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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“On p. 34-6, there is a random effects ANOVA test of statistical significance which comes in overwhelming, if that reassures you.”
Again, it doesn’t, geophysical data is notorious for violating random white noise distribution as almost a rule.
Each trend here needs uncertainties. Every slope needs an uncertainty and a correct model of uncertainty to which it must be compared. Period. Otherwise, the results of this “study” are utterly meaningless. Where’s your outlier protection (median, etc.)? Skewness? Kurtosis? That there is not a single robust analysis of the data that was actually gathered. How much do you think your confidence intervals and weighting change. You go from 727 stations to 160, an ~80% reduction in N. That’s an 80% reduction in the number of trends and therefore an enormous potential change where the distribution bounds lie. None of this is addressed.
If verified, this data would seem to put a dent in NOAA’s scientific credibility, and in terms of data, some of the basis for determining U.S. land temperature rises only. I doubt it “puts reality behind all the suspicions that flows around” as Svend Ferdinandsen says in an overblown claim.
It puts a small chunk of measured reality, IF verified, behind ONE of many sources of suspicion about AGW. Science is rarely able to disprove, with one study, credible theories based on masses of evidence collected by thousands of scientists. The overwhelming mass of evidence still supports AGW. And will until or unless overwhelming evidence to the contrary pours in. This study looks like it could be important, but it is still only pulls one chink of mortar out of the huge brick wall.
It’s fascinating that, like vultures searching the ground for a carcass, some viewers look at one study (which is as yet unverified by other climate scientists) and claim it puts the final nail in the coffin of AGW. Not so much. Focus on the big picture; it’s vital to see the forest, as well as the trees.
Steve McIntyre seems to have changed his opinion on the value of Watts et al. (2012), which he co-authored.
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/
See also an interesting post on the same serious problem in Watt et al. (2012)
http://rabett.blogspot.de/2012/07/bunny-bait.html
Interesting… Yahoo News has a top headline for Muller’s paper. I’ve tried 3 times to make a comment that mentions this paper (either by title or direct link), and none of my comments show up…
@Smokey,
Try to keep focussed. I am talking specifically about possible flaws in THIS paper. And even Steve McIntyre seems to agree:
“There is a confounding interaction with TOBS that needs to be allowed for, as has been quickly and correctly pointed out.”
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/
JohnB,
You don’t understand. I am focused on the central question: is any measurable global warming caused by the 40% rise in CO2? If so, I challenge you to post the measurements, and show, per the scientific method, exactly how much global warming results from each unit of CO2 emitted. Quantify the effect of CO2 in a testable, replicable manner. If you can do that, you will be the first.
And as pointed out by others, TOBS is an artifact. There is no agreed standard, so each individual location can do it differently.
The fact is that there has been no measurable acceleration of global warming in the long term upward temperature trend since the LIA. None. Therefore, any minuscule temperature effect from the rise in human-emitted CO2 is too small to measure, and thus can be completely disregarded as a non-issue.
Rufus – Yahoo comments does not accept urls
Smokey says:
July 31, 2012 at 10:19 am
“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.”
There is more outside interest than normal in this site and a number of people like myself, who regard cAGW as valid, reading it. Perhaps you could refrain from this dogmatic garbage and give Mr Watts a chance to bring his paper up to publishable standard.
You are doing for your cause what Mr Romney’s press spokesman has just done for his candidate.
William Roberts;
Each trend here needs uncertainties.
>>>>>>>>>>
All in due time sir. While we wait, please let me dumb it down for you. I’m pretty dumb, so I am good at it.
1. The vast majority of all opor quality sites result in a temperature reading that is too high.
2. Despite the above, the vast majority of poor quality sites were adjusted still higher.
3. The vast majority of pristine sites result in a temperature reading that is accurate.
4. Despite the above, the vast majority of pristine sites were adjusted upward by an even higher amount than the poor quality sites.
Scream all you want about error bars. One doesn’t need them to understand that the adjustments were done in a manner that is completely illogical and can have no other result than to produce a warming trend significantly higher than what is actually occurring. If you wish to kvetch endlessly about the error bars, then you have missed entirely the main point of the paper.
From JohnB on July 31, 2012 at 10:09 am:
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:
From JohnB:
April 13, 2012: Warming in the USHCN is mainly an artifact of adjustments
See graph: Stepwise Adjustments Due to USHCN Adjustments, 1900-1999
Time of Observation adjustment (TOBS) adding about 0.3°C since 1940
Station location quality adjustment adding about 0.2°C since 1940
Measuring technologies adjustment adding about 0.05°C since 1940
Urban heat island adjustment subtracting about 0.05°C since 1950
As shown by the paper, bad siting increases the trends.
Bad sites (3,4,5) far outnumber the good sites (1,2).
Logically a station location quality adjustment should be subtracted.
Yet said adjustment is added instead, increasing the trends, and is the second largest increasing adjustment.
The only “trends” that adjustment can be there to ensure is a warming trend.
“Everyone” accepts UHI is negligible. The IPCC says so, and they are the “mainstream climate science position”, thus that is what “everyone” accepts.
“Everyone” may accept there are siting effects, well except for all those people presenting “mainstream climate science” papers and positions for years as evidence that Watts is full of it as siting has no discernible effects, people like Mosher etc have pointed to temperature record reconstructions done by individuals, often mentioned by Tami’s Troupe over at Open Airy Mind and similar sites, that found siting made no significant difference in the trends, etc.
But if NOAA applies their adjustment in the wrong direction, how much agreement can “everyone” have on the effect?
As to the validity of the adjustments, I stumbled across this May 11, 2012 post over at Lucia’s site: A Surprising Validation of USHCN Adjustments.
The USHCN adjustments were validated due to USHCN’s excellent agreement with the BEST results.
BEST has now been shown to be a rejected big steaming pile of “mainstream view”.
Thus USHCN Adjusted has excellent agreement with a rejected big steaming pile of “mainstream view”.
What greater proof of the validity of the USHCN adjustments can anyone want?
[snip – we get it, you don’t like the headline, stop thread bombing and move along to something else. ~mod]
davidmhoffer,
Excellent elevator explanation. When reliable and accurate rural sites are used, scary global warming vanishes. It’s that simple.
And Entropic [who I smoked out early, when he was pretending to be Mr. Neutral] now adds politics to the mix. I don’t know what he is referring to regarding a press spokesman, but it certainly isn’t relevant to what I wrote, and which I can support. Entropic’s “dogmatic garbage” is his admitted, unfounded belief in catastrophic AGW, which is and always has been baseless alarmism.
More than 31,400 [U.S.-only] scientists with degrees limited to the hard sciences – including more than 9,000 PhD’s – have stated in writing:
Maybe Entropic is smarter than all those folks. But I doubt it. If their view is that CO2=CAGW is ‘dogmatic garbage’, I’ll listen to them over a True Believer who has no convincing scientific evidence supporting his belief system.
Those interested in the analysis included in the potential Watts 2012 paper will probably find these useful.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/
Jeff Condon – I’m sure Mosher can contribute to the analysis and when he does I will be interested; it is his arrogant, snarky, know-it-all attitude conveyed in his posts that causes vitriol. He seems to think he is entitled to everyones data when he wants it. He also loves to pile on anyone not part of the “concensus” to prove how unbiased he is. By the way I enjoy your posts on the Air Vent!
Smokey says:
July 31, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Smokey, the manic CAGW alarmists are seeing their empire crumble. Next year, funding for useless climate science projects will be cut drastically; consequently, anything that damages “the cause” must be dealt with today. Wait until a few hurricanes start to form in the Altantic – it’s global warming!!
davidmhoffer, now let me do some dumbing down for YOU. You can’t actually say whether Watt’s trends are any different from currently accepted trends without robust analysis of uncertainty in the time series and trends. Is that a simple enough bottom line?
Seriously put forward:
Title:
“GLOBAL WARMING DOUBLED BY INFLATED NOAA MEASUREMENTS.
Climate Science thrown into dispute.”
That’s got to be an eye catcher. Please consider.
Entropic man says:
July 31, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Those interested in the analysis included in the potential Watts 2012 paper will probably find these useful.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nice try. Calling it a “potential” paper doesn’t change any of the factual information presented. So let’s stick with a discussion of the facts, shall we?
The two links you provide speak to the method currently in use by USHCN. The facts presented in the paper show that these methods result in applying a warming adjustment to stations that are already too warm and then applying an even bigger warming adjustment to sites that are pristine on the argument that they are cooler than the larger number of bad sites around them.
Calling it a “potential” paper shows your desperation to discredit it without discussing the facts. You’re entitled to your own opinion sir, and as the saying goes, you are not entitled to your own facts. In this case, you’ve taken obfuscation to a whole new level by trying to pretent that anything at all you can draw attention to is more important than the facts.
“It is his arrogant, snarky, know-it-all attitude conveyed in his posts that causes vitriol.”
It’s amazing. So many of them fit that description. It’s the reason I began to doubt CAGW in the first place. The proponents were just so nasty. I found the skeptical sites much more open and friendly. Granted, it’s not a popularity contest. But such angry, arrogant people in my experience, are not to be trusted.
I also love how McIntyre is downplaying his involvement. How about the qualifications of all these volunteers to objectively and correctly rate? Now there’s something to audit.
[Really ? . . you think the volunteers had an agenda? . . you sound increasingly like a troll. How about some evidence for your insinuations . . kbmod]
Watcher says:
July 31, 2012 at 11:07 am
You claim that there is overwhelming evidence in support of AGW?
Where?????
Shhh.
Oh and it’s not that I don’t like the headline — it would be a great headline for a study that proved half of global warming was artificial.
William Roberts says:
July 31, 2012 at 1:11 pm
davidmhoffer, now let me do some dumbing down for YOU. You can’t actually say whether Watt’s trends are any different from currently accepted trends without robust analysis of uncertainty in the time series and trends.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sure I can. Stations that are known to be poorly sited, and which produce temperature readings that are too high, were adjusted even higher. Sations that are known to be pristine were adjusted higher by an even greater amount. I do not need a “robust analysis of uncertainty” to conclude that the accepted trends are calculated from garbage data, and can have no possible result other than to produce a much higher trend than an analysis that properly accounted for these factors. If you need a “robust analysis of uncertainty” to assist you in understanding this rather simple concept, then I’m afraid no further dumbing down will be sufficient to resolve your problem.
@janef20 says: July 30, 2012 at 10:04 am
docs.google.com spreadsheet. The gift that keeps on giving.