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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It was the BEST of times; it was the WATTS of times.
Moderators, this was the vid that was to be linked/Embed in my prior post. Not sure it didn’t get there from here?
[REPLY: Uhhh, it’s not here either. -REP]
Eli Rabett says:
July 29, 2012 at 7:58 pm
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]
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HAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Very nice!….. well, okay, maybe “nice” isn’t the proper word, but, you get my meaning. 😀
Anthony, as a lurker and layman who appreciates the work you are doing in this long fight I have sent a donation to you. I hope others can do the same.
Thank you.
[REPLY: Gnuburger, thank you. WUWT is not sponsored by any organization and relies on the generosity of people like you. One of the few times Anthony has gone seeking a sponsorship, to create a website offering user-friendly access to official data, it was essentially torpedoed by Peter Gleick in the “Fakegate” affair. Thank you for your support. -REP]
Wouldn’t the best way to challange this methodbe to analyze the annotated rationale for the adjustments made to the raw data in the lab notes (as duly witnessed and dated) left by the archivers?
How about taking this methodology and looking at other countries station data? Canada and Australia seem like good candidates…
[REPLY: There are probably quite a few good candidates for this sort of analysis. It would be very good, however, if interested groups in those countries came forward and took on the job themselves. It is time-consuming and requires attention to detail, but Anthony has shown that you do not need a big, formal organization and a big, formal budget to accomplish great things. -REP]
Darnit, seem CA assist if not helping me. How about a link or alternate attempt ? LOL!
Gnite~~~~~
REPLY – Raw, no TOBS. ~ Evan
That is going to be a main line of attack on the paper. There is a sound basis for the TOBS adjustment, although the size of the adjustment is open to question (or questionable if you like).
Its not widely appreciated that most of the 20th century warming in the official records is due to the adjustments. While there are justifications for the adjustments, the practical consequence of adjusting the data is rampant confirmation bias.
A public debate over the adjustments is long over due and to the extent it reaches Joe Public will increase scepticism.
The US is the most thoroughly and effectively monitored region or country in the world with weather and temperature stations. The Gold Standard. And here we have the chemical analysis: Fool’s Gold. A few flecks of the real thing (unadjusted rural MMTS data) which give, at last, a good signal when the NOAA paint jobs are scraped off.
Negligible warming. About 1/3 of a degree Celsius per century (+/- ?? 0.5° ??). Global warming and climate disruption is and always was a deliberate artifact of manipulation of the record.
RICO time.
Eli Rabett says:
July 29, 2012 at 7:58 pm
So how does a year 2009 photograph tell you anything about the rating of a station in 1980?==================
What a stupid question.
It is called data, the best we have.
Cut the abstract to 250 words [otherwise the paper could not even to submitted]. The reason the journals demand a short abstract is to force you to communicate the essence of the paper, the take-away message, the elevator speech.
Wow!!! -REP- I have to commend you. After 600+ posts you still on top of it. Are you one person? Are you Anthony?
[REPLY: Thanks, but no,
we…ahhh, I am not Anthony and I am not doing this alone. Senior Moderator dbs, evan, jove, and a bunch of others have been working to approve comments and keep out the riff-raff. I’m just the mouthiest of the bunch. -REP]Well done Anthony, and Al! (et.al.)
You’ve made the Pajamas Media already! http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/29/new-excitement-in-the-climate-change-controversy/ Good initial review, with also skeptical comments about Mueller and a mention about DotEarth’s skepticism of Mueller. I also posted a link over at Brietbart.
Paul R
dana1981 says:
July 29, 2012 at 3:58 pm
No, if both of them are out by only one standard deviation or so they are in agreement. That’s not “pretty far off” at all.
I’m not “arguing for large uncertainty bars”. I’m simply pointing out what the uncertainty actually is. Not sure why you seem to want to twist that into something unscientific or incorrect …
w.
Good work Anthony and thanks, money talks, so have donated to help out.
[REPLY: Tom, Anthony may be taking a well-deserved rest at this point, but on his behalf I’d like to say “thank you” for your contribution. It will be put to good use. -REP]
REP – You’re still on top of it! grammar…
Reed Coray says:
July 29, 2012 at 8:29 pm
It was the BEST of times; it was the WATTS of times.
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Classic.
I’m sure we will read many comments to the effect that the ConUS is only 2% of the globe etc. Which is true.
The reason this analysis is possible is because of the metadata gathered by Anthony’s Surface Stations project. We don’t have this sort of data for the rest of the world, and its a travesty:)
It sort of goes without saying that any organisation claiming to be serious about accuracy in climate science (like the IPCC – no, just joking – maybe BEST, or Hadley even) should now have as a top priority the collection of similar metadata for all stations globally. Most countries have climate or meteorological bodies who should be able to help – all you really need to do is visit each site with a camera and a tape measure. It shouldn’t be more than a few months before they can provide Anthony with the metadata to complete this exercise for the entire global surface network.
How long do you think it will really take? Or will we (the sceptical blogosphere) have to organise it ourselves?
[REPLY: There are probably quite a few good candidates for this sort of analysis. It would be very good, however, if interested groups in those countries came forward and took on the job themselves. It is time-consuming and requires attention to detail, but Anthony has shown that you do not need a big, formal organization and a big, formal budget to accomplish great things. -REP]
That’s right. As I mentioned earlier, this is what makes America great. Congratulations (and when I say that, I suspect these results and their conclusions will be very difficult to assail).
May I suggest a thread on news reactions to the announcement? Here are 3 for starters that we know about, others will no doubt follow:
Boston Examiner Devastating blow to temperature records
Tucson Citizen US Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to noaa station siting problems
and The Telegraph UK Global Warming, yeah right
Huh? In graphic it says “Class 1\2 (compliant)”. One backslash two?
Downloaded latest version of “Figures and Tables”, that Figure 20 also has it.
Any meaning to it, other than a missed typo?
[REPLY: it means class 1 and class 2 bundled into one bin. -REP]
Adrian says:
July 29, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Instead of being all snarkish, how about you tell us just exactly how to calculate the odds of the result having occurred randomly? It is an interesting question, and it is far from a simple problem.
w.
My take on the whole thing is this:
I
AGW is supposed from the “thermometer warming” data. What has been exposed is that most of the “thermometer warming” data is man-made. Though mankind has the power to affect the readings of thermometers it has no abiltiy to turn up the earth’s thermostat.
This thermometer warming seems to have been man-made in two senses. The first is that many thermometers are located in places where man is creating extra heat or causing natural heat to be trapped thus artifically raising thermometer temperatures. The second is that human beings have been deliberately altering thermometer readings to make them read higher. The first is stupidity. The second is fraud.
Though the earth may be warming for a number of reasons after all this “false warming” is deleted
almost all the warming “that is actually occuring” can be assigned to natural causes. (We are still coming out of the Little Ice Age for one.) Therefore there is next to zero actual man-made global warming. Thus CO2 is plant food and not a major player in any warming that is occuring.
So if the false thermometer data they have piling on us is rooted in both stupidity and fraud then I am willing to make the extension and say that AGW in totem is rooted in stupidity and fraud — with fraud being primary.
Eugene WR Gallun
I’m not clear on one thing. Is the average US surface temperature calculated by adding up all the readings and then divided by the number of stations used? If that’s the case an area with more stations would skew disproportionately the overall average toward that region’s average. Or, is there a method to weight the stations to prevent this?
[REPLY: This is where it helps to carefully read the paper. We are talking about “gridded data” – the map is esentially divided into grids, the stations within the grid are averaged, then the grids themselves summed and averaged. It’s not quite that simple, but that’s the gist of it. -REP]
Lots of fun. Was this intended to be a sticky post?