From Tom Nelson
Email 600, Sept 2007: Watts expose makes NOAA want to change entire USA method
[Tom Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center] We are getting blogged all over for a cover-up of poor global station and US stations we use. They claim NCDC is in a scandal by not providing observer’s addresses. In any case Anthony Watts has photographed about 350 stations and finds using our criteria that about 15% are acceptable. I am trying to get some our folks to develop a method to switchover to using the CRN sites, at least in the USA.
Hat tip: AJ
===============================================================
Note this email, because it will be something I reference in the future. – Anthony
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I have surveyed (and submitted) one hard-to-reach weather station. I would not have known what to look for without the information in this blog over the past years. The problems I saw that can influence the measurements from just this one site made concrete what has been said here. How can anyone grounded in the scientific method believe that the world’s temperature has increased by 0.1 C (or whatever) due to readings from these places? Thanks Anthony and Evan!
The feeling has got to be like watching your child take their first steps!
Congrats.
Great to see Anthony, Evan and the rest of Anthony’s citizen army vindicated. A step forward for transparency and empiric investigation…. ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’
Maybe I missed something along the way, but in the email he admits to only 15% that are “unacceptable”. Is this % purely due to the time frame in which the email was sent?
evanmjones says:
February 4, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Perhaps people thought about what a data break it would be in the USHCN data and that there would be no long continuous records in the years after the break.
We’ve heard very little about the CRN site data. Perhaps people are waiting for some sizable fraction of the blessed 30 year climate period before trying to embrace the CRN data.
Or perhaps they’ve found the CRN data isn’t tracking the airport station data very well.
It would be a good amateur project to collect monthly CRN averages and post summaries and graphs ala GISS, UAH, etc. and produce data suitable for inclusion at Wood-for-Trees.
I’d be interested if I didn’t have this pesky job that keeps me busy. And fed. Fed is good.
Theo Goodwin
February 4, 2012 at 1:09pm
Theo, if I remmember right, Anthony’s project and data came under an attack not only by the alarmists, but also by many luke-warmers, and I could never understand why? What did luke-warmers hope to gain by downgrading Anthony’ project, beats me.
Taras
Of course the instrument sites are unacceptable. I have heard the meteorologists in charge of these stations say as much.
One man can make a difference. You’re the man Anthony. Thanks for all you do !
WLF15Y
Go back and re-read. He says only 15% are acceptable.
evanmjones says:
February 4, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Cortland
Cooperstown
Bedford
Belvidere
Mohonk
Maryland
New York
Norwich
‘Lantic City
Stroudsburg
Blue Hill
Morrisville
I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere.
Not only is this the best climate blog on the planet, it’s also the most effective considering what came crawling out of the woodworks of the CAGW movement.
This isn’t a small achievement.
Great work from Tom Nelson who’s sinked his teeth into the ClimateGate e-mails and simply can’t let go.
Great job.
About 6 inches of snow at the moment here in Cambridge, England… so I guess our weather stations will be ignored for a while huh? 😉
evanmjones says: February 4, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Cortland, Cooperstown, Bedford, Belvidere, Mohonk, Maryland, New York, Norwich, ‘Lantic City. Stroudsburg, Blue Hill. Morrisville
I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere.
Darn near, but not Belle Plaine, Toledo, Clinton, Galva, or Aledo. 🙂
Nice to see your hard work pay off, Evan.
Mike
Bravo for your hard work Anthony and also Tim for reading each and every one of the ClimateGate2 emails
The email600 also includes:
‘.. IDAG is meeting Jan 28-30 in Boulder. You couldn’t make the
last one at Duke. Have told Ferris about IDAG, as I thought DAARWG
might be meeting in Boulder. Jan 31-Feb1 would be very convenient
for me – one transatlantic flight, I would feel good about my carbon
bootprint and I would save the planet!
Cheers Phil’
(bold inserted)
The acronyms are enough to bamboozle anyone. Or at least keep them on the outer.
Apologies, meant Tom in previous post.
Karl’s behind must be jealous because of all the crap that comes from his keyboard.
email600
DAAWRG!
Data Archiving & Access Requirements Working Group
for eg http://www.sab.noaa.gov/Meetings/2011/march/SAB_Mtg_Pres_Mar11_Webster_FINALv3_03-09-11.pdf
Anthony your effort and tenacity are nothing short of amazing. This was your project from the very beginning. Beautiful work!
So we now have evidence that they acknowledge the existing meteorology less than ideal for climate change monitoring and are motivated to improve it.
Ooops. Seems to contradict notions of nefarious behavior. If they wanted to produce fake data to support some climate conspiracy they would not bother to try to improve the network now would they.
The weatherman said, “minus 5 in the cities tonight, minus 10 in the countyside”.
So they do believe in the urban heat island and station siting must be important.
Who’d have thunk it.
evanmjones says
As NOAA has refused to release its adjustment code, we cannot reproduce the adjusted data, and therefore, of course, any results are Scientifically Insignificant.)
———-
I was under the impression that it’s relatively easy to code your own adjustment code and that it has been done multiple times. And they all come much the same conclusions about the temperature trends.
So doesn’t that make access to the NOAA code kind of irrelevant since the actual principles involved are well known.
Paul Westaver says
No… that isn’t the half of it…
I speculate that while they were privately wringing their hands about the station data, they were publicly dismissing Andy Watts as that pesky, tedious, obsessed weather station dork…
I just hate NOAA bravado and arrogance.
———–
That’s weird. You just make up a story, and then you claim this is a valid justification of you contempt.
Funnily enough this is the concrete foundation upon which my admiration for WUWT is based.
Roger Sowell says: February 4, 2012 at 12:53 pm
“On a related theme (good vs bad measurement locations), are there no sites that could be considered “pristine” and long-term?”
Roger: In his article “What’s Wrong With the Surface record” John L Daly listed the following U.S sites as some in that category.
Ashton, Idaho: Basin, Wyoming; Cedar Lake, WA; Cold Bay, Alaska; Davenport, Wa; Eagle Pass, Texas; Lamar, Colorado; Lander, Wyoming; Lampasas, Texas; Nome, Alaska; Spickard, Missouri;
Tombstone, Arizona; Yellowstone National Park;; Yosemite National Park HQ, California.
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/surftmp/surftemp.htm
It would be interesting for those with the expertise to do a comparison with the graphs John lists and those now listed at Hansen’s Gistemp.
I do note that even using Hansen’s data “after removing suspicious records” that in almost all cases the places above not only still showed no “unprecedented warming” but 1934 was still clearly the hottest year in the USA in the time frame covered.
A big tick to Anthony and all his volunteers.
evanmjones: I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere.
Well, I been to Steheken. And seen the elephant. (That’s a Oregon Trail joke, boy.)