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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I think I’ve read all the comments, and haven’t seen this mentioned:
“Surfacestations.org gallery server has received heavy traffic and some attacks in the last 24hrs. The online image database aka gallery server site has been put into safe mode to secure backups and make it more secure.”
“some attacks”? Is Geick out on bail?
Congratulations Anthony. Great work.
Looking forward to a listing of the 56 primo stations. Is Beeville, TX one of them?
With 930 comments, this comment will get lost, but it’s my two cents, so…
WHY has it taken so long for ANYONE to get around to doing a paper that isolates the data from bad sites from the good ones, and the rural from the non-rural and the airports from the rest?
The fact that the climatologists did not do this themselves, to clear the air can only mean one of two things: They are either corrupted or they are incompetent.
The ratio of the good-vs-bad sites in its extreme (rural, non-airport, raw vs urban, airport, adjusted) being 1:10 is an indictment of the fundamental procedures. This study should have been done in 1990 or sooner. If it had been done, all the subsequent hollering and alarmism would have been laughed at.
‘Skeptics’ are not dismissive of science; skeptics are dismissive of bad science.
It is nice to see fundamental and real science going on.
Steve Garcia
At 7:31 PM on 30 July, feet2thefire had posted:
At which point I am moved to ask why they can’t be both corrupted and incompetent?
A couple of decades ago I’d read an observation to the effect that this great “We’re All Gonna Die!” hokum was the product of “third-rate incompetents with second-rate credentials foisting a first-rate fraud on the public at large.”
Can’t source it as a quote, but I refuse to take credit for it. Too pithy by far for my poor abilities.
feet2thefire continues:
You’ll have to take up the “Why the hell wasn’t this done sooner?” business with Mr. Watts. I’m not familiar with his explanation about how he came to become curious about Stevenson screens and the possibility of temperature record deviations as the result of changing the paint on the boxes from old-fashioned whitewash in a strictly specified formulation to modern, more durable, but more heat-artifact-inducing white latex paint.
What seems obvious in retrospect was not so terribly obvious at the time. Look up H. pylori and peptic ulcer disease sometime.
Gawd, did I scrub in on a boatload of Bilroth II procedures back in my training years….
William Roberts,
The planet has been warming naturally since the LIA. That is where the warming comes from, not from human CO2 emissions. While they may add some insignificant warming, their effect is so minuscule that it is unmeasurable.
Despite a ≈40% increase in human CO2 emissions, the long term warming trend has not accelerated. At all. In fact, the naturally rising trend line [the green line] shows that the natural global warming since the LIA is moderating. Therefore, the rather large rise in CO2 cannot be the cause of global warming [in reality, it is largely an effect, since rising CO2 follows temperature rises on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. Only in the upside-down world of Mannian climate pseudo-science does effect precede cause.
The Null Hypothesis requires that past climate parameters must be exceeded for the Null to be falsified. That has not happened, as Climatologist Roy Spencer makes clear: “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.”
The Null Hypothesis says that global temperatures will continue to rise within the parameters of the long term rising trend.
Going back to the LIA, we see that the long term trend remains unchanged. Therefore, the rise in CO2 has had no effect; temperatures are not rising at an accelerating rate.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but empirical, testable measurements and observations show conclusively that the rise in CO2 has not caused a measurable acceleration in temperatures. CO2 probably has a small effect, but for all practical purposes, it can be completely disregarded.
It takes a strong character to admit that what someone has always believed is not really true. Leo Tolstoy expressed it well:
“Carbon” has been falsely demonized, motivated by huge amounts of grant money. Anthony Watts et al. did this for practically nothing. And it is more honest than the propaganda that the billion dollar UN/IPCC emits. It may not be 100.0% perfect right now. But it is honest, while Richard Muller is not.
congrats again, I can’t help commenting again on such outstanding science!
This really shows anyone who can look at the facts that thousands and thousands of climate scientists around the world have been engaging in a giant conspiracy to fake their numbers and tilt their conclusions!
How long will the free people of the world need to put up with these out-of-control elites? I think it’s time to put some moles in their world – what if we got some of our people accepted as PhD students in some of these conspirators’ labs? Then we could collect first-hand, inside evidence about their liberal conspiracy.
Let’s face it, these “climate scientists” are going to keep on with their nonsense until someone presses criminal fraud charges and makes them stick!
Just finished my first detailed read through of Watts et al (2012) paper. One more run throught tomorrow morning and then I will be ready to comment on it with confidence.
John
Bad idea, the only one I would trust with it is McIntyre. Mosher does not even have the integrity to post his comments here and is not qualified to review the data. Let him whine and he can look at the data after the paper is published and make meaningless comments on it that he will never publish.
“There are people in this world qualified to statistically analyze time series. It’s clear not a single coauthor on the study could be included in such company.”
If not Steve M., then who? Mike M.?
And to amend my previous post: Congratulations Anthony & coauthors. Great work
Smokey, my comments have nothing to do with temperature, attribution etc. Ignore the climate part of this. The authors might as well have been analyzing trends of the price of tea in China. My point would remain unchanged.
Does this analysis mean we don’t know what the temperature is and never have, or that we don’t know what the temperature has been and never will? If in 2012 we don’t know the temperature is then we’d be well advised to put off any remediation activities until we do know.
William Roberts,
The entire debate [and this paper] are all about temperature, and it’s relation to CO2.
The central claim is that “carbon” is evil and the cause of future problems. That is a false conclusion, as I showed above with several references. CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. More is better. Accept that, and the scales will begin to fall from your eyes.
The demonization of CO2 is all about money, status, taxing, and political control. Because honest, skeptical science has already completely destroyed the CO2=CAGW conjecture.
Ally E. says:
How about:
“GLOBAL WARMING NOTHING BUT HOT AIR.”
🙂 🙂 🙂
===
Love it. Here’s a few more:
“NEW STUDY TURNS DOWN THE THERMOSTAT ON GLOBAL WARMING!”
“MOTHER EARTH DOESN’T HAVE A FEVER. NEW STUDY POINTS TO FAULTY TEMPERATURE READINGS.”
“THE SKY ISN’T FALLING. CHICKEN LITTLE CLIMATE SCIENCE NOT SUPPORTED BY ACTUAL DATA.”
Fox has finally taken notice:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/30/weather-station-temp-claims-are-overheated-report-claims/
William Roberts;
Not being a statstician, I cannot debate the issues you raise. My single class in stats being 30+ years ago, it wouldn’t suffice even if I could remember it.
That being the case, I must rely on the expertise of others. As in any area of endeavour in which I cannot rely on my own expertise, I’ve identified experts on whose opinion I can rely.
In this case, that would be one of the co-authors of the paper, a certain McIntyre. If he belies the statistical analysis to be sufficient, then that is good enough for me. If he believes otherwise, I’m certain that he will ensure the deficiency is suitably addressed before the paper takes itz final form. If YOU on the other hand are interested in being constructive, you could offer specific approaches and explain their relevance to promote discussion and perhaps educate the rest of us. Otherwise you’re just kvetching to hear yourself kvetch.
EVAN!
leading zero before a decimal point:-
“REPLY – Thought about it, then decided that since every starting number there would be a zero, anyway, why bother? ~ Evan”
==================================================================
On the Zero issue….. Put the Zeros in. For the journalists who skim through it and who will cut and paste figures from it for quotes to deseminate to the rest of us… Having a Zero in front of every number, reinforces the fact we are paying huge taxes for something that starts with a Zero.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501
Did the BBC get it’s charts mixed up this one looks as though it’s showing cooling.
The Berkley chart’s show warming or is it me not knowing how to read chart’s.
http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/
The Blaze is carrying a story that contrasts Richard Muller’s ‘conversion’ from skeptic to warmist with Anthony’s (et.al) paper presented here. The main graphic at the head of this paper is used in The Blaze story and a link to Anthony’s paper is provided.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/weekend-climate-drama-climate-skeptic-says-hes-been-converted-to-global-warming-camp-as-study-finds-noaa-exaggerated-data/
First, this is crap. Second, pollution is bad.
[REPLY: Dude, your eloquent and insightful analysis has made everything perfectly clear to me. It is just amazing that I couldn’t see this clearly before. Thank you. -REP]
@Alan Mcrea
You posted this”
“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003″
as a way to discredit Muller? What the hell dude. Wake up
Reg Nelson,
Love the first one: “NEW STUDY TURNS DOWN THE THERMOSTAT ON GLOBAL WARMING!”
LOL. Perfect! 🙂
*
Smokey? I think your words are brilliant. You’ve explained the situation well. 🙂
“New study shows half of climatic surface warming comes from faulty measuring and data processing”
@Paul K2,
So you say that the Watts paper should be rejected unless it includes a USCRN comparison?
Watts time period of analysis was 1979-2008. How many CRN stations have records that begin in or prior to 1979. None.
So, I think most reviewers would insist that any mention of CRN be removed prior to publication since it would not be consistent with the time frame of analysis and thus, regardless of outcome, either is a red herring or just confuses the issue.
Breitbart is reporting directly on the Watts et.al. paper. They cite Monday morning interviews with Dr. John Christy and Anthony Watts.
New Study Crushes Global Warming Data Claims
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/30/New-Study-Crushes-Global-Warming-Data-Claims
Fox News is carrying the story, with interviews.
Weather station temperature claims are overheated, report claims.
The temperature record from stations across the U.S. has been systematically overinflated due to faulty data manipulation and “encroaching urbanity” — locations near asphalt, air conditioning and airports — according to a new study. And if correct, it calls into question just how hot our planet is getting.
Global warming believer-turned-skeptic Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist, posted a new report online questioning the reliability of weather stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, a 120-year-old weather system that forms one tent pole of climate measurements. As the country has evolved, building urban metropolises and airports and pouring parking lots, the weather stations haven’t moved — and poorly cited stations are spoiling the data.
“The best stations get adjusted up to the level of the worst stations,” Watts told FoxNews.com. “It’s like making a temperature smoothie. You put all these different fruits in to represent different qualities of stations and you run it through a blender and you get a milk shake.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/30/weather-station-temp-claims-“are-overheated-report-claims/#ixzz22AUAxdMP
Temperature Smoothie! I like it!
MtK
Hehe 🙂
Elmer, you guys so rule. I’m still cracking up about the previous one someone made (Hitler finds out the Start menu will be removed from Windows 8) and now you go and make this!
“The New York Times printed everything I told them!”
Absolutely Hysterical!
I must agree with others here (Tucci76, W. Roberts, Roger N, …) that anywhere you state a mean value, you should also state an uncertainty of the mean (mean std error). I don’t think it is worth even a sentence debating whether it be normal or something more exotic. Assume it is normal and mark the +/- value.
Given the number of points in the time series and scatter about the trend line, state the simple mean std err of each the calculated mean slope.