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.
==========================================================
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.
Anthony/Mods,
Question about something curious I found here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/
Along with the lists of stations, there are two groups of lists with “surfacestations-ratings” in the names, grouped “1-2” and “3-4-5”, dated 2010. I can’t find anything there about what they are. Any relation to the surfacestations project?
[REPLY: It doesn’t look like anything nefarious. If you are writing a paper and separating the stations into categories, you would certainly want to be able to tell anyone who asked just which station went into which category. Whether these two files are anything like the similar files used by the surface station project, I can’t say. One thing to keep in mind is that the Leroy 2010 classification system used by Anthony in this paper would have classified many of the stations differently than this list, which is why the trends appear differently. -REP]
Who knows? Now with valid data, perhaps one of those models will be validated. Does this mean
that the modelers are now scrambling to redo validation runs?
Lets not go overboard. I have lost count of how many “devastating blows” there have been. Leif Svalgaard is urging caution on this.
I am having a lot of trouble believing that you are unbiased. I sit on the fence (I have not seen compelling evidence for or against human induced climate change), thus I have no opinion as to who (or what) has caused what, if anything. I have seen many sites that slant their opinion on the same data, to the left or the right. Your site falls into this category. Your summaries are predisposed (it is quite apparent). I wish you would be the one to deliver the information without the desired result of those that fund you (the greenies fall into the same category). Do anyone know of a site that is unbiased? Or are you willing to report and not interpret? I wish someone was willing to.
[REPLY: Gee, your first comment here and already raising red flags. No one funds WUWT and results and opinions are not dictated by non-existent “funders”. Read the paper for yourself and decide if the purported results are supported by the purported facts. If you have a political problem, get lost. -REP]
The data cannot be bent to suit one’s purposes. The future will reveal all and those who are guilty of confirmation bias in interpreting the data will be exposed. They will be reviled and condemned for their mendacity by current and future generations. Scientia primus erit.
592 word abstract with 7 citations – what journal has formatting that allows that? Maybe Fox News could start a Fair and Balanced Journal of Climate Science! Anyway, congrats, it must be so nice to know you were right all along. Please post the peer reviews when you get them, we love the open way you practice your science!
At 6:53 PM on 29 July, Mike observes:
…and at 7:24 PM on 29 July, michael hart writes:
I hadn’t thought it worthwhile to make this point myself, but reading it repeated, I think it potentially useful to join my expression of concern with those of earlier commenters.
In all my training and experience, I’ve had it hammered home that a manuscript’s abstract – to be published in a periodical, as opposed to creation as a conference poster presentation – is generally not to contain citations, nor is it to exceed the recipient journal’s length limitations (usually 200 or 250 words).
Anybody else have useful input on this issue to provide?
….and what of Richard Muller? Converted?
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-results-convert-sceptic-let-the-evidence-change-our-minds-20120730-23769.html
David A. Evans says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:11 pm
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.
Ian H says:
July 29, 2012 at 5:23 pm
TOBS can matter even when using a max/min thermometer.
TOBS and all the rest of the games played with atmospheric temperature do not provide a measure of the amount of energy that was in the atmosphere that day. Temperature is not a measure of atmospheric energy content. Energy content is measured in joules.
Averaging atmospheric temperature is mathematically easy and completely meaningless in physics from the perspective of assessing whether ‘green house gases’ cause the retention of energy in the atmosphere. As any heating engineer will tell you it is essential to know the enthalpy of the air and that varies considerably with humidity. Add liquid water droplets as in clouds or mist and fog and the enthalpy is hugely increased.
It is really important to use the correct metrics rather than those that are easily available but incorrect.
“Urbane” temperature stations?
You may have meant “urbanism” rather than “urbanity”
A. Scott offers the ultimate self-aggrandizement expert:
July 29, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Michael Mann (h/t Tom Nelson):
“It seems, in the end–quite sadly–that this is all really about Richard Muller’s self-aggrandizement :(“
janef20 says:
July 29, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Paul R. Ehrlich sounded off on Twitter. “Considering Christy’s rep I’ll wait and see where/if it’s actually published and what the responses are.”
I think Paul confuses Christy with Spencer. But we all know that Paul is a little addled these days. I can not recall a rebutal square-off with Christy that won the day. Spencer got dinked in RSS by that guy in Colorado (or was it Arizona), but it was such a *horrible* argument, I forget his name 😉
AMS would have to publish it. It is significant, pertinent and does not call any of the main players out. Just the group.
They will though, allow rebuttals with all abandon of reasonable sense.
Yeah, like Ehrlich has such an illustrious reputation….
Ed Barbar, this will be the Warmistas first line of defence: The uUS is only 2%, the ROW is bulletproof (because it has never been shot at?)
After two days of pounding the refresh key followed by an afternoon of reading the paper and many of the comments I could not be more pleased, both personally and as a devotee of the scientific process, for Team Anthony.
The C-AGW devotees are revealing the robustness and efficacy of the new paper in the volume and frequency of their shrieking.
Thanks and Cudos to the Mods for their deft handling of this avalanche!
Have a great week!!!
HAH! ” rural MMTS stations not situated at airports may have
the best representivity of all stations in the USHCNv2. ” I KNEW IT!
Those stations report 0.034°/decade, or 0.34°/century! I’ve made myself a pariah damn near by insisting the “lukewarm skeptic consensus” of 1.2°C/century compromise baseline was almost certainly hogwash, and that the real number was in the 0 – 0.3° range.
Gloat, gloat, double-gloat!
Gail Combs @ur momisugly July 29, 2012 at 6:10 pm
These four items are all political goals, not scientific ones
My preferred headline:
NEW STUDY REVEALS U.S. GOVERNMENT MANIPULATED TEMPERATURE DATA TO INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING
Tomorrow I will ask my boss if he wants me to produce a special report or program to explore this issue.
[REPLY: John, John, John. You know that the study doesn’t reveal that. It does, perhaps, suggest a question in desperate need of answering, but Anthony is not one to gild the lily, unlike some formerly-skeptical-physicists-turned-climate-scientists that could be mentioned…. but by all means, ask the boss… uhh… I thought you were your own boss….??? -REP]
May I be the first to state that this deserves to be a sticky at the top of WWUT for several days.. I wonder how long it will take the pro-AGW blog sites to start tearing it apart without actually reading it.
Great work,everyone involved….
This may be a dumb question from someone who was up till 3:30am in Western Australia to read the headlines in the paper (it is now 10am and only a few horizontal hours and 500+ comments later) but when the first fellow drove a horse and buggy to install the first US weather station was it his plan that its readings were to be used to calculate “global [mean] temperature?” The scare quotes are because I am one of those recalcitrants who still cannot see how such a statistic has any real world meaning. The root cause of this problem in my opinion is using equipment (data) for a purpose for which it was never designed. It appears to me they were designed to help predict the weather, and for that purpose they do a fair to middling job. Wrong tool for the wrong job so something broke. Specifically when did this concept of “global [mean] temperature” come into existence or was it invented for AGW or the IPCC?
“What we all suspected UHI does have a tremendous effect on surface temps reading so we can conclude maybe 50% of the warming not significant well in the USA there is no AGW so ther is no global either AGW thank you Mr wats”
This proves that half the warming since 1970’s is ALW/UHI/human adjusted. 🙂
And it will be much cheaper for us if we correct for this than rather change the world?
Theo Goodwin says:
July 29, 2012 at 6:59 pm
A. Scott offers the ultimate self-aggrandizement expert:
July 29, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Michael Mann (h/t Tom Nelson):
“It seems, in the end–quite sadly–that this is all really about Richard Muller’s self-aggrandizement :(“
==============================
Embarrassing now, isn’t it? “My self-aggrandizement is bigger than yours.”
Well, we’re going to see how they handle Anthony’s great work. Starting tomorrow, I assume.
Muller is a mental super-lightweight, a wisp of fluff blowing about looking for the warmest breeze with the best-funded consensual vortices to keep him aloft. Nothing he says has an unexpired “best by” date.
Anthony
Thank you, thank you!
Nick,
Yes, the UHA numbers were global, not US numbers. However, given this paper, you have to consider how much bias there is in the UAH numbers. Now, I’m not talking about the people who read the measurements, report their algorithms, and the results, necessarily. I’m arguing that in a biased world it’s dangerous to do so. I’m thinking about the following.
Imagine a world in which on one side, you have many biased scientists trying to prove a theory. The world MUST spend Trillions of dollars to stop C02 production. These scientists are smart, many, and well funded. That’s what the consensus means, right? Imagine now, a world in which the truth may be influenced by bias of scientists. Now, what kinds of errors in the algorithms is this group of people likely to find and report? Know that they are advocating their own numbers, which are much higher than UAH numbers. They will seek errors in algorithms that support their position, and thereby remedy the error in the satellite record. They will not seek errors in the algorithms that do not support their views. So only one kind of error is likely to be disclosed.
I recommend you google the following words: nature science bias
There have been a number of articles of late complaining about the inability to replicate scientific studies with drugs. Allergon recently tried to replicate a significant number of studies, and failed.
Climate Science, in my view, has been demonstrated to be highly political, and emotionally driven. To expect no bias in this field, but to expect it in others is, in my view, absurd.
As an example, please see this realclimate.org post:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/more-satellite-stuff/
The Sept 2010 WMO CIMO adoption of Leroy 2010 is in this document – scoll to Annex IV