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.
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Your sentence starting in line 39 does not read quite right. I would substitute: [Application] of the new Leroy (2010) classification system [to] the older siting metadata used by Fall et al. … yields dramatically different results.
If all one did is read all of the material posted since Anthony’s WUWT suspension there is no longer any justification for avoiding the F bomb.
It is inconceivable that Muller and the entirety of the team notables are not aware of the fatal flaws throughout the theoretical folly they continue to advance.
It’s not a hoax or settled anything. It’s Fraud and a WUWT post by a legal minded contributor detailing the offense is due, big time.
Excellent work by Anthony and others. So far, I have not seen anything by the MSM in the UK, though the Guardian is still milking the Muller story with several new articles on how wonderful it is.
Like some other people, I would like to know how NOAA justify the adjustments they made to the data.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/30/watts_et_al_temperature_bombshell/
Any idea on how long it would take to get this peer reviewed?
“Valeri Kursk says:
July 31, 2012 at 3:32 am
If there is a US flag in moon I believe they were there.If the Ice melts from Arctic Ocean and Greenland and glaciers are vanishing around the world I believe that is happening.
So why fight over measurements? Measuring is very difficult task if not impossible.So what?
Be prepared and buy boats if you feel you need. Maybe warming happens in such slow pace we have time to adapt. I would consider the bad air quality in big cities to be more serious problem for those who has to live there. There are cars and factories.Cars can use electricity(which makes them more efficient). No one wants to inhale any much dirt in any form so let’s cut it down at least.”
Valeri, thanks for joining in the debate. Your point about measuring is a good one. I worry about the minute detail involved; 0.1 per decade here, an adjustment there, the arguments over statistical methods, the use of models, the fact that a global average is nonsense etc. However if it is that unclear then there is no proven case. I worked in forensics for a while and as they might say, hardly any of the warmist case would stand up in court!
Regarding the ice melting then where is the proof it is CO2? Correlation is not causation?
Cars are less efficient when they use electricity [I think you mean cleaner but just investigate the environmental damage from the batteries]] and we all here agree that dirty air is bad, shame CO2 isn’t dirty or toxic. You may be confusing it with carbon monoxide. We would prefer the billions wasted on CO2 control to be spent controlling real pollutants.
As regards to sea level rise I have lived and visit regularly several coast lines for 58 years and haven’t noticed a change in any of them – I should get a boat though!
I have a quibble with the title of the article: how could half of the global warming have been in the USA in the first place? If it were, then it would be really, really, really freaking hot out there.
(Just drop the word “global” and I’m happy.)
[SNIP: Valeri, this is interesting but off-topic for this thread. Please find a more suitable thread and post it there. Thank you. -REP]
To a layperson the “BEST” project was supposed to be about getting the “best” available temperature record as a basis for policy discussions going forward. Yet, they seem to have punted on the issues of site and measurement quality, relying instead upon new ways of slicing and dicing all data: bad, good, or of unknown quality.
Anthony et al. now show what it looks like to start from the actual “best” 30 year land surface records. It’s a different picture than if one throws all the diverse noisy data into a hopper and hopes to make something of it.
I am surprised at the vitriol against Steve Mosher. He is involved peripherally in the BEST project which I personally believe it is heavily over-processed and under-vetted. The team has failed to respond to ANY of my critiques no matter how they were presented. IMO, it contains near-meaningless error bars and as this work shows, a trend contaminated by bad urban data (see McIntyre’s latest post). Still it is open-source, open data, and that has a lot of positive uses. What Anthony’s surface station work has proven is that the old classification system is as contaminated as the thermometers are and did not work effectively. The new classification system reveals a clear and differentiated signal that on casual observation seems to match the ground trend nicely to the satellite data.
Mosher is quite brilliant and deserves some room (and time) to analyze and make his own conclusions. If you guys are too smart to learn from him, you must be pretty amazing.
[REPLY: Nicely put, Jeff. -REP]
To Lief…I have been a resident of this planet for 9 decades…had my own very small but sucessful business for many years… you are in real need of some humility…try this book, “How to win friends and influence people”….your style would not have worked in my Company..
RogerN says:
In general it is wholly meaningless to quote a measured quantity without an associated error.
In specific, it is not.
The point of this exercise is to demonstrate the fact that the mean trends of the two sub-populations (good sites vs bad) of a larger dataset are different, by a factor of two or more.
You seem to think that it helps your “cause” to assert that there is so much error in those data that a twofold difference in trend is not statistically significant. Go ahead. Make that argument.
Please.
If an undergraduate had written the top paragraph I would have insisted that they go back and put the uncertainties next to the measured quantities.
And soon thereafter, that undergraduate would have your job.
Just a couple of pedantic observations wrt the headline of this post:
1. ‘global warming in the US’ ?? It’s continental warming, at the most.
2. ‘half of … warming … is artificial’. Artificial means unnatural or man-made. Surely Mr Watts et al did not intend to concede that 50% of the T-rise is due to AGW?
Thanks to Watts and friends for their huge efforts. Science is very hard work, isn’t it? And even harder when so many people are booing from the sidelines.
The Heat island effect has been known for centuries, as any gardener could tell you. The walled gardens (kitchen gardens) from Mediaeval times – through Tudor times up to the era of heated greenhouses – used the warmth of the sun, held in the masonry, to grow exotic crops against the south-facing walls. The same usage as the storage heaters popular some years ago – warmed up by cheap overnight electricity, and heat dispersed through the day using fans or convection.
How the keepers of the records could fail to notice that their thermometers were being invalidated by the encroachment of masonry, asphalt and exhaust fumes is a question for their own consciences. In the meantime, let us encourage the use of measuring stations in parks, woodland clearances and gardens. And try to discourage the electricity-from-windmills brigade.
Jack Mclaughlin says:
July 31, 2012 at 9:18 am
I have been a resident of this planet for 9 decades…had my own very small but sucessful business for many years… you are in real need of some humility…try this book, “How to win friends and influence people”….your style would not have worked in my Company..
Having been a resident for seven decades I have learned that life is not all about ‘influencing people’. I trust that people can make their own choices without having to be influenced.
I had to laugh, even FoxNews is leading this with ‘An ex-TV Weatherman says’
I notice you require funds for publication so have happily hit the fling funds tab, especially having read a lot of the comments at dot earth. It never ceases to amaze me the vitriol that spews forth from some people’s fingertips.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, that these errors in surface station locations must be rife around the world. The UK one nearest me at what was a potty little airstrip and is now Bournemouth International Airport (although a somewhat exaggerated claim) is a case in point.
[REPLY: Your contribution is gratefully accepted, Biddy. Thank you. -REP]
A mainstream view:
Everyone accepts there is a UHI effect and siting effects. Many of the adjustments you hate so much are there precisely to ensure they don’t affect the trends. The problem with Anthony’s paper is that it compares good sites unadjusted with the published trends from all sites adjusted. So the question remains, is the difference due to siting or adjustment. And if it is adjustment, then which adjustment – adjusting for e.g. a change in time of observation is definitely a valid thing to do. Split out siting vs. adjustment and the paper might get taken more seriously. If it gets ignored, it will be because it is flawed rather than because it produces an unpopular result.
John W @ur momisugly July 31, 2012 at 8:23 am
If you assume the same peer reviewers who review most of the TEAM’s papers, I would guess “forever” would be how long it would take to get this paper successfully peer reviewed. 🙂
@ur momisugly Lord Lucan
A ‘real’ life analogy:
A few years ago my doctor in London told me I was suffering from furring of my arteries due to my so-called ‘excessive’ lifestyle, and that if I didn’t change my diet and start doing some exercise, I stood a very real chance of serious coronary problems in the not too distant future.
A week later he called to say the data upon which he based his prognosis was flawed. Consequently, my insurance company and I saved vast sums of money and I was able to maintain control over my own life, rather than relinquishing control to the doctor and his “cures”.
Keep up the good work, I for one am sleeping better knowing you’re debunking those climate change nutters, who, as I have learned, use local weather events and natural climate variation to greatly exaggerate their claims. 🙂
It appears that Slashdot has a post on Anthony’s paper. It also appears the ignoramuses have risen to the top in that thread. One believes Anthony not to be a meteorologist. Another is recycling the lack of “peer review” as a reason to discard the paper out of hand. None of the top rated posts display any degree of understanding of what just happened and a pitiful few display any higher level of intelligence whatsoever.
JohnB says:
” If it gets ignored, it will be because it is flawed rather than because it produces an unpopular result.”
JohnB could not be more clueless, could he? This paper is not being ignored by anyone – except for the usual media suspects. And the result is very unpopular specifically because it destroys the myth of CAGW. The entire ‘human-caused global warming’ conjecture has no scientific evidence to support it. None. There are only True Believers like JohnB who credulously drink the CAGW Kool Aid. That is not science; that is religion.
Thanks for the analysis. It puts reality behind all the suspicions that flows around.
By the way, i wonder why the UHI should not be a part of the the Global temperature. Of cause it should be stated separately, but talking of Global temperature, the urban areas are parts of it like the oceans.
It could bring more fuel to the discussions of the sensitivity of CO2 forcing.
MB Edwards says:
July 31, 2012 at 5:22 am
Anthony is quoted in Foxnews as saying global warming is real, albeit slower than NOAA/UNIPCC predicts. With .1555 degrees Celsius per decade, by my accounting we’d reach 2 degrees C warming by 2130 instead of 2100 as UNIPCC predicts (at low end of their modeling).
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MB,
You are forgetting about the time period. 1979 to 2008 was during the positive phase of the PDO, and it also encompassed a couple of fairly active solar cycles.
As a result, much of that 0.1555C is due to cyclical factors. IE, it has nothing to do with CO2.
I looked at a few comments on Slashdot and conclude that just because a person considers themselves to be a tech nerd, does not preclude them from also be scientific illiterates and boobs.
It is not worth my time to comment there. There are as many ill informed and fallacious comments by true believers as one would find at blogs like Desmogblog.