http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/07/07/on-the-record-observing-a-heatwave/
Readers will recall that when I asked for the temperature data at Heathrow for 1st July, I was told it would cost me £75 (+ VAT!!). The next day, however, they published this graph, showing a considerable spike.
Thanks to Willis Eschenbach’s excellent analysis at WUWT, I noticed that the data I had requested had actually been provided FOC to Carbon Brief, a political blog set up to promote the decarbonisation agenda. Carbon Brief, with the help of advice from the Met Office’s Mark McCarthy, then used the data to attempt to prove the assertion that it “woz the sun wot done it, onest guv”.
So, let’s take a look at the data, which the Met Office were so reluctant to hand over to me.
Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WqpCC7AHjfHa686evyNuKRvvhcIRE1bpwW0ElBZYP8A/edit?pli=1#gid=0
We find that the temperature at Heathrow jumped from 35.8C to 36.7C in the space of two minutes. According to Clive Best’s analysis, a Boeing 747 landed on the runway just to the south of the temperature sensor at 14.13, just as the temperature peaked. [UPDATE – We believe that the airline times are BST, and not GMT, as the Met Office have used. Clive is rechecking this]
Also note that there was a subtle wind shift from from the SE to S, from 14.06 to 14.12, just as temperatures picked up. Or 1.6C in five?
Meanwhile, the Met Office have two serious questions to answer:
1) Why were they so reluctant to provide this data to me in the first place?
2) Why are they so keen to help the Carbon Brief with their propaganda?
Is it really possible for a bit of sunshine to increase temperatures by 0.9C in two minutes?
It would be BST. UTC+1 Much like EDT. UTC-4.
For instance AC420 YYZ-YUL is scheduled to depart YYZ at 17:00 local no matter where +/- UTC is.
I did not know prior to this that the met office weather stations such as Heathrow or Waddington had anything but hourly records of temperature. We can find out more detailed information if we pay them money and it is from this more detailed temperature record that the new temperature records for July have been set for those weather stations that they claim have done so. I think that we have been subjected to nothing but propaganda from the Met office and the media in the UK about the weather and what little confidence I still had in the Met Office has now gone.
17:00 EDT converted to UTC
http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ac420/
a bit of fun about ice at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport today:
20 July: Crikey: Ben Sandilands: Ice makes a rare impact on Australian flights
While frost is relatively common over many Australian airports, delays caused by aircraft icing like those being reported from Melbourne Airport this morning are rare…
COMMENT By blueloo: “But the rarity of the problem at the major Australian airports makes the installation of de-icing gantries or mobile units impossible to justify.”
QANTAS bought a mobile de-icing unit for Melbourne within the last 10 years or so )i believe there were delays in it being approved due to lack of airport fluid containment facilities for the runoff). The de-icing truck usually sits somewhere near gate 7 on the domestic terminal. It used to look quite new but apparently as it doesn’t get much use it has been left to fade and waste away. Other news sites reported that the de-icing unit/truck was broken………
REPLY from Ben Sandilands: That’s sad news about the Melbourne de-ice truck. I noticed this morning that there are still drifts beside some roads three days after most of the snow fell and some of them show signs of being caused by the use of a grader to clear at least one lane.
What I meant about a major de-ice investment was the sort of industrial strength units used in much of the northern world.
These are designed to deal with tall vertical stabilisers on wide bodies like the A330 shown in the photo…
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2015/07/20/ice-makes-a-rare-impact-on-australian-flights/
Really, why use any thermometer at any modern airport for keeping climate records? It only makes since if you desire higher temperatures. Dollars for doughnuts they’ve adjusted early temps down and modern temps up at that site.
Solar radiation are measured horisontally. At that latitude and time of day will clear sky condition give a radiation of less than 900 w/m2, If larger values are measured must a reflections occured. Either in the atmosphere by clouds or by something on ground.
Paul Homewood wants to know why the Met Office handed over data to Carbon Brief.
apart from having staff with all the right academic & MSM connections listed in “About Us” below, their funding comes from interested quarters:
Carbon Brief – About Us
Funding
We are grateful for the support of the European Climate Foundation…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/about/
worthwhile checking out Who We Are – Board, Team, Funding etc:
European Climate Foundation: Caio Koch-Weser (Chair)
Caio Koch-Weser is a German politician, economist, civil servant and business executive. He was Secretary of State in the German Federal Ministry of Finance from 1999 to 2005.
Before his governmental duties, Mr. Koch-Weser spent 25 years at the World Bank, most recently as Managing Director of Operations, based in Washington. He was also Chair of the World Bank Policy Committee and a member of the Executive Management Committee. Currently, he is Vice-Chairman and senior adviser with Deutsche Bank.
The graph speaks for itself. It reveals a temporary spike in temps that is outside all other recorded temperatures that day. It’s an anomaly, simple as that, and should have been treated as such and ignored. However fair isn’t part of the alarmists playbook.
Trying to charge Paul Homewood while giving the info’ to the Carbon Brief for free just cements the mean-spiritedness of the deal.
.
PS @ur momisugly mod, sorry for earlier rant.
Adjusting data for known biases isn’t in denialists’ playbook. The record holds.
Yes, but with that logic, every past high record would need to be examined to determine whether the high on that day was over a short interval as well.
Do we know that the data was provided free of charge to Carbon Brief?
They may have paid the nominal fee.
What on earth s a temperature station doing next to one of he busiest runways in the world? It is unreliable.
Not for the purpose it is primarily intended. Flight crews need to know the local temperature, not the one some miles away.
As plausible as this all sounds, shouldn`t we be seeing a lot more of these spikes on a daily basis?
How do you know we aren’t? The only reason this particular spike was examined more closely was due to the attention-grabbing fanfare of “hottest ever” publicity.
How long has Heathrow been doing minute by minute logging of temperature? How can such a measurement be compared to the old use of min/max thermometers which would have a much longer latency for sudden temperature change?
son of mulder. I would strongly suggest that this is happening as a result of zero actual global warming for 18.5 years and the necessity to “prove” that AGW is occurring in the last Northern Hemisphere summer prior to the December Paris Summit. I must admit I am praying for blizzards to close Paris airport for a few days before this crapfest takes place.
The siting of the Heathrow Airport weather station is documented here with picture.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/wmo03772-heathrow/
“1) Why were they so reluctant to provide this data to me in the first place?”
Maybe because then all of their readings would become suspect. The Carbon people wouldn’t use/investigate that bit about the spike, but someone verifying the readings would.
Just a thought.
I take a bet that about that time a ‘heavy’ was doing some taxing . stopped for some reason then give it a boot full to get moving again , that would produce a nice big bloom of ‘hot-air’, wind in the right direction would be all you need.
The real story is the MET office PR pushing this ‘hottest ever ‘ and their attempt to BS there way out of it . Which when it comes to CAGW then been doing for years .
And once again it is worth remember that these stations are designed to give data for air-movements not to be used for wider areas and that often airports do not well represent the wider area anyway. They are used because , in classic climate ‘science’ style , then are ‘better than nothing ‘
The same plane also caused abrupt rise in sun radiance?
At 14.09 969.5 W/m2 there wasn’t a sudden temperature rise before for a minute. Please note you need sunshine to record solar radiation levels between 500 and 700 W/m, just different amounts of clouds affect the readings and can scatter solar radiation to give an impression the sensor is detecting more solar radiation than a clear sunny sky. If the idea was it takes a while in sunshine for it warm before it quickly rises, then why did the temperature suddenly drop while high sunshine levels were maintained? This certainly indicated a unnatural spike or the continued sunshine would had maintained it. Instead it drops 0.5 c in just a minute straight after, while continuing mainlining high solar radiation level readings.
Woj radiance on hot tarmac = UHI. You cannot know if other variables such as heavy airliner jet blast are involved so the data should be dumped from any sensible climate analysis. Any record at airports is meaningless unless you have a lot more instrumentation to account for all variables in a scientific manner. Warmists only require consensus to include bad data in the record of course. Science has little to do with the record.
Error
mainlining? maintaining
To quote Al Sleet, the Hippy Dippy Weatherman (George Carlin):
Temperature at the airport is 88°, which is stupid because I don’t know anyone who lives at the airport…
The temperature at Heathrow on that day was only at or above 36c for 4 minutes it would be interesting how long the spikes lasted at the other stations that claimed record July temperatures, this could have been the four minute heat wave across the UK and I did not notice it pass by because it did not seem that hot a day where I was it was cloudy mostly.
I’m no expert on Heathrow operations, but if a plane landed and turned like on this picture (747 added by me and left clownishly large on purpose so nobody thinks I tried to fake an actual landing) looks where it’s engines are pointed: http://oi61.tinypic.com/2e31x5f.jpg
While I have been busy I found time to e-mail Heathrow. A very pleasant, professional lady, Debbie King, replied that the runways are “made of tarmac”.
Sunshine on what we call “blacktop” raises the temperature a bunch. Particularly new blacktop.
An aside, the 10,000 Ft and 8600 Ft runways at the Rockford Airport are made of blacktop. Our record high temperature is 112 degrees f. Wasn’t quite that hot when the Concorde used to land here. As a retired (reformed?) roofer I know those long-chain molecules can be blown to pretty stiff consistencies. We mopped at a bit above 550 with “extra steep” we used on walls.
In the short section of data provided there are short ‘runs’ where the temperature change is >= 0 in successive samples. Most “runs” are only 2 or 3 samples long. There are two runs of 5 successive increases. One at 1430 to 1435 gave a net 0.5 degree increase. The run at 1408-1413 which produced the maximum has a swing of 1.6 degrees. All other runs are 0.6 degrees or less. The swing which leads to the maximum is a major outlier compared to all other changes. It would be interesting to see what swings were recorded across much longer periods.
Rough graph here http://bit.ly/GWKEWDELTAT