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.
RaCook1978PE says
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.
Henry says
I am afraid it could be a bit more complicated than that
i.e. chemical reactions happening on top of the atmosphere
://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Well, this should be interesting to observe going forward, contrasting the reported results/the measurements of the new network (showing the data the light of day!) with the results of the ‘old’ network … looking forward to seeing it in action, Anthony! Thank you for your hard work on this.
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Well done Anthony, congratulations on this great new venture. I hope that it becomes a great commercial success as well. It should certainly be seen as a personal triumph of intelligent labour. They should have a lot of explaining to do when they fudge their figures.
I like how you display the New Hampshire “pair” of CRN stations (14 stations are installed in pairs NH’s, at least are in similar settings and should display similar data. In looking how the other pairs are presented, I noticed some flaws in the map.
I’m also somewhat confused by the CRN web pages.
According to http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/stationmap.html OK has one pair (west) and one single (east). However, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/isis/stationlist?networkid=1 lists two pairs:
# OK Goodwell 2 E (OK Panhandle Research & Extn. Center (Native Grassland Site))
# OK Goodwell 2 SE (Oklahoma Panhandle State Univ., School of Agriculture (Permanent Pasture))
# OK Stillwater 2 W (Oklahoma State Univ. (Ag. Research Farm Site))
# OK Stillwater 5 WNW (Oklahoma State University (Efaw Farm Site))
Your map shows the west pair well, but shows the eastern one as a single.
Both NCDC pages say there’s a station in Santa Barbara, but I don’t see it on your map.
You show a station in Ontario, Canada (58.1) but the NCDC doesn’t list it, I assume it’s one of the CRN stations, just displayed in the wrong place. BTW, the dots on the NCDC map and temps on yours are very much not in the same place. I hope you’ll be making another pass to refine the map location coordinates.
Nice base map!
Anthony, this information has to be put out to every climate blog (pro or con) all the main stream media including ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, FOX, NYT, etc. When you are complete in the next 2 weeks as you stated, this must be disseminated everywhere that we can think of. Thanks for all your work, I don’t know how you do it!!!
We need to be ‘clued in’ if there are any papers published that address ‘issues’ with this new network, too.
Issues such as, any changes in sensors, upgrade of equipment, proposed protocol or procedures (test plan) for running the ‘new gear’ (external meteorological sensors esp.) along side the ‘old’ gear, site moves or site changes (site grading, changes in drainage, change in landscaping including changes in grass composition, addition of ‘shielding’ shrubbery -often for view-blocking from the road- and the like), new construction in the vicinity including road-upgrades (2-lane to multi-lane etc), ‘TOBS’-style computation adjustments (cue Moshpit Jaws-movie theme music) and the like.
Best to stay on top of this from the start.
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The fundamental issue is that the best you can get from it is a hint of what the energy fluxes are really doing.
TEMPERATURES CANNOT BE AVERAGED. That’s because they are not quantities, nor do they measure quantities. It’s OK to average rainfall, because it is the same stuff here and over there. But 90° in Tampa is not the same “stuff” as 90° in Tripoli. It’s mostly water’s fault; damp air at a given temp has much more energy than dry air.