Yes, this is a real current temperature presented by NOAA/NWS for the forecast of Addison, TX near Dallas.
![160-in-addison-tx-national-weather-service[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/160-in-addison-tx-national-weather-service1.jpg?resize=640%2C507)
I checked the airport ASOS at Dallas Addison Airport (KADS) and sure enough, the reading is there:
Source: http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KADS.html
This is likely an ASOS station failure, which is a fairly common occurance, like I pointed out in Honolulu a couple of years ago:
More on NOAA’s FUBAR Honolulu “record highs” ASOS debacle, PLUS finding a long lost GISS station
I find it amazing they don’t have a simple data sanity check built into the NOAA data dissemination system. This wouldn’t even pass in Death Valley. How many other incorrect temperatures get logged but never noticed because they aren’t so absurd as to be impossible?
h/t to D.B. Stealey and Moonbattery
Relative humidity seems to be calculated from that temperature and is way off too, as is the heat index. That’s enough red flags would you think not?
What would the frequency of this happening on getting erratically high temp readings? How much of a temperature difference would it take to screw up (skew) avg temp readings?
My short guess is PLENTY.
How can anyone in their right mind blindly accept such unverified, unaudited data and then use it to feed their doom prediction computer models?
Garbage in garbage out.
REPLY: To be fair, we don’t know if this will make it into the monthly average or not, but we’ll check – Anthony
Ha! I, for one, would welcome those ‘readings’ come January and February …
.
But it’s a dry heat.
…has anyone ever seen one that was too low?
That’s what happens after a cold front comes through, it gets hotter – all caused by global warming.
“This is likely an ASOS station failure, which is a fairly common occurance”
Since the prior reading is 64 and the following 59, I think the true reading was 60 and someone typed a ‘1’ in front of it.
Here are the raw metar observations for Addison Airport. These do not appear to be ASOS observations. Note they report visibilities greater than 10 miles at times, something not possible with ASOS observations. Looks like a typo, observer meant 17 but manually entered 171.
KADS 151747Z 30018G22KT 10SM SCT013 SCT028 20/17 A2996
KADS 151830Z 35012G21KT 13SM OVC008 19/16 A2996
KADS 151848Z 35010G19KT 10SM -RA OVC008 18/16 A2997
KADS 151947Z 34014KT 10SM OVC008 171/15 A2998
KADS 15
KADS 152147Z 34012G19KT 11SM OVC070 15/13 A2999
KADS 152147Z COR 34012G19KT 11SM OVC007 15/13 A2999
KADS 152247Z 34012G16KT 8SM OVC007 14/12 A3001
Must be the not well-mixed cloud of CO2 drifting over from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, exhaled during Sunday’s Cowboys & Redskins (or Indigenous Americans) game.
We have had this happen in our area with wind speeds. Apparently a problem with birds landing on the wind equipment and then taking off again with no quality control.
BTW, this is NOT a forecast as the headline states but simply an observation. Big difference.
160 was supposed to be 60 degrees!!
How quickly before someone points back to it (corrected or not) and states, “Look, it’s in the record. That makes it a fact!”
Okay, maybe I just think poorly of the warmist crowd, you get that.
How is this data entered? Automatic? or manually?
However I expect Seth the bore at AP to proclaim “New Record High”.
Probably another dumpster fire.
More worryingly, how many failures occur that result in plausible readings? And how do you detect that anyway?
Latitude said
October 16, 2013 at 2:05 pm
…has anyone ever seen one that was too low?
Those are immediately checked out.
You’d have thought someone with an intact brain cell would have noticed an error of that magnitude. It just shows that no-one is watching the data. Surely it is not too difficult to create an error-checking app to flag such erroneous data?
charles the moderator says:
October 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm
But it’s a dry heat.
——————————————————————
Yeah, maybe these things don’t show up on Infra Red …
Remove “1” from “160”, and you get “60”. Just a typing error…
This reminds me of the local bank time and temperature phone number I encountered about 15 yrs ago. I called the number, and the recorded voice said “Our temperature system is working accurately now, thank you for your calls and concern…time, 7:38 pm, temperature, 518 degrees…click.”
There really should be a flag (asterisk or something) to let us know that they are aware of a possible issue. On the other hand, it’s good that they don’t try to automatically scrub or fix things on the fly. Raw data should stay raw. What I’m wondering is: at what point does this raw data get adjusted/homogenized and disappear for good? That’s an honest question, no snark intended.
You can bet that some academic drone will dig this figure up in the distant future as “unequivocal documentation” that CAGW was for real.
See how it works yet – That missing heat will turn up randomly at any location and will also be more intense in the future, I am sure we all agreed to this model in AR4.
Right, but let me channel Steven Mosher for a moment and say, remember this when bitching about adjustments. Can’t have it both ways.
I find it amazing they don’t have a simple data sanity check built into the NOAA data dissemination system.
Why imagine they can really be sane?
Latitude says:
October 16, 2013 at 2:05 pm
“…has anyone ever seen one that was too low?”
See my Tips and Notes comment on WUWT for
October 1, 2013 at 6:56 pm
Sensor problem was noted and fixed.
What stays in the record – who knows?
Latitude says on October 16, 2013 at 2:05 pm:
“…has anyone ever seen one that was too low?”
= = = = = = = = = =
Yes, but my “educated guess” is that as soon as they are spotted, They are “Adjusted up to what they surely must have been”
OOPS
This calls for the Dr Strangelove defence:
Muffley: There’s nothing to figure out General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: Well, I’d like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: (anger rising) General Turgidson, when you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring.
Turgidson: Well I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up sir.
In this day and age, there shouldn’t be any humans ‘in the loop’ … now, corrupted data (occurring in transit from the ASOS site to destination) is another thing; a parity error/checksum at some point should have caught that …
.
It took them 2 hours to fix it. I was trying to takeoff at an Air Force base once and the weather station was reporting overcast at 100ft even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Several airplanes weren’t allowed to takeoff and were telling the weather man his station data was incorrect but the weather man said he couldn’t override the computer unless they got a pilot report from someone flying. Because I was in a helicopter I got a special VFR takeoff approved and immediately reported the true weather. Then they let everyone takeoff.
Strange how people have become subordinate to computers even when they are obviously wrong.
Climate science should at all times be based on robust rather than classical statistics. Instead of a least-squares regression, for example, one should do a regression based on least absolute deviation or even M-estimation.
This reduces skewed results caused by outliers from instrument failure, misprints, and so on.
Lucky it was ‘Overcast’ or it would have been really warm.
Jim says:
I can’t say for sure, but I’ve worked with an ASOS a bit and the data was fed directly to a computer with no human input. We could only observe. That data was fed directly into a larger database. I’m not sure if anyone can manipulate the data it puts out.
See. Runaway Global Warming. Just as predicted.
Thanks for this Anthony, now know where the “missing heat” has gone from the last 17 years; Dallas Airport! 14:47: 15/10/2013.
Can someone please phone the IPCC and tell them their predictions/projections/guesses/animal entrail patterns are back on track?
Maybe the weather station is located too close to the airport tarmac and a Southwest Airlines jet had to sit next to it before getting clearance for takeoff.
OMG I saw the same thing happen in Stamford, CT. Wunderground which uses the NOAA feed I think showed 80F and a half hour later it was showing 65 or so. It does not show up on the historical trace, but I’m sure I saw the same thing.
Waiting for “Forecast The Facts” to help clear this up. (Not.)
Can someone phone the IPCC and tell them the missing heat from the last 17 years has not gone into the oceans?
It has gone to Dallas Airport at 14:47 on 15/10/2013!!
I like hot…
charles the moderator says October 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm:
But it’s a dry heat.
A dry heat? In Dallas? Come on! People in Dallas move from AC in the house to the AC in the car to the AC in the workplace. Just like people in Ottawa in winter.
I’m sure that NOAA’s data homogenization processes will take care of it.
/sarc
Don’t deny it, 97% of all computers agree it was 160F.
Mark Bofill says:
October 16, 2013 at 3:33 pm
—————–
In case anyone’s curious, I’ve discovered it’s just as annoying when you do it to yourself as when Steven does it to you. Disagreeable little experiment I won’t be repeating. 🙂
It’s raw data.
Leave it be.
Actually you see this in all raw data.
Later during qa it will be flagged after the following is checked.
Past temps
Nearby stations
The surrounding days.
Qa doesn’t happen in isolation from other sources of information.
This is why raw data sucks
FWIW the ASOS at KRIC (Richmond “international” airport) was found to be reading several degrees high. By my observations it was that way for several (at least ten) years always reading 4 – 5 degrees above the readings at my house (8 miles from KRIC). A maintenance crew found the thermometer screens at KRIC were routinely being clogged with grass clippings from grounds maintenance ops. They quietly fixed that and for the last three months or so KRIC readings agree with mine to within 1 degree. Whadayaknow!!
Of course all those excess readings went into the official record.
Not knowing much about US Geography, I thought there was a Hell, Texas. Turns out its in Michigan. So no hell in Texas……until now!
Mosher says “raw data sucks”
I’m sure the data that is represented by photographs of the large healthy trees exposed by the receding Mendenhall Glacier and across Canada, Russia and the vegetation being exposed on the Western Antarctic Peninsula must really suck.
Bye the bye, what is the “limit switch” for correction of diversions from past temps, nearby stations, and surrounding days? And why do such “corrections” always favor your belief system?
john another says:
October 16, 2013 at 5:45 pm
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Gosh I was making a dumb joke, not trying to start a food fight.
Thanks for correcting my misrepresentation btw Steven, getting your take on this wrong was unintentional stupidity on my part. The rest was intentional stupidity on my part that was supposed to be mildly amusing.
Three months ago I started recording temps and other weather symptoms at my house, about 12 miles from Richmond International Airport (RIC or KRIC, don’t care). Our temps have been consistently 2 to 3 degrees lower than the airport, with fewer 90-degree days, etc. We had long noticed that the airport readings were quite high. If Chris Moffatt’s temps now agree with the airport’s, that may mean he’s in metro Richmond’s heat island; out here in the country (southeast corner of Mechanicsville, toward New Kent) we don’t usually get the same readings as the airport. I plan to keep my record for a while, just to see what happens.
For what it’s worth, if you go to the running score of the decoded observations, that odd result did get flagged as “Suspect” by quality control:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=&sid=KADS&num=48&raw=0&dbn=m&banner=off
And if you look at the raw observations, the next one (two hours later) includes the “COR” tag indicating that it is a correction of the previous report. (When an error occurs, the erroneous entry isn’t replaced, but is superceded with a “corrected” observation.)
According to my aeronautical charts (I’m a private pilot), KADS is a Class-D airport that’s tucked under the “upside-down-wedding-cake” of the Class B KDFW airspace. And according to AirNav (http://www.airnav.com/airport/KADS), while KADS has an AWOS-3 automated station, it’s only available by phone (rather than on a broadcast frequency, as ASOS and AWOS generally are for untowered airports). At towered airports, the weather observations are done by humans and then are broadcast (usually hourly, with special (SPEC) designation when warranted) by a human reading them (on a tape loop) over the ATIS frequency. At towered airports where the tower isn’t open 24 hours a day, the compiled reports will be supplemented by the automated station during the hours that the tower is closed. (See, for example, the daily compilation for Class D Lebanon, NH : http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=&sid=KLEB&num=48&raw=1&dbn=m&banner=off ). However, KADS is a bit of an oddball in that no compilation of any kind is done during hours when the tower is closed (10pm – 6am). If you look at the two links up above for KADS, you’ll see that in the raw observations the 9:47pm observation is post-tagged with “last” and then the next observation is at 6:47am the next morning.
Anyway….. looking the raw observations, it’s clear that someone typed in “171” rather than “17” as they should have (raw observations and the ATIS/ASOS/AWOS stuff you hear uses celsius temperatures). Given that the COR didn’t appear for a couple hours, I doubt that the ATIS broadcast to pilots was stating a temperature of 171! (ATIS is read by a human, not a computer-generated voice, as ASOS and AWOS are.) But indeed, one hopes that data screening keeps stuff like this out of downstream database building.
Wait for it; a drought will be declared.
I would love to know how that error got in there. Human transcription error?
Instruments and computer algorithms don’t often produce errors of +100.
It’s a very strange error in my view, and some root cause analysis would be entirely appropriate if those responsible actually care about their data quality..
Are they predicting snow and ice? After all, with global warming, water freezes into ice when you heat it. /sarc
@Dr, Ware –
Anthony himself ferreted out an number of instances where thermometers were placed by obvious heat sources – asphalt parking lots, exposed to the sun, even under incandescent lights. Sounds like you might be seeing one of these thermometers similarly placed in order to generate fale hish temp readings.
“false high temp readings” – please pardon my sloppy typing.
Dr John Ware: I’m at Elko, VA about 3 miles from Bottoms Bridge, far east Henrico Co. Since they fixed (or did they?) the KRIC AWOS my readings are seldom more than a degree or two lower than the AWOS. Never above however…..funny thing that! But definitely not in the urban heat island. I think we’re talking minor differences between Elko and M’ville easily possible because they are about 15 miles apart.
Cheers
Come on guys it is only a type-O big deal
The 14:47 has now been removed.
Truthseeker says: October 16, 2013 at 2:54 pm
and charles the moderator says: October 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm
But it’s a dry heat.
——————————————————————
Yeah, maybe these things don’t show up on Infra Red …
——————————————————————
What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?
Another one of those rogue “hotspots”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/stalking-the-rogue-hotspot/
shenanigans24 says:
October 16, 2013 your :57 pm
Don’t deny it, 97% of all computers agree it was 160F.
——————————————-
Think about that ,absolutely perfect, quote. Ain’t technology great!
Think about that systemically across your digital worlds > ?
You didn’t mention comm links; therein I think lay the cause.
A couple years back my normally accurate ‘atomic’ 60 kHz WWVB-controlled/corrected clock was off one solid minute. One whole minute! The next day and since then it has been spot on …
Conclusion: I suspect a corrupted ‘comm’ channel at 60 kHz due to ???? (something in the area being switched on or off at the very moment that the LSB “ones” digit was being transmitted by WWVB). I don’t recall any T-storms in the immediate area.
I have video of this, with 10 MHz WWV audio playing in the background while the 1-minute off ‘Atomic’ clock’s face is surveyed …
.
Robert of Ottawa says:
October 16, 2013 at 4:49 pm
charles the moderator says October 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm:
But it’s a dry heat.
A dry heat? In Dallas? Come on! People in Dallas move from AC in the house to the AC in the car to the AC in the workplace. Just like people in Ottawa in winter.
—————–
En route from house to car, I frequently have to duck passing fish and submarines. No such thing as a dry heat in Dallas.
Houston is worse. They snorkel in the streets.
Not a typo, relative humidity as is wrong.
Maybe we should have paid them when they asked?
Hmmm… If this is true it sounds a lot like climate manipulation by people who don’t like Texas, to me!?!
Mark Albright says
which seems to be a good theory.
But do met guys have no form of QC checks that would identify this as a possible error right up front? Its a fairly easy one to spot….data vastly different from previous might at least ask for verification after entry.
The more I see of met/clim ‘science’, the more I am convinced that there are huge system(at)ic failures in basic data collection.
I once speculated a little on what would be the ideal organisational and practical way to study climate. And it all began with designing and maintaining a rigorous data collection network. Bad data –> bad science.
This does not seem to be a lesson that is widely understood in climo circles.
Not a typo. System is automated. SHEESH…
I was at a traffic light in Melbourne Florida on October 13th around 4pm. Sign at the bank next to me says it’s 96°F, car says it’s 85°F, and radio says it’s 88°F…all at the exact same moment for the same place (less than a mile from the airport).
So I’m thinking that whoever manufactured the temperature gauge at the bank must have been the same folks that made the one in Dallas…only the one at the bank is much more accurate. 😉
This appears to me as possibly a subtle software failure, causing the reporting of air temperature to be 100 degrees F away from what it was. The dewpoint appears to me as plausibly correct, and the relative humidity appears to me as calculated from a plausible dewpoint and an implausible temperature.
Y’alls be careful down there now; specially if you are entered in the Dallas Marathon; be sure and carry a bottle of water with you.
Mebbe they are just allowing plenty of room for this recorded data to be “adjusted downward” at some future time for one last stab at proving CAGW.
We heard they do things BIG in Texas.
That temp is enough to drive a bloke to join the Big Climate Victimology Club-http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/global_victims/
Yes, but it’s a dry heat with the RH at 5%, the heat index is only at 139F. Why complain?
I suspect visibility would be less than 10 miles because of the heat haze. And dry heat..?
Briefly, as it’s overcast and was raining an hour earlier. Very unpleasant conditions, though if you sat around in a towel and splashed water scented with aromatic oils onto any rocks that were nearby you would have a sauna. If a sauna is not your game you could cook eggs on the rocks [or the airport tarmac].
They just got their Celsius mixed up with their Fahrenheit (71C = 160F). When will the U.S. join us all on planet earth and switch to metric?
And GISS homogenisation will bring all other surrounding station up to well over 150C !
“Chad Wozniak says:
October 16, 2013 at 6:09 pm
“false high temp readings” – please pardon my sloppy typing.”
No, Chad, I won’t pardon your sloppy typing. I spend quite a bit of time looking up words like “metar” (thanks, Mr. Albright) because I think maybe it’s a word I just don’t know and I don’t want to misunderstand the point. It’s not the typing that causes the problem. It’s the failure to take a peek at what you wrote before posting. I noticed Michael Mann doesn’t know the difference between looser and loser. I want to think our posters and our well paid scientists are educated, but if we can’t communicate properly, it doesn’t matter what we know. It gets lost in the “sloppy typing”. Save yourself a post… proof the first one.
john another, it’s my understanding the those “healthy trees” at Mendenhall Glacier are dead. They are carbon dating them to see how long they’ve been dead. Was there a news report saying they were alive? If so, who reported this? Alternatively, was this a case of “sloppy reading”?
Please, folks, let’s up our game.
I apologize for my rant. No, I’m not a teacher. I’m also not a scientist, so I struggle with some of what I’m trying to learn at WUWT. Please, have pity on me.
TimTheToolMan says:
October 16, 2013 at 7:01 pm
Truthseeker says: October 16, 2013 at 2:54 pm
and charles the moderator says: October 16, 2013 at 2:03 pm
But it’s a dry heat.
——————————————————————
Yeah, maybe these things don’t show up on Infra Red …
——————————————————————
What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?
————————————————————
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…
Noticed it’s the reading at Addison Airport – did somebody park an aeroplane with the jetpipes pointing at the weather station perhaps?
Government shutdown causes runaway global warming in Texas…
160 degrees and 5% relative humidity is completely normal in Texas at this time of the year. The new normal, I mean. Is innovation not wonderful?
I was going to say “make sure to get a screen shot, but it looks like you did, lol. Done that myself a number of times when they had some outrageous temp listed for our area.
Gee, I wonder why the ozone action police did not arrive on the scene and send out warnings via taxpayer funded electronic alert signs.
Goldie says:
October 16, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Not knowing much about US Geography, I thought there was a Hell, Texas. Turns out its in Michigan. So no hell in Texas……until now!
We also have a Paradise, Mi. So you can literally go from Hell to Paradise in a day.
Not a software problem. Only one reading effected, plus 160F is FS for some thermometers.
obviouisly, the other 17 or so temperatures listed need to be adjusted higher, Then graphed, then used to scare children. (I want to be an NOAA employee, I’ve heard there’s been a recent opening.)
Obviously, I need typing practice.
==================================================================
Sometimes there is an error in the raw data.
Here the error is obvious because it is wildly outside the real readings surrounding it.
Sort of like the climate models don’t match the reality surrounding them.
I had to email Accuweather with a screenshot one very blah August evening in 2010 when the current temps recorded in my hometown were 15°C, with a ‘Real Feel’ forecast of -129°C. It was a below average August (nothing new in the UK), but not cold enough for my blood to freeze upon stepping outside.
@Jeff Crowder
Bank thermometers aren’t typically sited anywhere near correctly. They tend to read way high in direct sunlight, is my general observation. I just happen to commute at the peak temperature time of day and my car is usually spot on with the day’s official high, if I subtract 1ºF for pavement heating. If I’m in town, my car usually reads 3 – 5 ºF higher than the day’s official high, sometimes as much as 7 – 8 ºF higher. But, I’m sure there must be some explanation for that other than UHI.
“We’re gonna die! We’re gonna die!”
Perhaps the weather station was on fire and the reading was correct.
As a Texan this amuses me to think of people in Dallas seeing this and thinking “yeesh, gonna be hot”, without going “ok that’s impossible” due to how absurd the weather can be there.
I dropped a note off here a year or so ago about my local apt KFHR having a failed temp sensor on its ASOS. It was reading about 20c low. It took several calls to get the apt manager to initiate a fix. Who knows whether it went into the data stream.
Is that a dry heat? 🙂
@Peter:
If we switch to Metric now, it gives NOAA and all the other AGW proponents a means to further adjust the historic temps as the values are “converted” from traditional units to SI.
I don’t have enough hands to facepalm as much as I should.
john robertson says:
October 16, 2013 at 2:36 pm
However I expect Seth the bore at AP to proclaim “New Record High”.
He might, but it still doesn’t beat the 212°F over Lake Michigan a couple of years ago. I don’t suppose they ever got around to removing that erroneous set either.
Howcome the errors are never unrealistically low temps?