PRESS RELEASE – U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.
Chico, CA July 29th, 2012 – 12 PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A comparison and summary of trends is shown from the paper. Acceptably placed thermometers away from common urban influences read much cooler nationwide:
A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.
The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.
Today, a new paper has been released that is the culmination of knowledge gleaned from five years of 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.
The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller, of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project in a June 2011 interview with Scientific American’s Michael Lemonick in “Science Talk”, said:
I know that is prior to acceptance, but in the tradition that I grew up in (under Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez) we always widely distributed “preprints” of papers prior to their publication or even submission. That guaranteed a much wider peer review than we obtained from mere referees.
The USHCN is one of the main metrics used to gauge the temperature changes in the United States. The first wide scale effort to address siting issues, Watts, (2009), a collated photographic survey, showed that approximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues. This finding was backed up by an August 2011 U.S. General Accounting Office investigation and report titled: Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network
All three papers examining the station siting issue, using early data gathered by the SurfaceStations project, Menne et al (2010), authored by Dr. Matt Menne of NCDC, Fall et al, 2011, authored by Dr. Souleymane Fall of Tuskeegee University and co-authored by Anthony Watts, and Muller et al 2012, authored by Dr. Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley and founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) were inconclusive in finding effects on temperature trends used to gauge the temperature change in the United States over the last century.
Lead author of the paper, Anthony Watts, commented:
“I fully accept the previous findings of these papers, including that of the Muller et al 2012 paper. These investigators found exactly what would be expected given the siting metadata they had. However, the Leroy 1999 site rating method employed to create the early metadata, and employed in the Fall et al 2011 paper I co-authored was incomplete, and didn’t properly quantify the effects.
The new rating method employed finds that station siting does indeed have a significant effect on temperature trends.”
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.
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 1999 methods with their Climate Reference Network (CRN) in 2002 but ineffective at retroactive siting evaluation.
Leroy 2010 adds one simple but effective physical metric; surface area of the heat sinks/sources within the thermometer viewshed to quantify the total heat dissipation effect.
Using the new Leroy 2010 classification system on the older siting metadata used by Fall et al. (2011), Menne et al. (2010), and Muller et al. (2012), yields dramatically different results.
Using Leroy 2010 methods, the Watts et al 2012 paper, which studies several aspects of USHCN siting issues and data adjustments, concludes that:
These factors, combined with station siting issues, have led to a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.
Other findings include, but are not limited to:
· Statistically significant differences between compliant and non-compliant stations exist, as well as urban and rural stations.
· Poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward, and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations.
· Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied.
· Urban sites warm more rapidly than semi-urban sites, which in turn warm more rapidly than rural sites.
· The raw data Tmean trend for well sited stations is 0.15°C per decade lower than adjusted Tmean trend for poorly sited stations.
· Airport USHCN stations show a significant differences in trends than other USHCN stations, and due to equipment issues and other problems, may not be representative stations for monitoring climate.
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We will continue to investigate other issues related to bias and adjustments such as TOBs in future studies.
FILES:
This press release in PDF form: Watts_et_al 2012_PRESS RELEASE (PDF)
The paper in draft form: Watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease (PDF)
The Figures for the paper: Watts et al 2012 Figures and Tables (PDF)
A PowerPoint presentation of findings with many additional figures is available online:
Overview -Watts et al Station Siting 8-3-12 (PPT) UPDATED
Methodology – Graphs Presentation (.PPT)
Some additional files may be added as needed.
Contact:
Anthony Watts at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/contact-2/
References:
GAO-11-800 August 31, 2011, Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 47 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
Fall, S., Watts, A., Nielsen‐Gammon, J. Jones, E. Niyogi, D. Christy, J. and Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2011, Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146, 2011
Leroy, M., 1999: Classification d’un site. Note Technique no. 35. Direction des Systèmes d’Observation, Météo-France, 12 pp.
Leroy, M., 2010: Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land, Climate, and Upper-air Observations JMA/WMO Workshop on Quality Management in Surface, Tokyo, Japan 27-30 July 2010 http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/qmws_2010/CountryReport/CS202_Leroy.pdf
Menne, M. J., C. N. Williams Jr., and M. A. Palecki, 2010: On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D11108, doi:10.1029/2009JD013094
Muller, R.A., Curry, J., Groom, D. Jacobsen, R.,Perlmutter, S. Rohde, R. Rosenfeld, A., Wickham, C., Wurtele, J., 2012: Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States. http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-station-quality.pdf
Watts, A., 2009: Is the U.S. surface temperature record reliable? Published online at: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
World Meteorological Organization Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation, Fifteenth session, (CIMO-XV, 2010) WMO publication Number 1064, available online at: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/CIMO/CIMO15-WMO1064/1064_en.pdf
Notes:
1. The SurfaceStations project was a crowd sourcing project started in June 2007, done entirely with citizen volunteers (over 650), created in response to the realization that very little physical site survey metadata exists for the entire United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN) surface station records worldwide. This realization came about from a discussion of a paper and some new information that occurred on Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog. In particular, a thread regarding the paper: Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res.
2. Some files in the initial press release had some small typographical errors. These have been corrected. Please click on links above for new press release and figures files.
3. A work page has been established for Watts et al 2012 for the purpose of managing updates. You can view it here.
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Note: This will be top post for a couple of days, new posts will appear below this one. Kinda burned out and have submission to make so don’t expect much new for a day or two. See post below this for a few notes on backstory. Thanks everybody! – Anthony
NOTE: 7/31/12 this thread has gotten large and unable to load for some commenters, it continues here.
Climate Depot has a nice headline,
http://www.climatedepot.com/
Jonas says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:14 pm
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!
___________________________
After it has been thoroughly vetted by WUWT and any and all errors found, make a copy. Then add a one or two paragraph cover letter explaining why the EPA is way off base and trot down to your State and Federal Congress Critters offices. Rub their noses in it. If you can represent a “Group” (NGO) so much the better. (Group = you and your buddies with a fancy name)
Then head down to the campaign offices of all the candidates and do the same.
Showing up in person has a much greater impact, especially if a large number of irrate citizens do so. The goal is to get this issue on the table for the next election.
ANthony et al, thank you for handing us a hammer just when we need it. Now it is up to the rest of us to use it.
This is a nice chart to include: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/residential_electric_forecast.png
As well as this bit of info
Delete “or work” and replace with “of work”. Well done Mr Watts you rock.
Congratulations Antony, I never believed the work of Menne et al. If they would be right there would no reason to have any classification for the measurement conditions of any meteorological station.
We at EIKE http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/ will take care for distribution in german speaking countries . Very well done Antony and all the other fellows.
Michael
I’m still reading through the paper…but good job guys. I love that you’re going to make all data, methodologies, and algorithms available with publication. You’re laying your hands on the third rail of ‘established’ climate science. Yes, that’s going to open the doors to criticism…and lots of it, but isn’t that what science is about? A few dour faces on the other side of the table could learn a lesson or two from your example.
Again, congratulations to all four of you.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 29, 2012 at 1:28 pm
The point is: you should say the SAME in both presentations.
REPLY – Point taken. ~ Evan
So I expect one of the two be revised to acknowledge the ‘Point taken’
REPLY – Well, once St. Mac gives it the full and complete monty we’ll decide which one we like best. (As of so far, I vote for VM.) ~ Evan
These findings prove again, that most of the US stations, considered before to be the very best maintained stations of the world (until Antony´s volunteer projects show the opposite) exaggerated the amount of warming there by far.
This was the first conclusion if one looks into the real situation on site after the publication of Antonys report in 2009.
But this is not true for the US only but for all major countries like germany also, as we proved several times too.
What will our he local media do?
It is to be expected that mainstream media will treat this message as a local event, that will not change the whole picture. But we from EIKE, like others, will not allow them to do so
best regards
Michael.
Well done Anthony et all
Good luck with the peer review – I hope you don’t get the recent problems that Spencer and O’Donnell got hit with.
Great work Anthony and everyone connected to this paper.
Just a suggestion here in preparation for the droves of people who will try and lambast this excellent work, you might want to change the legend colors for the comparison chart above – maybe use Green instead of blue for the lower temperatures? I can see someone trying to criticise the paper because blue means colder or some such thing.
Yes, congrats to all that have worked so hard !
Lines 505&506 verses figure 10 might use some rephrasing.
Sorry late to the party. Congrats on all the hard work to Anthony et al. Now off to digest the paper….
Typos in the paper: line 300 and 757/758
By the way: which journal will publish?
Discussion paper, line 293:
“In contradiction to Leroy (1999) and Leroy 293 (2010) publicly available review papers for Muller et al. (2012), showed they used grouping of Classes 1,2,3 as compliant sites, and Classes 4&5 as non-compliant sites. In addition to the lack of class binning using surface area by applying Leroy (2010) site classifications, this may also have contributed to Muller et al. (2012) finding no discernible trend differences between station classes.”
Tsk tsk, Muller et al.
Congratulations Anthony, Evan, Steve & John!!!
Here is my suggestion for a short PR headline:
NOAA Adjusts US Temps to support global warming!
(Subhead: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has doubled U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.)
(I learned in marketing that a headline should be 7 words or less – well this is 8)
and
The more photos of the actual sites, the better, I remember your original article
had lots of photos of the sites. Many of them were from other countries too.
Anyone who has followed WUWT through the years knows the gargantuous effort that has been put forth by both yourself and all of the gatherers of the Surface Stations survey data and you all deserve a great gesture of appreciation for carrying this to a proper and detailed summary of what has occurred to the land surface temperature records and adjustments by NOAA, NCDC, USHCN and the implications carried into the GHCN dataset used by all major datasets.
Just WOW! Well done Anthony et al.
Well done! Anthony and co-authors. I wonder just how much such a study would have cost had it been done as funded academic research. I also wonder just how many of our favorite warmistas (and others) have taken in enough grant money to do such a project yet didn’t and I wonder just how much they profited personally from their grant money versus their income as celebrities.
It never made sense that temperature readings wouldn’t be affected by local heat sources.
Congratulations Anthony on your hard work – and to your excellent team!
Steven Mosher says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Data Problems
1. Uses GHCN Version 2.
2. In our urban-rural comparisons we use the Urban, Semi-Urban, Rural classifications provided by NASA.
Your cryptic messages do you no favours. This crap has no meaning. Say what you mean or go back to your classroom.
Line 534: “… indisputably higher….” ?
James says:
July 29, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Considering that many comments here have already posted suggested corrections, you’re statement has already been demonstrated to be false.
-Scott
Some (overlapping) questions to Anthony et al.
What is the motivation behind using the new siting methodology ? Are there pros and cons to using it ?
Could using the new methodology in some way create a (counter intuitive) bias such that trends would be *under*estimated ?
Are there good reasons based on the laws of thermodynamics for assuming that one methodology is better than the other ?
Why wasn’t it adopted widely in other studies ? Were reasons given or is it simply too new to have made an impact ?
I realise that answers to the some of the above questions may be found in the reference list. However, like the journalists who read this, I don’t have a great deal of time and would prefer the authors to defend their work. I suggest that answers to the above questions (+ other relevant questions popping up here) be placed in a FAQ section. This work *will* be attacked and readily available well motivated responses are needed.
On another note, its not enough that a method is simply “endorsed”. The CAGW methodology is endorsed by the community and accepted by governments worldwide. To claim the method is endorsed is a useful statement but the argument shouldn’t be overused.
The most affected appears to be the block
of four states, in brown, labelled “.411”.
But is this true? The four States included
are Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah.
From NOAA’s own data ……
A random sample of towns…..
Flagstaff Arizona 1970-2010 :
-0.066 degrees Celsius difference per year
Phoenix Arizona 1940-2010 :
+0.034 degrees Celsius difference per year
Albuquerque New Mexico 1940-2010 :
+0.011 degrees Celsius difference per year
Santa Fe New Mexico 1940-2010 :
+0.01 degrees Celsius difference per year
Boulder Colorado 1960-2010 :
+0.082 degrees Celsius difference per year
Denver Colorado 1940-1960 :
+0.017 degrees Celsius difference per year
Fillmore Utah 1940-2010 :
+0.019 degrees Celsius difference per year
Provo Utah 1940-2010 :
-0.002 degrees Celsius difference per year
Data from NOAA via Wolfram Alpha
Somthing rather odd about that isn’t there ?
None of these figures are anywhere near
the .411 except for Boulder Colorado which
is around Double that figure, but note that
on some other places the temperature actuall
fell over the piece.
OK so the time periods are not the same,
and I did choose some towns at random.
This isn’t an extensive study like Anthony’s
but however there does appear to be a large
discrepancy between these latest “official”
NOAA estimates, and long term measurements.
see widget on index page at the Fraudulent Climate Site
Check out some towns of your own to see whether the
temperature has been rising as NOAA says in it’s
press releases ????
Well done, Anthony. A doubling of the trend. Suppose you were twice as large as you are. You would be Bigfoot. The science is in real troubles if your and your fellows article is accepted.
Steven Mosher says:
July 29, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Thanks, Steven. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us as to what difference this might make? It’s a serious question. Your cryptic posting style is betraying you again. I suspect you have a valid point, you’re a very smart guy … but what is it?
Me, I suspect that they used USHCNv2 (which is related to GHCNv2, not GHCNv3) so that they could compare apples to apples regarding earlier studies of the US … and as far as I know, there is no USHCNv3 available yet. So it’s unclear what would be gained by using GHCNv3 to compare with previous studies that used USHCNv2. If they did that people would just say “you’re comparing apples to oranges” … and they’d be right.
So what? What difference does it make what you/Mueller used? Again, a serious question. It may make a difference, as may the use of GHCNv2, but until you let us in on the secret, I don’t have a clue what your point is regarding either #1 or #2 of your statement.
w.