New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial

Kudos! I can hear the stuttering and sputtering from the Usual Suspects already.
It’s popcorn time!

Seems legit

Good work!

Bravo!

Final nail in the coffin?
[REPLY: Read the paper first, please.]

SNIP -REP

Small error – shouldn’t the bottom/blue coloring zone in the legend of Figure 20 be listed as 0.0?
-Scott

Just a suggestion — I think the press release needs a headline and lede. Without it, it will take an editor too long to figure out the significance of the release and might get it wrong.

Congratulations on your new paper. Turn about is fair play.

Excellent work Anthony. On my initial reading, your work seems robust and I hope it stands up well to peer-to-peer review.

Congratulations Anthony.

Great work, any plans on a global analysis ?

Worthy of the weekend of silence. Well Played.

Garbage in, garbage out, BEST. This is what you should have been working on, had you been honest brokers. Anthony, well done, BRAVO!

Congratulations. Timely too, given Muller’s “conversion”…

That reconciles land data with ocean data and satellite data.

Richard Muller just today published an op-ed piece in the NYT explaining why he believes all the alarmist pronouncements are correct. This can’t be coincidence, can it? Sounds like there’s some background intrigue to this whole story.
[REPLY: There is, but it’s not all about Muller. -REP]

Excellent work, Anthony! You are a true modern day hero!

Heh. Heh. Heh.
Good on ya.

Hi Antony, great work!
You’ve got a typo: “and endorsed was endorsed” should be “and was endorsed”, I presume.
Cheers,
Mark

Brilliant. Now, very quickly, get someone to clean up the typos lest they become the story.

I’m happy to see John Christy’s name in this work. He’s been working for years to find the real temperature of the earth. You can see from Anthony Watt’s work (with his volunteers help, but mostly him) reasons why the temperatures we’ve been seeing in the earth are not necessarily the real temperatures. I’m also happy to see Evan Jones involved.
This work is real science, an example of how science is supposed to be done!

Interesting. Why are the figures always higher after adjustments?

“and endorsed was endorsed by” lose the first endorsed.

Anthony,
Can you translate the implications of this for mere mortals like myself?

Nice job everyone! But I think there is a tremendous uphill battle yet to come for this getting the attention, acceptance and appreciation it (hopefully) deserves!

Excellent news. Let’s hear the Church of Warming respond. Bring on the fraud trials.

Nice work. Found a few typos that you might want to fix in the following paragraphs:
Watts et al 2012 has employed a new methodology for station siting, pioneered by Michel Leroy of METEOFrance in 2010, in the paper Leroy 2010, and endorsed was endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation (CIMO-XV, 2010) Fifteenth session, in September 2010 as a WMO-ISO standard, making it suitable for reevaluating previous studies on the issue of station siting.
Previous papers all used a distance only rating system from Leroy 1999, to gauge the impact of heat sinks and sources near thermometers. Leroy 2010 shows that method to be effective for siting new stations, such as was done by NCDC adopting Leroy 199 methods with their Climate Reference Network (CRN) in 2002 but ineffective at retroactive siting evaluation.
Endorsed is repeated in the first one (sentence in general is choppy) and 199 is missing what I assume is a nine in the second one.

Crap, my above comment didn’t work because of unexpected HTML. I think that the dark blue value in the legend of Figure 20 should be listed as less than 0.0, not greater than 0.0. Hopefully Anthony can fix this soon.
-Scott

“surface area of the heat sinks/sources within the thermometer viewshed to quantify the total heat dissipation effect.”
Neat.
Common sense at last.

Wonderful stuff – congrats, Anthony…

Wonderful work. Here’s hoping it does get global exposure. Thanks Anthony for your tireless efforts to peel back the CAGW onion.

Congratulations, Anthony.
Now, all we need is to factor out irrigation and other humidity affecting factors (in the rural sites).

Outstanding, and given the recent pronouncements of Muller, extremely timely.

Well done Anthony!

· Poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward, and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations.
Where are these “adjustments” coming from?
It sounds like the data is being manipulated to fit the theory, but that can’t be. The people doing this work are scientists, right?

Anthony: Minor error found in the presentation slides: >0.0 should be <0.0 (less than).

Heh, Well done Anthony! Of course, the larger question will be is how or will this new method be applied toward global temps?

Why do sane people like Mr Watts continue to play the game of the AGW fanatics: 1979-2008? There has been no global warming at all since 1995.

Dear Moderators;
Typo:
Watts et al 2012 has employed a new methodology for station siting, pioneered by Michel Leroy of METEOFrance in 2010, in the paper Leroy 2010, and endorsed was endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)…

We do not have a valid climate database from which we can draw proper conclusions. These adjustment methods are dubious and as Mr. Watts shows, seem to be exaggerated in one direction, “up”. In some databases such as NCDC they go so far as to retroactively re-adjust temperatures with each passing month. In these cases the scheme adjust pre-1950 temperatures colder and post-1950 temperatures warmer. These re-adjustments seem to be additive and this database is now used as the input data for others (e.g. HADCRUT4). Below is a graph showing the cumulative “re-adjustment” of temperatures in the NCDC database since May 2008 until June 2012. We do not have an accurate database on which we can base decision making.
http://climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20MaturityDiagramSince20080517.gif
Basically, what we have been basing decisions on is mathematical prestidigitation.

Typo I suppose ……adopting Leroy 199 methods should be leroy 1999 methods.
Thanks for the excellent work!!

Massive congratulations to you. If the numbers are this big the whole edifice is shakey, which gut instinct told many of us when we were first presented with the “adjustments”.
Thanks to all involved.

Thanks for your persistence, Anthony.

So how does the trend from from good and bad stations compare to the trend from the satellites for the same area? This seems like a critical question.

Anthony:
I found two typos in the press release. The first is in the 3rd paragraph after the heading “… Anthony Watts commented that”. In the second line after “Leroy 2010” the release says “and endorsed was endorsed by”.
The second is in the last bullet point before the reproduction of figure 20. The first line has “… show a significant differences …”
Very interesting paper. Your hard work has paid off.

Congratulations.
This is not the end or the beginning of the end. But the end of the beginning.
(Translation: the real battle has just begun)
mpaul wrote:
“Just a suggestion — I think the press release needs a headline and lede. Without it, it will take an editor too long to figure out the significance of the release and might get it wrong.”
Fully agree. Keep it simple and in journo-speak but more understated than Fentonese. Say:
Re-analysis of warming trends in United States yields surprising results.
P.S. Josh even has a toon already over at JoNova

How is it that I know this will not be treated as good news by the alarmists.

Excellent! One comment: Shouldn’t >0.0 in the “Average trend” legend on the maps be <0.0?

The Faeces will now hit the fan. Don’t just admire from the bleachers, Fling Funds! Anthony will need them.

I was going to mention the typo but that is handled above.
Don’t tell to read the paper–I will go back for the next pass, but I didn’t see if on the first pass–does your son get credit for the UHI experiment a few years ago?

I would have liked to see the in the press release total numbers for stations in each category/location, just to help us more quickly appreciate the extent of the problem — you know, 5 vs. 50 vs. 500 stations is something that can help one wrap one’s head around the issue.
Congratulations on the paper, and the enjoyably subtle dig.

As an ENGINEER…used to SPC (Statistical Process Control) after reading Anthony Watt’s fine paper and the figures I gather THIS AT FIRST PASS:
There are 10 decades of data, going back to around the turn of the century-
1. Probable NET “real” change, 1.55 degrees C upward from “whatever” would be the baseline.
2. Enough S.D.’s from the normal variance to be a real trend.
3. NO exposition of the DECADE to DECADE changes, which I think would (will, Anthony isn’t just going to “hang it up” now..) show..particularly with the LAST decade in place, warm trends/cool trends,warm trends and cool trends. AND THAT is the “underlying oscillation” which always exists.
THE FACT THAT WE’VE NOW LIVED THROUGH A DOWNTURN SPANNING OVER A DOZEN YEARS…should obviate the CO2 “dominance” argument from an empirical standpoint.
Important CONCLUSION derived from EXCELLENT DATA and assessment of the GIGO (that’s a complex computer analysis term) difficulty.
Sending this link to MANY…
Max

On you pptx – bottom row of legends should be <0.0. Of course, those should never happen – right?

Typos in the legend:
>0.0 –> .05 – .10
.25 – 30 –> .25 – .30

199=1999. Honest observation of a typo, not nitpicking. I look forward to reading this in detail later, well done Watts et al.

I think it’s smart they you did a press-release on your study. Got to play by the current rules or get smashed out of the way.
I agree with David and mpau, snazz this press release up some. Additionally, these two paragraphs, or something similar and more exciting should be first: (grab people)
“Today, a new paper has been released that is the culmination of knowledge gleaned from five years or work by Anthony Watts and the many volunteers and contributors to the SurfaceStations project started in 2007.
This pre-publication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, is co-authored by Anthony Watts of California, Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville, is to be submitted for publication.”

So what? This is NATIONAL, not global data about only ONE of many parts of the massive body of data that underscores the case presented by the vast majority of expert scientists who have published peer-reviewed papers concerning climate change. Furthermore, this report is presented by a team with an obvious axe to grind vis a vis mainstream climate science, so the conclusions and methodology are automatically suspect. But it’s interesting that people here want SO much to believe they have a block buster.
[REPLY: John, read the paper and digest the methodological implications…. and keep suggestions of dishonesty to yourself. -REP]
FURTHER REPLY – Suspect away! Unlike that “vast majority of experts” we will be providing full disclosure of data and methods. Upon publication, you will get to check for yourself. Furthermore, when we got totally different results for Fall, et al., we didn’t withhold the paper. We went with it anyway. That’s what honest scientists do. ~Evan

Bravo! Anthony – well done!

From the PPT:

NOAA adjustment procedure fails to address these issues. Instead, poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward (not downward), and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations. Well sited rural, non-airport stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied.

Yesterday over in the Tips page, REP mentioned: What Anthony is going to publish tomorrow is not of the flashy fire-works variety, rather it is a tectonic sort of event. Lots of people are going to be, shall we say, non-plussed? Could even get bloody.
NOAA’s adjustments need some exploratory surgery. The NOAA adjustment disease has metastasized into the great body of published work.

Scott says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Anthony,
Can you translate the implications of this for mere mortals like myself?
==========================================================
Scott,
Skip down to the “Conclusions” at the end.
Haven’t read the entire thing as yet. Looks like an amazing amount of work, for you and others. Well done. It looks as if we can now apply some numbers to what we all suspected was going on.
I hope you inculuded the series of pictures over time of the station at O’Hare airport.
Sorry for any typos.
Tom

Even though the hype building stunt and revealing phrase- “The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller” feels like sour grapes and a bit of an ‘eye for an eye’, I congratulate you on your efforts to date Anthony. Let’s hope people focus on the science instead of ‘Anthony is a hypocrite’.

mpaul says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Just a suggestion — I think the press release needs a headline and lede. Without it, it will take an editor too long to figure out the significance of the release and might get it wrong.

Headline:
Alarmist Claims Deflated—
Review of US Temperature Data Shows Very Little Warming for Last 30 Years
Other suggestions?
/Mr Lynn

viewshed: the natural environment that is visible from one or more viewing points

“Anthony, mpaul is correct. The PR release document needs a strong headline and lede! Editors simply will glance and pitchr otherwise. (The press has become extremely lazy form my early days.) You need to put the conclusion (the ‘take-away’) in the headline and explain significance in the lede.
Bravo work and brilliant tactical approach on a highly public pre-release, making it obvious that politics are at work if rejected by the journals.”
Agreed. Punch it up Anthony. It’s too important, and you’ve worked too hard.

Just one little typo in the graphs – the y axis of Figure 12 – CONUS station class comparison using gridding, with a Class 1&2 baseline – should read DELTAtemp from Class 1/2.

Antony, there is a mistake in the color scales: it is writen “>0.0” instead of “<0.0"
REPLY – My mistake. (And the other one on that scale.)

WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *CLAPPING*

AW – Slide 43 since is there a typo NOAA Adj Average at the top is .25 in the map .30?
Great PPT looking forward to the paper. PS I could be wrong.

Why do sane people like Mr Watts continue to play the game of the AGW fanatics: 1979-2008? There has been no global warming at all since 1995.

I’m not credentialed, but my take is he (they?) is talking about the :of record” the warmists talk about.
No way to talk about “cooling since” with out the whole record.

NOAA? We’re with the Humane Association, we know what you’ve been doing, and we’re here to take the pooch away.

Assuming this holds then, at the very least, you’ve demonstrated that the results on temperature trends are sensitive to siting and that an overestimate of temperature increase is likely to have been made. The fact that this is so far restricted to the US is irrelevant since it has a wider significance. This is important.stuff (if it holds) Well done for getting the work to the stage at which you’re happy that its sufficiently solid such that it can now go out for review. .
You should be prepared that the likely response to it is (a) pretend it doesn’t exist (maybe this will work and you didn’t need to cancel the holiday). If (a) doesn’t work then argument (b) its not even peer-reviewed will be made, ignoring the fact that this doesn’t stop others talking about their work in advance of publication. Argument (b) will be joined by (c ), which is that its written by biased bloggers (with the implication that its therefore bound to be wrong). Failing all of this, argument (d) will be rolled out, which is a complicated refuting argument involving some very technical terms which sound impressive to an uncritical journalist. Peer review will also likely be a little rough….
By the way, why doesn’t BEST and the other groups use this new site classification technique ? I assume its been discussed in the literature. If so, what are stated pros and cons ?
.

The fundamental takeaway for me is that they have apparently used the most contaminated data (the most poorly-sited stations) to adjust the least contaminated data (the best-sited stations) to match. That is just plain wrong of them to do, the adjustment process at any given station notwithstanding. It says they have more “trust” in the contaminated data than the uncontaminated data and that reeks of confirmation bias because the contamination moves the trend in the same direction as their hypothesis.

Well done Anthony et al. Been looking forward all weekend to this post and it’s been worth the wait. The truth will set us free (eventually!).

Canonical !

3. authorized; recognized; accepted: canonical works.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canonical

Well done. Your work should become the standard by which others are judged. Given the coverage Muller has had recently it it good that you pushed to get it out in a timely manner. We need to be able to answer that stuff in a timely manner.
Examples: Slashdot HuffingtonPost

Hmm, Fig8 — the Rural MMTS stations, excluding airports graph would be my pick for the most uncontaminated site-grouping. The raw data shows averaged US trends during 78-to-present to be a mere .03C/decade.
Oh, but it doesn’t include the TOBS, the TOBS…./sarc

I’m curious about why the SE stations, for the most part, received the least amount of adjustment

To me this is the really important paragraph:
Watts et al 2012 has employed a new methodology for station siting, pioneered by Michel Leroy of METEOFrance in 2010, in the paper Leroy 2010, and endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation (CIMO-XV, 2010) Fifteenth session, in September 2010 as a WMO-ISO standard, making it suitable for reevaluating previous studies on the issue of station siting.
The surface stations project was ‘just amateur Anthony being picky about the experts. But now the surface stations project data is being put through a World Met Office ISO standard. That will be extremely difficult to wriggle out of.
Kudos to all Anthony.

Spurious doubling of 30-year warming trend from well-sited surface temperature
monitoring stations, 92% of which is due to erroneous upward data adjustments by NOAA of the actual data from those well sited stations? Does this pass the “close enough for government work” test? Wonder how much has been spent by NOAA making these erroneous adjustments, how much has been spent on research employing said erroneous data, and how much has been spent on misdirected public policies influenced by said erroneous data? Taxpayers want and deserve to know!

This was a study of US stations, not world stations, if I read correctly.
Be hard to say much about the world from that.
Pure ignorance: Do “we” have any information about the quality of the global data (I think I recall a report of a single station being used to characterize all of Siberia)?
Can a math relationship be developed for “US data:satellite data::satellite data:world data”?
Almost as ignorant: Do “we” have the raw data from which to re-work the record, or is that among the things that have been lost?

Figure 23 is impressive as well, tmin tmax and tmean with identical (!) trends for 1/2 sations but heavily increased tmin trends for 3/4/5 stations.

I’m a bit puzzled; I’ve looked through the paper, but I can’t find it clearly stated whether the data you used for your analysis was the completely unadjusted data, or the data adjusted for time-of-observation (you state, of course, that you’re using the same data as in Fall et al.–but that was unadjusted, TOB adjusted, and homogenized data, with comparisons between all three, while unless I’m misreading things here the primary comparisons in this paper are between your own analysis vs. homogenized data. I can’t find it stated one way or another whether TOB data was used for your analysis or not). Would you mind clearing up this point (or, unless this is just an obvious case of my failing to read what was plunked down right in front of me, perhaps clarifying it in future edits of the paper)?
REPLY – Raw, no TOBS. ~ Evan

Congratulations on a fine bit of work.
I know very little about this, but has this rather simple minded experiment been done? Rather than using a single temperature sensor, a grid of temperature sensors are used at test sites that will encompass “contaminated” areas by heat sources and rather more remote areas. Eg: if one sensor is in a car park, what is the difference between its readings and ones 200, 500,1000 … yards away in a field?
A number of different test sites, i.e. rural and urban would be needed.
Using modern radio methods, logging can be done without cabling.
This would give direct experimental evidence of the effects that are inferred (correctly in my view) in this paper. it would also give a better experimental basis for DESIGNING a surface temperature monitoring system than we have a present (assuming that one will be needed in the era of remote sensing).

Lines 299-301 need an edit.
REPLY – My bad. Should read “do not consider”. ~ Evan

Congratulations Anthony on a job well done!!!
TRUTH…. Its the new hate speech.
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” George Orwell.

The local stations are reporting that it’s 105F right now in OKC. My thirst- o- mometer tells me they are close.
Great job, Anthony (et al).
Thanks for all that you’ve done and not just with this paper.

Really good to see science as she is done in this much-trampled-over area. The end results are not unexpected, but devastating nevertheless.
Small typo on slides 5&6 of methodology “Compliant (Class 1\2) stations show a trend of 0.102°C/ Decade” should be comment on slide 5 and “Compliant (Class 1\2) stations show a trend of 0.095°C / Decade” should be comment on slide 6 – they are reversed.

At 12:33 PM on 29 July, JohninOregon had posted:

So what? This is NATIONAL, not global data about only ONE of many parts of the massive body of data that underscores the case presented by the vast majority of expert scientists who have published peer-reviewed papers concerning climate change. Furthermore, this report is presented by a team with an obvious axe to grind vis a vis mainstream climate science, so the conclusions and methodology are automatically suspect. But it’s interesting that people here want SO much to believe they have a block buster.

Indeed, it’s “NATIONAL,” evaluating the surface stations network considered the technologically most reliable and best-maintained such information source on land surface temperatures in the world.
If this is the best such land area surface temperature assessment system on the planet (covering, as well, a broad range of metropolitan, suburban, and rural areas), and the quality of the system is now proven to be demonstrably more prone to error than had been previously assumed – with the preponderance of error shown to produce the impression of warming in excess of real conditions prevailing – what may be reliably inferred about surface temperature monitoring systems data from even less reliable thermometers all over the rest of the world?
Quoting from a popular science article in Analog magazine’s “Alternate View” column (titled “Lessons from the Lab,” published in November 2009, but written months in advance of 17 November that year), physicist Jefferey D. Kooistra reviewed the preliminary results of Mr. Watts’ SurfaceStations.org project under discussion here. He closed with:

As for the creebing about how these results are being “presented by a team with an obvious axe to grind,” isn’t the process of peer review supposed to be an infallible and absolutely reliable means of sustaining impartial objectivity in the presentation of scientific research?
Well, hell. That’s what you warmist Watermelon clowns have been spouting for years, isn’t it?
Even though Climategate 1.0 (FOIA2009.zip) and Climategate 2.0 (FOIA2011.zip) confirmed the decades-long suspicions that the “consensus” cabal had turned peer review into pal review both to evade error-checking of their own submissions and to suppress the publication of contrarian research and analyses.
Fortunately, those of us in the ever-growing “denier” community are skeptical of every claim, including those supported by data and results which debunk the crippled conjecture of anthropogenic global warming.

3 pages of abstract, 10 pages of references….52 pages in total…..To which journal are you going to send this “paper”???? 🙂 🙂

My Dad who worked for the WMO 1963 to 1977 in South America told me in 1997 that the AGW was a tax grab! he did not even mention the science hahahahahaha

This will make the political controlfreaks…. freak out!
You know, what they hate is normal citizens doing volontairy work to find out truth.
That means they loose control.
THEY as in “THEY LIVE”, evergreen classic movie, check it out.

Tried to donate, but the system didn’t work. You might want to have a look at that!

We love you Mr. Watts!!

Was it stated as to which journal this is being submitted?

Bravo Anthony at al, well done, good to see science at work!
Skeptics are vindicated, comments about data and adjustments are endorsed now with scientific papers asking for more quality data and work!
This issue of station sitting quality was also my feeling that the majority of USHCN data is “UHI poluted”.
It was also my understanding why BEST found decreasing trend in “most urban” against the whole database. “Most urban” are already big cities where the growth is no longer as significant as in smaller areas.
In the 20th century there was worldwide urbanization process and an interesting demographic evolution. Many big cities have “grown up” and a big part of the world reached over 90% urbanization and also ceased to grow. We have seen this in almost all developed countries, with stagnation in Europe, Russia, Japan, South Korea limited growth in North America and Australia, now followed up by China and others.
Interesting to note that the absolute population growth was 75 million in 1968 and also 75 million in 2010 at double the population. But the new 75 million do not add in the same locations.
This phenomenon starts to happen in the 1950s and continues on a larger scale in the next years.
As more and more cities grow and reach a level of what I would call “UHI saturation”, the slow growth of big cities and smaller in absolute values UHI increase for cities from a certain size explains a smaller delta UHI for an urban group that contains cities, in comparison with a UHI contaminated average containing many small locations growing – consistent with the results from the BEST study – divergence appearing in the 1950s – and with the logarithmic dependency of UHI growing trend based on population.
The time period when this de-couplement happens and the increased difference is consistent with the global demography.
Your paper addresses only the time frame from 1979-2008 in the US but it clearly points out at the flaws of not proper using the meta-data of the stations sitting and making statistical adjustments irrelevant to the meta-data and will hopefully serve to a correction of the race to the highest adjustments trend. (It is not only UHI but various stations sitting issues, I know).
————————————————————————-
Toby says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:21 pm
The US is how much? 2% of the earth’s surface.
But it is warming at 0.155C/ decade, not far off the IPCC expectation of ~0.2C/decade.
Seems like good and valuable contributory work, to add to the confirmatory analysis of the BEST group of Richard Muller.
————————————————————————-
Toby, the world did not start to exist with your birth, even if it might appear so to you. If you go and see unadjusted temperature data for longer periods you’ll understand the 0.155C/decade
in a different perspective:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/ruti/north-america/usa-part-1.php

So, this means that AGW (or a good portion of it) is really man-made….just not by [CO2]…
REPLY – Mmmm. A good portion, yes. ~ Evan