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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Lucy Skywalker
I’m sure you have collected a lot of studies on your web page. I’m sure there are many studies in the literature which offer an alternative view. Things are rarely black and white in science. To think otherwise is likely to have missed something and to be following prejudice. We all have a prejudice. Its safer that we remember this.
[snip -policy violation]
Rewrite lines 757/758 to use “for” or “in”, not both.
Bravo, Anthony, co-authors and helpers.
A lot of constructive suggestions on the thread – which validates your decision to put your draft out there for comment. With a bit of polishing and editing, it will be much better and more accessible to general, as well as specialist, readers than most of the gibberish that gets published in journals.
I concur with suggestions about tightening up the abstract and perhaps getting a professional editor (volunteer) to go through it for punctuation, style and clarity. No reflection on you – it was obviously finished in a hurry and besides, professional editing is a specialist skill – although we seem to have a few in-house experts on the thread!
Assuming no major flaws emerge, and it’s looking good so far, you have truly shaken the tree with this work. And don’t forget, you still owe yourself a holiday with your family.
Do the results affect the Berkeley Earth study results?
@ur momisugly 8:46 pm, REP says
[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]
And much appreciated. Thank you, one and all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Up stream there are comments about Dr. Richard Müller, and —-
Jo Nova carried a response by Christopher Monckton regarding the recent Müller editorials in national papers. Her title is: “Müller lite: Why Every Scientist Needs a Classical Training”
It’s a grammar thang, W. “The odds is … ” don’t scan so good.
“The odds are” is far more correctamundo. For really sure!
Y’could’a said “the probability is very small”, or “the likelihood is…” being as what those are singular, as opposed to plural or multiple-type nouns.
But I bet it confuses the Dickens out of many.
I don’t think anyone’s there to answer that call …
Among the French, the French are renowned for many things the rest of the world finds severely contrary to observation. >:p
Umm, by the very definition of the “A” part of AGW, 100% of AGW is man-made. What it is not is real, extant, measurable, non-nugatory, un-negligible.
The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller, of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project …
NO IT DOES NOT!!
To do that, Anthony’s press release would have opened: “Call me a converted warmist.”
🙂
How to put the cat firmly among the pigeons – with style!
Is all Anthony’s work collating that instrument siting information finally paying off? Watch this space…
Fantastic work. And well-needed.
Hi,
I think I’ve found a small editing error in the “Overview of the paper”-ppt:
On slide 43 the text says +0.251 (the same as in slide 24), but the figure shows +0.310.
Great work!
REPLY – My bad. Cut/paste error. It’s .310. Will correct. ~ Evan
Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after USHCNv2 adjustments are applied.
I thank Lief for his proposed condensed abstract. I don’t care for the included sentence above, however, which comes from the original paper. I think a rewording such as below would be clearer, harder to misinterpret when reading quickly, further reduce the word count, and have more impact:
The USHCNv2 adjustments increase the warming of well sited rural stations by a factor of three.
I was tempted to put ‘adjustments’ in scare quotes, or insert the word ‘spuriously’ before the word ‘increase’, but resisted.
I understand that the reason for posting this paper prior to review to is to get feedback from the the readers on mistakes etc… to be fixed. If thats the case, I’ve started proofreading and here are my suggestions for the abstract (I’m not trying to offend, just help):
p2, ln19: “In Fall et al, 2011, …” et al. should have a period after al, not comma.
p2. ln20: Perhaps spell out United States once before using abbreviations U.S. for rest of paper
p2. ln23: “…(USCRN) in 2002. In 2010, Leroy improved…” There seems to be an extra space after the period here, and there is no need for the comma on an intro phrase of only 2 words.
p2. ln24: “system to introduce a…” replace with “system by introducing a…”
p2. ln29-31: Move the phrase, “particularly when applied retroactively to existing stations” to just after “Leroy (1999)” and end the sentence.
p2. ln31: Replace “which performs well…” with “While the old classifications system performs well…” or something similar.
p2. ln32: Change “siting evaluation, but does not take into account the surface….” to “siting evaluation, it does not consider the surface….”
p2: ln35: “….station exposure affects USHCNv2 temperatures, in particular the minimum temperatures,…” to “…station exposure particularly affects USHCNv2 minimum temperatures,….”
p2. ln37: “…both also which also used….” does not need also
If this is helpful, let me know, I can scan my corrections and email them easier than typing them all out.
Well, perhaps I don’t count well late at night. Try this:
The USHCNv2 adjustments multiply the warming of well sited rural stations by nearly three.
Other tiny edits for the paper:
Line 69: myriad factors, not myriad of factors
Line 122: is, not is that there is [a minor sylistic point, some may disagree)
Throughout: I suggest citations such as “… et.al.,(2010)” should have a space preceding the open parenthesis.
Exciting times! Thanks to all concerned!
I understand that the reason for posting this paper prior to review to is to get feedback from the the readers on mistakes etc… to be fixed. If thats the case, I\’ve started proofreading and here are my suggestions for the abstract (I\’m not trying to offend, just help):
p2, ln19: \”In Fall et al, 2011, …\” et al. should have a period after al, not comma.
p2. ln20: Perhaps spell out United States once before using abbreviations U.S. for rest of paper
p2. ln23: \”…(USCRN) in 2002. In 2010, Leroy improved…\” There seems to be an extra space after the period here, and there is no need for the comma on an intro phrase of only 2 words.
p2. ln24: \”system to introduce a…\” replace with \”system by introducing a…\”
p2. ln29-31: Move the phrase, \”particularly when applied retroactively to existing stations\” to just after \”Leroy (1999)\” and end the sentence.
p2. ln31: Replace \”which performs well…\” with \”While the old classifications system performs well…\” or something similar.
p2. ln32: Change \”siting evaluation, but does not take into account the surface….\” to \”siting evaluation, it does not consider the surface….\”
p2: ln35: \”….station exposure affects USHCNv2 temperatures, in particular the minimum temperatures,…\” to \”…station exposure particularly affects USHCNv2 minimum temperatures,….\”
p2. ln37: \”…both also which also used….\” does not need also
If this is helpful, let me know, I can scan my corrections and email them easier than typing them all out.
It occurs to me that we are witnessing not just a brilliant paper, but a monumental change in the scientific process itself. For the first time (that I am aware at any rate) a major scientific paper is being reviewed, and improved, in a public forum. There’s no doubt that the guts of this paper would not have been possible without the dedicated work of the authors. But consider the additional history that is being made by crowd sourcing the final version.
Every spelling error will have been found, every grammatical error fixed, confusing sentences and paragraphs rewritten for clarity, every axis on every graph properly labelled, scaled, and yes, colour coordinated too.
Best of all though, is that the peer review will be impeccable. If there is a single problem with this paper, it will be found. The number of eyes on it from people who want it to succeed, but would nonetheless point out an error if they spotted it, is staggering. Not to mention of course that there will be legions of those who want this paper to fail and they will be even more agressive at trying to poke a hole in it to prevent it from reaching publication.
As to those who worry that the journals will find some excuse to keep this paper out, I’d like to know how? By the time the final copy gets submitted to a journal, you’ll have a hard time finding an apostrophe out of place. If thousands upon thousands of reviewers, many of them desperate to find a flaw, are unable to, does anyone think that three qualified reviewers are going to find something significant that was missed?
Best of all, by the time this does get submitted to a journal, what journal is going to want to reject it? It is already hitting the MSM. Unless that journal can actualy cite a credible reason for refusing the paper, they’d be the laughing stock of the scientific community and not even the MSM dullards could avoid writing a WTF article.
We’re witnessing a giant nail being driven into the CAGW coffin, but we are also witnessing a permanent change in the way science progresses.
Ivory tower, meet the blogosphere. Ignore it at your peril.
davidmhoffer says:
July 29, 2012 at 11:59 pm
If thousands upon thousands of reviewers, many of them desperate to find a flaw, are unable to, does anyone think that three qualified reviewers are going to find something significant that was missed?
Fixing a comma here and there does not constitute serious peer-review.
One small suggestion for the press release title:
Sorry, I meant title of the post.
Fully agree with davidmhoffer contribution; this paper publishing proces is a watershed.
Congratulations everybody
“New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial”
OK, I have to be a contrarian here. I hate that headline!
It makes it sound as if you’ve proved that half the warming is anthropogenic. How about, “Study shows half of USA global warming due to faulty weather-station siting”
?