookie=1&fid=22862
Details on AWOS:
http://www.allweatherinc.com/aviation/awos_dom.html
and as I understand it, it is not rated to –80F, the specs for the thermistor say:
Ambient Temperature Sensor.
The sensor shall be thermally isolated in a
motor aspirated radiation shield to accurately measure air temperature.
A. Range. From –40C to +60C (-40 oF t o +140 oF)
B. Accuracy. ±0.3C.
C. Resolution. 1 oF.
Source: http://www.allweatherinc.com/pdf/awos_level_iii.pdf
So, given the official equipment there at Prospect Creek, it seems NOAA has either purposely or unintentionally created an impossibility of the Prospect Creek record of ever having been broken there again.
Frank K. says:
January 31, 2012 at 7:56 am
Mary Turner says:
January 31, 2012 at 6:42 am
Re: 0.45C “temperature rise”. Can you please explain which “temperature” you’re referring to? Is this the “temperature of the earth”? An average? How was it derived? Where? 2m above the ground? 5m above the ground? Does it matter? What about the sea surface temperatures? They are mixed up in the 0.45C “temperature” rise. Do they matter?
The link is in my previous post.
This is pretty silly argument. So just add 0.45 C to the all time record low temperature (that is known) in one location, and that means any location on Earth can possibly reach this “all time” low as an “outlier” to the chaos that is climate – HEH!!
All I’m showing is that the temperature extremes being discussed are not particularly exceptional at far northern and southern latitudes.
glenp says:
January 31, 2012 at 8:08 am
They’re iced in at Nome and can’t get out to see the ice disappearing! Bawhahaha!!!
is the biased LEFTIST MEDIA going to suffer since there won’t be anymore POLAR BEARS on MELTING DRIFTS to take pics of?
btw there is a POLAR BEAR OVERPOPULATION crisis
Austin and Jim
I like Anthony’s explanation better. If you look at the chart that he provided, the temp only changes when the wind blows. North wind = colder, South wind = warmer
Anthony: If the no-atmosphere temperature of the Earth is supposed to be -18C, how does the temperature drop to -60 C so quickly? At that latitude, is the low temperature expected? Grey body radiation averages to -18 c? Ulaanbaatar hit -50 C a few days ago and it is not all that far north. Seems to me it gets colder than the no-atmosphere condition. Clouds in the day, clear sky at night combining to create below-pure-vacuum temps??
The only thing close to Jim River camp IS the DOT camp and just down the road is Pump Station 5 on the Alaska pipeline. At those temps you have to have special permissions to travel, and unless it involved heading back to town no one is going to try.
@ur momisugly Brendan 6:40AM
“You don’t use measuring instruments where you expect them to go near or above (or below) their ranges. Its just bad science. I would have savagely beaten with broccoli undergraduates who used measurements outside the range of the measurement devices.”
The MMTS system from NOAA is used in Alaska and well as CONUS, and it only goes down to -55F See: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/dad/coop/specs-1.html
See some Alaskan MMTS deployments here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/27/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-49-alaskas-coop-stations/
Of course when they put them that close to heated buildings, there’s no worries about getting to -55F
BRING IN NEWSWEEK AND THE OTHER ECO-TERRORISTS! I remember in the 1970’s when Newsweek and the other eco-terrorists were telling us that ANOTHER ICE AGE IS UPON US! They demanded that Congress pass a law to have the military fill up planes with volcanic ash from the Pacific islands, cover the North and South Poles, melt the glaciers, AND SAVE ALL OF MANKIND!!! Get the crazed sex poodle Al “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break” Gorgasm involved as a consultant for good measure. Surf Alaska in no time!
Sprinkle some crushed dry ice on the ground around those record low areas…
per the CO2 warming theory…
the sublimating dry ice should bring the temperatures back up to a nice toasty level….
Let me know how it works out for you for anyone who tries it..!!!
Maybe Gore and company can try that experiment in Antarctica if they get too cold down there on their discovery cruise…
During the winter of 2009 an identical Davis Vantage Pro II weather station at the Tetlin Wildlife preserve in Tok, Alaska recorded a -80F.
Thom, for skeptic and nonskeptic alike, there is no need to wait: monthly summaries are available here.
And yes, during 2011 our planet was bathed in red.
Like the navigator says in Kubrik’s Dr. Strangelove:
“I’m sorry sir. Those ARE the numbers.
By the way, I should point out one very important thing even for this scary red and blue graph. Rectangular global maps are close to as as misleading as it is possible to be, because they leave out, well, the Jacobean, don’t they? See that big, blue pacific? The area of that is much, much, larger than all of those really rather tiny patches of big red dots up to the far north. So “bathed in red” is more than a bit of an exaggeration.
Half of the surface area of the Earth is within 30 degrees of the equator. In this band, I eyeball blue beating red. There is almost no anomaly at all in the southern non-tropics — temperatures are unremarkable and fairly well balanced. In the nothern hemisphere the most interesting thing is that temperatures exhibit much larger extremes — BIG blue and BIG red dots, but then, this was the beginning of fall, the beginning of negative oscillation in major NH climate cycles, and hence one expects maximum variation in that season. Overall, sure, it looks a bit more red than blue, but remember there is a lot less area here than the map suggests, almost NONE in that big stretch across the top.
That’s why this graph is as close to a lie as it is possible to make it. Note that the dots are in a rectangular grid! Holy shit, Batman! Count all of those red vs blue dots across the latitude of Alaska compared to those wussy little dots down on the equator, where things are warm, close to neutral except for the big slice of medium-sized blue dots across the eastern pacific. Oh no! Lots of warming!
Now, think for a minute about what the distance is in between those equatorial dots vs those Alaskan dots. Would that be 0.4x? It would. A dot at the equator is 2.5 times the weight of a dot in mid-Alaska or comparable latitudes. A dot north of that is even more weakly (correctly) weighted. Points well inside the Arctic circle — the top few rows of this grid — have more like 1/4 of the weight of an equatorial point.
I’m sorry sir, that is the geometry.
We could then discuss the difference between weather and climate. But why bother? The UAH lower troposphere result for November 2011 is already available. On roughly the same baseline, it shows a global 30+ year anomaly of around 0.1C. Knock yourself out.
Look, my Physicist friend, as you say, skeptic and non-skeptic alike should look at, and pay attention to, the numbers, but that means not being taken in by elementary areal legerdemain, wouldn’t you say? For example, that one BIG red dot at the VERY northernmost point in the map is precisely — meaningless. If you scale the dot with its actual area, it isn’t “5C”, it is more like “1C” compared to a dot on the equator. The size of the dot SHOULD be weighted not with the size of the anomaly (as the graph does, clearly stated in the legend but who reads legends or understands the spherical Jacobean), but with the product of the size of the anomaly and the area of the Earth’s surface associated with the dot.
But that picture wouldn’t be quite so red, would it?
I should offer a course: “How to lie with numbers and graphs and charts”. This one would make a great poster child example of a lie.
rgb
The problem with the whole thing is that the data is weak. Lousy placement of measuring devices (on asphalt, concrete, in the direct path of jet exhaust) skewed the data. Then they don’t even use the same locations for a period of time. They eliminated the ones that didn’t give them the results they wanted. The Russians raised hell about the total elimination of thousands of measurements they provided. To get an accurate measure the proper sites must be used and it must be over a period of decades. You cannot possibly get anything right until there is consistency. Using formulas to adjust the data and manipulating the model to get the desired results has totally invalidated all the work done previously.
The first clause still annoys me, the claim about PERSONAL WEATHER STATION. I bought my first Davis VP station from one of the best TV meteorologists in Boston – it was his “personal” station at home, he was upgrading to the unit with the aspirated temperature sensor.
I read the Santa Rosa, CA Press Democrat Newspaper has one, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/07/09/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-19/
Anthony used one to help document errors at Carefree, AZ, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/carefree-record-high-temperatures-in-arizona/
Of course, these have nothing to do with accuracy at -79°F, but neither does the NWS comments about “personal weather stations” that can out perform their crap under normal conditions. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/16/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-88-honolulus-official-temperature-2/ Even if I had my own ASOS station, I’d want a Vantage Pro to keep an eye on it.
REPLY: Rick see update #2 above – Anthony
No, the record cold and record heat was NOT consistent with the AGW crowd, not until they realized they had a problem and started the process of making it so that they could claim global warming was to blame no matter which way it went. The reason it is warm in most of the US is that the jet stream is staying north. If it dips low we will get the full force. The Pacific Ocean flipped from warm to cool five years ago and the Atlantic is predicted to flip from warm to cool in the next three years. They run on a sixty year cycle. When they are both in cool mode and the solar output is in a weak cycle, as it is going to be for the next five to seven decades, we will then get a vicious taste of bitter cold that lasts for a very long time, just as it has cyclically in the past. Go to the UK Guardian for a good treatment on this.
“The link is in my previous post.”
Please use this link then to answer the questions I posed. I don’t see that information specifically at your link. You can take your time…
“All Im showing is that the temperature extremes being discussed are not particularly exceptional at far northern and southern latitudes.”
Can you demonstrate using the available data that -80F is not exceptional in Alaska? Certainly this is the case at Vostok, Antarctica. Thanks.
In any case, it’s a warming world!! No more cold records! The seas will evaporate and the poles will melt off! All because of CO2 – a harmless gas! I believe! I believe! \sarc
“Mary Turner says:
January 31, 2012 at 6:42 am
All I’m showing is that the temperature extremes being discussed are not particularly exceptional at far northern and southern latitudes.”
All I’m saying is that various high temperature records and ~.45C of alledged warming that sends the media and others into histrionics are not particularly exceptional at the location they are taken.
They don’t have to be exceptional. They only have to be normal to prove that there isn’t a change (warming). The Anglican University VERY quietly released data this week that shows NO warming for the last fifteen years.
The AGW scam is dead and buried folks: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Put a fork in it.
Dante’s seventh level of hell is intense cold. One could say that Alaska just experienced that level of hell.
How many other Alaskan/Yukon indeed arctic stations are not able to measure temperatures below -40 degrees C? With a station like this “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can’t.” Didn’t somebody already say this, they must be a sceptic.
How convenient for GW koolaide drinkers that high temps support GW but low temps don’t refute it. I wish my job had those same rules for my productivity levels.
One comment stated that record low temperatures at the higher latitudes are not necessarily exceptional. They should not be confused with temperature trends at the mid-latitudes. I agree.
Record lows at the poles indicate that the atmospheric conditions are conducive to radiational cooling. The conditions for high cooling rates are; still air movement, very low atmospheric moisture, and low atmospheric pollutants such as dust, smoke, methane, and excessive CO2. For the most part the atmosphere is “saturated” with CO2 respecting the influence of its presence and IR absorption. More CO2 does not cause higher absorption of IR radiation. At the wavelengths CO2 absorbs, the percent transmission through the atmosphere is already nearly zero.
The heat of the Earth (roughly 300K) under ideal radiational cooling conditions, is radiated into space (nearly 0K) causing very low temperatures.
Tim Clark says:
January 31, 2012 at 9:26 am
“All Im saying is that various high temperature records and ~.45C of alleged warming that sends the media and others into histrionics are not particularly exceptional at the location they are taken.”
This brings up another question about the “exceptionalism” in temperature records. Suppose that the high temperature tomorrow at Niceville, Iowa exceeds the record by 0.5 F. So a new “record” temperature is set at that location! The old one was set in 1910. Is the new record temperature “exceptionally” different than the old temperature record of 1910? Lets say the old record was 50 F and the new one is 50.5 F. Are they really different, or perhaps, in reality, essentially the same, especially given the fact that they were obtained from entirely different measurement systems, with measurement errors probably far exceeding 0.5 F?
Robert Brown says:
“Y’know, people keep saying this, but I don’t see Obama investing a whole lot of rhetoric and no hard action at all in CAGW. …I’d say republicans do a lot more pandering to the tea party extremists than democrats do to tree party extremists”
Like rejecting the Keystone pipeline, that would create thousands of real jobs in a string of states that had the poor judgement to not vote for Obama? Try overlaying the pipeline http://www.state.gov/img/11/45257/keystone_map_400_1.JPG on the 2008 electoral map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2008.svg
Jan 1989.
US Army Field Exercise Brim Frost
Temperatures hit -75 F.
And we were out in the middle of it,….in TENTS!
Thank God for Yukon Stoves!
LOVE the global warming NUTBALLS saying “See, that record low proves it’s warming, that’s what we’ve said ALL ALONG…..”
[snip – just a bit over the top- AW mod]
Robert, perhaps it will sooth your irritation to notice that NASA’s web site offers a polar-plot option for climate data.
And yes, polar plots too show that during 2011 our planet was bathed in red.
With regard to broader issues of climate prediction, here is an exercise that I find soothing.
When a jet airplane is on final approach, and the landing gear are lowered, we hear a loud “whooshing” noise as turbulent air flows over the wheels. It is then that I ask myself two questions:
(1) Do scientists and engineers understand that turbulence in-detail? The answer is “no”.
(2) Do scientists and engineers understand that turbulence well enough to predict what the pilots must do, to land the plane safely? The answer is “yes.”
So the question is not whether we understand the climate in-detail (answer: we never will). The question is whether there is any realistic possibility that our planet is headed for a “crash.”
Elevator Summaries: (1) NASA stands willing-and-able to help folks plot climate data any way they like. (2) Regarding the hypothesis “AGW is no problem”, both theory and data provide ample grounds for rational skepticism about that hypothesis.
Why is that in direct contradiction to the latest from Anglican University? And surely you have heard that NASA had problems with grossly malperforming sensors. And it is purely subjective because you must have a long term data bank to so as to have comparisons. None of it adds up.