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.
###
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.
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“This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue…” May I suggest that you reword this to avoid using the word “issue” twice? It sounds a bit awkward.
TOBS can matter even when using a max/min thermometer. I can show you why with a simple thought experiment.
Suppose (for the sake of this thought experiment) that temperature fluctuated regularly with max temp always occurring at 2pm and min temp always occuring at 2am each day. If the observation time was 2pm then the thermometer would be being reset each day at the hottest time, so the reading on the thermometer would be the largest of todays temperature peak and yesterdays. This would bias the maximum up slightly but would have no effect on the minimum. Conversely if temperatures were taken at 2am the minimum recorded temperature would be the lowest of todays and yesterdays and would be biased slightly downwards but there would be no effect on the max.
If you stay away from taking measurements near the hottest or coldest time of the day however, any TOBS effect when using a max/min thermometer is going to be tiny. So while the effect is real, one should take care not to overstate its effect or overadjust for it.
A. Scott says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:13 pm
…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
*
How about something shorter, sharper and juicier: ERRONEOUS ADJUSTMENTS CONFIRMED TO DOUBLE WARMING.
🙂
Good paper. I note that about 20% of sites are class 1 and 2 and therefore compliant. I think statistically this is sufficient. However, you don’t seem to mention anywhere how many of these are rural, suburban and urban so when you demonstrate the difference in trends for these locations I am left with that question. Also, you might like to demonstrate whether the distribution of data is “normal” and therefore suitable for ANOVA or whether it is non-normal (just so there is no question in that regards).
Congrats to you all. In a related note, have you seen what Steve Goddard has found lately? A 3°F difference in USA between USHCN and GHCN. GHCN is 3°F higher in trend since 1895. USA is almost dead flat in USHCN. It is an amazing difference (which Steve thinks is related to most sites being at Airports in GHCN(US)).
Did you guys consider using USHCN instead of GHCN?
Please have a look:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/a-tale-of-two-countries-the-richard-muller-gigo-story
Question. While waiting for the data to be released, could we get a simple station listing? A listing of the stations used (plus their new quality ranking) would allow a lot of checking/replication, and it wouldn’t take much effort to release.
I notice that Arizona has warmed at the fastest rate for all three of the data sets in the graphic. Arizona has had more urban sprawl and concrete and tarmac added to it than probably any other place in the US, so this is absolutely no surprise to me. It has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2 or “global warming”.
Not only have Anthony and co-authors outclassed BEST with both immaculate timing for BEST and AR5, as well as courteous acknowledgement and adoption of martial tactics.
They’ve done the same re the Wahl & Amman Jesus paper tactics ie if it was OK for IPCC to accept a published paper dependent on being supported by an unpublished paper, then it’s OK for IPCC to reject published papers dependent on not being undermined by an unpublished paper.
Brilliant.
My favorite hero Alfred the Great also adopted the “tricks” of his opponents, in order to best them. This is why British history says that Alfred founded the British Navy. He did – thanks to adopting Viking “tricks”.
kudos to all concerned.
naturally, Muller is all over the MSM. plus:
30 July: ABC: Ocean study reveals carbon not sinking
Research co-author Richard Matear from the CSIRO says the deep currents which draw carbon into the ocean actually vent it upwards in some areas…
The research has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-30/carbon-storage-trends-revealed/4163274?section=tas
on BBC radio last nite, with Sulston saying climate deniers are now fewer, and getting more shrill:
29 July: BBC World Service: The Forum: Inequality
We present a special edition of The Forum hosted by former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
Joining her in front of a lively audience at the RSA in London are Nobel prize-winning biologist John Sulston…
John Sulston is a Nobel prize-winning biologist and chair of a recent report ‘People and the Planet’. He is particularly interested in the challenge of inter-generational inequality; the likelihood that our present overconsumption will make life worse for future generations. John argues that we have a duty to preserve resources for those who come after us…
Mary Robinson: She now leads the Mary Robinson Foundation working for Climate Justice…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vtkcs
Yes, yes Al Gore I am quite sure it is the same Kristen Byrnes.
I hope it will apply to australia to well done
Ed Barbar says: July 29, 2012 at 5:03 pm
“Nick,The 2007 trend from UAH, according to Wikipedia, is .143 degrees C per decade,…”
Ed, is that the US48 trend? The 0.23°C/decade US trend comes from their own file, which gives 0.14 as the global trend.
Anthony,
Line 279 does not seem to make sense within the context of the previous portion of the sentence.
“a full distance and area measurement are; low resolution aerial photography that made it”
I think the problem is with the “are;”.
Regards
Gnrnr
Once again the value of basic data collection, and the dangers of jumping to conclusions about the earliest analysis of that data, is proven. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Line beginning 758
“The odds of this result having occurred randomly are quite small.”
Assertion. Though I do agree with it 😀
Doug Proctor at BH:
Great point. Thanks Doug.
Steve O says:
July 29, 2012 at 3:37 pm
The scientific community will probably react with a collective sigh of relief…
_________________________
You forgot the /sarc tag
I only wish what you said was true, but I am not holding my breath.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-results-turn-sceptic-let-the-evidence-change-our-minds-20120730-23769.html thi the latest article in australian press , we are starting to get some press at last
With these findings in addition to NOAA-gate (NOAA’s doing a Number One on the scientific method by abandoning hundreds of measuring stations in cooler regions) we now have NOAA’s “Number Two-gate.”
Many people are saying that NOAA has posted erronious data, and temperature readings, in the past, but seemingly in many cases the NOAA data (as reported by Wolfram Alpha) appears to agree with Anthony’s numbers (roughly), but it has been MIS-REPORTED. Now who was it that did the mis-reporting? Because if this is really true, then those who knowingly and deliberately mis-reported that NOAA data would be guilty of a criminal fraud. Some blogger employed by NOAA perhaps?
we should be told.
William McClenney says:
July 29, 2012 at 2:10 pm
“…
How many realize that messing with the orbital paced variables invariably yields peaks of ~100,000 years, ~41,000 years and ~19-23,000 years? Would even the wise wise one (Homo sapiens sapiens) stumble past the precession-minimum looming over the next 4,000 years? We have only been massively burning fossil fuels for about the last 200 years or so. KNOWING that CO2 gas is a GHG, and KNOWING that we might need to bridge the gap to the next, several thousands of years-away rise in N65 insolation, what would you do, hominid, if it was all left up to you?
And would you base that decision on use, or dismissal, of Watts et al 2012?
It’s a fair question. ”
I am not sure what you said, but I think you said it pretty well.
“The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites,”
This is the global land-ocean temperature index compiled by NASA/Goddard.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.txt
It gives temperature anomalies of +0.1C for 1979 and and +0.43 for 2008, an increase of 0.33 for that 30 year period and 0.11C per decade.
The data calculated by Watts et al for the US high quality sites even suggests that the US is warming faster than the global average.
With NASA/Goddard and Watts et al both agreeing on the rate of warming, perhaps we can stop arguing over WHETHER warming is taking place, and concentrate on fighting over WHY!
[You are misrepresenting what NASA/Goddard are claiming. – the mods]
Am I reading the graphs correctly? It would appear that more accurate MMTS sensors in rural locations excluding airports at class 1 & 2 sites are showing a warming trend of only 0.032C per decade for the period 1997 to 2008?
ATTN: ANTHONY ET AL
TEMPERATRES ARE MEASUSRED TO +/- 0.1 DEG. ROUND ALL COMPUTED VALUES TO THE ACCURACY OF THE THERMOMETER .
THE MARK OF A PROFESSIONAL IS CLOSE ATTENTION TO DETAIL . BY FAILING TO FOLLOW THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF MEASURED DATA TREATMENT, YOU GUYS LOOK LIKE A BUNCH SLOPPY SCIENTISTS AND AMATUERS, AT LEAST TO THIS CHEMIST.
REPLY:
1. There is NO NEED TO SHOUT. Even though I have a hearing problem I can read you just fine.
2. If we were dealing with absolute temperatures, you’d be correct. But this paper deals with calculated temperature trend comparisons.
Thanks for your interest – Anthony
From TomRude on July 29, 2012 at 4:56 pm:
(noting his later comment where he mentioned he had goofed up quoting someone else)
The link is bad. Should be:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051387.shtml
Non-paywalled version is available here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/
“williams-menne-thorne-2012.pdf”
As well as Menne2010 and other rubbish.