NOAA’s impersonation of the two faced god Janus just proved my point about station siting issues with their actions that speak louder than words.
While there’s all this caterwauling about my PBS News hour interview, and my statements were apparently so threatening that NOAA itself asked PBS to publish a rebuttal in their apologetic story about having my interview, in the real world, NOAA is actually taking my concerns seriously and funding a research project to study my concern. But NOAA of course wouldn’t own up to that on PBS, instead they wrote essentially “all is well, nothing to see here, move along”.
Here’s Spencer Michels commentary and NOAA’s statement as published at the PBS website yesterday:
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Let’s start on the question of whether temperature data is flawed. That was raised by Watts, and his views on that are being heavily criticized on the web today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote a response to us and stands by its record on temperature data. Here is what NOAA sent:
The American public can be confident in NOAA’s long-standing surface temperature record, one of the world’s most comprehensive, accurate and trusted data sets. This record has been constructed through many innovative methods to test the robustness of the climate data record developed and made openly available for all to inspect by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Numerous peer-reviewed studies conclusively show that U.S. temperatures have risen and continue to rise with recent widespread record-setting temperatures in the USA. There is no doubt that NOAA’s temperature record is scientifically sound and reliable. To ensure accuracy of the record, scientists use peer-reviewed methods to account for all potential inaccuracies in the temperature readings such as changes in station location, instrumentation and replacement and urban heat effects.
Specifically, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center published a scientific peer-reviewed paper (Menne, et al., 2010) that compared trends from stations that were considered well-sited and stations that received lower ratings on siting conditions, which found that the U.S. average temperature trend is not inflated by poor station siting. A subsequent research study led by university and private sector scientists reached the same conclusion (Fall et al. 2011). Additionally, the Department of Commerce Inspector General reviewed the US Historical Climatology Network dataset in July 2010 and concluded that “the respondents to our inquiries about the use of and adjustments to the USHCN data generally expressed confidence in the [USHCN] Version 2 dataset.”
Looking ahead to the next century, NOAA has implemented the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) – with 114 stations across the contiguous United States located in pristine, well-sited areas. Comparing several years of trends from the well-sited USCRN stations with USHCN shows that the temperature trends closely correspond – again validating the accuracy of the USHCN U.S. temperature record.
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Now, while NOAA is claiming at PBS that the surface temperature record is “accurate” and “The American public can be confident in NOAA’s long-standing surface temperature record…” they quietly fund a new project to look into EXACTLY the questions I’ve been raising. It’s a Janus moment for NOAA.
From the USCRN Annual Report: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/publications/annual_reports/FY11_USCRN_Annual_Report.pdf
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5.1.3 Planning for Thermal Impacts Experiment
Initial funding was provided this year by the USRCRN Program for a multi-year experiment to better understand the thermal impacts of buildings with parking lots on air temperature measurements. A site near the offices of ATDD will be instrumented to measure accurately the air temperature and other variables at multiple distances from the potential thermal heat source, corresponding to the distances from thermal sources used in classifying USCRN stations (Figure 7).
This study will have several applied and practical outcomes. Determining the downwind range of influence of a typical building will be important for understanding built environment impacts on surface air temperature measurements. Other measurements of radiation and heat fluxes will help illuminate the physical processes responsible for any detected heat transfers. Finally, this information will help influence future USCRN/USRCRN siting decisions. Additional insight is being sought by collaborating with National Weather Service (NWS) and National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) on extensions of the basic project. This effort promises to be greatly useful to understanding climate quality temperature measurements and how they can be influenced by the station site environment.
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So why would NOAA say “all is well” with the surface temperature record, on one hand to PBS, while on the other hand fund a project to examine exactly my issues that they say “don’t matter”? It seems they took Spencer Michels and PBS for a ride with their Janus duplicity.
I predict that unless they figure in surface area of heat sinks/sources as well as distance, the experiment will show no significant effects. Of course, given what we’ve seen, that may be the goal.
We’ve already learned about what happens when you figure in distance AND surface area of biasing elements around climate monitoring stations and published about it here in my announcement of Watts et al 2012. Not looking at the surface area issue is why Menne et al 2010 and Fall et al 2011 found no significant effects. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has endorsed this as the new standard for station siting analysis:
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
See Michel Leroy’s study listed in there. When we applied Leroy’s surface area metrics to the siting bias equation, bingo, station siting effects popped right out:
Our new reanalysis (taking into account the TOBS issue raised) says the siting related heat sink/source effect is real and affects not only the absolute temperatures (for record highs/lows) but also the trend of temperatures. NOAA compounds the issue by making adjustments that mask the problem, and make it worse.
I’ll have more in a future post. (h/t to Steve Mosher)
Steven Mosher says:
September 19, 2012 at 4:01 pm
EM. Smith there is a study of the micro climate at an airport. hard to find but its out there.
For folks who worry about jet exhaust one place to start to get an idea of how the temperatures fall off as a function of distance you can start with ground safety documents.
Like the one below around pages 6-6-13
http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/media_gallery/files/tech_data/AC/Airbus-AC_A340-500_600_Dec11.pdf
Of course that doesnt answer all the questions, but it gives you idea of how quickly the temperature falls off in the plume. There are other documents showing that, but again
you need to look in the right places ( defense publications ) where there is a reason
to measure how quickly a temperature field dissipates.
And you can just look at the surface temperature from space. Also, instructive. Wind , low buildings, and low surface roughness..all interesting
Apus Gpus Coolers Heaters Water trucks Lav trucks Food trucks Fuel trucks Hot brakes Burning rubber Paymovers Airstarts Baggage systems Snow melting Hot deicing…
Aren’t the three stations located the furthest from the buildings all equidistant from the road? Wouldn’t that alter the results?
Steven Mosher, have you considered that the entire city is releasing heat in the winter. Buildings, although insulation is improving, radiate heat from inside all winter. Air conditioning units radiate heat all night. As I recall, dad was measuring the temperature of the city and surrounding rural areas throughout the night. We crossed the city multiple times from the outlying areas and out of the city to the rural area again. The city does not shed heat for only a short period. It sheds heat 24/7. You may not have considered this.
Anthony, they are not funding research to investigate your concerns, they are funding research to show your concerns are groundless. The former would be scientific and so made public the latter is only made public once (if) it brings home the bacon.
Winnipeg was approximately 500,000 at that time. Still showed on average 3 C difference.
This article acts like this study is a good thing. It’s not. This is an announcement of whitewash intended to dishonestly refute the urban heat island claims. Government is not honest. Scientists funded by government are not honest. They work to advance their own economic interests, and the urban heat island claims undermine those interests.
I think we can write the summary and save the tax payer the coinage it will cost for these researchers to discover what they are wanting, waiting, and willing to “see”.
If they think that this one-building layout in the picture proves *anything* about the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI), they fail as knowledgeable scientists from the get-go.
They still do not understand that what is being said about UHI is not the absolute UHI that affects the temperature trend but the change of the UHI over time. Maybe using a bit of simple math might drive home this to the other supposedly intelligent scientists that still don’t quite ‘get it’.
T.actual = T.rural + ∆T.uhi
or
∆T.uhi = T.actual – T.rural
∆T.actual = (T1. rural – T0. rural) + (∆T1.uhi – ∆T0.uhi)
For instance:
∆T.actual = (T. rural.2012 – T. rural.1960) + (∆T.uhi.2012 – ∆T.uhi.1960)
as taken by a sensor now embedded with a city that was but a small town in 1960 with the station a mile away on a farm at that time.
Someone might critique that if I failed to label the terms slick enough.
If a city has never changed over the given time period in any way then there is no *change* in the UHI therefore the slopes will be the same whether UHI is included or not… the delta is zero.
∆T.actual being the slope of the increase in temperature over time that is being labeled GW (global warming), but with UHI in the equations, and specifically the *change* in the UHI, it is quite simple to see that this is NOT the actual ‘global’ warming we have experienced and this is still being called GW by the alarmists. They are either quite dumb or being quite devious.
I think we are still not wording this effect properly (it’s the delta in UHI) so the more simple public can understand.
They nullified (omitted) that heat during the day? Will wonders never cease?
😉
Another amazing revelation! NOAA is now doing the kind of empirical research necessary to validate temperature measurements. This particular research looks like just a beginning and much more experimental work must be done. WUWT has really moved some bureaucrats off their chairs and into nature.
The siting of their measurements downwind is correct as far as it goes, but all locations have prevailing wind directions that represent varying days per year. At each site a secondary direction may only be slightly less than the MOST prevailing direction, and a tertiary one not a lot less than that one,. In my last US location the most prevailing was only about 32% pf the year; the next was about 25%, with a third at about 20%. I would ask if this kind of spread will be taken into account.
It sucks that scientists so often try to oversimplify. And I don’t accept funding limits as a valid excuse. Either do the job right or get out of the field and let someome better take over.
I am puzzled that our BBC weather reports regularly say things like “you must remember these are night-time temperatures for towns; temperatures for rural areas can be expected to be several degrees lower”. Are they misinformed or do they know something that NOAA doesn’t?
To measure local ground effects:
Use wind farms as measurement sites and put a weather stations meters on top and at the ground of several turbines in each location. Then have different ground treatment for each turbine and see over a year or more which ground conditions i suitable for real measuring. Can be done in many locations all over the world. Probably easy funded as well. Go for it Anthony.
The 2011 USCRN report states “The USCRN temperature record for the U.S displays no significant trends during its first seven years (Figure 17).” See the accompanying graph on page 21 of the report (page 27 of 44 of the pdf) at http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/publications/annual_reports/FY11_USCRN_Annual_Report.pdf . The US temperature departure for max temps and min temps from 2004 to 2011 varies +/- 0.2 degrees F, hitting a high in 2006 and a low in 2008 (min temps) and 2009 (max temps). Maybe PBS and the AGW should read this report!
What are satellites calibrated to?
We are 10 miles from the “official airport based temperature sensor for zip 48363” in a low density, non-farmed, rural area. Most homes are on 3 to 10 acre sites. My sensor is located 10 feet due north of my home, mounted 6 feet above the ground, protected by a home made wooden shield, mounted on a tree, and over low green vegetation. It has been checked against three other digital temperature sensors and all register within 0.1 F.
My typical readings are 6 F to 8 F lower than the “official sensor” during the night [7:00 am]; and 2 F to 6 F lower that the “official sensor” during the peak day at about 5:00 pm.
We are about 60 miles north of the “official Detroit Metro Airport sensor”. It is like we are in a different state. My readings are 8 F to 12 F lower than the “Detroit sensor” during the night [7:00 am]; and 6 F to 10 F at about 5:00 pm.
The NOAA should come to my house [and leave some money] to get this valuable “well sited” temperature data.
wayne says:
September 19, 2012 at 7:50 pm
∆T.actual = (T1. rural – T0. rural) + (∆T1.uhi – ∆T0.uhi)
If a city has never changed over the given time period in any way then there is no *change* in the UHI therefore the slopes will be the same whether UHI is included or not… the delta is zero.
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Correct. This was the failure of the BEST analysis of UHI. They compared temperature to absolute city size rather than deltas, and concluded there was no UHI. However, they never compared temperature to the change in city size. (or if they did, they didn’t publish the results).
Similar to looking for lost keys. BEST concluded they must not exist because they didn’t find them anywhere they looked. In reality, lost keys are always to be found in the last place you expect to find them.
Right, it’s rather amazing that the distinguished physicist Dr. Muller and his mathematician daughter didn’t even have a foggy what they were measuring in UHI effect when applied to the slopes of trends in temperatures over time. They blew it big time. It just shows that no one, even with degrees and letters behind their names, the consensus, can all be so wrong.
Anthony Watts knows the difference.
Dr. Spencer knows the difference.
Dr. Dryson knows the difference.
Dr. Christy knows the difference.
Dr. Michaels knows the difference.
(the list would be lengthy if I continued)
And so do so many good scientists and engineers, the ‘skeptics’.
This is why BEST, GHCN, GISS, NCDC, Hadley CRU, NOAA are all deeply flawed datasets of this Earth’s temperature trends differentiated over time periods by run-of-the-mill ‘climatologists’. Their instantaneous spot records may not be so bad but the application (differentials) over two times are not correct when looking at long period temperature trends. That is when I became a denier of their alarmist 1.0 to 1.4C trend. Analyses have already been performed, multiple of them, that shows clearly that ~1.0C is a fallacy. There is still the about 0.3 to 0.4C trend still remaining at zero population density (logarithmic plotted) but most of the alarmists fire is now extinguished and it is the UHI effect that made that difference.
Over on SkS there is a thread titled ‘PBS False Balance Hour – What’s Up With That?’
I asked…
[“When asked to describe his ‘skepticism’ about human-caused global warming, Watts went into a long discussion about his concerns that encroachment of human development near surface temperature stations has introduced a bias into the temperature record. However, what Watts failed to mention is that the scientific groups who compile the surface temperature record put a great deal of effort into filtering out these sorts of biases.”]
If this assertion – the scientific groups who compile the surface temperature record put a great deal of effort into filtering out these sorts of biases. – is true, can you tell us why NOAA is quietly funding a new project to look into the questions Anthony Watts has been raising? That they are funding such work surely shows that while NOAA is claiming at PBS that the surface temperature record is “accurate” and “The American public can be confident in NOAA’s long-standing surface temperature record…”, NOAA ain’t so sure.
[“5.1.3 Planning for Thermal Impacts Experiment
Initial funding was provided this year by the USRCRN Program for a multi-year experiment to better understand the thermal impacts of buildings with parking lots on air temperature measurements.”]
NCDC Annual Report http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/publications/annual_reports/FY11_USCRN_Annual_Report.pdf
I wonder what they’ll come up with
vrooomie at 04:42 AM on 21 September, 2012
fretslider@116; your fake skeptic underwear are showing..;)
There is *no* “alleged” taking care of biases in the temperature record: it’s well-documented, utterly open to anyone whoc ares to learn about it, and there’s simply no ‘there’ there. If you are truly trying to learn, and not just be a troll, you can find all that info on this website, among many others. There’s no conspiracy here…except in some folks’ *heads.*
fretslider at 04:59 AM on 21 September, 2012
vrooomie
My smalls have naff all to do with anything here.
I never mentioned a conspiracy. Let me restate the question so you can get your head around it.
If this assertion – the scientific groups who compile the surface temperature record put a great deal of effort into filtering out these sorts of biases. – is true, can you tell us why NOAA is quietly funding a new project to look into the questions Anthony Watts has been raising? That they are funding such work surely shows that while NOAA is claiming at PBS that the surface temperature record is “accurate” and “The American public can be confident in NOAA’s long-standing surface temperature record…”, NOAA ain’t so sure.
It’s a pertinent question, obviously one you are unable to answer. Perhaps another can.
Moderator Response: This is a good topic for the Why we can trust the surface temperature record thread. Please take it there.
fretslider at 05:29 AM on 21 September, 2012
Moderator Response: This is a good topic for the Why we can trust the surface temperature record thread. Please take it there.
With respect, it is part of this discussion.
The narrative sure got turned on it’s head by Anthony Watts. The PBS show was billed as ‘Climate Change Skeptic No Longer Doubts Human Role In Climate Change’ about Richard Muller.
It morphed before their eyes as Anthony Watts confesses to having been a True Believer Who now has Reasonable Doubts. Doubts not about the temperature trends. Doubts about WHAT CAUSES that trend.
Horrors. This Heretic Apostasy CAN NOT STAND. It is a mortal threat aimed at the heart of CAGW and Carbon demonizing. This religion does not tolerate apostasy. Reminds me of another religion that has been in the news lately.
Anthony stole the show. They can’t abide a scene stealer. Especially such a nice man, so reasonable, so absolutely persuasive.
…”There is no doubt that NOAA’s temperature record is scientifically sound and reliable. To ensure accuracy of the record, scientists use peer-reviewed methods to account for all potential inaccuracies in the temperature readings such as changes in station location, instrumentation and replacement and urban heat effects.”… There is only Doubt About The Cause of the trend.
fretslider, bet they will come up with the answer that their temperature readings are basically correct. To me that is probably correct.
But that is not the real question about AGW is it? Read my next comment. I’ll sepearte it so not appearing I am shouting at you, just venting a bit.
Here’s a small example: take two equivalent days that in an urban area, if there were no city present for a moment, would have both read on the thermometers at the same time of day 58F. That is, make the days decades apart identical. Now, put them in a real environment. The one in 1930 in a small town would read 58.3F but the one forward in 2012 in the now huge city reads 60.9F.
Is the 58.3F correct scientifically? Yes. They had state-of-the-art thermometers then also.
Is the 60.9F correct in 2012? Yes, scientifically correct. NOAA’s off the hook there.
Is the 2.6F difference caused by co2 levels that just by chance has been also increasing over the same time period? HELL NO. Excuse me.
Any scientist with a shred of integrity would instantly see this was not so. You can drive your car with an external thermometer from inside a large city near the weather station and then outside town in twenty minutes and see the cooler temperature. In twenty minutes drive back to the same point by the station, it’s warmer. Repeat till you are convinced, many days if you wish. So many people know this is true by this very simple method now that cars have thermometers. The satellites show the thermal infested heat over large cities but the amount over tiny towns is many magnitudes smaller if not measureable at all. That 2.6F is the UHI differential over long periods of time I spoke in the two comment above.
More that that, this increase is mainly over nighttime minimums and cold winter settings when a small amount of additional energy will affect the temperature to a greater degree due to the Stefan fourth power law. This is documented in many papers. The daytime and summer temperatures are not being affected as much. This is also documented in many peer reviewed papers and studies.
Does this make me mad at current climate “scientists” who actually call themselves scientists repeatedly ignoring and trivializing this effect? You bet ya’.
Wayne
My question seemed reasonable to me and it referred to what had been posted. And the moderator wanted me to take it to “Why we can trust the surface temperature record thread.”
Now if that isn’t a blatant attempt to shut down any discussion, I don’t know what is.
I live in London – it’s a helluva lot warmer than the surrounding countryside. I wonder why that should be ; )