From the “temperature bias only goes one way department” and the University of Montana:
Mountain system artificially inflates temperature increases at higher elevations
MISSOULA – In a recent study, University of Montana and Montana Climate Office researcher Jared Oyler found that while the western U.S. has warmed, recently observed warming in the mountains of the western U.S. likely is not as large as previously supposed.
His results, published Jan. 9 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, show that sensor changes have significantly biased temperature observations from the Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL) station network.
More than 700 SNOTEL sites monitor temperature and snowpack across the mountainous western U.S. SNOTEL provides critical data for water supply forecasts. Researchers often use SNOTEL data to study mountain climate trends and impacts to mountain hydrology and ecology.
Oyler and his co-authors applied statistical techniques to account for biases introduced when equipment was switched at SNOTEL sites in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s.
His revised datasets reduced the biases to reveal that high-elevation minimum temperatures were warming only slightly more than minimum temperatures at lower elevations.
“Observations from other station networks clearly show that the western U.S. has experienced regional warming,” Oyler said, “but to assess current and future climate change impacts to snowpack and important mountain ecosystem processes, we need accurate observations from the high elevation areas only covered by the SNOTEL network. The SNOTEL bias has likely compromised our ability to understand the unique drivers and impacts of climate change in western U.S. mountains.”
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Co-authors on the paper “Artificial Amplification of Warming Trends Across the Mountains of the Western United States” include UM researchers Solomon Dobrowski, Ashley Ballantyne, Anna Klene and Steve Running. It is available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/2014GL062803/.
The SNOTEL system also consistently under-measured snowpack. I know someone who maintained the old analog instruments and took part in the change over to digital. He estimated the newer devices undercounted precip. by about 10 percent. The suit boys back at HQ never believed him because they just don’t do fieldwork anymore – and what 30-something with a shiny new PhD. is going to listen to a 60-year-old field tech with 40 years experience?
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. … if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
—Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
Until readers recognize that all forms of energy (including gravitational potential energy) play a role in entropy and thus in determining the state of thermodynamic equilibrium (which the Second Law tells us will evolve) then you are barking up the wrong tree with radiative heat transfer theory as your only concept in your beliefs about temperatures on all planets and satellite moons.
So they have identified a bias that indicates that the previously identified trend was too large.
What are the chances that this correction will get applied to the temperature trends reported by the GISS and other groups?
glen, would you, too, guess at <0?
Auto – a bit cynically, perhaps, but in my 63rd year I'm a bit used to that now . . . .
Nearly every day I read about some warming bias, cherry picking, “homogenizing”, etc. or outright fraud in the temperature data sets. There are so many “scientists” working to make sure the Jim Hansen senario stays alive that I believe their combined efforts are massive and highly effective. I am wondering how much cooling we might see in the data sets if we could get an honest reading of the temperatures from these so-called experts.
It has been said that it is very, very hard to get a man to see the truth if his paycheck depends on not seeing it. I think we have a lot of that going on in climate “science”.
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. … if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
—Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
Until all readers recognize that all forms of energy (including gravitational potential energy) play a role in entropy and thus in determining the state of thermodynamic equilibrium (which the Second Law tells us will evolve) then you are barking up the wrong tree with radiative heat transfer theory as your only concept in your beliefs about temperatures on all planets and satellite moons.
Another measurement issue at NoTricksZone
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.ghJYJr6E.Kr1QR011.dpbs
Gee Whiz, is this just one more example of BS / AGW ≠ ‘Bovine Stuff’ / AGW, rather, =’s Basic Science / AGW ? It’s been 45 years since I took ‘basic science’ in high school, so, one might comment that I’m not a ‘scientific expert’. But, were I to use the TV series example of “Breaking Bad” and the characters of Walter White & Jesse, especially the episodes of “Fly” and “Salud” <> … the concept of Good Basic Science tells me that good, quality data comes from non-poluted data ! WW was obsessed with not have his process poluted by outside sources [ a fly ] and kept his ‘lab’ CLEAN ! Jesse, when called upon to recreate the product, argued successfully with a ‘scientist’ that the lab being provided for him would NOT function unless it was brought up to standards. When you change the measurement method, as is discussed here, without a reasonable control set to cross reference, all you’ve done is poluted the data. We common folk, non scientific types, get it . A. Watts did the very same discussion in that old paper of his, “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”, back in 2009 ! Just saying …. https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
This seems like yet another reason to ignore the surface temperature measurements and focus on the satellite data.
Satellite Data Says 2014 Actually Wasn’t The Warmest On Record http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/12/satellite-data-says-2014-actually-wasnt-the-warmest-on-record/
The more you find the lies the deeper they will hide the lies.
Next up as I posted now for years.
The mercury in the thermometers will have to be tested monthly to make sure they are not doctoring those up also.
Creepy. It is not global warming. The opposite.
Heck, even NCDC adusts for equipment change (CRS to MMTS) in its USHCN dataset.
Of course, that’s a positive adjustment . . . #B^)
I know this is maybe a little off topic but I am going to throw it in the mix. After SNOTEL and CRAP of Canada, what the heck. It seems somebody went a bit teenager a while back about PNAS too so nothing new. But anyway, while furthering my education by television last evening, I watched a program about the gardens at Buckingham Palace. The narrator said spring comes earlier in the Queen’s garden than the rest of (I think they said) England. Because, …………….wait for it, because……………, it is surrounded by the city of London!!! I gasped. I think they told the truth and there wasn’t a hint of global you-know-what. Perhaps that is why the program was on late night. Anyway, it was a good show.
snotel – short for snow telemetry. not snot tel. and we are well aware of changes in snow course readings due to vegetation changes and other mechanisms other than climate change and have published such. things like changing from steel pillows to hypalon, up to 25% decrease in snow accumulation. there are many deficiencies in measuring sensors and changes over time, we have as best we can,documented such and the information is ready and relevant to any researcher who will take the time to due diligence on a dataset prior to making conclusions. we also try to contact anyone we see publishing conclusions that have not made appropriate contact. some listen and some dont. i am very happy that mr oyler not only contacted, obtained relevant meta data and advice and counsel but [listened] and got it published… we have submitted a similar data bias paper on changes in snowpack and have been declined by a half dozen journals as not relevant.
[Thank you for your reply. .mod]
“…we have submitted a similar data bias paper on changes in snowpack and have been declined by a half dozen journals as not relevant.” Media bias may be more rampant than scientific/data bias and just as damaging.l
/ lack of / responses, foreseeable. Sad.
You’re on it anyway. Great !
Thx for standing, thanks for sharing.
Best regards – Hans
Randy,
Could you post a summary of your supporting findings with Anthony for possible publication here?
Best Regards,
Ray
“SNOTEL provides critical data for water supply forecasts.”
Critical. I’m sure. People always consider what they are doing important.
Ummmm …. Yes, critical! Accurate snow pack numbers are critical!
If you understand the issue of water rights, assume that:
A. Cities along a waterway have rights to a portion of the water.
B. Hydroelectric facilities have rights to a portion of the water.
C. Native tribes and Commercial/Recreational fishermen have negotiated requirements that x quantities of water must be left in the waterway to flush juvenile salmon downstream.
D. Long time irrigation rights holders get first crack at what’s left to irrigate their crops.
And then assume you’re a farmer and your irrigation rights are secondary level …. and you’re trying to decide what crops to plant.
It’s so easy to be condescending …. but I grew up in the Yakima Valley and I can tell you that snow pack numbers are critical.
“Critical. I’m sure.”
Depends on your location in this case. Essentially all farming in the Western US that is South of the 45th parallel and West of the Rockie Mountains depends on irrigation and a vast system of reservoirs and canals. The SNOTEL data is critical to the farmers and water managers that maintain this system.
gov agency – all publications have to go to professional journals – however, go to utah snow survey, under site data and there is a copy… unfortunately we are revamping our web page and much of the meta data, including a paper on this temperature topic is now not linked will get that back up soon. it details the entire history of our temperature data set in all its ugliness. data from about 2000 on, when we standardized all sensors, all shields, all locations is good – data prior to that is simple bad. no other way to put it,inconsistent in sensor type, sheilding and location…
Randy:
Do your high elevation Western US temperature readings – stated as accurate since 2000 on – match the “plateau the satellite readings indicate for global average temperature anomalies the past 18 years?
I wonder what the variability would be over 100 Stevenson screens spaced 100 feet apart on a 10 x 10 grid.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2906874/Volcanoes-cooling-Earth-Aerosols-small-eruptions-reduced-global-temperatures-tropical-rainfall.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
Hope this works never posted a link this long. Anyway the “Fix” is in ths pause is caused by little bitty volcanoes. This was noted on an earllier thread that they would do this . And sorry this O.T. but my dear wife brought it to my attention. sigh
michael
Oh and sorry about the poor spelling …I didn’t have it peer reviewed
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/09/ben-santer-tries-to-explain-the-pause-in-global-warming/
And Willis E. followed with one of his own about it.
——
. . . and Mike, you can do this:
Mike’s Link
to answer that question mr wolfe, we have within that 100 linear feet, 4 seperate temp sensor and 3 agencies operation them… any given hour there can be up to 10 degrees difference between these sensors. ours is warmer in winter, +2 degrees and cooler in summer than the raws site 100 feet way and slightly less different than the iUTAH site some 70 feet away… the link to changes in snow courses is:
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/ut/snow/?cid=nrcs141p2_034206
i could post the graphs between the temps sensors but am at tahoe, would have to get back to the office
@ur momisugly randy
How would you rate accuracy for day to day min and max tracking, say today’s min temp to tomorrow’s min temp, or max 2 max?
For each station, 1 by 1.
One might take note of the ‘SNO’ in SNOTEL. The point being that this system is founded with measuring snow that will melt and be available for irrigation utmost in mind. [The NRCS is the modern Soil Conservation Service and within the Department of Agriculture.] That alone is a tough thing because of winds and terrain. In the past (maybe now fixed), some sensors could be buried in snow.
Temperature from these sites can be expected to be problematic. Insofar as the purpose is to measure ‘water equivalent’ of the snow pack there isn’t much sense in having one on a site not expected to have snow. Snow blows off some spots and drops into others. Winds can come down off the high ridges in the morning and reverse in the afternoon.
This seems to be a system NOT designed for the type of temperature measurements needed to monitor climate trends.
Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t care all that much about temperature. Here is my wall of worry:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/pdo-macdonald2005.txt
I sometimes wonder if events 1000 years ago were one of the factors that made California tribes far more primitive than tribes in other parts of North America. Perhaps the Negative PDO beat them into submission and they never recovered.
Are we at the outset of another one of these?
James,
From that abstract: “A prolonged period of strongly negative PDO values
between AD 993 and 1300 is contemporaneous with a severe medieval megadrought
that is apparent in many proxy hydrologic records for the western United States
and Canada.”
That is also the time period that the Anasazi pueblo dwellers of the desert southwest were forced to leave their cliff dwellings…. and disappeared into the mists of history.
““Observations from other station networks clearly show that the western U.S. has experienced regional warming,” Oyler said, “but to assess current and future climate change impacts to snowpack and important mountain ecosystem processes, we need accurate observations from the high elevation areas only covered by the SNOTEL network. The SNOTEL bias has likely compromised our ability to understand the unique drivers and impacts of climate change in western U.S. mountains.”
Observations from other networks.
think.
so other networks show you that SNOTEL is biased.
think
you read that wrongly… as usual Mosh.
Think.
Go back to the authors’ abstract… and read it… and think.
As an aid, the best starting point is to put yourself in circa 1999-2000, and re-imagine (or remember) all those projections of 2015 and what was supposed to be happening then. Think…
I THINK we should rely on the satellites and microwaves so as not to worry of the confounding effects of tinfoil surrounds and interpolation. Maybe make tinfoil hats…
Looking at the bigger picture… if a minor change in type of thermometer or time of day or location of sensor can introduce an error the same order of magnitude as the climate signal, then common sense says the change in climate is not enough to be worrisome.
Urban Heat Islands (UHI) have caused rather dramatic warming in urban areas where most people live. Yet the people and the urban wildlife and urban environment continue to thrive. Changes with CO2 warming will be less and slower than the UHI warming that has already happened.
According to their abstract: With artifacts removed, the network’s 1991–2012 minimum temperature trend decreases from +1.16 °C decade−1 to +0.106 °C decade−1 and is statistically indistinguishable from lower elevation trends. Moreover, longer-term widely used gridded climate products propagate the spurious temperature trend, thereby amplifying 1981–2012 western US elevation-dependent warming by +217 to +562%.
Off by a factor of 10+…. Ouch