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.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/#comment-1047845
In Mosh’s defense (as if he needs it) I’m thinking he’s lucubrating on the subject. He saw a potential flaw and rather than engage recklessly, he’s preparing a critique that he feels comfortable arguing about. Give him time. If he’s got something, he will engage when appropriate.
He may also be hinting at a direction for those who have the ability to review and find flaws in the paper (I am not one). He’s a teacher, after all.
Nick Stokes said on July 30, 2012 at 3:44 am:
As I was previously calculating, the slope for UAH for January 1980 to December 2009 is 0.20°C/decade, not 0.25.
Using the NOAA 12-mo averages you referenced, that slope is 0.24°C/decade, which is what you had previously erroneously reported as the 1979-2008 trend.
But UAH reports monthly figures. Using the monthly NOAA figures I had gathered, that trend for January 1980 to December 2009 is 0.30°C/decade, 50% higher than the UAH figure.
So once again, NOAA is running half again higher than UAH.
How is that not significant?
Second verse, same as the first
A little louder, a little worse.
A point I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere yet is that if Anthony Watts’ paper is accepted then it blows a massive hole in the regional modelling of the US and hence the global modelling of climate, because the models have to hindcast as well as forcast. The whole of the CAGW fear machine is based on the results of climate models.
Press release states: “…approximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources…”
Urbanity means possessing politeness/refinement/suaveness/etc. “Urbanization” is the word that is needed here.
Tumper says: Great Great and nice work too. I sent funds.
Finally we have “scientific proof” that the IPCC, NOAA and every other agency that have sucked the life and money from the planet based on a huge LIE called AGW are now being exposed for what they are! …out and out “NON Scientific entities” even though they claim they are!
True science is not an emotional “feel good/bad” state of mind…….it is basically the TRUTH…………………Well done Anthony…let the rabble eat each others tails over this one!
Which the warmists fell over themselves to “deny.”
Regarding the other half of the warming, what fraction of that is due to regional to super regional scale surface / near surface waste heat, albedo / vegetation modification, and, disturbances to boundary layer laminar flows by human made structures and tree plantings?
Check the figure 8! It is a major smoking gun! the trend at the well maintained, automatized rural stations is 0.032 C per decade in the period 1979-2009!!! No global warming at all in the continental USA!
Climate Olympics: Two compete for grandstanding gold medal
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/07/climate-olympics-two-compete-for-grandstanding-gold-medal/
Pretty lame…
Nick Stokes (July 30, 2012 at 3:44 am )
“…calculated 1980-2009 instead of 1979-2008. I’m surprised it made so much difference.”
Sounds like a good argument for using 5 year averages instead of individual years when investigating long term trends.
@me
Seems I was right, the BBC did add the final paragraph without indicating the text had been changed
Manfred:
“That reconciles land data with ocean data and satellite data.”
No, it does not. It shows instead that both satellite and ocean data have a significant spurious warming trend. The UAH data for the USA 48 show 0.22 C per decade 1979-2009. The rural, category 1 and 2 MMTS trend fro the same period is 0.032!!! No trend at all!
The BEST thing about the BBC coverage of the Muller story is the illustration… of a weather station array right next to a runway!!!
[SNIP: Off Topic. -REP]
johanna says:
July 29, 2012 at 10:46 pm
….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….
___________________________-
Lief wrote an abstract and I am prodding my husband, a technical writer with a degree in Physics, to look at the paper for Anthony et al.
Hopefully there are others with good writing skills out there who will do the same.
“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.”
A fundamental message of the paper is thus that better quality sites have a lower temperature trend. What are the uncertainties on the values quoted above ? In general it is wholly meaningless to quote a measured quantity without an associated error. +0.155C +- X , +0.248 C+- Y , 0.309C +-Z . What is the complete list of contributing sources of uncertainty to X, Y and Z and how were the relevant uncertainties combined ? Are X, Y and Z correlated in any way ? Are the uncertainties to be regarded as normally distributed ? If so, why can than that judgement be made ?
The sad thing is that no one is looking this way. All MSM have BEST’s story above Watts one, Its always the same. Steven Goddard has amassed massive amounts of graphs and data evidence of fraud with GISS, NOAA, BOM ect., No one actually cares or is even looking at this study, Hopefully it is because no one cares about global warming anymore except a few warmist fanatics and skeptics etc… Only serious legal action funded by a wealthy skeptic or the like will actually make anyone notice that is the sad fact I’m afraid.
That’s some pretty fancy data “adjusting” sleight of hand, to adjust for the urban heat island effect & end up with higher rather than lower temperatures. Reminds me of “adjusted”, pro forma cooked book accounting from the dot com bubble era.
Does GISS still keep its adjustment algorithms secret, or are they subject to review now?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 30, 2012 at 10:52 am
“Blogs can be important too, if stringently moderated. ‘Climate Audit’ is a good example. WUWT is not there yet.”
With all due respect to your vast knowledge and large contributions to WUWT, different blogs have different purposes. The benefits of WUWT go beyond the excellent analysis and tightly controlled comments found on CA. Anthony Watts has accomplished a heroic task that began with his weather stations website and culminated in yesterday’s brilliant reintroduction of empiricism into the science of weather station siting and the science of temperature reading comparisons. Though scientists and sceptics owe very much to McIntyre, he has not undertaken an effort that will change the course of the science. It is well and good that Anthony’s actions call forth more than excellent analysis and tightly controlled comments.
Excellent work Anthony and the team that matter!
So much for the ghosts of stations past and ghosts of stations present.
What about the ghosts of stations future?
Who is talking about installing NEW STATIONS to make up for all the worthless ones (or just uprooting them and taking them out into the stix somewhere)?!? And the lack of good rural sited stations?
Can we reverse the huge fall-off of station that happened when the cold war ended and interest turned from science to soap operas?
OK President Hu (China) and King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia) – can we borrow just a little more money…
Good and important work. Thanks to all involved for this mammoth undertaking.
But how can we not think that the main data sets are not rigged? After all, I read years ago about people looking at some rural sites that had not been moved and they showed no warming. Now I find Mr. Watts team finds a 0.032 per decade warming trend when looking at only well sited rural stations. This was known by scientists whose job is to keep the data sets. I see fraud and conspiracy.
Please tell me how “conformation bias” alone could account for the “keepers of the data” from not seeing it, and that they were not involved knowingly in scientific fraud.
Note to mods: I am trying to be calm here and the question is a serious one to me.
If the paper holds up, what are the implications for the world temerature record? Can the reset of the world be any better at measuring temperature than the US? I’m reminded of some accusations when climategate broke that the New Zealand temperature record looked fudged, i.e. flat until the adjustments were made, at which point a warming trend appeared.
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