In my travels surveying weather stations around the United States, I met many dedicated observers like this one. It is sad indeed that their painstakingly recorded data by observers like this one gets adjusted by NCDC to give results that aren’t the same as what they observed. I have some comments, data, and photos about the station that follow, but let me say to Mr. Hendrickson first; thank you sincerely for your service and dedication.
NOAA honors New York farmer for 84 years of service as volunteer weather observer (press release)
When Richard G. Hendrickson (seen at right) logged his first weather observation for the U.S. Weather Bureau, the precursor to NOAA’s National Weather Service, Herbert Hoover occupied the White House. Since then the Bridgehampton, New York, farmer has filed twice daily reports, tallying more than 150,000 individual weather observations – playing a critical role in building our nation’s climate history.
As part of the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program, Hendrickson collects data from the weather observing station on his farm and calls in his observations – temperature, precipitation, wind and any other significant weather factors – to the weather service.
On July 27, Hendrickson, age 101, will receive an award for his long standing service – 84 years – to the nation. Since Hendrickson is first in the history of the program to serve for more than eight decades, the new 80-year service award will be named in his honor.
“Volunteer observers are the bedrock of weather data collection,” said I. Ross Dickman, meteorologist-in-charge of the New York weather forecast office. “Richard has contributed thousands of weather measurements to build the climate record for Long Island, and after 84 years, holds the title of the nation’s longest-serving volunteer weather observer. With this award, we honor Richard for his selfless dedication to his community and the country.”
Hendrickson started volunteering as a weather observer when he was 18 years old. His lifelong commitment stems from personal interest in weather and a sense of patriotism. “I enjoy observing the weather, it’s what I do for my country,” he said.
Hendrickson’s enthusiasm for weather extends beyond collecting data. In 1996 he authored, Winds of the Fish’s Tail, which highlights his years of observing the weather on Long Island’s east end. Hendrickson also writes a column on weather that is published in two eastern Long Island newspapers.
The award presentation will take place before an open house at the weather forecast office in Upton, New York. Throughout the day; residents are invited to tour the forecast operations floor, meet meteorologists and learn how forecasters track storms and issue warnings. The open house is an opportunity for the public to learn how to become weather-ready, become a storm spotter and see a weather balloon launch.
AWARD PRESENTATION:
Sunday, July 27, 9:45 a.m. to 10 a.m. EDT
New York Weather Forecast Office
175 Brookhaven Avenue, Upton, NY 11973
NOTE: Media must register with Tim Morrin to attend the ceremony, 631-924-0227
The National Weather Service’s Cooperative Observer Program has given scientists and researchers continuous observational data since the program’s inception more than a century ago. Today, over 8,700 volunteer observers participate in the nationwide program to provide daily reports on temperature, precipitation, and other weather factors such as snow depth, river levels and soil temperature. Long and continuous weather records provide an accurate picture of a locale’s normal weather and give climatologists a basis for predicting future trends. These data are invaluable for scientists studying floods, droughts, and heat and cold waves.
The first extensive network of cooperative stations was set up in the 1890s as a result of a Congressional Act that established the U.S. Weather Bureau. Many historic figures maintained weather records, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson maintained an almost unbroken record of weather observations between 1776 and 1816, and Washington took weather observations just a few days before he died.
The National Weather Service New York forecast office located in Upton, New York, is the primary source of weather data, forecasts and warnings for about 18.6 million people in southeast New York, northeast New Jersey and southern Connecticut. Visit us at weather.gov/nyc and join us on Facebook and Twitter. For more on how to become weather-ready, visit Weather-Ready Nation.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources.
==============================================================
First a look at the station itself from above. The coordinates are the ones given in NCDC’s HOMR metadata.
The Stevenson Screen (white box between the row of trees and the house) is about 25 feet from the asphalt driveway, would would make it a Class 4 station, unacceptably sited:
Climate Reference Network Rating Guide – adopted from NCDC Climate Reference Network Handbook, 2002, specifications for siting (section 2.2.1) of NOAA’s new Climate Reference Network:
Class 1 (CRN1)- Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (<19deg). Grass/low vegetation ground cover <10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading when the sun elevation >3 degrees.
Class 2 (CRN2) – Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding Vegetation <25 centimeters. No artificial heating sources within 30m. No shading for a sun elevation >5deg.
Class 3 (CRN3) (error >=1C) – Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
Class 4 (CRN4) (error >= 2C) – Artificial heating sources <10 meters.
Class 5 (CRN5) (error >= 5C) – Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.”
That’s not the fault of the observer, Mr. Hendrickson is working with what he has. NOAA/NWS actually installed and placed the station, and is responsible for its maintenance. The station is also boxed in by vegetation on three sides, along with the house for the fourth side, making it warmer than it should be due to wind inhibition.
What is even more interesting though is what happened to the data in 2012, according to this plot from NASA GISS of the station, there was quite a spike.
Yet amazingly, even though Mr. Hendrickson has been dutifully reporting the daily data, and it is up to date, as seen in his May report below…
…NASA GISS run by Gavin Schmidt, can’t seem to find the time to get their data set current for Bridgehampton, as seen here, only going to 2012. You’d think Gavin could tear himself away from Twitter long enough to at least get the data updated, especially since this man is so dedicated to the task.
More on all this in a later post.
UPDATE: 7/24/14 9AM I sent a Tweet yesterday to Gavin asking why Bridgehamptoon has not been updated at GISS since 2012, and as far as I know there has been no response.
Nick Stokes in comments thought that the lack of GISS updating was a GHCN problem, not a GISS problem.
I also asked the BEST team (who also use GHCN) and Zeke Hausfather responded almost immediately:
Looks up to date to me, as a file was just compiled this morning and is available up on the FTP site: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/ . I believe they have a system that automatically compiles it daily.
Here is a chart of station observations in GHCN by month from today’s file. There are 2297 stations reporting so far for June 2014 (none for July, obviously, since its not over yet). If you check GHCN-daily instead of GHCN-monthly, you will find much more data from last month.
My thanks to Zeke for that.
Also of interest are these notes in the status file for GHCN:
GHCNM, V3, status file (users can use this file to determine overall current status, including information related to previous changes and errata). ******************************************************************************** 07/14/2014 On or around 06/06/2014, there was an ingest problem with the “C” source data, (unpublished MCDW), and this caused a signficant reduction of data from that source. However, much of the data were still available through an alternate source (UK Met Office, “K” source flag). The ingest problem was resolved on 07/10/2014, and the expected frequency of “C” source data was restored. ******************************************************************************** 10/17/2013 Government operations have been restored, and regular monitoring of GHCN-Monthly will now resume. During the shutdown of government operations, some ingest of recent international data were not received. These data should be restored with the next processing cycle (e.g. 10/18/2013). ******************************************************************************** 10/01/2013 During the shutdown of government operations, GHCN-Monthly will continue to update automatically, but will not be monitored by the GHCN-Monthly team. We will also be unable to answer questions submitted to NCDC.GHCNM@noaa.gov until after government operations resume. ********************************************************************************
GHCN even continued to update during the “government shutdown” last year, and there is no note indicating late data for all of 2013.
So much for the Nick Stokes theory as to why GISS has not updated Bridgehampton. Now it’s back to Gavin and GISS.
I’m time limited for the next two days, so my promised update won’t happen until this weekend. Tony Heller has done some work in the meantime worth looking at here: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/more-from-bridgehampton-ny/
The graph of adjustments show Bridgehampton’s data has been dramatically cooled in the past by as much as 1.5°F:
I have not double checked the graph above, but the spike at Bridgehampton in 2012 seems spurious, as I originally noted.
More on all this Saturday or Sunday when time permits.
~Paul: Sorry, maybe they were not supposed to be URLs, could you drop those somewhere ( at least the June archived file )?
i look forward to the next post . since tony heller began highlighting adjustment issues i had a feeling there was a schidt storm brewing,this would appear to confirm it. here we have an adjustment for a station move that did not happen, it is likely as a result of using gps . how many other stations have an adjustment for station moves for the same reason.
there is a continuous record of data being recorded in the evening until fairly recently , with all changes documented , so there are no unknowns in terms of tobs or equipment changes .so now an absolute comparison can be made between a raw data set with this information exact and the adjusted “data”.
as i said,i look forward to the next post.
Not if he is scientific. There is no room in science for that cavalier attitude to tampering with records that you just exhibited ( and if you think so, just imagine what fun others might have tampering with records related to you ). Either way you have no business putting words in his mouth. That warmist propaganda attributed to him is probably cherry picked out of something larger anyway.
So what to do? How about this … the simple, logical and formerly favored method of the concept of scientific controls.
Recreate sites today using the original equipment on the same locations where possible, studiously using photographs as a guide, trees, asphalt, everything. Most importantly take the temps at the same time as was done back then. According to Leif something similar is done with sunspots using early telescopes.
One thing is for sure IMHO, if you think the appropriate action to correcting incompatibilities due to 8:00am versus 8:00pm is to alter the historical dataset, then you are not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. What that makes you is the exact opposite of a scientist. Hear that Mosher? It is more akin to Stalin’s cadre of artists airbrushing out inconvenient truths in photographs. Not science.
When someone says we cannot compare today to the historical past ( I wonder if this is true in England’s CET ) then the the logical thing is to fix the site and make it compatible to the historical record … unadjusted. Or close the site.
Perhaps as part of the Siting Project those involved could identifies which sites ( if any ) are comparable to the past, what is the longest comparable recording period of time, and which sites could be retrofitted or resurrected from the dead. Apples to Apples you know. Not Apples to Cherries, or Oranges or Tangerines or fake Apples.
Temperature has to be adjusted because of the shadowing effect from air craft. Anthony you might remember before 911 there was someone ,I can’t remember who tried for years to get the American government to stop all air traffic over America for a day , so he could collect all the data he had organised from people like the above Richard Hendrickson and then came the fall of the twin towers and America suspended all air traffic for a couple of days. Didn’t he get the data he required to prove he’s shadowing effect theory. I thought the shadowing effect was responsible for a 2 deg drop in temps. When the hot exhaust from a jet flying at the top of the freezing troposphere is ejected ,what we see is cold air chasing hot or negative charge (heat) attracting positive charge (cold). One thing I see is climate science likes to use the theory that hot chases cold . I don’t agree with this theory because , the first electromagnetic field line is the tropopause (cold positive charge) which is attracted to the 6000 C (hot negatively charged )core and the hotter stratopause, that’s why it’s held in place and the tropopause works north south and not up and down. Temperature = electric potential at work or to put it another way it depends how fast the electron is moving around the nucleus that determines it’s temperature. Heat creates fission (seperation) and cold creates fussion ( attraction) One other thing to remember is the troposphere is a sea of negatively charged electrons.
The dedication and stability of a Richard Hendrickson stands in stark contrast to the data collection that has prevailed in most of the world over most of the last 160 years.
0.6° C. over the last 160-odd years? Given the state of the climate/weather data gathering system, the adjustments ( cough, cough ) made by GISS, the urban heat island effect, Chinese ( cough, cough ) weather stations/data, Russian ( cough, cough ) weather stations/data, Sub-Saharan African ( cough, cough ) weather stations/data— among a multitude of other problems, that’s a rounding error— at best.
When one stops to consider the reliability of the historic temperature records, one is left to wonder if we are kidding ourselves about our ability to gauge the extent to which current temperatures are or are not higher or lower.
Do you really believe that Russian temperature records from, say, 1917-1950 are reliable?
Do you honestly believe that Chinese temperature records from, say, 1913-1980 are reliable?
Do you seriously believe that Sub-Saharan African temperatures from, say, 1850-2012 are accurate?
I don’t.
Greg, I don’t think they have changed the algorithm recently, because this kind of thing happens all the time. The algorithm is just unstable somehow – as you say, it bounces around. This is discussed on Paul Homewood’s blog somewhere.
You can find the latest file, ghcnm.tavg.latest.qca.tar.gz by going to Nick/Jim’s ftp link and backing up to /ghcn/v3/
The June file isn’t available on the web as the files are overwritten. Try this link, assuming you are happy with .tar.gz files
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1fcBLZDFH7RRFVidmk3QzJXcDQ/edit?pli=1
This how you deal with it.You actually go back and check and you get this result.THis is why Goddard KNOWS how to deal with climate fraud
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/more-from-bridgehampton-ny/
ilma630 says:
July 24, 2014 at 12:49 am
Having worked at a major data analytics company, apart from Mr Hendrickson’s original data collection, the onward handling processes and QA look very amateurish at best, would never pass any sort of audit, …
—————————
That is a very good point.
Where is the audit trail?
If anything, NCDC goes out of is way to erase any type of past tracking.
“The June file isn’t available on the web as the files are overwritten. Try this link, assuming you are happy with .tar.gz files ”
Thanks Paul, that’s fine.
I now archive everything I get because data files seem to have a short half life these days. I never overwrite with an update, the first thing I do is a diff to see what has changed apart from appending new data.
Nick Stokes says:
July 23, 2014 at 11:15 pm
The change to MMTS itself requires an adjustment, which usually has warming effect. As to the relocation, it seems that the MMTS is further from the asphalt mentioned in the head post as a warming factor. If that is important, it means that the older readings were warmer than they should have been, relative to later.
Yes, and by that logic, all of the earlier readings should be adjusted cooler.
I believe it has been noted that any incorrectly site – Not Class 1 (CRN1) – may give an artificially higher than correct reading.
The complexities involved in attempting to properly correct each properly operating non-Class1 site with its unique, ever changing environment, is virtually impossible using current information gathering techniques.
re: lee July 24, 2014 at 12:40 am
No one here has probably used the old-timey paper USGS 7 1/2 minute topographical maps to ‘take’ long and lat measurements; I have, and it is NOT surprising that with the advent of GPS a more accurate position was recorded.
Too many ppl today with only a lot of ‘desk’ experience, as poster ‘jim’ above alludes to.
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Long may Richard G. Hendrickson continue. His dedication is humbling.
re: lee on July 24, 2014 at 12:40 am
… ‘The first GPS satellite was launched in 1978 …
A brief side note: We had at the time 3 (three) sats in orbit in 1978 as the fledgling GPS NAVSTAR project was still in its infancy, the hardware of the day still being developed at several companies in the US.
Yuma Proving Grounds had a ‘ground range’ where aircraft could fly patterns while taking data on new hardware before the full constellation of sats was in place. I was with TI at the time working on their HDUE (High Dynamic User Equipment), performing ‘factory test’ of product and providing technical support to personnel performing environmental testing (shake and bake) on the HDUE ‘boxes’.
Later, in the 90’s while at MetroCel Cellular (to be bought by ATT WS) I made use of GPS and USGS topo maps to do cellular system planning and site selection; with the GPS sats having SA (Selective Availability) turned on one’s position on earth could be seen to ‘drift’ +-300 feet or more as SA was meant to ‘dither’ the computed position about a centroid point. Not until sometime in Pres. Clinton’s term (after May 1, 2000) SA was turned off, resulting in a more accurate, instantaneous GPS position report.
SA – http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/faq/
GPS – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
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Maybe I missed something, someone living near this gentleman should walk up and ask him in the decades you have been making readings, how far has that station moved? When was the asphalt driveway built? Again, if I missed this, my apologies. If it has not moved, screw you nick.
re: jmorpuss July 24, 2014 at 3:29 am
Temperature has to be adjusted because of the shadowing effect from air craft. Anthony you might remember before 911 there was someone ,I can’t remember who …
One thing I see is climate science likes to use the theory that hot chases cold . I don’t agree with this theory because , the first electromagnetic field line is the tropopause (cold positive charge) which is attracted to the 6000 C (hot negatively charged )core and the hotter
.
You’re the Electric Universe guy right? I remember you (others should too) … off the wall ‘theories’ with no basis in known physics and all that …
Trying to sneak in here under the RADAR?
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@Dennis Kuzara et al. The GISS 2012 spike is due to missing data for Sep-Oct-Nov. The 12.0C average for 2012 is based on only the previous three quarters (3.1C, 11.0C, 22.0C), so naturally there’s a spike.
I apologize if someone else pointed this out earlier.
Regardless, Mr. Hendrickson is my hero.
The question I would like answered was whether the gentleman himself compensated for TOB’s? or whether he just blindly logged the data from the min max bars at exactly the same time each day?
The recorders that I talked to all compensated for exceptionally hot or cold periods. They were extremely careful to get the accurate temperatures for the day and understood the limitations of the device.
Some of them did their own infilling though, taking temperatures from the Daily paper to fill holes in their record.
He observed the temperature twice a day. That should make any TOPS adjustment unnecessary?
His station is showing ~2 degree trend….
….and the adjustments to his station are also ~2 degrees
So did temps increase ~2 degrees?……or is it just the adjustments that increased ~2 degrees?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/more-from-bridgehampton-ny/
The universal curse of Civil Service – dedication and professionalism will get your work noticed – eventually – but when there are political agendas afoot, your work will get no respect.
Nick, you said
“According to the location history, on 17 July 1985, the station moved 0.1 miles N. According to the equipment history, on the same day an MMTS system was installed. According to another note I saw, the CRS system was kept as a backup.
The change to MMTS itself requires an adjustment, which usually has warming effect. As to the relocation, it seems that the MMTS is further from the asphalt mentioned in the head post as a warming factor. If that is important, it means that the older readings were warmer than they should have been, relative to later.”
You need to go back and look at the map again. If the station was moved 0.1 mile N then the original location was 0.1 mile (~500 ft) S of the present location. According Google maps, that area is an open field, just north of a barn. So in effect, the station was moved from about a class 2 location to its present class 4 location. Cooler to warmer. Seems a cooling adjustment pre-move doesn’t track here.
Avery Hardin,
As Nick points out since 1985, the system has been an MMTS: Min – Max system. Min and Max temps do not depend on TOBS so a TOBS adjustment would not be appropriate either.
I suspect that adjustments are bulk system adjustment made based on an assumption of application rather than the individual appropriateness as dictated by each site.
I’ll have an update to this post this weekend (as a new post), right now I’m time limited by other duties.
In the meantime I’ve made a short update to this one.
Nick Stokes theory about lack of update at GISS being a GHCN problem doesn’t hold water.
HELP
I am not sure that I fully understand the TOB issue, and perhaps someone would kindly explain it to me, because my initial (uninformed) view is that it is a date of record, not a time of observation problem. Eg,
IF on 6th June, at say 10 am, I observe and record the max/min recordings, what I am seeing is the max and minimum temperature for 5th June. Whereas,
If on 6th June at say 6pm, I observe and record the max/min, what I am seeing is the max for 6th June, and the minimum for 5th June.
Now if I observe temperaturs over a period of say 40 years, but at some stage say after 12 years, I change my habit from making my observations at 10 am but instead I make my observations at 6pm, I will have correctly recorded every maximum and every minimum temperature that that station has observed, it is just that i will have got one day out of sync.
However, we are not concerned with making a comparison from one specific day on year X to the same specific day the following year. All we are after is the average max/min as observed by that station. The fact that one day’s data has got out of sync, makes no real difference to the average, and the resulting trend, and I would suspect that the ‘error’ therby created is rather less than trying to make some theoretical correction to what that day’s temperature would have been had it been taken at a different time, eg., when I make my observation at 10 am on 6th June, I know what the maximum temperature was the day before (because that is what the max is showing me), and I know the current 10 am temperature, but it is a complete guess to work out what the temperature will be at say 1pm or 2pm or 3pm later that day on 6th June. And when I come to check the temperature at 10 am on 7th june, I will know what the high for 6th June was.
Now I can see that there may be problems if you keep on checking temperatures at random times, without routine, but when you take temperatures twice a day (if the times are reasonably straddled early morning and early evenning) you will always be getting a correct max/min and at worst you will merely be off-syncing an observation. I accept that very occassionally, a day when there are temperature inversions may lead to an error, but this will be rare, and again the ‘error’ is likely to be less than trying to make some guess as to what the high would be if observation was made at different times.
To me TOB becomes an issue only when you get sparse collection of data, say on a few days one week, one day the next week, 5 days the following week, 1 day the week after etc etc, and/or when each and every day’s observation is made at completely random times,. But if that is the type of data coming from a station it should be thrown out, not homogenised.
If you are getting data collected in the dilligent manner as shown by Richard G. Hendrickson, twice a day, I can’t see the need for a TOB adjustment. It seems to me that it is more likely to create an error, than to correct one.
As i say, I am probably missing something important, and I would appreciate a simple explanation. THANKS.
Further to my post above, Correction:
IF on 6th June, at say 10 am, I observe and record the max/min recordings, what I am seeing is the max for 5th June, and the minimum temperature for 6th June. Whereas,
If on 6th June at say 6pm, I observe and record the max/min, what I am seeing is the max for 6th June, and the minimum for 6th June.
re: bwanajohn July 24, 2014 at 8:28 am
…
You need to go back and look at the map again. If the station was moved 0.1 mile N then the original location was 0.1 mile (~500 ft) S of the present location. According Google maps, that area is an open field, just north of a barn. So in effect, the station was moved from about a class 2 location to its present class 4 location. Cooler to warmer. Seems a cooling adjustment pre-move doesn’t track here.
Presumes original long/lat determination was accurate. I assert it was not. Later the position was (probably) corrected with a GPS-based lat long coordinate pair. The first-ever lat/long pair was probably determined by the county engineer (responsible for bridges and roadways) who had access to topo maps of the day via a description of the shelter position over the telephone.
You’re at the limits of accuracy in determining the long/lat on a map designed for that purpose or if doing a ‘star site’/sextant-based reading even.
.