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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Konrad. @ur momisugly July 29, 2012 at 5:51 pm
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?
Yes, you can believe your eyes.
The abstract seems over long. Also, I’ve seen some electronic databases guillotine an abstract after it exceeds a certain length. Yes, many people may only read the abstract. But they may not even do that if it tries to squeeze too much in, and becomes boring as a result.
With some journals, references should not be used excessively, if at all, in the abstract.
Oh – up at the top there’s a like to Leroy’s classification paper. Teaches me to look at the bibliography….
I can find typos in anything. Without looking too hard, a few comments, some may be duplicates:
242 There is a greater number of Class 1, 2, and 3 stations, and fewer Class 4
243 stations. There are, however, a greater number of Class 5 stations, as well.
Number is always singular, so 243 should “There is”. Or, you could say in fewer words “There are more Class…”. Like you did with fewer!
300 proximity and area ratings from Leroy 2010 and
are doconsider ground-level vegetationStrike or replace, not sure what it should be.
384 Conversely when only USHCNv2 stations sited at airports are
385 considered these differences are not as strong as seen in Figure 6.
On my first reading, I noted “strong as seen in” should be “strong, see” I haven’t checked the figure so I’m not certain how the ambiguity should be resolved.
I see also that “considered” needs a following comma, it’s absence helps leads to confusion later.
505 Class 4 compared with Class 4 (the baseline, so the result will be 0.), Class 5 compared
506 with Class 4 and all lower classes.
Drop the period in line 505.
the sentence doesn’t mention that there is also a comparison of Class 3/4/5 compared with Class 4 or whatever it is.
532 Will be either supported or disputed by the many various comparisons which follow.
“Will” continues a sentence started in line 528, so it shouldn’t be capitalized.
599 … Shown in Figure 16 is a six
600 panel comparison
showing comparisonsfor Urban, Semi-Urban, Rural stations with raw“showing comparisons” is redundant.
On the panels – can you redo them so they all have the same Y axis? Please!
Throughout, especially at:
168 issues reported by Watts (2009)., Menne et al.,(2010), Fall et al.,(2011), and Muller et 168 al.,(2012).
I don’t know the rules for refereneces, but the period in “Watts (2009).,” can’t be right.
is the period in “Menne et al.,(2010),” required? Drop it if you can. The comma I hope should be replaced with a space, e.g. “Watts (2009), Menne et al (2010), …”. You use that form in line 697 to reference the other paper.
Throughout:
Class 1-2; Class 1, 2; Class 3,4,5; Class 3/4/5; Class 3\4\5:
Pick a style, any style (except the execrable backslash form which if pressed will elict a ran tt from me about command options on TOPS-10, C/PM, MS-DOS, Unix, and it won’t be pretty). I.e. “What MrX said.” You might want to do a global replace of double spaces with single spaces, they annoy me, but I didn’t mark a few I saw – even I have limits on nit-picking.
As for the content, umm, I think I have to read it again and focus on the content.
“Wagathon says:
July 29, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Someone should tell Ehrlich that when it comes to ‘rep’ it’s Christy +1, Penn State 0.
”
Yep, and Ehrlich, -87.
Congrats, Anthony Watts et al. This paper is calmly and clearly presented – I am smiling at the Guardian attempting to be something it is not in it’s haste to trumpet Muller’s mish-mash of findings.
intrepid_wanders asks “How’s that ACORN going?”
If you’re referring to the accuracy of rounded Fahrenheit temperatures in the ACORN source data (http://www.waclimate.net/round/australia-acorn.html and http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/acorn-sat-a-preliminary-assessment/), it’s still being utterly ignored.
@Ed Barbar says:
July 29, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Even the UAH numbers will include UHI bias. And, it omits the poles. It seems something should be done to correct for the lack of data at the poles.
I was wondering if the UAH data can be parsed to reflect the temperatures in the well-sited area vs. not well-sited. That could be interesting.
Way to go folks. And just ahead of the IPCC cutoff.
I trust this exciting and informative paper will be included.
Just wondering though, why do the Class 5s fair so well alone?
Also, the last paragraph you say: “There is the further issue……. (It is difficult, however, to be certain of the true effect thanks to the relatively small number of Class 1,2, rural, non-airport stations.)”
I’m not sure the term “thanks to” is really right. Maybe “due to” or “because of”.
Great work!
Congrats
cn
Manfred says: July 29, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Figure 23 is impressive as well, tmin tmax and tmean with identical (!) trends for 1/2 sations but heavily increased tmin trends for 3/4/5 stations.
Shouldn’t Figure 23 be a bar chart instead of a curve? Connecting the points between Rural, Suburban, and Urban indicates there are intermediate values for intermediate designations.
****
MrX says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Haven’t gone through the paper yet. Just looking at the ppt files right now. One thing that I find striking is the comparison between airport vs. non-airport COMPLIANT stations. Now, if they were compliant, should they not have a similar trend? Does this suggest a need to revisit what exactly a compliant station should be? Airport compliant stations show fully twice as much warming as non-airport compliant stations.
****
It just means the 1 & 2 compliance requirements don’t necessarily eliminate all airports. The site could be surrounded by ever-expanding square-miles of concrete/asphalt/buildings, but if it’s in a compliant “patch”, it could be a “2” category.
But I don’t think any airport site (unless it hasn’t changed/expanded over its history) should be used for climate analysis.
In your current version of the Figures and Tables PDF you’ve corrected the trend scale and the >0.0 mistake on Figure 20. They still exist on Figure 2.
At a time like this, it’s good to pause and think
What’s going on in the mind of the Climate Science Geek?
“It can’t be right, it must be wrong
After all, our theories are strong
We took C02, and multiplied it by three
That must be the temperature, don’t you see?
This man who has the audacity to claim and say
the location is important, must go away!
We will find a doubt, or two or three,
to continue our efforts, to save the planet!
Or at least continue our research grants. . ..
“
Thanks for the abrasive response editor.
I was taught the scientific method by Keri Mullis (Nobel 1993) whom I worked with. He drilled into me, make sure it is 100% and golden before declaring anything. He was pretty controversial in doubting many things (I am sure you remember).
I would like to see data, and not opinion is all. I have issues with heat islands at meteorological stations due to blacktop etc… I wish someone would post a list of all data, with (heat island / not heat island) indicated and such. I would like to see how something is determined, not just name dropping Michel Leroy, I don’t know him, I don’t know what he did or how. But I guess it is perfect per your doc above. Sorry, I want to know why his work is more precise can’t just blindly agree.
Then we can start to get a real picture of wtf is the issue (media, reality, etc…).
And in the future. Please don’t diminish yourself with the condescending replies. It reduces your effort, as it make you appear to be “voting” for one side of this discussion. And as scientific folks, you of course know that ambiguity and and agnostic view on the subject is utmost and foremost.
Cheers.
A.
[REPLY: I happen to admire Kary Mullis but I don’t know you and apparently you didn’t know “Keri” all that well yourself (in all fairness, though, half my students get my name wrong, too.) Your comment was juvenile and your attempt to trade on the name of Dr. Mullis, while remaining anonymous, is despicable. So, devastate me. Who are YOU? -REP]
A more juicy headline, addressing the deeper issue me thinks:
“New climate study shows official NOAA temperature data falsely doubles actual temperature increases since 1979, potentially invalidating much Global Warming research, projects, and legislation”
And of course, that’s where this story really leads to…. We’d all REALLY like to know how many studies have been done with the faulty data… What IPCC reports included it… How many taxpayer funded studies (or projects like Solyndra) were based on it… What government related actions might have been affected by it (such as EPA regulations, etc)
How much money was wasted on all this madness? It would be helpful if we had a list of how far reaching this is, how much the (intentionally?) faulty data impacted taxpayers in wasted money…
And let me add my kudos as well — Thanks Anthony et al!! Kudos!!
I never did understand how anyone could possibly adjust for urbanization, siting changes, etc without boots on the ground examining each and every station, and adjustments being made one station at a time. It appears that Anthony et al have done just that. I can’t see how this could fail to be an improvement on the data sets.
Well done!
Here is the “Like” link for folks looking for it:
http://www.surfacestations.org/donate.htm
So how does a year 2009 photograph tell you anything about the rating of a station in 1980?
[REPLY: Dr. Halpern, one would think you had never done any research in your life. Go back and read the paper again (if you read it a first time) and try really hard to wrap your mind around the methodology. My bet is you’ll come back with the same inane question. -REP]
“We will continue to investigate other issues related to bias and adjustments such as TOBs in future studies.”
So Tom Karl’s pet rat TOBy is next? But…, but he is so cute snug in his little Stephenson box, his warm furry body wrapped lovingly around the thermometer bulb…the roguish upward curve to his little whiskers! Not the Ratsak! Nooooo…
Trenberth “et al” will be happy. The missing heat has been found! It’s been stored in all those papers that now need to be burned!
(Just a little comic relief. Back to serious comments.)
[SNIP: For a number of reasons. Nothing personal. Sorry. -REP]
Thanks for your dedicated work Tony.
meemoe_uk says: July 29, 2012 at 2:18 pm
bit dissapointed really. Another climate paper saying 0.1C rise here or there.
I was hoping for a leaked video of Mann and Jones et all at a dinner party with international bankers laughing and joking about their big global warming scam.
[REPLY: Watts et. al. 2012 invalidates all the major data sets and your’re “dissapointed”? No pleasing some people… -REP]
I agree with REP. I once saw a sign over the office door of a colleague. I don’t remember the exact wording or the author, but it went something like this.
I don’t have a formula for success; but I have one for failure–try to please everyone.
[REPLY: Thanks for the validation. Sometimes I’m like a parking voucher that way. Uhhh…. did I really spell it “your’re”? I’m not sure I can handle that kind of humiliation… -REP]
Remember. if you can not admit error, you can not grow into decent adults. IPCC science FAIL.
This should be the title:
“Watts et. al. 2012 Invalidates All Major Data Sets
Well, I read everything again and checked the references and this is truly a game changer once the process completes.
Anthony, as I have said prior, it is time for WUWT-TV.
Live, interactive discussions on the Web. One way video streaming with filtered chat quesstions for the many willing professional guests. Hey, its gotta start somewhere for the MSN isn’t going to bring forth why some are actually skeptics…….
I would be willing to fund the initial effort. You have my email by me just being here.
Make it a great week!
Sorry, but I just find ……. well it speaks for itself, after the paradigm shifter today/
Look out for the “do do” that will occur 🙂
.