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.
Let’s not get carried away here.
I’m sure the paper will be published, but it hasn’t been submitted to any journal yet and hasn’t passed peer review. Until that time, climate scientologists will just ignore the paper as a way of burying it.
Publishing in a quality journal (Nature or Science or is the paper too many pages for them? Or “just sends the wrong message” lol) will give the climate scientologists no excuse.
James says: July 29, 2012 at 2:31 pm
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.
I wrote a page on UHI, having collected a great many studies, not least being those of John Daly. Watts et al 2012 is therefore not a confirmation of “prejudice” but of evidence. All Watts et al have done is the slog to turn results that were blindingly obvious to me, into a tight and fortified paper. Sure, there will, rightly and correctly, be criticisms. Judging by all past records including their generous attitude to BEST, I think all authors will cope with criticism as scientists should – by acknowledging it when it’s correct and germane to the conclusions.
As far as I can see the main novelty is that the weather station classification scheme of Leroy (2010) is better than Leroy (1999). It would have been more elegant if the press release had stated that the differences between stations of various qualities can only be found in the temperature trends of the raw data and not in the homogenized (adjusted) data, which is used to compute trends.
For a bit more detailed “review”, please visit my blog:
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2012/07/blog-review-of-watts-et-al-2012.html
I hope I have been fair to the manuscript. I felt it was good to comment before the press started parroting the press release and the night is starting in Europe.
I agree with that.
MangoChutney says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Publishing in a quality journal (Nature or Science or is the paper too many pages for them?
It is much too long Nature or Science.The usual strategy is to publish the long paper somewhere else first [e.g. Journal of Geophysical Research]. Then when reviewed and accepted there [‘paper in press’ should be enough] submit a short ‘Letter’ to Nature or Science summarizing the main message and referring to the long paper for details. Trying anything else will fail.
Anyone who’s ever lived near a weather station close enough to see it on a regular basis probably has been providing anecdotal evidence of this for decades, but having an actual study to back it up has taken WAY too long. I’ve stood by such an airport weather station, and felt the heat radiating from the tarmac on my face. I’ve personally seen another weather station within 2 meters of a central air heat exchanger, with the grass around the stations base moving every time the unit switched on.
Strangely, with all the records set for “high” temperatures in the last 2 years, I remember vividly the temperatures being just as high or higher 20-30 years ago, for equally long times, in the area. Yet, now, it’s as if those heat waves never existed and the records I thought were set, aren’t in the books. Perhaps all the temperature readings I remember were solely TV-station-gathered readings not part of the official record, but I thought those were using input from the official weather stations just as they are now (just gathered by phone or dial-up internet instead of modern near-real-time monitoring). I would really like to see compilations printed in the 80s of daily highs & lows and compare them with what the official sources “say” the temperatures are now. More and more, I feel like the AGW crowd is telling us that “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia”….
Good point, but USHCN, for all it faults, is one of the best station networks in the world. At least it generally avoids airports. GHCN, GISS, CRU, etc, depend heavily on airports, so that what Anthony has found goes double for them.
In Ohio, for example, there are 26 USHCN stations, of which some (notably Urbana) are terrible, but only 0 are airports. But of 10 CRU stations in Ohio, 8 are airports (if you count “Cincinnati” as being in OH).
The US may have only 2% of the earth’s surface, but it may have 50% of the earth’s valid weather stations! (Just a WAG) 🙂
In Italian :
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?p=22242
Michele
Anyone who’s ever lived near a weather station close enough to see it on a regular basis probably has been providing anecdotal evidence of this for decades, but having an actual study to back it up has taken WAY too long. I’ve stood by such an airport weather station, and felt the heat radiating from the tarmac on my face. I’ve personally seen another weather station within 2 meters of a central air heat exchanger, with the grass around the stations base moving every time the unit switched on.
Strangely, with all the records set for ”high” temperatures in the last 2 years, I remember vividly the temperatures being just as high or higher 20-30 years ago, for equally long times, in the area. Yet, now, it’s as if those heat waves never existed and the records I thought were set, aren’t in the books. Perhaps all the temperature readings I remember were solely TV-station-gathered readings not part of the official record, but I thought those were using input from the official weather stations just as they are now (just gathered by phone or dial-up internet instead of modern near-real-time monitoring). I would really like to see compilations printed in the 80s of daily highs & lows and compare them with what the official sources ”say” the temperatures are now. More and more, I feel like the AGW crowd is telling us that ”we’ve always been at war with Eastasia”….
I can see how TOBs can affect the mean temp, unfortunately, I can’t remember whether Obs moved from morning to evening or vice versa.
Early morning Obs can bias the temps down, Evening Obs can bias upwards.
Then again, when did we stop using max/min thermometers?
DaveE.
Anthony – excellent work.
Having PR and media experience I agree – the press release needs a strong headline – you have to give the media one sentence that grabs their attention.
Something like this:
NEW TEMPERATURE REVIEW USING UPDATED WMO APPROVED STANDARD SHOWS NOAA WARMING DATA ERRONEOUSLY ADJUSTED – WARMING SIGNIFICANTLY OVERSTATED
Figures 10 – 19, I would have liked it better if the figures that were related all had the same vertical scale. By having the scale set automatically by the data in the figure I thought it was more difficult to spot trends across the graphs. By using the same scale the trends become more obvious.
Christoph Dollis says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:05 pm
“ Otherwise, the paper will not [should not!] pass serious peer-review. In the meantime you should use the phrase with the least amount of hype.”
I agree with that.
How can a reasonable person disagree?
Fantastic work by very dedicated people.
shoot – I should refresh browser once in a while – seems you’ve already addressed 😉
Jaypan, Muller was never a skeptic. That he states he was a skeptic is a deliberate propaganda pose; he is on record for the past 15 years as saying he believes in AGW. He is a Warmista in pseudo-Denial clothing, a Judas Goat.
Thanks Leif, that’s what I thought
“Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied”
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Why is properly collected data even being “adjusted” in the first place?
And why is improperly collected data being adjusted data all? It should just be discarded.
Each site has unique errors introduced by the combinations of different instrunmentation, different local siting problems etc. You can not just homogenize all the data across all the sites with the same algorithm. It is just too bad for climatologists that there is only a sparse amount of data available and that most of it is grossly contaminated by bad experimental technique.
If a study was sequencing a neaderthal DNA sample that was contaminated during collection with human DNA, the results and researchers would be laughed out of their field if they retained this data and tried to “adjust” it and then make fallacious claims about how much it matched human DNA.
If a chemist was measuring the mass of samples and realized that they had been placing their thumb on the scale for some samples, they would not keep those measurements and try to “adjust them” by guestimating how much pressure their thumb was applying to the scale on average and then applying a correction factor to all their measurements. They would start over and gather new data and avoid making the same experimental errors this time.
As far as I am concerned every one of the official temperature record data bases is nothing more than junk science. They need to start from scratch and collect new data. Too bad for them that this means they will not be around when enough data exists to make insightful analysis.
How about they try discarding all of the poorly sited stations and their half-baked data. I would like to see what trend that smaller data set would show, and without any adjustments please, just properly stated error.
How well do the compliant sites match with the USCRN ?
I like the preprint, but there is zero chance of this getting past peer reivew
e.g.
758… The odds of this result having occurred randomly is very small.
Peer Review: Is this an IPCC report? lol
I am a meteorologist and am not surprised by these results. With my car thermometer on a clear night I start in an outskirt part of town (Springdale road) and it’s 42 degrees, into the urbanized area (Oakley) and it’s 45, and then I drive south to a rural area (Union, KY) and its back around 42 again. Seems like UHI and land use could definitely be a factor here. This is for the Cincinnati area.
My father, a retired chartered engineer, who developed arming devices for the Ministry of Defence once told me.
“Your enemy is always your best friend, especially when you hide nothing.”
If the other (AGW) parties can find nothing wrong with your methodology and your results then they have just helped you secure your position,
magna diem (?)
Besides that I don’t think people understand that the methodology for the USHCN v2 adjustments is the same ones used in GHCN v3. If the methodology doesn’t work in USHCN it also will not work in GHCN for the exact same reasons. Both CRUTem 4 and GISS rely on GHCN v3 and if GHCN v3 is flawed then it will then flaw the GISS and CRUtem datasets, GIGO fashion.
1. Neither the world — nor even these comments! — are solely populated by reasonable people.
2. I think the paper is great work, on balance — important work — and I want it to succeed in being widely considered and taken seriously. So I chimed in hoping the authors actually make the change.
Now if I was writing sales copy, that’d be different. Then “reasonable” is a whole different ball of wax.
Given Gavin and the Team 5 minutes and they will think of a way 🙂