Today, NOAA is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the 134° reading at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, including speakers, guests, and media coverage expected to begin at 11AM PDT, right about now. I find this fanfare odd, particularly in light of how understated the observer was when Mr. O.A. Denton recorded the temperature on the original paper B91 form, a photocopy of which you can see below:
The image above was released this morning on the NPS Death Valley Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/DeathValleyNP
Oddly, it is an entirely different B91 form that NOAA/NWS placed on their “celebration page” under the “about the record” tab here: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/deathvalley/
Why would there be two different paper records for the same month, one with remarks filled in and the other not? There are other clear differences also. One wonders why two paper records would be needed. Perhaps one was created for “official presentation”. Both forms appear to have identical layouts, but are filled out differently.
[added: Some commenters suggested a “carbon copy”. However, there are significant differences between the two, one is not a carbon of the other. For example “mean maximun” temperature is 116 on one form and 116.4 on another. The mean of max/min is 98.4 on one and 98.6 on another, with what looks like the .4 over written by the .6 And, as Mosher points out, the two forms have different handwriting. ]
Stranger though, that while they have time for this fanfare, neither the NOAA/NWS nor the NPS representatives have time to answers these questions about the record, which I posed to them last week in this email below.
Mr. Berc has since responded, but said he’d only answer my questions if I was present at the event, and when I replied that I would not be present, has offered no answers. Ms. Chipman has not replied.
===============================================================
From: Anthony Watts
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 8:10 AM
To: daniel.berc@noaa.gov
Cc: cheryl_chipman@nps.gov
Subject: Death Valley 134 Celebration
Good morning,
I’ll be covering this event. I have some important questions that I’d like to ask.
1. Do you have press passes available?
2. Why did NOAA decommission the MMTS electronic sensor near the front of the Visitor Center last year and go back to using the mercury thermometer in the Stevenson Screen? What was the impetus? Am I correct in noting that the MMTS thermometer was in use for over a decade prior to last year?
3. When was the last time the Stevenson Screen received maintenance for paint? When I was last there, the screen looked quite chipped/peeling and had some darkened wood from aging. Is it painted with latex paint or the traditional lime based whitewash paint which was the standard in 1913 for all USWB Stevenson Screens?
4. Why does the NPS maintain the electronic sign that shows erroneous readings, such as what was highlighted in an LA Times story during the recent temperature spike?
There are actually 3 temperatures, if you included the bogus 132F from the sign.
It appears the reading comes from the non-official weather station mounted at just above roof level near the front wall of the visitor center. Is that the source?
5. Who is responsible for the weather station at Badwater basin near the turn-off/parking area and where is the data from it collected? Is the data available? In your press release you indicate that the 1913 Greenland Ranch reading is “…the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth. “. If Badwater basin station were to exceed the 1913 reading, would it be considered reliably recorded? It seems to be near state of the art equipment.
6. How often is the mercury thermometer in the Stevenson Screen at NPS Visitor Center checked for calibration? From the photo recently posted by NPS showing the 128F reading, it appears to be well aged. What is the age of that thermometer? Has it ever been tested by NIST or similar entity?
7. Is there any sort of backup or reference thermometer in place inside the Stevenson Screen?
8. Do you have a location (lat/lon) for the 1913 location of the station in Greenland Ranch? What date was the Greenland Ranch station decommissioned, and were there other intermediate locations before the station resided behind the NPS visitor center?
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to the event.
Anthony Watts
WUWT
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@mosher as I said in my original text, it may be a copy made for “presentation purposes”
This is really thread jacking in a way, but being one who worked extensively with multi-part field survey forms (field copy, office copy, file copy, etc) – the blue looks like carbon paper with PENCIL markings highlighting certain items with fountain pen notes and some shorthand. The black and white one looks like an office scribed version with things written out in full and may have been filled out by an assistant then signed by the originator after checking the transcription. Pretty common in the days before copiers and computers. Jeez, I hate revealing all that old technology. What’s worse, I still have a package of blue carbon paper in my computer room.
Steve Mosher
Yes it does look like the copy (the one in blue ink) has had information added to at a later date.
Which has been written in black ink.
When we were doing paper copies and there was an aircraft accident nearby, we would confiscate the original and recopy. They may also have been doing it in triplicate. They may also have been doing quality control and some readings may be corrected. I do not know how they do it now. In Canada the number of errors observers made was noted (before computer error) and they heard about it good or bad.
@ur momisuglymosher as I said in my original text, it may be a copy made for “presentation purposes”
@ur momisugly@@ur momisugly@@ur momisugly@@ur momisugly@
I didnt read anything folks wrote about this. Just looked at the documents and note what I see.
i wouldnt speculate about the purpose. first determine whatever facts we can.
they dont look contempraneous (ink) . they arent written in the same hand. there are differences.
That points toward but does not confirm the existence of a third document or other source.
why it was made? person who initialled it might know.
Anthony, I think it is very significant, with the success of WUWT, that a government agency cannot answer your most serious and relevant questions.
I bet the little fanfare occurred originally because the station was young enough such that no one had a clue what sort of range an ‘all-time record’ high might even be out there. After all, it was about 20 years before continual measurements started in Vegas.
Perhaps years later when it became apparent that this was an outlier in the world (like nearer to WWII), they went back and added clarity to what was previously a simple sheet of paper so as to make it more preservable. Scribes have been known throughout millennia for getting a little cute with original documents though when copying them over for posterity, or for lack of a printing press 😉
The two records were not written by the same hand, that is obvious.
I’ve read surveyors notations that date back ~100 years, everyone has a style.
The draftsmen like to add their own “flourish” to the end product.
Don’t know why some of the numbers would change ??
The blue ink copy was obviously made later than the original which is in black, and might be pencil rather than ink (I’d use a pencil on a document kept in any place where it could get wet). Note that the person making the copy signed for O.A. Denton, but initialed the document. The black ink additions regarding RH to the copy look like they were done with a drawing pen that was dipped in a well. They write a broad stroke at first as the excess ink flows off. Why this different ink? Who knows? Probably that RH data was found at some subsequent time and merged into this copy and the original blue ink pen was not available. Note the black RH values are from a different writer than the blue–different lower case ‘r’ at the termination of a word.
The blue ink might have come a good quality fountain pen, not a ball point. The ink looks like it bled, which ball point ink does, but maybe this is an artifact of the JPEG? There is a second, lighter color of blue which I thought was an attempt to get a dried nib to start writing by using a dip in water. However, on second look, the lighter blue actually looks like pencil. Then there is the underlining which is definitely pencil. Lot’s of people have played with the copy.
It’s interesting to speculate about these copies of the document and its copy, but they don’t seem much out of the ordinary. The originals would be better to inspect. The original has messy penmanship, and I wonder if there are some transcription errors as a result–note the ‘2’ in places that almost looks like the writer started a ‘3’ and corrected himself.
The more amazing thing is that Death Valley had more precipitation in July 1913 than we are likely to get here in Cheyenne this July. Oh, it’s parched here.
… why are there two different paper records?
Hmmm … truth quickly becomes “stranger that fiction” once again in the climate sciences; a potential murky source for record-noting weather-recording/reporting docs nearing ‘warp of space’ proportions and relatedly bringing to the fore in minds an addition item in that mounting collection of “inconvenient truths” which beg for ‘official’ explanation …
.
_Jim says:
July 10, 2013 at 2:49 pm
You got to love the trolls.
When they have nothing meaningful to contribute, they still contribute in rambling circles of meaningless babble.
Love the website AW, it features on my FB regularly,
The 2nd is a forgery. Just look at the “July” in each document. You will find that the J in the 2nd is more upright causing the whole word to slant differently. The signatures are not the same. Look at the crossing of the “T”. In the 2nd its way too long and imprinted harder. The length of the entire signature is too long. The “O” and the “A” first names are completely different. The California’s are different besides one being shortened, so carbon copy theory is wrong. That’s just a few examples.
Bad forgery.
But how old would need some analysis of the ink used.
Hmmmmm…why do it? For what reason?
Worked on a weir once upon a time and after logging the counts for the day went and made my dinner. In the meantime, a huge wind came up and blew the log book into the river! In a panic, I got an empty log book and tossed it into the river. I followed it in a boat and it went to the exact same spot under a log jam several hundred yards downstream. Whew! I told my supervisor about it the next day and he said no worries cause he had a duplicate in safe keeping. Perhaps that is what the additional “copy” is with the differences being rounding up of 100ths? Maybe he was keeping a backup for his own safe keeping in case someone lost the original?
@Steven Mosher 12:40 pm
you see guys an english major is a worthwhile major
So why not set an example and use some punctuation and capitalization?
Stephen Rasey says:
July 10, 2013 at 3:30 pm
@Steven Mosher 12:40 pm
you see guys an english major is a worthwhile major
So why not set an example and use some punctuation and capitalization?
=================
You are misinformed with respect to the English major part, I think.
He is just playing out the hand.
as he will
[snip off-topic bound to bring in other off topic comments -mod]
As to why they made a copy.
They could be a big clue in the photocopy of the original. Notice the black line that runs from the little group of numbers in the middle of the page to the right hand bottom of the page.
Notice how on each side of this line that the lines on the pages do not match up. This would suggest the this line is in fact a tear in the page.
So if this was the case, then they would of had a very good reason for making a copy and so save the original from further damage.
Should have wrote “that” not “the”.
The real story here is that the 100 year record has not been broken. It is that fact that should be hailed.
Everything else is just an aside.
Who you calling a troll, geran? I’m a regular here; you don’t like colorful commentary on the murky state of climate science and ‘funny’ supporting docs (nothing seems to be simple, straight forward or ‘clean’ in the documentation regarding ‘climate’)?
.
Makes you wonder if this “celebration” of the past high temperature record is to set the scene in the minds of potential voters, for the pea and thimble switch hope for a hotter temperature to be recorded at the other set up Death Valley location, i.e. framing the framing of the debate !!!
or are we now too well informed to fall for that?
Perhaps the black and white was the original used to make each day’s entry and the other a neater copy that was actually turned in at the end of the month? Or the neater one made in the main office with remarks added from a separate record?
geran says:
July 10, 2013 at 2:57 pm
_Jim says:
July 10, 2013 at 2:49 pm
You got to love the trolls.
When they have nothing meaningful to contribute, they still contribute in rambling circles of meaningless babble.
===================
Geran, you leave me vexed, can’t tell where you are coming from.
Please explain ?
My two cents worth:
Both are carbon copies; both are smudged and the lines are blurred. Neither are originals. No reason to assume that both originals were not filled out in triplicate … but obviously, at least in duplicate. So there are 2 originals that we haven’t seen, and probably 1 or 2 carbon copies that we haven’t seen either.
The ‘black’ copy is not only a carbon copy, but has also been photocopied since the top and bottom of the forms are cut off. Typical of copy machines, especially older ones. Also, the lines are wavy … happened in older machines, especially when the paper was about to jam. (Grrrr.)
After multiple copies were made, they were separated and went to different desks where other notations would be added … as in the Remarks section of the ‘blue’ copy.
Wayne Delbeke @1:25pm … I’m liking your reason for the two versions. That just sounds like how things would have been done, back then. Not that different from when I first started clerking in an office a few years before we finally got computers!
Don’t know if I added anything to the conversation, but what do you want for 2 cents?
That ‘blue’ image looks like it was written in Indelible pencil, so that it would be long lasting and survive wetting. By 1937, the authorities took a dim view of its use due to dyes in the pencil causing serious stick injury. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17390181
I have postcards from Germany written in Indelible pencil dated 1905, that are very clear to read. This may authenticate the 1913 date somewhat.