This is interesting, and of course it goes hand-in-hand with what I have been saying for years.
Scott Sistek, of KOMO News/Weather reports:
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For several years the thermometer at SeaTac airport has been reporting temperatures 1-3 degrees above surrounding areas.
Instead, it seems the thermometer at Sea-Tac is finally back on track, reporting temperatures more realistic with respect to other nearby thermometers. It’s been a long suspicion among some local meteorologists that the thermometer at the airport been running a bit warm over the past few years, frequently reporting temperatures 1-3 degrees warmer than surrounding sites. (Both UW professor Cliff Mass and I have done blogs on this apparent warming in the past.)
Here is just one example from July 16 last year when Sea-Tac reported a high of 88 degrees but everyone else around the Sound was closer to 83-86. (KSEA is Sea-Tac, the numbers on the far right are the preliminary highs for the day. This link will help decode the other cities listed here.)
UW research meteorologist Mark Albright has been tracking this anomaly for the past couple of years and has been among the most vocal in this apparent discrepancy. As just one example, he found for those first two weeks last July that the Sea-Tac gauge ran an average 2.3 degrees warmer than four other neighborhood thermometers placed within a couple miles of the airport.
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Apparently, they fixed the ASOS thermometer, and the problem went away.
Read the whole story here: http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/Did-Seattles-climate-cool-15-degrees-in-a-blink-of-an-eye-254419491.html
h/t to reader Steve Z.
And as I’ve documented before, such errors remain in the climate record. Like the malfunctioning airport sensor in Honolulu, where the skewed temperature set new high temperature records. See this interview with a NOAA/NWS meteorologist on the issue:
But, even after knowing they were caused by a malfunction, the NOAA/NWS leaves the bogus high temperature records intact. Only government could screw up data this badly.
Here is where the sensor is:
The SeaTac ASOS, according to NCDC HOMR, is located below.
SeaTac is part of the GHCN network used for climate. But was it surrounded on three sides by heat holding asphalt in 1948 when the weather records began there?
Doubtful.
First Sea-Tac Airport Terminal, ca. 1946
I wonder what this revelation will do to this study, which used Sea-Tac and other GHCN stations as the basis for the claim?
New study finds “nighttime heat waves” increasing in Pacific Northwest
UPDATE: more on why these sorts of failures tend to be mostly hot failures:
Mark Albright,
It is pleasant to hear of someone having respect for due diligence. Thank you for yours wrt the SeaTac thermometer discrepancy.
How does this relate to your area of interest in research meteorology at UW?
John
So the record improves with the dying of each old sensor?
What is the range and accuracy of these sensors?
How are they calibrated?
How often?
I was trying to follow Environment Canada’s upgrade of their weather sensing stations.(last year)
found a spec for the temperature sensor used but was unable to follow the means by which they obtain the claimed accuracy at high arctic sites.
I remain quite unclear how the sensor package self calibrates for temperature range of -60C to +40C.
If NOAA were not corrupt, they would have done what any sane temp measuring authority
would do : receive the complaints from bona fide weather men, examine the data from surrounding
temp gauge and see clearly, and at once, that their own temp gauge is providing invalid
temp data for the area. Fix the problem, then correct their invalid data using data from the
surrounding temp gauges that display consistency. Now, was that hard? Leaving temps on the record that are known to be fraudulent is, you know, fraudulent. The claim by a previous poster
that one should allow all bad temp gauge records to stand is both absurd and also fraudulent –
imagine the absurdity of allowing a temp of 168 degrees to stand. Or following the bizarre logic
that there must be an equal number of equally wrong bad high and low temp readings,so nothing should be done. No, what you do is when you find an error , then you correct it. And you have a mechanism in place that can detect small erors, not just large ones, using the many temp readings available close to your station. NOAA has been shown incompetent before, in spades. This is
merely additional prima facia evidence that should result in the wholesale overhauling (and probably destruction) of this most disgusting Federal agency. There is no good reason we should pay money to be lied to.
using a device needed for pilots for min rotate speeds to set global policy was either extremely stupid or purposely done so just to “show” a rising temp.
I lean towards the latter.
crews need the runway temps to know a/c performance parameters, using these for climate measurements should have been criminal.
Now that they have taken their foot off the scale will Seattle still be afraid of the hiding heat?
Appell,
“Lately more of the heat being trapped by our emissions is going into the oceans than was the case in the 1980s and 1990s, and less into warming the thin sliver of air on the surface. (About 93 percent of the extra heat goes into the oceans.) And the oceans are warming enormously in recent years – heat that is not guaranteed to stay there, and often comes out in El Nino years — and it now seems likely an El Nino will happen later this year.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/04/water_vapor_and_the_greenhouse.html#incart_river
An example of science. I am a third generation participant in the Framingham Heart Study. They take my blood pressure under the same conditions with the same double blind instrument that they used with my grandparents. The device is routinely checked by the the NIH staff which have no direct connections to the Study.
If the warmists have similar examples I’d love to hear them. Instead they have airport thermometers that read high at higher temps and refuse to discard the erroneous data when confronted with the proof.
They continue to use PRTs (platinum resistance thermometers). The most common mode of failure for these sensors is a gradual increase in resistance until the platinum wire fails to an open (infinite resistance) state, indicating infinite temperature. This failure can occur due to slow degradation (corrosion) of the platinum wire. Corrosion usually requires the combination of water, acidity, and an oxidizer on metal – such as humid air laced with exhaust fumed (NOx).
So in this case, GOGI… garbage out of the thermometer; garbage into the temperature record.
Ric Werme,
My point is two-fold: Airports are frequently the warmest place in the area, and Chicago is having absolutely bizarre weather this year…
I’m having trouble understanding why regular calibration isn’t a standard part of managing any official climate reporting device. The pumps I use to put fuel in my car must have an annual certification; balances and scales used in laboratories (professional or university) likewise have an annual calibration certification. I understand than any instrument can fail; I don’t understand why such a failure remains uncorrected for several years.
The ASOS, or automated surface observation system, is primarily to let pilots know what the conditions are at the airport runways. Using them for global climate temperature records makes no sense, unless they conform to siting requirements, which would be a rarity I would think. A jet exhaust within a couple of hundred feet should rule them all out.
Windsong says:April 14, 2014 at 9:49 am
You can find daily precipitation here, by state, if you click on the desired state on the second map (the green one) on this page: http://www.cocorahs.org/
When the state comes up, you can change the date and mouse over or click on individual stations to get its reading.
at Windsong 9:43
“There is plenty of unused airport property on the west side of SeaTac that would be a much better location for instruments than adjacent to a taxiway.”
About the bold, see the second statement:
First, I posted links to the “west side” on a previous post but don’t have the time to find it or do it again. One can use “Street View” of Google Earth to have a look. But . . .
Second, weather instruments have found a home next to runways because there is a need for them there. If “climate science” wants something different then other locations are available. “Better” is for the user to determine and pilots seem to like the between-the-runways location.
This is getting to be like in baseball where the radar gun reports a different pitch speed depending on the stadium. Some stadiums are known to run their guns ‘hot’ in order to hype their players a little more.
Hmm. That one’s a Class 3, Leroy (2010) rating, and a Class 4 for Leroy (1999).
Definitely below par for an airport site.
Airports are odd beasts. On the one hand, there are large paved areas in the vicinity. OTOH, they are usually (but not in this case) well away from the sensors.
As ASOS are Min-Max sensors, I don’t think jet exhaust will affect all that much. The blast would have to hit right at Tmin or Tmax to skew the readings. However, the effect might be more pronounced with continual readings, where every bump up will affect the average.
D. Cohen said at 9:56AM, “Why is there only one thermometer at each station? Five or six thermometers simultaneously recording temperatures would show up any inaccurate temperatures like a sore thumb. They cannot be that expensive — hey, the whole weather station can’t be that expensive. Why not have several many-yards-apart duplicates of them also?”
These are the same people who pay $200,000 for an OUTHOUSE!
Our government at work…
@ScarletMacaw at 10:50 am
I agree scarletmacaw. I have called these things recalibration events” (1/23/2013)
Willis replied with a argument I do not feel holds water and invalidated by facts such as the SEATAC station above:
What is not in dispute here is that there is an apparent instantaneous drop of temperatures at SEATAC due to a sensor running hot at the time of replacement (B9) and replaced with a sensor, presumably with sufficient calibration to put back on line (C0). A discontinuity has happened. Whether it is 1.5 deg C, 2.0, 1.2, 2.4 is not the issue. Whether it is a “significant” 1.5 deg C over 15 years or insignificant 0.5 deg C adjustments every 5 years is also irrelevant. Both bake in the instrument drift as climate signal and treat recalibration as noise to be discarded.
Furthermore, breaks in the temperature records are frequent in BEST data. See my example for Stapleton Airport, Denver, CO which has 10 breakpoints (seven ! from 1980-1999) seemingly disassociated with historical events at the airport. Breaks are big and frequent. I’d love to see a scatter plot of segment length vs amount of shift at the end of the segment. It would raise eyebrows.
Cutting the record at a discontinuity PRESERVES the instrument drift (if that is what happened prior to B9) as climate signal and ignore the B9-C0 recalibration information.
At the very least, the amount of the discontinuity is testament to our uncertainty in the absolute temperatures.
In what other areas of science is junk data knowingly included because “the averages will even out?” (My quote.)
In business, this sort of record keeping lands you in jail. In medical research, you could be subject to fines and other penalties. In government, however, it will probably lead to a promotion.
If the excess temperature is due to a local heat island, extra thermometers would only increase the number of anomalously high readings. In this specific case the thermometer finally went off the deep end an they replaced it, but that only brought it into conformity with other nearby sensors. So, we’re still left to wonder whether the Seattle Heat Island is diddling with the data.
Janice More said
“Well, isn’t that precious of Mr. Albright. NOW…. that he and his fellow AGWers are desperate for temperatures to warm…… they correct the record DOWN”
Whoa Janice, a tad unfair on Mr Albright who I believe who seems to have a track record of de-biasing the warming slant amongst his colleagues
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/03/a-global-warmin.html and
http://www.zoominfo.com/s/#!search/profile/person?personId=64049541&targetid=profile
@ur momisugly Janice Moore 10:58 am SE of Renton, WA, near Lake Youngs.
@ur momisugly Steve Keohane 1:55 pm Thanks for the link. I looked at Snohomish County in March and the foothill locations were hammered with rain. (Even our temp impaired KSEA site logged 9.44″ in March; a new monthly record.)
@ur momisugly John F. Hultquist 2:06 pm Thanks for the info on the rationale for location. I concur, airport sites for their use, and sensibly sited locations for scientific data collection.
If these stations are read/monitored remotely, why not (during routine maintenance) replace the fans with fans having speed sensors? They’ve been common in the PC and probably mainframe world for years, and even high-quality ones (with or without golfball texture 🙂 ) are not all that expensive….just a thought….
Stephen Rasey,
Good post. BEST has been deconstructed here on several occasions. From my perspective, the BEST paper has no credibility.
Dear Lawrence13,
Yes, you are correct. I was mistaken. What more could I have said than I did in my apology (not acknowledged… perhaps Albright agrees with your apparent assessment of it’s being inadequate…) at 10:58am, today?
Good for you to provide substantiation (at 3:48pm) for Mr. Albright’s correction of my mistake about him being pro-AGW.
I am EAGER to hear from you. What more would you have me say to make amends?
Sincerely,
Janice Moore
We in Australia suffer similar problems with our BOM.
Locally we have a rain gauge that has a bad habit of going off line in severe rain events.
The BOM usually issues a statement that rainfall not recorded in the auto gauge will not be supplemented by the back up manual gauge(the one you actually look at)because, and these are their words not mine,
“IT WOULD FUDGE THE RECORD”.
Why have a back up gauge?
It is affectivly giving a false and misleading historical record.
Lower rainfall contributing to the lie that is global warming.
I live approximately 5 klm from that gauge and have for the last five years.
My gauge tells me that nearly 500 mm has gone unrecorded.
Not exactly a drop in the bucket.
So you in America dont for one instance think your on your lonesome when it comes to BOM’s manipulating data to fit their lies.