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.
You folks – all of you – are heroes who deserve to go down in the history books for defending the legacy of the scientific method in the face of the all out assault from the postnormalists. Well done all of you. *Standing ovation*.
This vid was about Climategate 2 however it is entirely apropos now….
What national dataset would be most comparable to the USHCN for use in a comparison? Given an “out of sample” dataset, if we find the same sort of systemic issue in the non-US samples as were found in the US, we can, I think, safely generalize to the globe.
On the other hand, I suspect other national networks (China’s, for instance) are not as well provided with historic meta-data as the US. Finding an out-of-sample dataset seems to be a challenge.
New Zealand leaps to my mind, but I’d like to hear other proposals.
Good effort Anthony and team.
One wonders about the honesty of scientists that adjust their poor data upwards and then their good data upwards to match. As these people create the data base that all others are made up from, it is a small wonder that they all say the same thing.
Global warming IS man made, Just who is this man or men?
My crops have been telling me that the climate has been cooling for the last 30 years and they don’t lie. pg
[REPLY: Watts et. al. 2012 invalidates all the major data sets and your’re “dissapointed”? No pleasing some people… -REP]
And thereby potentially invalidates possibly thousands of papers in many other fields that relied on those data sets. Yes, tectonic.
[REPLY: Yes, I saw your comment at Bishop Hill. Glad someone gets it. -REP]
I think the study needs a graph.
Would it be possible to have a graph showing the curves of NOAA vs.siting 1+2 vs. siting 3+4+5 over the last 30 years? That would speak much more clearly, since this is the form in which one is used to have temperatures presented.
It would make a much better attention grabber than the histograms.
seriously, well done to all.
Watts’ breathless response to Muller’s NYT article is “Look! It’s a squirrel!”
[REPLY: You didn’t read the paper either, did you? -REP]
Excellent work. I too look forward to reading in depth. I have always suspected dubious input… I love it! Thank you!!
I’ve just finished reading the paper. Anthony, yes, this is huge. This should rip the lid off alarmism, and I hope the MSM is ready to play it right. If they want bad news, this IS bad news – for alramists, for fear-mongering politicians, for the raise-your-taxes-and-control-the-population hype. I hope they are paying attention. A big THANK YOU to all involved.
I guess you *do* need a weatherman to know which way the heat is drifting.
Line 518
I assume the “dampening effect” mentioned is not related to moisture, but the term seems potentially misleading in this context [especially as I was thinking of asking a question about the effect of water/humidity on Tmin].
Line 532
This sentence appears to make no sense as a free-standing sentence. Should it be a continuation of the sentence that begins on line 528?
As I said ad Joanne Nova’s, my takeaway points are:
1. A generalized surface warming trend is real, although this trend appears to have begun to reverse around 1997.
2. The surface warming this century was overstated by a factor of about two.
3. Atmospheric warming still isn’t being recorded, the tropospheric hot-spot still hasn’t been found, etc.
So this isn’t “no warming”. This is “sloppy science” and biased assumptions” from those with either a career or political axe or both to grind.
I believe many of those mistakes will have been honest ones. And that’s the thing: it’s easy to fool yourself especially when self-interest is at stake.
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My favourite part is how Watts et al. used a new WMO-ISO standard in performing their analyses. Barring simple calculation or logic errors, this ground-breaking paper will be hard to debunk without going after Leroy (2010).
But they adopted it for a reason, so I think that’s unlikely.
Excellent work Anthony, real facts that the other side never provide
In the Overview of the Paper ppt, the figures on slides 11 and 12 are identical but the description differs. Likely just a cut/paste error but needs fixing.
I look forward to seeing this in the MSM tomorrow.
Congratulations on the announcement before August 1, along with the paper. Does this timing mean the pre-publication paper can be considered for IPCC AR5? Or is the urgent timing just to point out its conclusions were omitted in the eventual report?
foo1 says:
July 29, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“I think the study needs a graph.
Would it be possible to have a graph showing the curves of NOAA vs.siting 1+2 vs. siting 3+4+5 over the last 30 years? That would speak much more clearly, since this is the form in which one is used to have temperatures presented.
It would make a much better attention grabber than the histograms”.
Yes I too was looking for a line graph showing (2) temperature curves – maybe it’s in there, I haven’t seen all yet. Kind of like the hockey stick curve superimposed over the real temp curve.
Wonderful job though. great presentation!
As luck would have it, the economic downturn has rendered many formerly greenish politicians more open to suasion than ever. This study will surely facilitate a soft landing for those seeking a way out.
Well done Anthony, and well done for getting it out as a press release.
In the UK we recently had a scandal where bankers were found to have been fixing an interest rate figure called Libor by a fraction of a percent. As one would expect for something worth billions, it made all the headlines and resulted in hot debate in parliament.
You on the other hand have only found a few percent which undermines the whole basis of a market worth trillions. (wink)
Frankly, I think these individual efforts are what make America great. Knowing the temperature of the earth, or even the US today and in the past is a difficult job, and it takes work. I recognize Steve McIntyre’s name here, and am glad to see his name on the paper. Somehow, I don’t think there will be a retraction.
Of course, I’m certain it is only a matter of time until someone tries to tear it down, not because it’s wrong, but because it isn’t the “right answer.”
Ian W says:
July 29, 2012 at 1:51 pm
….Steve – I have stated multiple times that the climatologists are all gathered under the lamppost as its light there – using atmospheric temperature when they should be measuring atmospheric heat content in kilojoules per kilogram taking account of the enthalpy.
Gail Combs has effectively tasked me to assess this 😉 . I hope to generate the integral of heat content for some weather stations using various humidity and enthalpy formulas. I have an idea that the daily heat content may not actually change as the humidity drops and the temperature rises and vice versa.
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I was just thinking that earlier today.
Relative Humidity has dropped since WWII. The albedo calculated from Earthshine observations show decreasing [albedo] from 1994/1995 (a time of minimal solar activity) to 1999/2001 (a time of maximal solar activity)… a surface average forcing at the top of the atmosphere, coming only from changes in the albedo… give 7.5 (+/-) 2.4 W/m2. Combine the effects with the adjustments to the temperature data set that Anthony et. al’s work suggests, we may have an actual net decrease in heat energy. Wouldn’t that be a real kicker!
Anthony, et al-
I hope to God that all your hard work bears fruit.
Sadly, it has become apparent that ‘science’ can no longer tolerate annoying details such as: facts, quality, integrity, accuracy or truth.
Congrats-but be prepared for all you work to be summarily dismissed; swept under the rug.
It’s not about you, it’s the system. Remember that. Keep fighting, we appreciate it. Always.
DARN, computer dropped the link again. Here it is for the Earthshine proget: http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2004_ASR.pdf
(Net connection is flaky)
This is a driveby comment after skimming the manuscript.
You are using “raw” for two different categorizations: on the one hand for “raw data” vs. “adjusted data” and on the other hand for “raw average” vs. “gridded average”. You drop the distinction in many figures.
You never define “raw average”, I assume you mean just averaging all stations. This kind of average is prone to additional influences from station distribution. Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. We have two regions A and B, all stations across all classes in A have a trend of 0.4°C/decade, those in B have a trend of 0.1°C/decade. There are 2 stations class 1/2 in A, 8 stations class 1/2 in B, 40 stations class 3/4/5 are in A and another 10 in B. “raw average” as defined by me for class 1/2 is 0.16°C/decade, for class 3/4/5 it is 0.34°/decade. If I got your definition right, why use a measure that is so obviously vulnerable to distribution effects, when ostensibly discussing siting issues? If I did not get your definition for “raw average” correct, what is it supposed to be? How do the trends change when calculating the trends for the different classes from gridded data?
In figure 8 you are comparing raw data for class 1/2 to adjusted data NOAA data. Am I correct, that in this case “raw” excludes corrections for time of observation bias, which the NOAA data includes? If I am correct, what is the reasoning for this kind of comparison, when the focus of the manuscript (according to the abstract) is siting issues?
You report trends to 3 significant digits without discussing or indicating error ranges anywhere in the paper. Do you claim these trends to be statistically significant to the last digit? If not, what are the error ranges? Should they not be included?
The paper would benefit from a plot of the actual temperature curves for different classes that you obtain for the CONUS. Length does not seem to be a consideration so far anyway.
All of the above found during a cursory skimming.
P.S.: You may or may not want to rethink your color coding. It is rather unusual to depict warming trends of 0 to 1.5°C/century with “cool” blue. Your mileage may vary.
I read the paper. I read the PPT presentation and the methodology graphs PPT. I have not read all the comments.
1) If the NOAA’s data is in error so too then are all works referencing the erroneous data.
2) I think the press release requires a figure that summarizes the concept for the non-scientific public. It is very scientific paper-like, as it ought, but the “release” needs a good one page graph in my view. (I know you are busy)
3) This data creates a greater gap between the Mann tree ring data and the atmospheric temps.
I’d like for him to explain that.