I had hoped to have this ready in time for heat wave season, as it would have been quite useful in July. Pursuant to my post about July average temperatures being lower with the new Climate Reference Network -vs- the old surface network, let me show you a sneak peak of what will be coming online in a few days.
This is just one of many graphics and data files that will be coming online representing data from the new Climate Reference Network.
Critics will of course say: “So what? Anybody can plot temperatures on a map and do averages”. True, but getting this all programmed, automated, polished, and running without any human intervention producing hourly maps from an obscure NOAA satellite feed is a whole different animal. If it was easy, somebody would have already done what I’m doing in a project that has been in development since Feb 2012.
The goal is to make the pristine “platinum standard” CRN temperature data more accessible, more palatable for the average person, and ready for use in websites and TV broadcasts. Right now it mostly sits in a corner at NCDC, and seldom gets cited in any of the news reports on national or regional temperatures in the USA. It will be a free and open public resource when it is completed. Both °C and °F displays will be provided along with analysis maps, graphs, and data.
While the above single map doesn’t look like much now, the full extent and value of this effort will become clearer later when I post the official announcement in the next week or two.
“seems there are deniers in the US who don’t even believe the climate changes at all!”
The issue for me always has been: since the dynamic climate always and everywhere at all times is changing, to what extent is that change harmful to the ecosystem and to humanity, to what extent does human activity induce change, and to what extent is human-induced change harmful? For me, the more data the better, the more I can know about how the data were compiled the better and the more I can review how the data were analyzed, the better.
Lastly, given that on average, the climate has been far colder, who gets to declare what the optimum temperature should be? Nobody questions the climate baselines used to evaluate the biosphere and honesty demands they are just as much up for analysis as any other aspect of the climate.
I would not push back on those who call me a “denier” except I get the impression from the emails that we had to pry from their clutches behind ivory towers that to them climate change is a horse to ride to greater glories of social justice. Let us call a spade a spade. Telling peer-reviewed lies, or programming climate models to lie is symptomatic of an evil corruption of science, media and government. This is the only conclusion I can come to when the solutions consistently proposed and demanded by advocates of global warming always involve destroying liberty and making government bigger and more powerful.
Perhaps it will finally show that Trenberth’s missing heat is actually located in Hansens’s NOAA-GISS temperature adjustments?
Mr Watts, That looks pretty impressive to me. We’re talking unadjusted, pristine data.
The truth is out there. Good work.
Jeff Alberts says:
October 12, 2012 at 9:34 pm
“I’m still unsure what use an average temperature is.”
What is global climate but an averaging of local climates. What is local climate but an averaging of local weather; over time.
We’re looking for trends after all.
Do you ever sleep? I wouldn’t think you have time to…
Great work!
Here’s some new data for the temperature database. We just broke the old low temperature record for October 13 here in western New Hampshire: this morning we got down to 22F (old record 25F). Thank goodness I have a pellet stove!
Any more record cold temps out there?
Brad says:
October 12, 2012 at 4:44 pm
“Assume funds came from Heartland Institute?”
So when Mann, Trenberth, Hansen, et al. produce some “research”, I am sure Brad will comment “Assume funds came from the American taxpayer?”
But I agree with Brad – let’s make ALL CAGW climate “research” privately funded (Greenpeace, WWF, Earth First, Al Gore etc. certainly have the resources).
Jeff Alberts says:
October 12, 2012 at 9:34 pm
I’m still unsure what use an average temperature is.
Unfairly jumping on Jeff too…:) Perhaps he’s missed the flow of phenomenal amounts of capital in recent years, predicated on the belief that average temeratures are rising… unprecedentedly, catastrophically…. etc.etc… I know I missed it – none of it flowed to me…(given the left’s propensity to fund “social justice”, I would have thought I’d have gotten some, to enable me to rise above my “denier” spiral of doom…) /sarc, for the politically impaired.
RobRoy @ur momisugly October 13, 2012 at 5:32 am
“We’re talking unadjusted, pristine data.”
We’re finally talking about DATA. After adjustment, we no longer are talking about DATA. We apparently now have DATA which does not “need” to be adjusted (adulterated?). Anthony is in the process of getting it to “come out of the closet”. It should then be obvious that , like the “emperor”, the adjusted “data” has no clothes.
Ha ha ha! You are are WAY too humble, buddy.
‘… just programming and plotting numbers and a user friendly open access way.’
Whata crackup. Like it is easy or something ha ha ha! ;-D
I really appreciate this effort – it will be a credible real-time dataset that NOAA can’t refute when they trot out their latest ‘hottest (day / month / year) ever!’. Even the PRESS will have to acknowledge.
You’re the man.
Thanks and congratulations. This is another good step toward open-source science, converting key data into useful form.
If I believed that heaven actually existed I would suggest a prime location in the place for Anthony. As second best, can we nominate him for the next Nobel?
There has been criticism of the present system of calculating average daily temperature by averaging the max and min temperatures. Can your system be used to average the hourly readings (or even shorter time periods) for each location to give us a more-exact average temperature?
IanM
Minor typo:
let me show you a sneak peak > let me show you a sneak peek
IanM
REPLY: Voice recognition software sometimes chooses the wrong word -A
RobRoy says:
October 13, 2012 at 5:37 am
Jeff Alberts says:
October 12, 2012 at 9:34 pm
“I’m still unsure what use an average temperature is.”
What is global climate but an averaging of local climates. What is local climate but an averaging of local weather; over time.
We’re looking for trends after all.
The Earth, in keeping with ever planet in the universe, has no “climate”. Astronomers never refer to a planet’s “climate”, only to their general atmospheric make up: i.e. composition, turbulence and ground level pressure and temperature. “Climate” is merely a general expression of the type of weather to be found in a particular region: e.g. “Mediterranean”, “Tropical”, “Temperate”, etc. If “climate” had any scientific meaning, the Earth’s “climate” could be scientifically defined. I know of no such definition, but am willing to entertain any proposals.
Finally, no one is “averaging local weather”, that would be ludicrous. It is temperatures that are averaged and WUWT has clearly demonstrated what a mess the climate “scientists” have made of this task.
Anthony says
NOAA never mentions this new pristine USCRN network in any press releases on climate records or trends, nor do they calculate and display a CONUS value for it. Now we know why. The new “pristine” data it produces is just way too cool for them.
Henry says
we are cool!! we already fell about -0.2 degrees K since 2000
I predict in total we will fall by about -0.5 K from 2000-2020
but everybody is (or will be) lying about it…
Thanks for this effort of independent stations reporting to us;
better that we get our own station for measuring the CO2 as well…
Easy for me to say, but it would be good to have the same for the legacy network for comparison.
[Resubmit – this seems to have been lost in the Ether. I didn’t see in the rejects pile….]
Wikipedia’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Climate_Reference_Network starts with one of its “improvement needed” boxes which says:
I love the “The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia’s general notability guideline.” note. Perhaps Wiki wants 30 years of data before calling the network notable. 🙂
Certainly looks like a page that needs to be adopted by some warm hearted editor. Who can put up with the cold hearted CAGW editors there.
Anthony, did you create the page? The first entry dates from when you visited NCDC, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/04/23/road-trip-update-day-1-at-ncdc/
WMC has been there. At least he added stuff:
REPLY: yes I did create that page, from the hotel that evening after meeting with NCDC – Anthony
Does the satellite collect from around the world. If so, we have another volunteer project.
Thanks Bob Mount. I have never seen a well put definition of Global Climate. Indeed there are local(regional) climates. It used to be all about temperature. Now we are constantly hit with AGW weather. Rain, wind, snow, drought, all included in the big scare. The warmistas consider all aspects of weather. Every storm or drought is man-made
That’s why I used the term weather as opposed to temperature in my makeshift definition. Not so “ludicrous”
The topic of this new resource is just temperature though. The true root of the original discussion, before “climate change, climate disruption” and other obfuscations.
Can your data be accessed from a windows application, I mean, If I wrote an interactive program, would the data be Updated regularly? just a thought!
REPLY: Not “my data” but NOAA’s data, and yes – Anthony
I note the NOAA N hemisphere temp map shows the coldest category at -1.5C when it is now down to -20C in places and -10 over a broad swath of the Arctic. Also, the “zero” C contour now stretches from the Great Lakes to northern China.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmp_01.fnl.html
Also note that the Norwegian ice area and extent have already steeply penetrated the 2007 curves and look to be headed to intersect all the years in the plot – oh this recent spate of frost all the way down to Texas is no one-off. It’s going to be a cold winter. I trust the Norwegians the most about arctic and antarctic temps and ice – they’ve owned these territories for a few hundred years!!
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Nansen%20Roos%20arctic%20ice%20extent&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
Anthony, your presentation is going to be very very valuable this winter.
Gary Pearse says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/12/new-national-temperature-resource-almost-ready/#comment-1108564
Henry says
Be assured of a few very cold winters coming up – especially in Europe. I predict an elfstedentocht in Holland for next year and/or any of the 2 following years
I am most disturbed now, since on checking my tables again I found that although warming of the globe (in the past) was more biased towards the NH – i.e. the landmasses in the SH did not really warm up much.- I was hoping we in the SH would be OK against the coming cold. But it appears we are cooling on both hemispheres at the same rates now. How can that be? It is not fair./
…..I hate the cold….
Hi from New Zealand,
1 Will this be available for the rest of the world.
2 It would be good if Christy and Co did a review for you
3 Great work looking forward to seeing final result
REPLY: 1 – no, this is a US system and dataset only, I can’t get the same data for elsewhere – Anthony
HenryP says:
October 13, 2012 at 11:23 am
Be assured of a few very cold winters coming up – especially in Europe. I predict an elfstedentocht in Holland for next year and/or any of the 2 following years
I am most disturbed now, since on checking my tables again I found that although warming of the globe (in the past) was more biased towards the NH – i.e. the landmasses in the SH did not really warm up much.- I was hoping we in the SH would be OK against the coming cold. But it appears we are cooling on both hemispheres at the same rates now. How can that be? It is not fair.
The increasing Antarctic ice (with its edge between 61 degrees and 62 degrees south latitude) is reflecting more and more of the solar radiation from the southern hemisphere.
Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words —
Anthony Watts, Montford and McIntyre,
Mosher and Nelson, McKittrick and Tallbloke —
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.