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.
Dear Mr Watts,
sincerest congratulations to you and your volunteers
Well anthony et al. congrats. If this paper holds, then what you will have done, is to give the world a breathing space to actually slow down and considerately approach the change in energy production. You may have just saved the worlds’ population trillions of dollars!
If this paper is accepted and right, i will be expecting Ray Lanberry (sp) from RC to come over here and personally congratulate you.
PS – you sure you were not helped in this by our Alien Masters? 🙂
On the same day Anthony Watts and his colleagues released their findings BEST also released their finding but came to the opposite conclusion! Whats Up With That?
Johnbuk
I was referring to the endorsement by WMO of the siting method (as described in today’s blog post).
You know, Democrats are famous for using their agenda to promote the jink science of AGW, but really there are Conservatives too who peddle this crap.
Hmm, how best to put my reaction….
“I once was a Hockey Stick, then I took a Reality Check to the knee.”
It payed to be skeptical of the data, If only Muller had actually been and remained a skeptic then he wouldn’t have egg on his face.
Second time through (slowly) was better than the first. Very nice work – clearly worth the hype.
James Delingpole from The Telegraph
Global Warming? Yeah, right
Is this a case of deliberate fraud by Warmist scientists hell bent on keeping their funding gravy train rolling? Well, after what we saw in Climategate anything is possible. (I mean it’s not like NOAA is run by hard-left eco activists, is it?) But I think more likely it is a case of confirmation bias. The Warmists who comprise the climate scientist establishment spend so much time communicating with other warmists and so little time paying attention to the views of dissenting scientists such as Henrik Svensmark – or Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen or indeed Anthony Watts – that it simply hasn’t occurred to them that their temperature records need adjusting downwards not upwards.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100173174/global-warming-yeah-right/
Congratulations!
Thanks to the authors we get to see the ugly effect of the Urban Heat Island (UHI).
This is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).
Detail. Change “Screening Whitewash” to “Screening The Whitewash” – there’s your press release title.
Comment “NOAA’s adjustments need some exploratory surgery. The NOAA adjustment disease has metastasized into the great body of published work.”
Well put.
I already had some very troubling info on NOAA’s activities involving Climate Change Education. Assuming that the incentive for this skewing was to keep the theory intact, I have been off researching. It’s been quite revealing. All safely downloaded and hard copied.
One quick point and then a request for help please.
The first is the repeated justification for all this planned reorganizing is premised on “Environmental observations are the foundation for understanding the climate system.” This paper makes it clear the problems are not just in the models. The foundational data is being skewed to obtain the desired social, economic, and political changes. I want to add that all these governmental agencies are determined to combine the natural and social sciences in their Climate Change work. That requires this kind of sloppy natural science and a lack of personal freedom as a result of making the social sciences deterministic.
I need help vetting and refuting if so the following statement from a 2009 NOAA report:
“The components and processes of the Earth’s climate system are subject to the same physical laws as the rest of the Universe. Therefore, the behavior of the climate system can be understood and predicted through careful, systematic study.”
I think that is a false premise NOAA is asserting but I need help explaining why.
The headline for the release: Man-made Global warming
proven
Subhead: The latest study shows Man-made changes to temperature record increase warming
Ha. Me too.
In fact, a couple hours ago I used that word (no pun intended) with my lady-friend while telling her about it.
Sparks – how do you know that Watts et al. won’t be the ones to have egg on their faces ? It pays for all of us to be sceptical, especially when faced with results which appear to confirm our prejudices.
Stu says: July 29, 2012 at 12:35 pm
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’.
Neither eye-for-eye nor sour grapes. It’s martial arts. Half the meaning of “turn the other cheek” is “learn from your opponent”.
Excellent, work, Anthony. Congratulations, and many, many thanks.
Line 382 May airports, due to the weather stations being placed on grassy areas in between
Should be
Many airports ………… ?
HARRY READ ME has a twin?
The Telegraph’s James Delingpole is I believe the first newspaper off the blocks:
“What Watts has conclusively demonstrated is that most of the weather stations in the US are so poorly sited that their temperature data is unreliable. Around 90 per cent have had their temperature readings skewed by the Urban Heat Island effect. While he has suspected this for some time what he has been unable to do until his latest, landmark paper (co-authored with 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 put precise figures on the degree of distortion involved.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100173174/global-warming-yeah-right/
Perhaps thermal imaging will be needed at weather stations. Concerning airports, the heat signature of concorde taking off:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAFFXjqKiwM
Look forward to the NOAA response.
Good work!
FD
PS: I do not know the price of beer in California, but I hope $100 are enough to buy you and your team a round.
heh… this stick looks bigger than other…sticks 🙂
I won’t pretend to understand it all but I get the gist and this is huge deal.
James – yes, thanks, I agree. Everyone should be scouring the paper for holes, IMO. Particularly because most everyone on this board ‘likes the findings’.
“Larry” said:
This was a study of US stations, not world stations, if I read correctly.
Be hard to say much about the world from that.
I disagree. For this to be a US-only phenomenon, the US temperature stations would need be of lower quality (siting, maintenance, etc) than RoW (Rest of World) stations. Given US wealth and technology over the past 50 years, I think the null hypothesis would be that US stations are no worse than RoW stations. Your alternative hypothesis is unsupported by your post, and requires supporting evidence to be plausible.