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.
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Look at the last 30 days global temperature anomaly map and it pretty clear how cold it has been in Alaska.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.html
It appears to be related to the break down of the north polar vortex and the sudden stratospheric warming event. A mini-polar vortex settled in over Alaska instead (and this is drawing the warm Pacific air straight across North America resulting in the southern two-thirds of the continent being above normal over most of the winter while normally, cold Arctic air periodically dips down to freeze our … off, not this winter so far). Alaska has taken the brunt of the winter. Asia has been very cold as well.
Bettes Field, AK registered -60 on the 1/28/2011. How is it you are getting almost 20 degrees cooler in a similar spot? Are you taking the reading right? I’m skeptical of your equipment.
Spent time in the army in AK and 40 below is *dangerous*. Try it without a bacalava or gloves and you will get frostbite in under an hour.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/windchill/
“37647347 says:
January 30, 2012 at 5:55 pm
I was just a kid when we lived in central Alaska in the early 1960′s, but I think it reached minus 40 degrees and we still walked to school. At least that is the way I remember it. I also seem to remember something about it being a dry cold instead of a humid cold, so it was more bearable. And we wore lots of layers of clothing beneath our parka’s. Alaska was great, the most beautiful state I have ever lived in…”
There really is only one type of battery that can easily operate at extremely low temperatures. They have the added benefit of lasting for a good 80 years with no maintenance or loss of energy. What’s the catch? They are made from Pu-238.
Brimfrost 1989, 6th Light Infantry Division from Fort Freeze-at-Night (Wainwright) we had readings on ATC and other aviation gear of -83, -85 in the field where we camped outside… The dark red hoodies we had made up for participants had -83 lettered on the front. Good times. Its always cold up there, and who knows when it’ll be frosty or balmy from year to year. Better hope Global Warming doesn’t happen though, or all the 38 million in California will be moving up North! It sounds great to have Canada and Siberia warm up, but when Mexico looks like the Sahara where do you think all those people will go? China, Pakistan and India are already arguing over shrinking water sheds in Tibet. Russians in 50-100 years might have some problems. Meanwhile, Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes have something like 5% of all non-frozen fresh water so I’m not worried. Just wish the Canadians would quit peeing up-stream 🙂 Just kidding.
The NWS disavowed 2 nights in a row of Illinois state record ( -38) a few years ago. They couldnt seem to get it through their heads that temps bounce up and down several degrees around sunrise and are more likely to bounce more when cold than when its warm since the amount of energy it takes to move the temp a couple of degrees is much less when its intensely cold. It actually was a study in ignorance as they said the mid afternoon readings were fine, unwittingly admitting that the air was well mixed. It busted it the second night again, after they went out and checked it the previous afternoon and supposedly fixed it. My meteo 461 course at PSU ( instrumentation… I still have nightmares about it) and what it takes to build and maintain instruments, and especially thermometers which are much more prone to err on the warm, than cold side would immediately turn anyone into a skeptic. Unless on site, with several thermometers, they have no business making a judgement either way as to how accurate it was.
I’ve got a simple question: If the thermal equilibrium of the earth without an atmosphere is -18C (or there abouts) Then what mechanism brings about -80C/F in alaska? Seems there is a major interaction between the atmosphere and cold space that allows part of the atmosphere to be chilled to -80C and then ‘settle’ to the surface. So a large portion of the atmosphere is involved in cooling the atmosphere and hence earth?
These temperatures are from a Davis Weather Station and the voltage from the lithium battery drops dramatically with temps below -50 and the result is bogus low temperatures. Davis makes no claims on temperatures below -40 and recent firmware changes keep the units from reporting colder than about -40F. The unit at Jim River has not had that firmware change installed.
This is exactly the same problem as in Tok in January 2009.
———————————————————————————-
So that means that they ignore all readings below -40. What effect would that have on the “average” temperature?
The Vantage Pro2 device was operating outside it’s stated operating range of -40 to 150F, so any reading below that would be suspect without a warming device for the battery and electronics.
http://www.weathershop.com/Specs/6152-62-53-63_VP2Spec_C.pdf
The usual temperature measuring device on these devices is a thermistor. Here’s the data for a typical thermistor, which has a resistance of 10,000 ohms at 25C (77F) and a resistance of 1,640,357.00 at -80F.
http://www.ussensor.com/rt%20charts/KW103J2.htm
Given the weak battery power available at such low temperatures, it’s highly likely that the recorded temperature is an instrument error. I thought you folks around here worry about bad temperature readings, after all the complaints posted on this web site.
REPLY: Apparently you missed the part in the article where I noted and explained the low battery issue. I was also in contact with Davis Instruments management about this issue and while they agreed the battery failure likely caused the end of transmission. I’ll follow up again tomorrow. Not also the closest airport “official” station just 0.9 miles away also has failed. – Anthony
JRG says:
January 30, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Bernd Felsche: That was a fascinating engineering solution you proposed. Might I suggest an alternative? Select a different battery chemistry, one that continues to function at adequate voltages to -80F or -100F
————————–
That doesn’t solve the problem of the electronics and sensors continuing to operate within their specified temperature range. If the instrument is not certified at the temperatures being “measured”, then one cannot trust the results without additional, external validation.
From MIL-STD-810F
“Temperatures colder than -51°C (-60°F) occur no more than 20 percent of the hours in the coldest month of the coldest part of the area (northern Siberia) where temperatures as low as -68°C (-90°F) have been recorded. Because extremely low temperatures are not controlled by a daily solar cycle, they persist for a long enough period of time to cause materiel to reach equilibrium at extremely low temperatures.”
Nor does a Li-SO2 battery cover an adequate range of temperatures which for the Arctic can be as low as -70°C (not uncommon). I’ve found only batteries of that type rated down to -60°C which falls somewhat short of being able to record “normal” arctic temperature extremes.
One might be astonished to find out many ways there are to achieve a voltaic output from an ‘Atomic battery’; these ppl can do a better job on enumerating ‘the ways’ than I can:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery
.
Alaska and Canada have been suffering through some of the coldest temperatures on record during the last week.
As noted, quite a major generalization. Southern Alberta has been well above average all week. The official high in Lethbridge today was 10°C (50°F). All sorts of warm records set in the past week or so across Alberta.
Fun topic though. ☺
Hmm that’s in the general area where the official low was recorded. Always nasty along the haul road during winter.
So if the ground station stops reporting due to battery failure, are there satellite readings to determine if Jim River, AK broke the -80F record?
I tried to make that point on another blog a couple of years ago and had my comment deleted. If the projections for warming were to be believed going back to when they first started making such projections, it should be impossible to see a record low temperature today as the “global” atmosphere would now be radiating enough heat back to the surface to make it impossible. We should only see record high low temperatures.
But didn’t someone recently publish something along the lines of colder temperature being consistent with warming temperatures, or some such poppycock?
I was born, raised and have always lived in Interior Alaska, between Fairbanks and Anderson to be precise. I am 47 years old. I have not seen a long cold spell like this since the 70’s. Except one the early 90’s which doesn’t hold a candle to the one we are in now. We had -60 on all our thermometers yesterday morning (digital and traditional), it hasn’t been above 20 below for weeks, usually 30 to 40 below for HIGH temps, overnights of 45 to 50 below…
I just paid $1526 for 344 gallons of heating fuel. We have burned 4 cords of wood this winter, which for us starts in October. Our electric last month was $410, serious lack of daylight this time of year…
This is our second bad cold spell, also having one in November.
I like my digital thermometer (Oregon Scientific), it keeps pace with 4 other traditional thermometers until about 50 below.
Why do I stay? It’s home and I have a really good job, I can retire at 52 then be a snowbird and head south when it gets like this!
As I post it has warmed up to -26 and it’s snowing. It feels so nice after 40, 50 and 60 below. Just thought I would give you a view from the north.
It’s all Bush’s fault.
Eric Barnes says:
January 30, 2012 at 6:41 pm
“Spent time in the army in AK and 40 below is *dangerous*. Try it without a bacalava or gloves and you will get frostbite in under an hour.”
Reply: I am sure you are right. I was just a kid in the early 1960’s at Ft. Wainwright, but I thought it got as cold as minus 40 while we were there. I seem to remember people saying it was more bearable because it was a dry cold.
The whole man-made global warming theory is a scam. Little global temperature fluctuations over decades are like the little temperature flutuations on any given day. Remember, even the pro-global warming scientists are touting a mere 0.8 K increase over 100 years, which is remarkable stable! It would be newsworthy if it DIDN’T change in 100 years.
This has probably been happening a lot over the past few years– historic record cold destroying the measuring equipment before it causes the warming cultists any further embarrassment.
I do not share this belief. I have two of the original Davis models and have seen my share of batteries fail. The temperatures are quite believable during the low voltage conditions, the radio section is the first to go, and data simply stops arriving.
When the sun comes up and the PV cell gets enough light to operate things, it resumes sending believable data.
However, I have no experience with the temperature sensors at temperatures below -10°F or so. I would not be surprised if there are calibration issues below -40°
If the NWS cared, they could test the Jim River unit. Anemometers that recorded the famous Mount Washington wind gust (and the lesser known Australian gust that is now #1) were examined, as were thermometers that recorded some of the state records.
Henry Ruh says:
January 30, 2012 at 6:08 pm
The Davis units have “supercaps” (capacitors that are rated in farads instead of microfarads) and those are charged by the PV cell. The 123 Lithium battery used during cloudy stretches and after the supercaps fail is nonrechargable.
Warm and cold records are getting set all the time. We’ve had some warm ones lately too.
What anthropogenic climate change predicts is that warm records will increasingly outnumber the cold records, instead of being about 50-50. And increasingly outnumber they do (e.g. Meehle 2009).
Also, we had an X class Solar flair at about that time! …Check http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/alerts_timeline.html
for all the details!
The Davis station temperature probe is most likely a platinum RTD which is quite stable and accurate in providing a temperature/resistance curve. The station itself which provides the operating voltage would not be housed outside. It is possible that the battery/voltage divider providing power dropped below the RTD voltage specification or the RTD experienced a mechanical failure…
The last observation from Jim River AK was about 18:30 UTC, which is about 1 hour prior to sunrise. Given that the temperature was on a downward trend it seems quite plausible we would have seen a -80 F reading near or just after sunrise at 19:30 UTC on 28 Jan 2012.
I have also heard there is a chance data is being recorded at Prospect Creek Airfield (PAPR) even though the data is not being transmitted in real-time.