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.
I long suspected the temperature rise was real but exaggerated. Well within historically known variation. And I suspect many others, particularly meteorologists, think the same.
Great work. Any theories as to what might cause the class 5 station to show lower temperature trends than class 4 (other than sample size issue)?
[REPLY: The paper does discuss that. -REP]
People in their own countries should attempt a similar excercise – I bet New Zealand would fall in a week.
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.
____________________________
You forgot the -1 for Ehrlich.
foo1 says:
July 29, 2012 at 6:40 pm
A few implications if the study holds up to scrutiny:….
Others?
____________________________
See ROM over at Jo Nova’s for an excellent list.
Mr. Nichopolis,
To answer your question about money wasted would take me the rest of my life. But here are a few telling links. I have not even tapped the government’s own totals of funds given to DOD DOE NASA USDA FDA EPA – all to solve this non-problem.
A huge reason this won’t die. http://www.ceres.org/incr/news/investors-representing-13-trillion-call-on-u.s.-and-other-countries-to-move-quickly-to-adopt-strong-climate-change-policies
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/gcce.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aMU3BkV3yqPU
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah4XLQCleuUYdFIxMnhMNnlXb2JQcDZUendjUXpWWUE&hl=en#gid=0
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629
More evidence that global warming is the greatest science hoax in human history. The standard strategy of saying Who Could Have Known after pissing away mountains of monetary resources is an equally historic policy failure. Are you listening Edward Markey?
The BBC have mentioned this study in an a paragraph added to their BEST article (right at the bottom).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501
Huh? Is a comma out of place or an extra letter in place?
You know, I’m sure that wasn’t there when I read the story. Maybe I missed it.
Congratulations! Well done Anthony et al. So, you were ONLY pulling together a whole new research paper in the last week, it could certainly have been much worse. Common sense, some improved science and plenty of hard work triumphant. I’m sure there will be caltrops aplenty scattered through the peer review, but you’ve got an excellent team.
Good luck,
W^3
Don’t hold your breath. Unfortunately, the Nobel committee in Oslo is assembled from former members of the Norwegian parliament and lead by a (very unsuccessful) former prime minister. CAGW-critical MP’s in Norway are uheard of, they don’t exist.
Apart form that, a heartfelt thanks to Anthony et al. for the work being done. Not all of us are blind over here. A small donation to be coming your way soon.
[REPLY: Thank you, Carsten. Your support and your commentary are always appreciated here. -REP]
I need help with an issue. IF we are to belive the current satelite measurements, and this study shows a smaller upward temp trend, that should mean previous temps were higher than advertised, not that current ones are lower? The AGW crowd do adjust the past lower to get steeper trends. Is this all part of the same game?
Amazing – BBC, at the end of the article …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501
Leif,
I wasn’t limiting my rationale to just typos. The science itself will be vetted too. We’ve seen some discussion of how the comparitive trends were calculated, and multiple calls for the data to be released with response that it will be in due course.
The only direct critisism of methodology that I’ve seen so far in this thread came from Mosher, who as usual, deigned only to throw in a drive by snark and then disaappear. The rest of the negative comments didn’t even achieve that much, they were clearly of the “I’ve made up my mind don’t confuse me with facts” variety.
If there are fundamental flaws in this paper, I’m confident that they will be found, precisely because there are so many eyes on it, and those who want it to succeed are just as likely, perhaps more so, to speak up precisely because they want it to be perfect, unassailable. Your criticism of the abstract was valid… and you jumped in and made suggestions to improve it. I imagine that the same will happen throughout the paper as various people apply their personal expertise to various aspects of it.
Not all science can be done in this fashion. But the domain of the journal as the only place where science “officially happens” is over.
Having read the paper now, I think what I like best is that it powerfully validates Menne et al 2010. It never did make sense that the earliest analysis of the surfacestation data couldn’t detect clear differential in station siting from the data. The problem is now clearly revealed to be the grading standards, and detecting that differential using the new standards validates those new standards are a definite improvement, and all on raw data collected before the new standards were finalized, but not re-analyzed until after the new standards were in place. That makes it a blind study, and thus no danger of having cooked the books to get to the desired result.
In your graphic, under the text box headed “Average Trend 1979-2008”, the figures in the table should all have a leading 0 before the nearly invisible decimal point. It’s a semi-standard good practice.
Regardless of what the outcome is after stringent review, what I love about this is the burst of energy and creativity it’s inspired among skeptics. For example, Pointman’s latest
Thank you, Anthony, Steve, John, Roger, Evan and all the rest.
In your graphic, you first say “1&2” and then “1\2”. Is the latter an error?
Make that Pointman’s latest:
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/whats-the-watts-paper-actually-mean-dude/
davidmhoffer says:
July 30, 2012 at 10:30 am
But the domain of the journal as the only place where science “officially happens” is over.
We do not disagree about that. But the journals have not been the place for many years. Equally important are seminars, colloquia, and informal discussions at scientific meetings. Blogs can be important too, if stringently moderated. ‘Climate Audit’ is a good example. WUWT is not there yet.
Twisters: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/#comment-1047796
Well, yes. You will be hard-pressed to find someone who’s been paying attention who disagrees with that. The pertinent question is, “how much warming has there been?” The second pertinent question is “WHY?” And the third is, “does it matter?”
I suppose I could keep going, but I’ll stop there.
Have we now asked NOAA under a freedom of information request to identify (for a chosen selection of sites) what date they adjusted the temperature and for the list of reasons why they adjusted upwards.
Surely if they do not now have a list of the reasons why they changed a sites records then the following data record is junk bond stuff
If they have dont have a list of the dates when they adjusted the temp series upwards then the following data record is also junk bond stuff
If the can supply reasons why they upped a specific class 1.2 record then the reason must be valid and can be audited to check its veracity.
From the data and graphs shown it would appear they have nothing but hot air.
Poptech says:
July 30, 2012 at 1:04 am
Poptech, whether you like Mosh or not (I happen to like him), he is in fact a very smart guy, as I’ve found out more than once to my cost. His posting style drives me nuts, but that’s a separate question.
w.