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.
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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.
You can even put “global warming” in scepticism quotes, as in:
“Study shows half of USA “global warming” due to faulty weather-station siting
That’s actually slightly more accurate with ‘global warming” in quotes, because your study shows global warming is in part a phantom result due to faulty measurement, not that faulty measurement has caused real global warming (per se).
davidmhoffer says:
July 29, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Great comment, and well done Anthony!
I promise when I win the lottery Anthony get’s a free holiday.
Integrity, honesty and good old fashioned hard work if these quality’s don’t deserve a free holiday to say Rio then, oh wait free holidays to Rio are for the corrupted acolytes never mind.
Well done.but I fear the paper will not receive the publicity it deserves. I suspect that, as usual, these important contrarian conclusions will be largely ignored by the media and the warmists. The orthodoxy is firmly embedded -. ‘The science is settled and the majority of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change’. Worst of all much of the public has lost interest and do not understand the catastrophic economic impact this orthodoxy are already imposing on the western economies.
To Anthony in particular, and to all the back-patters on this blog in general saying how great this paper is, let me cast a word of warning: This paper, in present form, WILL NOT get published.
And before that happens, when you all complain that there’s massive pro-global warming bias in the published literature and that the review process is corrupted, let me explain why: for scientific correspondence, this paper is very, very poorly written.
Here’s a couple changes that would have to be made off the bat:
1. The abstract should be no more than a paragraph, 150 words at maximum.
2. No block quotes- paraphrase the conclusions of other authors’ work.
3. Way too long- similar studies would be published in GRL, JGR-Atmospheres, or the like. Your manuscript text is 52 pages double spaced. JGR’s maximum is 25. GRL is 12. So you need to cut this at least in half or in a quarter.
The finding of significant station biases within the historical temperature record would be an important result, certainly worthy of publication. But it won’t ever see the light of day outside of the skeptic blogs unless you tighten it up.
Jesse Farmer
What journal(s) this being submitted to and when?
Thank you and Willis for finally commenting on his incohorent posts. Mosher please don’t comment until you learn how to make posts that people without mind reading abilities can understand.
Willis, if he was such a smart guy he would make coherent posts.
Why would Mosher not post his comments here?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/until-sunday-july-29th-around-noon-pst-wuwt/#comment-100282
He must feel left out Anthony did not ask him for his imagined “expert” opinion on these issues.
OK I’ll have a try at the headline:
“New study shows half of reported US ‘global warming’ temperature trend erroneous due to faulty siting of weather stations.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
“Fixing a comma here and there does not constitute serious peer-review.”
So true, but over the next few days there will be many clever, educated (even both) people looking at this paper, yourself included. Many will be looking for any error that they can find, either to kill it or to make sure it can’t be killed.
That’s the big difference, a real sceptic will criticise a paper even if it does appear to support their side of the arguement……….. A climate scientist.. not so often 😉
all this great work, did it get in the MSM,
Hopefully Christopher Booker next Sunday,
Hi from a sceptic in NZ.Thanks to the team for their magnificent work.Just one request,could you put our NIWA on the right track to monitor our temps please?They seem to be struggling at the moment.
Good luck and good health to you all.
One last, lonely typo remains on the corrected file, named watts-et-al-2012-figures-and-tables-final1.pdf
On the colored maps shown as Figures 2 and 20, the lowest delta-T per decade (the deep blue color on the scale) is labeled “>0.0” which I read as “greater than zero”. Shouldn’t it be labeled “<0.0" i.e. "less than zero" to indicate cooling? The bar-charts starting with Fig.4 include negative delta-Ts on their vertical axes which clearly represent cooling.
More praise than I can express, for all of your tenacious and principled work.
Yeah. Also I said 1.0 instead of .10. I will correct. Other error as well with one of the maps; I’ll get that, too. ~ Evan
See I get to waste time discovering how Mosher really feels by looking at other sites,
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/#comment-223472
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/#comment-223546
See I get to waste time discovering how Mosher really feels by looking at other sites,
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/#comment-223472
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/#comment-223546
Poor Mosher does not have the balls to comment here how he really feels as he does not want to have to defend his points.
davidmhoffer says:
July 29, 2012 at 11:59 pm
It occurs to me that we are witnessing not just a brilliant paper, but a monumental change in the scientific process itself… (etc.)
*
I agree with you. This paper will be printed. For those who object to how it stands now, hey, it’s still in the editing phase. Point is, it’s solid data. It’s not based on “models” or on “predictions” or hype. This is not a paper that can be easily ignored or swept under the carpet.
What I love is that those con-artists who hide behind a mask of “science” have to accept it or they show their true natures. Honest scientists will embrace the data, fraudulent ones will loathe it, but to keep up the pretence, they will have to accept it – no doubt with gritted teeth.
This paper puts them firmly between a rock and a hard place, and that’s icing on the cake. Any shouting they do, any objecting, any squirming at all shows them in a true light. So they will accept it and try to dismantle it “scientifically” but it’s too thorough for that.
Delicious stuff. 🙂
It seems that most of the MSM have yet to comprehend the significance of this paper. I’m probably repeating comments but the findings of this research not only affect all papers based on NOAA data but similar research on station siting has got to be carried out in all the continents in the world using the WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy.
This will take a long time and will probably affect all ‘global warming’ research related to all the continents. Many thousands of research papers from all over the world could become redundant. All IPCC reports based on flawed temperature records would have to be set aside. Any research papers submitted for the next IPCC report using station data from NOAA will will have to be scrutinised and likely rejected. Papers using station data from the rest of the world will be unreliable until the stations have been checked.
The work has really only just begun. If editors and journalists from the mainstream media don’t recognise the enormity of this they will be utterly failing the public and will lose out even more to the blogosphere.
For those who criticise that USA is only 2% of global area, note that Australians have been working on related exercises. Before our 2% land area can be added to the USA, there are some format and calculation steps to make our findings easier to read beside the paper by Anthony Watts et al. 2102. There is important, systematic work reported for example on the Kenskingdom blog, at http://www.waclimate.net/ and on the Warwick Hughes blog http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/
to name but 3. Often, the joint efforts of several come together on http://joannenova.com.au/
One set of figures that I worked up looked for a baseline temperature trend in Australia in the period 1972-2006. (We went from deg F to deg C reporting in 1972). If there was positive UHI, then it would add itself to the baseline trend.
From a start of about 800 met stations, I selected about 45 that were fairly considered to be essentially pristine. There was no systematic pattern in the trend of either Tmax or Tmin for these pristine stations. The highest trend was +4.7 deg C per century equivalent (projected from a linear fit, which is not optimum, but is easy to understand), the lowest was – 2.7 deg C per century equivalent. http://www.geoffstuff.com/Pristine_Summary_1972_to_2006.xls There was no obvious need to invoke CO2; indeed, it hardly explains negative trends.
The micro environment around each sensor was not examined, measured or corrected in detail. That is perhaps the next step. However, when the variation in these 45 stations (culled from nearly 100 that could also be pristine – pristine is one step more pure than rural) is so large, it is obviously difficult to extract a signal due to another cause such as UHI. This is a weakness with BEST. Can’t show a baseline, can’t show an increase.
So far as I have read, the Australian findings appear compatible with Anthony’s, but it is too early to be dogmatic. We have to compare Granny Smith apples with Granny Smith apples.
Christoph Dollis says:
July 30, 2012 at 12:37 am
“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”
*
You have a point. What about “New study shows half of global warming in USA is artificially high.” Or “…is erroneous.” Or “…is exaggerated.”
Fantastic work!
Now wait for the Ignore-Deny-Abuse cycle.
Congratulations Anthony, Evan, Stephan, John and co-authors!
Excellent paper! My interpretation is that Rural, Class 1 and 2 stations best represent temperature in the CONUS.
I read many of the comments, but I’m sleepy now and wish to add a couple of editorial comments before I get distracted. Please excuse me if others have already made these comments, I am leaving out those that I saw others mention in their comments.
Line 534. I do not understand the statement that the “Tmean trend is indisputably higher for well sited stations than for poorly sited stations.” It appears lower to me. If I am missing the point, perhaps others will miss it as well.
Figure 16. I do not see a semi-urban entry for Tmin Raw in class 1/2, nor do I see an urban entry for Tmin Raw in class 4.
Thanks for a wonderful paper. I look forward to when it is formally published (and I think it will be – it’s too important to ignore) and I hope this analysis is extended around the globe.
Also thanks to Anthony and Stephan for your efforts in running two excellent blogs. I read many fine articles, but I rarely make comments.
Bill Kojak
REPLY – Yes, lower, not higher. I’ll check out the missing blips. Thanks! ~ Evan
I’ve not read the paper as yet. It’s about time the “heat island effect” was definitively calculated for.
However, one thing has hit me straight in the face.
When numbers of under one are shown on the “cartoons” and temperature lists, I was taught as an engineer a leading zero before the decimal point kept everything clear, unmistakeable and correct.
The inconsistency is made worse by the famous .40. The numbers with leading operands (+- = !) and so on before the decimal point. Never seen it before and it does not look right.
A detractor would simply question its validity as simply “pencilled in”.
All the best guys!
REPLY – Thought about it, then decided that since every starting number there would be a zero, anyway, why bother? ~ Evan
Another one that thinks that current measuring decimal, degrees of temperatures means anything , to not talk about how temperatures are measured…
chrisale says at July 29, 2012 at 9:52 pm
“Even if you are correct (which honestly, I am skeptical that such a huge discrepancy could be made) the fact is the warming signal has not been magically whisked away. It’s simply been cut down a notch or two and CO2 remains the only factor that has changed enough to account for that rise in temperature. Nothing else fits the bill, which is what BEST confirms as well.”
So in your interpretation, if this analysis of the raw data is correct, then the lack of natural variation on the global climate is confirmed?
No, it just is not completely disproven.
What it does show is that, with the best data judged to current standards, climate change is not as bad as we thought.
This is good news.
Hi Anthony,
I’ve only had time to skim through your paper and the methodology ppt so far. The way your manuscript reads, it suggests that your comparisons are for ‘raw’ data, with ‘raw’ implying no Tobs correction. Is this correct?
REPLY – Raw. No TOBS. ~ Evan