WUWT readers may recall that I wrote about this experiment being performed at Oak Ridge national Laboratory to test the issues related to station siting that I have long written about.
This effort promises to be greatly useful to understanding climate quality temperature measurements and how they can be influenced by the station site environment.
From the USCRN Annual Report: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/publications/annual_reports/FY11_USCRN_Annual_Report.pdf
Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon writes about the the first results of this experiment presented at the recent AMS meeting in Austin, TX. The early results confirm what we have learned from the Surface Stations project. Nighttime temperatures are affected the most.
Two talks that caught my eye were on the land surface temperature record. They attacked the problem of land surface temperature accuracy in two completely different, but complementary ways.
One, by John Kochendorfer of NOAA at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is a direct test of the importance of siting. They’ve installed four temperature sensors at varying distances across a field from the laboratory complex. The experiment has only been running since October, but already they’ve found out a couple of interesting things. First, the nighttime temperatures are indeed higher closer to the laboratory. Second, this is true whether the wind is blowing toward or away from the laboratory.
It’ll take a lot more data to sort out the various temperature effects. One way the buildings might affect the nighttime temperature even when the sensor is upwind of the buildings is infrared radiation: the heated buildings emit radiation that’s stronger than what would be emitted by the open sky or nearby hills.
More here: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/01/dispatch-from-ams-looking-at-land-surface-temperatures/
Biases Associated with Air Temperature Measurements near Roadways and Buildings
Wednesday, 9 January 2013: 9:15 AM Room 15 (Austin Convention Center)
John Kochendorfer, NOAA, Oak Ridge, TN; and C. B. Baker, E. J. Dumas Jr., D. L. Senn, M. Heuer, M. E. Hall, and T. P. Meyers
Abstract
Proximity to buildings and paved surfaces can affect the measured air temperature. When buildings and roadways are constructed near an existing meteorological site, this can affect the long-term temperature trend. Homogenization of the national temperature records is required to account for the effects of urbanization and changes in sensor technology. Homogenization is largely based on statistical techniques, however, and contributes to uncertainty in the measured U.S. surface-temperature record. To provide some physical basis for the ongoing controversy focused on the U.S. surface temperature record, an experiment is being performed to evaluate the effects of artificial heat sources such as buildings and parking lots on air temperature. Air temperature measurements within a grassy field, located at varying distances from artificial heat sources at the edge of the field, are being recorded using both the NOAA US Climate Reference Network methodology and the National Weather Service Maximum Minimum Temperature Sensor system. The effects of the roadways and buildings are quantified by comparing the air temperature measured close to the artificial heat sources to the air temperature measured well-within the grassy field, over 200 m downwind of the artificial heat sources.
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Early results of what has been learned in the surface stations project can be seen here:
New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
Nothing of any importance to see here…..let’s just move on.
Over the years I seem to recall that warming often occurs with night time temperatrures while daytime temperatures seem normal. Maybe this is a signature of UHI as well as badly sited individual thermometers. It is the storage radiator effect, i.e. heat stored in concrete by day keeps the place warm by night.
I might be missing something, but the installation in Fig 7 appears to be “it” — i.e., the whole experimental design. If so, I’d be hesitant to call it an experiment; more like a demonstration. I’d want to have more than one transect at the site, perhaps with the replicates arranged radially (to capture varying wind direction), and replicate the site design at several locations. Sure, it will probably show what everyone (here) expects, but I can’t see n = 1 being sufficient for a defensible analysis of any kind.
Look for a new round of adjustments.
Aren’t experiments like this already in the literature? I don’t see how they are just figuring this out in the 21st century. This is goofy.
Also, what about airports? Has anyone done similar experiments for runways? A heat sink is a heat sink whether it is a brick building or a slab of concrete.
“Nighttime temperatures are affected the most.”
As I recall, warming that showed a greater rise in Tmin than the rise in Tmax was supposed to be the “Signature of CO2 induced AGW”.
This study appears to confirm what Anthony’s work has shown. Warming that showed a greater rise in Tmin than the rise in Tmax is the signature of poor station siting induced ALW (anthropogenic local warming)
However I’m sure however the BEST team will be able to re-establish the signature of AGW through playing with anomalies and homogenisation. There should be absolutely no need to get out of the office and make individual station record corrections based on individual station metadata and site conditions. /sarc
I have been jumping up and down and screaming for years about how climate scientists have no instinct for the empirical. The obvious failure revealed in the post under discussion is the same failure that undermined paleoclimatology: you cannot simply pop sensors (select proxies) down across the globe and assume that their readings are comparable. You have to do empirical research on the environment of each and every sensor before you can know that they are comparable.
Now that some climate scientists have discovered this fundamental truth of scientific method, my guess is that they will conclude that the necessary work is so tedious and dirty that they would rather give up climate science. I encourage them to do so. There is not one among them who shows the capacity necessary to do what Professor Watson (of Crick and Watson fame) did over many decades. Every day he went into the lab and immersed his arms in vats of chemicals, day after day after day. Watson’s work, which is ongoing though the good Dr. is deceased, is the empirical grounding of the Double Helix. In any science, someone has to do that work.
Does this mean a readjustment downwards will be undertaken once the effect can be accurately quantified?
I hope this duplicating older experiments because this is soooo obvious.
But if not, it’s about time.
Now, the next step is to set up a similar (but much larger ) array around multiple cities of different sizes to start to better quantify UHI effect.
With a station correction & UHI correction, maybe we can derive a surface temp data set that is more meaningful (but it will be an interpretive product regardless , due to the above effects being in the raw data).
As has been pointed out, why have we spent so many billions of dollars ‘proving’ Global Warming, without making this simple test. In addition, sceptics have been claiming this is a probable factor for years, and it has been brushed aside as irrelevant, and data ‘adjusted’ to preconceived ideas without said tests being made.
As I recall (perhaps poorly) the majority of Global Warming is in higher nighttime lows rather than daytime highs. If that is true, is it possible that even that is a crock, and there is really no warming whatsoever? That would be the very last leg of the whole CAGW hypothesis, and it should then be abandoned unless some proof appears.
I predict that my taxes will not go down, however, and neither will the shill squealing of the alarmist abate.
^^ “shrill squealing”, although maybe “shill” was a Freudian slip….
Station siting criteria have been around since before we were born, just for this reason. This stuff has been known for a long time. It has only been in the AGW era that some of these basics have been purposely forgotten: station siting, natural climate variability, the billions of years of earthly climate without a runaway greenhouse effect, and so on.
The back story to this is simply , for most of the time poor sitting in reality did not matter to much . No one thought you could really give accurate figuers to two decimal places and thanks to the chaotic nature of weather its was accepted that forecast of all forms , temperature being just one , would be a bit and miss . And to that the lack of funding and you can see why the details of there position where not given a high priority. AGW changed all that suddenly they were claiming great accuracy and predictive power , so people started to look at just how good this locations really were and that’s when all hit the fan .
For example
Airport weather stations are designed to give weather for the airport and a limited area , so issues like jet wash and lots of runways were not an issue has its was still accurate for ‘the airport ‘ for the purposes it needed to be . But once it was expending into greater areas , partly to save cost , these factors became an issue , especially when they were being used in the name of ‘the cause ‘ and claimed to be a accurate way of measuring of wide areas to not subject to airport conditions.
Theo Goodwin says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:18 pm
Now that some climate scientists have discovered this fundamental truth of scientific method, my guess is that they will conclude that the necessary work is so tedious and dirty that they would rather give up climate science. I encourage them to do so….In any science, someone has to do that work.
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They are too darn lazy to send their grad students or even their senior level Bachelor of Science students out to do the grunt work.
Ben D. says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Does this mean a readjustment downwards will be undertaken once the effect can be accurately quantified?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Are you kidding? Hansen will figure out some way to use this to ADD a couple more tenths to the global and US temperature record.
The good thing about this, apart from the result, is that it is now published. If the results stand then this can be used to invalidate a whole set of interdependent data sets and subsequent dependent models. It would quite likely remove any ‘human sourced’ component… Back to the drawing board.
About time, duh !
now all they need to do is the REST of the Frigging sampling requirments:
Replicates and random sampling.
Hey – half a dozen or so ‘good’ papers in the last couple of weeks.
‘Good’ – well, sensible.
Are the wheels on the CAGW Juggernaut starting to look a bit wobbly on their axles?
Could it be that some in the weather/climate area of science have noted that not absolutely everything published is, well, good, verifiable science?
[What about the other politically correct bodies, like the Met Office, or the American Chemistry thingy, whose brand leader is an English graduate, I read about today . . . .?]
Might the tide be starting to turn?
The costs so far have been horrific – all those [self-snip for obscenity] windmills, for a start! – but maybe we’ll see a reduction in the rate of increase. Please . . . . . . . .
Here in the UK – my local forecast is -10 C (14 F) tomorrow at 0600 Z, in the UHI called London – we need some political leadership.
Rather eliminates anyone called Clegg or Cable – or Cameron.
And I don’t think the Millipede chap, who started the wind-scam as Energy Minister, would recognize a hectojoule.
Auto
I didn’t see anything about magnitude in that Oak Ridge experiment.
How big an effect are they finding for station siting?
@Duncan, don’t know for certain, since I can’t get the whole presentation yet. I will say that if it were not a significant value, John N-G would not have written about it.
I would think it would also be nice to see how all the different levels of adjustment
(i.e. intake and homogenization) alter this data set just to see how good current process measures up to a control set of data.
How much does the pruning of, mostly rural, temperature stations from the data set back in the 90’s come into play here?
ahem. arnt you forgetting who first pointed this experiment out to you?
About “canyon effect” and “heat sinks”, how about the radiators varying characteristics due to size and distance. I know that radiation from a point source is attenuated by R^-2, and that as the dimensionality increases from line to surface to volume and as the dimensions increase the physics gets real complicated.
Wow, an actual science experiment !!
Now move the experiment to the Arctic where the temperature difference is 100 degrees.