30 year trends of temperature are shown to be lower, using well-sited high quality NOAA weather stations that do not require adjustments to the data.
This was in AGU’s press release news feed today. At about the time this story publishes, I am presenting it at the AGU 2015 Fall meeting in San Francisco. Here are the details.
NEW STUDY OF NOAA’S U.S. CLIMATE NETWORK SHOWS A LOWER 30-YEAR TEMPERATURE TREND WHEN HIGH QUALITY TEMPERATURE STATIONS UNPERTURBED BY URBANIZATION ARE CONSIDERED
Figure 4 – Comparisons of 30 year trend for compliant Class 1,2 USHCN stations to non-compliant, Class 3,4,5 USHCN stations to NOAA final adjusted V2.5 USHCN data in the Continental United States
EMBARGOED UNTIL 13:30 PST (16:30 EST) December 17th, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – A new study about the surface temperature record presented at the 2015 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests that the 30-year trend of temperatures for the Continental United States (CONUS) since 1979 are about two thirds as strong as officially NOAA temperature trends.
Using NOAA’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network, which comprises 1218 weather stations in the CONUS, the researchers were able to identify a 410 station subset of “unperturbed” stations that have not been moved, had equipment changes, or changes in time of observations, and thus require no “adjustments” to their temperature record to account for these problems. The study focuses on finding trend differences between well sited and poorly sited weather stations, based on a WMO approved metric Leroy (2010)1 for classification and assessment of the quality of the measurements based on proximity to artificial heat sources and heat sinks which affect temperature measurement. An example is shown in Figure 2 below, showing the NOAA USHCN temperature sensor for Ardmore, OK.
Following up on a paper published by the authors in 2010, Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends2 which concluded:
Temperature trend estimates vary according to site classification, with poor siting leading to an overestimate of minimum temperature trends and an underestimate of maximum temperature trends, resulting in particular in a substantial difference in estimates of the diurnal temperature range trends
…this new study is presented at AGU session A43G-0396 on Thursday Dec. 17th at 13:40PST and is titled Comparison of Temperature Trends Using an Unperturbed Subset of The U.S. Historical Climatology Network
A 410-station subset of U.S. Historical Climatology Network (version 2.5) stations is identified that experienced no changes in time of observation or station moves during the 1979-2008 period. These stations are classified based on proximity to artificial surfaces, buildings, and other such objects with unnatural thermal mass using guidelines established by Leroy (2010)1 . The United States temperature trends estimated from the relatively few stations in the classes with minimal artificial impact are found to be collectively about 2/3 as large as US trends estimated in the classes with greater expected artificial impact. The trend differences are largest for minimum temperatures and are statistically significant even at the regional scale and across different types of instrumentation and degrees of urbanization. The homogeneity adjustments applied by the National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly the National Climatic Data Center) greatly reduce those differences but produce trends that are more consistent with the stations with greater expected artificial impact. Trend differences are not found during the 1999- 2008 sub-period of relatively stable temperatures, suggesting that the observed differences are caused by a physical mechanism that is directly or indirectly caused by changing temperatures.
Key findings:
1. Comprehensive and detailed evaluation of station metadata, on-site station photography, satellite and aerial imaging, street level Google Earth imagery, and curator interviews have yielded a well-distributed 410 station subset of the 1218 station USHCN network that is unperturbed by Time of Observation changes, station moves, or rating changes, and a complete or mostly complete 30-year dataset. It must be emphasized that the perturbed stations dropped from the USHCN set show significantly lower trends than those retained in the sample, both for well and poorly sited station sets.
2. Bias at the microsite level (the immediate environment of the sensor) in the unperturbed subset of USHCN stations has a significant effect on the mean temperature (Tmean) trend. Well sited stations show significantly less warming from 1979 – 2008. These differences are significant in Tmean, and most pronounced in the minimum temperature data (Tmin). (Figure 3 and Table 1)
3. Equipment bias (CRS v. MMTS stations) in the unperturbed subset of USHCN stations has a significant effect on the mean temperature (Tmean) trend when CRS stations are compared with MMTS stations. MMTS stations show significantly less warming than CRS stations from 1979 – 2008. (Table 1) These differences are significant in Tmean (even after upward adjustment for MMTS conversion) and most pronounced in the maximum temperature data (Tmax).
4. The 30-year Tmean temperature trend of unperturbed, well sited stations is significantly lower than the Tmean temperature trend of NOAA/NCDC official adjusted homogenized surface temperature record for all 1218 USHCN stations.
5. We believe the NOAA/NCDC homogenization adjustment causes well sited stations to be adjusted upwards to match the trends of poorly sited stations.
6. The data suggests that the divergence between well and poorly sited stations is gradual, not a result of spurious step change due to poor metadata.
The study is authored by Anthony Watts and Evan Jones of surfacestations.org , John Nielsen-Gammon of Texas A&M , John R. Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville and represents years of work in studying the quality of the temperature measurement system of the United States.
Lead author Anthony Watts said of the study: “The majority of weather stations used by NOAA to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts. This study demonstrates conclusively that this issue affects temperature trend and that NOAA’s methods are not correcting for this problem, resulting in an inflated temperature trend. It suggests that the trend for U.S. temperature will need to be corrected.” He added: “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record”.
The full AGU presentation can be downloaded here: https://goo.gl/7NcvT2
[1] Leroy, M. (2010): Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land, Climate, and Upper-air Observations JMA/WMO Workshop on Quality Management in Surface, Tokyo, Japan, 27-30 July 2010
[2] Fall et al. (2010) Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/r-367.pdf
Abstract ID and Title: 76932: Comparison of Temperature Trends Using an Unperturbed Subset of The U.S. Historical Climatology Network
Final Paper Number: A43G-0396
Presentation Type: Poster
Session Date and Time: Thursday, 17 December 2015; 13:40 – 18:00 PST
Session Number and Title: A43G: Tropospheric Chemistry-Climate-Biosphere Interactions III Posters
Location: Moscone South; Poster Hall
Full presentation here: https://goo.gl/7NcvT2
Some side notes.
This work is a continuation of the surface stations project started in 2007, our first publication, Fall et al. in 2010, and our early draft paper in 2012. Putting out that draft paper in 2012 provided us with valuable feedback from critics, and we’ve incorporated that into the effort. Even input from openly hostile professional people, such as Victor Venema, have been highly useful, and I thank him for it.
Many of the valid criticisms of our 2012 draft paper centered around the Time of Observation (TOBs) adjustments that have to be applied to the hodge-podge of stations with issues in the USHCN. Our viewpoint is that trying to retain stations with dodgy records and adjusting the data is a pointless exercise. We chose simply to locate all the stations that DON”T need any adjustments and use those, therefor sidestepping that highly argumentative problem completely. Fortunately, there was enough in nthe USHCN, 410 out of 1218.
It should be noted that the Class1/2 station subset (the best stations we have located in the CONUS) can be considered an analog to the Climate Reference Network in that these stations are reasonably well distributed in the CONUS, and like the CRN, require no adjustments to their records. The CRN consists of 114 commissioned stations in the contiguous United States, our numbers of stations are similar in size and distribution. This should be noted about the CRN:
One of the principal conclusions of the 1997 Conference on the World Climate Research Programme was that the global capacity to observe the Earth’s climate system is inadequate and deteriorating worldwide and “without action to reverse this decline and develop the GCOS [Global Climate Observing System], the ability to characterize climate change and variations over the next 25 years will be even less than during the past quarter century” (National Research Council [NRC] 1999). In spite of the United States being a leader in climate research, long term U.S. climate stations have faced challenges with instrument and site changes that impact the continuity of observations over time. Even small biases can alter the interpretation of decadal climate variability and change, so a substantial effort is required to identify non-climate discontinuities and correct the station records (a process calledhomogenization). Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/why.html
The CRN has a decade of data, and it shows a pause in the CONUS. Our subset of adjustment free unperturbed stations spans over 30 years, We think it is well worth looking at that data and ignoring the data that requires loads of statistical spackle to patch it up before it is deemed usable. After all, that’s what they say is the reason the CRN was created.
We do allow for one and only one adjustment in the data, and this is only because it is based on physical observations and it is a truly needed adjustment. We use the MMTS adjustment noted in Menne et al. 2009 and 2010 for the MMTS exposure housing versus the old wooden box Cotton Region Shelter (CRS) which has a warm bias mainly due to [paint] and maintenance issues. The MMTS gill shield is a superior exposure system that prevents bias from daytime short-wave and nighttime long-wave thermal radiation. The CRS requires yearly painting, and that often gets neglected, resulting in exposure systems that look like this:
See below for a comparison of the two:
Some might wonder why we have a 1979-2008 comparison when this is 2015. The reason is so that this speaks to Menne et al. 2009 and 2010, papers launched by NOAA/NCDC to defend their adjustment methods for the USCHN from criticisms I had launched about the quality of the surface temperature record, such as this book in 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? This sent NOAA/NCDC into a tizzy, and they responded with a hasty and ghost written flyer they circulated. In our paper, we extend the comparisons to the current USHCN dataset as well as the 1979-2008 comparison.
We are submitting this to publication in a well respected journal. No, I won’t say which one because we don’t need any attempts at journal gate-keeping like we saw in the Climategate emails. i.e “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” and “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”.
When the journal article publishes, we’ll make all of the data, code, and methods available so that the study is entirely replicable. We feel this is very important, even if it allows unscrupulous types to launch “creative” attacks via journal publications, blog posts, and comments. When the data and paper is available, we’ll welcome real and well-founded criticism.
It should be noted that many of the USHCN stations we excluded that had station moves, equipment changes, TOBs changes, etc that were not suitable had lower trends that would have bolstered our conclusions.
The “gallery” server from that 2007 surfacestations project that shows individual weather stations and siting notes is currently offline, mainly due to it being attacked regularly and that affects my office network. I’m looking to move it to cloud hosting to solve that problem. I may ask for some help from readers with that.
We think this study will hold up well. We have been very careful, very slow and meticulous. I admit that the draft paper published in July 2012 was rushed, mainly because I believed that Dr. Richard Muller of BEST was going before congress again the next week using data I provided which he agreed to use only for publications, as a political tool. Fortunately, he didn’t appear on that panel. But, the feedback we got from that effort was invaluable. We hope this pre-release today will also provide valuable criticism.
People might wonder if this project was funded by any government, entity, organization, or individual; it was not. This was all done on free time without any pay by all involved. That is another reason we took our time, there was no “must produce by” funding requirement.
Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist of Texas, has done all the statistical significance analysis and his opinion is reflected in this statement from the introduction
Dr. Nielsen-Gammon has been our worst critic from the get-go, he’s independently reproduced the station ratings with the help of his students, and created his own series of tests on the data and methods. It is worth noting that this is his statement:
The trend differences are largest for minimum temperatures and are statistically significant even at the regional scale and across different types of instrumentation and degrees of urbanization.
The p-values from Dr. Nielsen-Gammon’s statistical significance analysis are well below 0.05 (the 95% confidence level), and many comparisons are below 0.01 (the 99% confidence level). He’s on-board with the findings after satisfying himself that we indeed have found a ground truth. If anyone doubts his input to this study, you should view his publication record.
COMMENT POLICY:
At the time this post goes live, I’ll be presenting at AGU until 18:00PST , so I won’t be able to respond to queries until after then. Evan Jones “may” be able to after about 330PM PST.
This is a technical thread, so those who simply want to scream vitriol about deniers, Koch Brothers, and Exxon aren’t welcome here. Same for people that just want to hurl accusations without backing them up (especially those using fake names/emails, we have a few). Moderators should use pro-active discretion to weed out such detritus. Genuine comments and/or questions are welcome.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this study and presentation possible.
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I’ve tried submitting a couple comments while logged in under my Twitter account (where the username would show up as Brandon S?) but they haven’t appeared, not even as awaiting moderation. Is there any chance they could get fished out?
(Or rather, could just the first one get fished out. The follow up comments were just me trying to figure out what was going on.)
Brandon, I tried to use my Galaxy last night to post comments using this exact name and account, but they wouldn’t post either. It’s happened before. I’m wondering if using “apps” somehow causes them to not get recognized by WordPress or something…
It would be fun if someone could round up all the troll comments, the bilious attacks and personal insults that have been removed from this site over the years. No doubt there have been a huge number attempting to insult, denigrate, defame, libel, abuse, insult, malign and vilify the hard working people who have used their own time, petrol (Ha! a fossil fuel plot) etc. to gather the data for this study, on this post alone. There were 16 posts on this subject on Bishop Hill before the first troll got out of bed and dragged his tablet out from under its rock. It is such fun watching them splutter into their fairtrade, harvested by sustainable methods, transported by sailing ships coffee. A book could be published of them all, or we could get Lew to do a conspiracy theory paper.
Good to see some science as I understood it still being done. The modern version of people in lab coats “reanalizing” data does not really cut it. ( and no……. re-anal-izing is not a spelling mistake)
As that is a sword that cuts both ways, I am not inclined to judge.
It is such fun watching them splutter into their fairtrade, harvested by sustainable methods, transported by sailing ships coffee.
Why, yes. So we enjoy the show.
Sorry, it is creating more confusion:
with 1218 stations official the trend varied between 0.224 to 0.409 oC/decade
with 410 stations data the trend varied between 0.04 to 0.292 oC/decade
with 808 stations data the trend varied between 0.219 to 0.442 oC/decade
Also, this is not based on the standard [WMO specification] Stevenson Screen data
Also,it is only for 30 years — not enough to understand trend as this may be part of natural variability.
I really don’t understand what is the real motive in presenting this data. Is it to show the problems in the data series building, then it is o.k but if the intension is to show the trend then this may not be right way. As I pointed earlier, please present a trend of historical data of an urban and rural station measured using Stevenson screen and not open sensors on the streets.
Also, W followed by M in Figure 1 is around 10 years and not 30 years as replied earlier.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
with 1218 stations official the trend varied between 0.224 to 0.409 oC/decade
with 410 stations data the trend varied between 0.04 to 0.292 oC/decade
with 808 stations data the trend varied between 0.219 to 0.442 oC/decade
That is the lowest/highest trend for individual region. 1st is Region 9 (West, lowest-trend region), while the 2nd number is for Region 7 (Southwest, highest-trend region) .
Also, this is not based on the standard [WMO specification] Stevenson Screen data
This is based on data for all equipment: CRS, MMTS, ASOS/AWOS. (MMTS adjustment applied for equipment conversion.) We do have a CRS-only subset. But CRS data is fatally flawed from the getgo, for both Tmin and (especially) Tmax. A CRS box in and of itself is a heat sink that spuriously increases trend for both Max and Min.
Also,it is only for 30 years — not enough to understand trend as this may be part of natural variability.
It covers a positive PDO phase. So it is ~half natural, ~half anthropogenic. But that is not what we are trying to assess. We are merely comparing the trends of well and poorly sited stations over a 30-year period of unequivocal overall warming.
Dr Reddy. I believe what the poster actually say is:
Among the nine regions of the CONUS
with 1218 stations official the trend varied between 0.224 to 0.409°C/decade
with 92 unperturbed class 1/2 stations data the trend varied between 0.04 to 0.292°C/decade
with 318 unperturbed class 3/4/5 stations data the trend varied between 0.219 to 0.442°C/decade
This was well documented in The Changing Climate of Global Warming. Here is just one of the clips that hit on the subject.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=24m30s
That is a direct reference to our study.
Here are the longest instrumental records there are, and they show no material warming.
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/jones1992a.pdf
Also, W followed by M in Figure 1 is around 10 years and not 30 years as replied earlier.
I am not sure what you mean. But figures apply to amount of warming per decade over the full 30-year study period. Does this answer the question?
Glad to hear my previous review was “highly useful”.
Hopefully my new review is also helpful.
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/12/anthony-watts-agu2015-surface-stations.html …
Normally I’d say yes, but unfortunately your have dirtied yourself by adding a link at the top to a rant by Sou/Hotwhopper aka Miriam O’Brien.
You profess a love of rational discourse in science, but you consort with someone whose sole purpose is denigration. It doesn’t say much for your professionalism.
That said, some good points there, many of which we are already aware.
Normally I’d agree. But Miriam O’Brien has labeled me a criminal (in writing) just for having a different opinion and daring to write about it. That’s over the top and indicative of her own lack of tolerance for “differing matters of opinion.”
Happy to hear you found some good points.
As long as it is nearly impossible to come to an agreement on scientific questions which have an answer, I do not think it would be productive to have a discussion about which blogs tone is worse. Always happy to discuss scientific topics where I have expertise.
John Whitman asked Victor V.:
Will Anthony (and his co-authors) have a chance to review drafts of your future climate focused papers before they go to a journal for submittal, as he has allowed you to do (eg – your previous review)?
There’s your answer, John. V.V. says there are scientific questions that have an answer. But as a typical climate alarmist, he refuses to accept what the planet is clearly saying; he doesn’t like the answer, which shows he and his ilk are wrong.
And:
Always happy to discuss scientific topics where I have expertise.
So I guess that’s the last we will hear from V.V.
@ur momisugly Buster Brown (who has at least 3 other names, per a mod, not long ago…) — Either you have poor reading skills or you deliberately mischaracterized (by implication) Anthony’s well-founded, rational, conclusion that for V. to include someone as dishonest (not to mention erroneous) as “Sou” in a discussion of Anthony’s paper is NOT to be “open-minded.” Rather, it is to create a false impression of “balance.”
{Much as O’Reilly of Fox does with his often pseudo-“fair and balanced.”}
That is, whether you meant “Sou” or V., you are wrong.
J
Buster Brown: AW said that V. had “dirtied” himself, not that V, himself, was dirty. So, I still disagree with your castigation of AW.
“Janince, every time one of my kids “dirties” themselves, I find that they are dirty. Never have they “dirtied” themselves and remained clean.”
And do your children simply, suddenly grow dirty spontaneously, or did they dirty themselves with something else? Because if your children are like every other child I know, including my own, the conditions required for becoming a dirty child are at least 1-a child and 2-a source or substance with which a formerly clean child has come into contact. So, unless you have never cleaned your kids, OR your children simply become dirty spontaneously, your anecdote is merely that.
My children would most likely BE “super special and out of the ordinary” because even they understand that logic allows people to know the difference between a statement of fact, and a statement of analogy. I mean, if I can assume logically that none of us can SEE V physically, (including Anthony and Janice) then using that same logic and reason, I would never ASSUME that Anthony was implying that V “dirtied” himself physically. If I actually tried to TELL my kids why I logically arrived at that conclusion, they would all most likely respond with some form of “DUH mom”.
They would also likely examine your posts here and declare that you think like a knucklehead. But then again, that might just be because they are super special out of the ordinary kids. You might try to find some, and observe.
Dirty boys ?
Buster strikes me as a guy who wants a little more attention than needed and does so by spinning things that are uninteresting. My 2 cents. My boys would ask him if he was breast fed, but they are not a sensitive bunch.
Now on the subject of dirty children, all I can say is encourage them to experience the world. Give them a good sense of when to stop being stupid so they survive to live another day.
I really only know about raising boys. THEY esp need to get dirty in all aspects of life. Test their mettle. Flex their limits. Exhaust themselves actually. Eventually they test the values in any pack as they should and figure out who they are and what they can bring to the table. Creates winners, losers, drives excellence. Yes, I know spoken like a knuckle dragging man.
I don’t know about girls, but I often wonder how one would have turned out in Knuteland.
REPLY – Please be advised. We only do meters around these-here parts. ~ Evan
Victor Venema,
Will Anthony (and his co-authors) have a chance to review drafts of your future climate focused papers before they go to a journal for submittal, as he has allowed you to do (eg – your previous review)?
It seems like that kind of reasonable professional reciprocation, as a common courtesy, would show good will. What do you think of this suggestion?
John
John Whitman, I could not review the draft of Watts et al. (2015) because only the press release/blog post and poster was made available. In general, I do not think that it is a good idea to search public attention for a study before it is published, especially when the result is likely to be contested, whether James Hansen does this or Anthony Watts, but at least in case of James Hansen there was a manuscript available.
In case you would like to hear whether I see Anthony Watts as a person with a deep understanding of homogenization algorithms, what I mainly write about, whose unique expertise would likely improve my manuscripts, I think you know that answer and you seem to be mainly looking for a fight.
“…homogenization algorithms…”
Well, there’s your problem right there. You guys just love to ‘homogenize’ everything until you get the answers you want. Your problem is that the real world is debunking your homogenization nonsense.
And let me add to John Whitman’s question: it’s not just Anthony Watts who should be able to review drafts of your future climate focused papers before they go to a journal for submittal. Everyone reading this site should have the same opportunity.
But I doubt you will allow that. Because if you did, I suspect that your manuscript would never be published.
Victor Venema,
Here is my understanding.
I think you said that the 2015 AGU FALL MEETING poster authors (Watts, Evans, Christy, Nielsen-Gammon) have insufficient professional standing/merit to receive from you what I called a “reasonable professional reciprocation, as a common courtesy, [that] would show good will” to see your future early draft research prior to submittal to journals. Actually, you focused only on one team member, Watts; curiously, you did not focus on the balanced team he is an essential uniquely contributing part of.
You appear to say no, even though you were allowed the opportunity to see an earlier pre-2015 draft of the research; where the earlier pre-2015 draft research was what you identified in your sentence ””Glad to hear my previous review was “highly useful””.
I had hoped to understand more clearly your personal view of what is reasonable basis for a professional attitude in the matter; not to argue with you. I now have a much improved clearness about your premises that inform your professional attitude. Thank you.
John
Victor Venema
“Glad to hear my previous review was “highly useful”.
Hopefully my new review is also helpful.”
Complete with accusations that Anthony Watts is a “science denier”, I note.
After visiting your blog, I felt I needed to scrub myself with bleach.
We have a hickory tree out back.
It has endured many a thwacking.
Don’t do the bleach thing .. total sterilization and you can easily end up with some funk as new bugs turn into opportunists.
Gentlemen, please.
My dear VeeV! Yes, highly useful, indeed. For the both of us, I’d like to think. Please feel welcome in this forum. Speaking strictly personally (and having no dog in the fight), I am quite unconcerned with whom you consort. Besides, think of all the good times we had there.
Well, to take it up from last time around, as you can see, there appear to be no untoward step changes in our graph. The bumps track each other rather well, if I do say so. First, we see a match (before MMTS conversion occurs — and we all know what they say about those CRS jobs, and it’s lamentably true to the [T]max), then an increasing divergence. Just like I said. So if we got it wrong, it ain’t that.
So I entreat you again: You course is clear. All you gotta do to salvage things is to do pairwise — not with just any old nearby station, but with stations of similar ratings (Class 1\2-to-Class 1\2 and Class 3\4\5-to-Class 3\4\5).
You can dustbin the baddies. Or at least apply (or infer, if GHCN metadata is as bad as I suspect) a microsite adjustment. A whopping big downward one, that is. Then split all the jumps you like. After all, if you must smear the homog-sauce all over the main course, you may as well do it right.
So come down a few floors and join the proles. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Why be a horrible warning when you have such a prime opportunity to be a shining example?
Be the man who saved the GHCN. Who knows, maybe you’ll win the Nobel Prize (for Science, not the Beauty one like in 2007). Or at least earn a spot in the Deniers’ Hall of Shame.
Besides, if you don’t, somebody else surely will. There is no getting the toothpaste back in the tube. Too late in the day for that. And, like the old jingoism jingle goes, “You got the men, you got the guns, and you got the money, too.”
It could be the beginning of a beautiful trendship.
I think this proves beyond a doubt that ground based thermometers should no longer be used..We have satellites that cover the ENTIRE globe AND don’t need continuous ( and sometimes retro active ? ) adjustments that are subject to a personal bias, as has been seen lately !! Satellites only, from now on !!
The correct ones must be used. If all are used, a Microsite adjustment must be applied.
“Lord Voldemort will provide.” #p^j
Why use them if you have satellites ??
Technically speaking the ground temperature stations don’t measure surface temperature either, but the air temperature a meter plus a bit above the surface. It’s all a matter of distance.
Why, no, they don’t, do they? They measure LT. And, as we know, LT trend is supposed to track higher than surface, anyway, at least during a warming phase. “Basic Physics” and all that.
Except when it doesn’t, of course.
Which means, as it stands, both can’t be right. And I think we both have a pretty good idea, at this stage in the game, which one can’t be right.
Moreover, the effects of urban heat sources offer an explanation for the current plateau in temperatures.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/when-is-it-warming-the-real-reason-for-the-pause/
It might be interesting to see another comparison of the 410 remaining stations and how their temperature trends compare to population increases in the nearby vicinity.
Probably some, but I don’t think a whole lot. We are only looking 100m. away from each station, anyway. More often only Sometimes pn;y 10m. Even 5m. or 3m.
Of course, a mesosite delta can affect trend, but we don’t think that’s weighing in much, here.
So, why is presenting a single trend line meaningful, in light of the fact that you can’t average intensive properties.
Because linear trends are the favorite statistical porn of choice. Good old OLS. Famed in song and story. And, god help us, we love it so.
I note on NCEI/NOAA an anticipatory release prior to Anthony’s talk telling everyone the US surface stations network is reliable and properly adjusted. They gave as their reference the old Menne paper that had been rushed out in 2010.
“A recent study conducted by scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information found no evidence that the U.S. temperature trend is inflated by poor siting of stations that comprise the US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN).”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/temperature-monitoring.php
I believe the work of Anthony et al has resulted in increased employment at NOAA-NCEI and has given them their work orders over the past few years. Some spin doctors were added as well, I’m sure.
Such an ‘anticipatory release’ telling everyone ‘everything is fine’ can backfire badly when is contradicted within a few days by study with p<01 significant results.
Frankly, now the smog has cleared from Paris COP21, you'd think the team would lighten up.
Most studies are unable even to beat Standard Error overlap. That’s only ~70% confidence after the dust clears. And that’s only the flashy external error bars. Who knows what mishmash of internal uncertainties even goes into producing those nice, thin, crisp external bars? (Yes, homogenization monster, I am looking at you.)
“We are submitting this to publication in a well respected journal. No, I won’t say which one because we don’t need any attempts at journal gate-keeping like we saw in the Climategate emails.”
Given the importance of getting the numbers right, and the effort you and your co-authors have put into this, it is essential that this project go through peer review. If I was an editor of a journal you sent this to, I’d likely push hard for publication even if peer reviewers were somewhat negative (if the study is clearly shown in review to be unpublishable, then of course there is nothing one can do). But this is one thing you’ve earned form your efforts to attack the science: a bit of inoculation. I would rather see the study clearly aired and addressed publicly, fairly, than killed in committee.
Sou and Variable Variability raise important questions about your study, which I assume you will address in the submitted article. Also, I assume your submitted paper will address issues about this sort of thing raised by Menne et al 2010. Also, there may be two uphill battles for the relevancy of this work. One is the whole idea of adjusting data. If your work is correct, data will have to undergo an adjustment, but the “deniers” (if I may use that term here) have been telling the “alarmists” that they are being bad boys for adjusting the data a bit too long to let that suggestion go uncommented on. The second is the relevancy of the US, which tends to buck the trend in global surface temperatures, over this particular period of time (AGW is a multi-decadal long term trend) to the overall picture of global warming. So you should probably try to address those issues in your paper too, I suppose.
Good luck, and may Reviewer Three be swift and kind.
Thanks for the words of encouragement.
Thank you for all your efforts.
Looking forward to looking at your work in detail.
Gregladen,
On what logical basis do you make the claim that “it is essential that this project go through peer review”? Accurate, honest peer review only means that some unbiased scientists (hopefully) read the paper and didn’t find anything wrong with it’s conclusions based on it’s methodology. It does not work like some kind of scientific seal of “truth”. Peer review should never be thought to mean that all of the reviewers believe and agree with the conclusions of the paper in question. Either Anthony et al make valid conclusions based upon empirical evidence, or they do not. To say they deserve “a bit of inoculation” makes it sound like they deserve preferential treatment, which has no place in “science” at all.
Anthony can and will publish this paper, whether or not the journal they are currently planning to submit it to accepts it or not. And it will be clearly aired and addressed publicly and fairly…and unfairly.
Some questions: You state- ” ‘deniers’ have been telling the ‘alarmists’ that they are being bad boys for adjusting the data”.
1) did you mean ALL deniers? Or just some? In particular have Anthony et al done so? If Anthony et al do not have a history of rejecting all adjustments to all data, then it would be silly to attack them as if they did.
2) Were ALL complaints from “deniers” about adjusting data based on flawed logic/reason or were some complaints about adjusting data based on logical and reasonable concerns? Because if one believes that there are absolutely no logical/reasonable arguments against adjusting data, it would make one doubly illogical/irrational to use someone else’s obviously irrational/illogical arguments against Anthony et al. Right?
Neither the uphill battle nor any campaign against this paper has any affect on it’s “relevancy” at all.
On what logical basis do you make the claim that “it is essential that this project go through peer review”?
Oh, it is. It will. With a healthy side of independent review. I look forward to it. Gotta get it past the ‘skins, you know.
if the US is bad what hope for African data!!
It’s the metadata that has me worried the most.
Actually, it seems lately that climate science seems to be using ” PAL Review “, which Anthony would not do of course…
Ah, that pal review thing was a loser from the getgo. See what it got them. A whole passle of papers competing for space to fall flat on, that’s what. Sure. you can fiddle peer review — but you can’t fiddle independent review.
When your teach told you that cheating was only cheating yourself, well, he got that one right.
Anthony, you do know that this paper will now officially make you part of the 97%!
Har.
But we already knew that.
Thus we ignore the visual signs of: Sea level rise. Warming oceans. Shrinking ice sheets. Declining Arctic sea ice. Glacial retreat. Extreme events. Ocean acidification. Decreased snow cover.
I hope you are being sarcastic… Not sure though. In case you are not…
Sea level rise has not accelerated in the ‘CO2 era’.
Oceans have warmed a tiny fraction of a degree, and only if you use the adjusted data.
Ice sheets have been shrinking since the end of ‘the little ice age’. And the Antarctic ice sheet is actually growing (as shown in a recent NASA study).
Declining Arctic sea ice has somewhat stabilized. The reduction was mostly due to wind driving ice out of the arctic, rather than unusual warmth. And the fact is, the arctic ice has little affect on anything. The albedo effect is low due to the very high latitude (as compared to the growing antarctic ice which is at much lower latitude).
Glaciers have been retreating since the ‘little ice age’, this is nothing new or catastrophic.
What extreme events are we talking about here. Hurricanes and ACE show no trend. Tornados show no trend, global drought shows no trend. You will have to back that one up a bit if you want to be taken seriously.
Ocean acidification? The oceans have neutralized by 0.1 or 0.2 on the pH scale, becoming somewhat more neutral, not acidic. This is truly a non issue.
Decreased snow cover? Seriously, have you looked at the data?
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=11
Rutgers shows that since the late 1980’s snow cover has been essentially trendless (maybe slightly up) and hovering right around the zero anomaly.
“The oceans have neutralized by 0.1 or 0.2 on the pH scale, becoming somewhat more neutral, not acidic. This is truly a non issue”
the canadian marine authorities say the seas are stable at between 7.5- 8.5.
You mean your imagination ???
@ur momisugly Moyer (0825 today):
1. Prove with evidence that each of those phenomena is actually occurring to a degree of significance making what we “see” of them worth noticing.
2. Prove with evidence that human CO2 caused any of those phenomena.
He can’t, and “Thus we ignore the visual signs of” his irrational, illogical argument. 🙂
Oh Oh..Ladies tag team..your done for Moyers !!! LOL….
Thus we ignore the visual signs of: Sea level rise
Or ignore visual signs that Land has subsided, making it appear as though sea levels have risen.
Thus we ignore
Sure, sure (but without the “extreme events”).
But we ain’t asking how. All we’re asking is how much.
From the head post: When the journal article publishes, we’ll make all of the data, code, and methods available so that the study is entirely replicable. (emphasis mine)
This is entirely proper. But I would like to push back on criticisms that until the data, code, and methods are published, the results are NOT replicable.
We are not talking about one-time experimental results. We are talking about a different way to analyze historical government, public domain records together with microsite issues that can be gathered by public documents, google and USGS satellite images, and a generalized concept of “What if we use a subset of stations with few moves and record complications.
There are not any barriers to performing the work yourselves with data that might be on your shelves. Indeed, scientific replication does not mean using the same data, same code, and same methods — that only repeats mistakes. Scientific Replication is about taking the concepts and reapplying those concepts with similar but different data, similar but different methods.
But I would like to push back on criticisms that until the data, code, and methods are published, the results are NOT replicable.
Well sure. But twice burnt, twice shy. So you-all will have to wait. We beg your indulgence in this.
Anthony Watts wrote: “5. We believe the NOAA/NCDC homogenization adjustment causes well sited stations to be adjusted upwards to match the trends of poorly sited stations.”
I have never quite understood the NCDC’s description of its Station History Adjustment Program. They say this here:
“Application of the Station History Adjustment Procedure (yellow line) resulted in an average increase in US temperatures, especially from 1950 to 1980. During this time, many sites were relocated from city locations to airports and from roof tops to grassy areas. This often resulted in cooler readings than were observed at the previous sites. When adjustments were applied to correct for these artificial changes, average US temperature anomalies were cooler in the first half of the 20th century and effectively warmed throughout the later half. ”
Not being a climate scientist, that reads to me as if surface stations are moved to cooler locations and post-move temperatures are adjusted upwards while pre-move temperatures are adjusted downwards.
To generally have temps adjusted downwards in the first half of the 20th century they must have concluded that UHI was a problem before 1950, and to have generally adjusted temps upwards later than 1950 they must have concluded that UHI was no longer a factor. This flies in the face of energy use, urbanisation and population increases.
If you then use those moved surface station records in the homogenisation process I could see why the minority of good quality stations end up getting adjusted upwards – they look like the outliers even though they are the best quality records.
They are referring to offset delta, not trend, per se. They only do mesosite, not microsite.
We be luke warmistas.
That’s rather tepid.
Extreme tepidness.
Not “we,” not I, James at 48. YOU (and, yes several others, here, but there are many of us who are not “luke warmistas” — not — at — all).
“Luke-warmers” ASSUME (gratis — based on speculation extrapolated from the properties of CO2 in a highly controlled laboratory setting utterly unlike the climate system called “earth”) that human CO2 causes significant warming of “global” temperature. That is, it is AGW-lite.
They have no quantifiable evidence for this assumption.
It just feels good to them to take a middle-of-the-road stance. It has much more to do with personality (or professional peer concerns) than with data.
I rarely disagree with you Janice, and I suspect you and I don’t really agree on this topic either. I only disagree with how/what you said here:
“Luke-warmers” ASSUME (gratis — based on speculation extrapolated from the properties of CO2 in a highly controlled laboratory setting utterly unlike the climate system called “earth”) that human CO2 causes significant warming of “global” temperature. That is, it is AGW-lite.”
I believe that definition belongs to the vast majority of AGWers outright. AGW=the belief (no matter how one arrived at that belief) that human CO2 causes significant warming of global temperatures. I think “luke warmers” would mean something more in the middle…that human CO2 probably warms the Earth, but not a lot, or that it can but has not yet. etc.
I don’t think that you and I can logically presume to know what it is that each and every “luke warmer” assumes. We can’t even really presume to know what James at 48 defines as a “luke warmista”.
Hugs my sistah friend!
Hi, Aphan,
I think we DO agree. The key word I think we are tripping over is “significant.” I was using it (I hope) in a technical sense, to mean: of any statistically meaningful driving causative effect.
Re: the generalization about lukewarmers, I may, indeed, be incorrect about some, but all whom I have seen commenting on WUWT have asserted the laboratory properties of CO2 (extrapolated without quantifiable evidence to the earth climate system) often along with a “just feels right to give it some effect” / “probably warms…” kind of reasoning.
Thanks for valuing me enough to communicate honestly with me!
Your WUWT pal,
Janice
P.S. Even if we do disagree — THAT’S OKAY! #(:))
Dang, I was just getting ready to get out the ” Mud Wrestling Arena ” , then you two had to go and get all kissy kissy !! Sheeesh…..
Marcus, Marcus, Marcus….I don’t know whether to roll my eyes or laugh at you sometimes. I usually do both.
Dear Aphan, both of those will do just fine as my preferred outcome !! ( as long as you don’t send me any ” SNUGGIES ” ) LOL
— not — at — all
I’m always sad to hear that. Lindzen is. Christy is. Judge Judy is. Spencer has made a positive crusade out of refuting the Sky Dragon Slayers. Heck, The Rev won’t even allow SDS posts here, anymore.
Dunno about those outside the community, but on the inside, ‘specially when it comes to TCR and ECS, we’re the New Consensus, all 95% of us.
Of interest here is that going back merely 30-years, resulted in 808 Weather Stations being dropped due to poor quality, poorly located, or being moved.
Try going back 60-years, 90-years, 120-years. Lengths of time that those involved with Hockey-stick did.
The number of continuous Weather Stations drops to point of being like that lone Bristlecone Pine tree. Meaningless when it comes to science and unconscionable when it comes to World policies.
Of interest here is that going back merely 30-years, resulted in 808 Weather Stations being dropped due to poor quality, poorly located, or being moved.
Oh, we keep the ones with poor microsite. We only drop for moves, changes in rating, and significant TOBS bias.
Out of the 410 remaining, only 92 are Class 1\2, and I anticipate a bit of argument over that, too.
— “we keep the ones with poor microsite”
Thanks for clarification.
— “only 92 are Class 1\2”
Which calls into question AGW Climatologists using Proxies, when there would be very limited number of Class 1 & 2 Weather Stations over sufficient window in time to calibrate Proxies with sufficient accuracy.
That and worse. And, anyway, if you don’t account for microsite, your trends are too high, even without the homogenization bomb “correction” making it even worse. So you are doing your pairwise with mostly bum stations.
The original Hockey-stick paper when back to 1400 BCE (roughly 600+ years) and the second, an update to the first, went back 2,000 years approximately. The United States Weather Service, formerly known as the United States Weather Bureau, has only exited since 1890, so it cannot go further back than that. No rational mind would assume anything outside of what can be reasonably determined by the evidence anyway.
But, but…I thought they didn’t invent hockey until 1773 ????
Not Half Enough
The “globe” is warming half of what we’re told
It’s such a shame for I don’t like the cold,
Seems the temperature has been trending flat
See 3 W’s @ur momisugly Watt’s Up With That:
While climateers pour over goats entrails
Realists did not believe their fairy tales,
As scamsters pushed their exaggerations
For one world rule by United Nations.
Brave volunteers went and checked the gauges
Cries of thermageddon now assuages,
Five hundred million for each degree
For non existent warming – that’s the fee;
But if its only half of what they say
We will only have half of it to pay,
Please tell the Pope and reverend Barrack
Stop the panic and send our money back.
So thank you Mr Watts and your great team
Your cheque is in the post – well you can dream,
Nobel prizes are just around the bend
With professorships and a gross stipend;
Then I awoke to the sound of silence
Apart from the warmists threats of violence,
So let the doomsters cry “the end is nigh”
Real seekers after truth dont need to scry.
PAH 18/12/15
This was just posted in Forbes business magazine by James Taylor. Feel free to comment if you like:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/12/18/new-study-confirms-less-warming-than-government-claims/?utm_source=followingimmediate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20151218
“Measuring temperature directly above a barbecue grill might cause a false warming signal.”
a Friday Funny from James Taylor, before he references Lamar Smith and NOAA
DB
The dirty underbelly of investment banking is starting to get a little antsy that rebate supported alternative energy is running out of time to become “as good as fossils”. Some risk managers are advising a ‘hedging” of long coal and oil to hedge against overinflated expectations for alternative energy.
Anthony’s article is good “cover” timing as the folks who recommended alternative energy plays don’t want to be the one to admit that didn’t know what they were talking about so they are looking for a scapegoat … just in case.
By that logic, you’re a climate alarmist. Nothing you say can be trusted.
Buster Bluster makes zero sense once again, and as usual. Syracuse has nothing to do with whether lawyers — or Mr. Bluster — can be trusted. And of course there are no degrees in climate alarmism, because alarmists have no credibility. Note that Bluster is a climate alarmist.
In the climate field scientific skeptics rule, and Bluster is no skeptic. He’s just a site pest who doesn’t understand the Null Hypothesis.
Taylor, on the other hand, has some kind of relationship with Heartland in addition to Forbes. Good for him; Heartland does more to promote honest science on a shoestring budget than the multi-$millions the .edu rainmakers bring in for promoting their DAGW hoax.
So? The comparison is apt. And the publicity was worth a lot more than the billboard cost.
BusterBrown@hotmail.com: Tautology doesn’t mean much Stealey, all scientists are “skeptics”
Far too many climate “scientists” very clearly aren’t.
The histrionics over Heartland are hilarious considering their AGW outlay is orders of magnitude smaller than what outfits like Sierra and Greenpeace spend promoting their AGW pseudoscience. Hell, the alarmists illegally spend more taxpayer dollars on AGW promotion (as NSF and EPA have been caught doing) than Heartland spends legally promoting skeptics with their own damn money.
there is no degree granted in “climate alarmism”
Heck, you-all won’t settle for anything under 3.5 degrees.
Good riposte, Evan. The guy is just a site pest with nothing worthwhile to contribute.
The basic point of significantly increased trends in UHI-corrupted station records would be better made with far-longer linear regressions than 30 years. At that computational interval, 60-year natural cycles produce very strong oscillations that have nothing to do with any secular trend. While the availability of vetted century-long records is reasonably good in the USA, it is quite limited in the rest of the world. That’s what makes estimation of the historical global average temperature challenging.
LA Times Dec. 16. Joseph Serna said “Freezing weather approaches record level in Los Angeles County.” They must have turned the wrong coal plants off!
They should just keep on doing what they are already doing and Santa will supply the coal.
Congratulations to Watts et al for an important addition to the climate jigsaw puzzle. Well done. One does wonder why NOAA etc have not undertaken this properly before, including and especially BEST! Very frustrating.
This information is probably the last thing NOAA wanted the public to know !!
Richard
NOAA and their executive committee had promised the OIG back in 2010 that they would ground truth the monitoring stations. They also gave a weasel out that they didn’t have the funding to do THAT level of ground truthing.
Now that a NGO (WUWT) has done it for them, it has the potential to create a seismic shift in what is the government’s role vs what is the NGOs role.
Big ole opportunity to establish new terms of interaction.
I’m excited to watch it play out.
This style of “cooperation” is not unique, but arguably seldom employed.
I went fishing today (deadens parts of my brain i think or maybe it just makes me not care) and for the life of me cant remember the name of the ornithologist whose ides was rejected by his boss decades ago and he smartly extended the idea to his network of bird watching buddies.
“they would ground truth the monitoring stations.”
As a person stuck with paying part of tab for funding AGW Alarmism, I would expect our government to quit advocating any policy or position based on any temperature data that came from a station that didn’t meet Compliant Class 1.
Idea that one can use temperature data with error of 1.0C (for class 3) or worse to make claims of AGW involving possible claimed changes of 0.1C is abhorring. Even worse is that AGW Climatologists coupled such bad data to even more questionable/inaccurate Proxy data, to make Alarmist claims of AGW goes well beyond unconscionable.
No prob with that. More room for us.
Well done.
[Gracious nod.]
One does wonder why NOAA etc have not undertaken this properly before, including and especially BEST! Very frustrating.
OPEN MESSAGE REGARDING OUR RIVALS:
BEST wants to, but we have not yet released our data. So don’t blame them. Plus, they have known for donkeys’ years that we are doing the [ratings]. So why should they re-invent the wheel whey can use/review/revise ours to their liking?
But they need our data for that. So blame them not.
What I want to make sure of is that Mosh and/or Zeke do not merely separate the compliant and non-compliant stations and average them. I need them to redo their pairwise comparisons, so that compliant is paired only with compliant and non-compliant is paired only with non-compliant.
What we need from BEST is an apples to apples and oranges to oranges comparison. Not pairwise pap.
Mosh? Zeke? Hear that, guys? Split all the jumps you like. But do it 1\2 to 1\2 and 3\4\5 to 3\4\5 style.
As for NOAA, they use our previous published Fall et al., and I would neither expect them to nor hold them responsible for not using our study before it has been published. What they do after that, we cannot know.
Look, NOAA is ubiquitously defensive, territorial, arrogant, sanctimonious, sometimes secretive, slow to let go their own preconceptions and, from personal experience, they can be sneaky. But they are not frauds, charlatans, or scam artists, and when I hear them characterized as such, I will not countenance it.
They are no worse than most, and better than some. Besides, they made the CRN, which is a thing of beauty. I surveyed the upwards of a dozen of those and they are so Class 1 it hurts. Compatible equipment, triple redundency PRTs, hourly readings (bye-bye TOBS-bias). Beauty to bring tears to a man’s eyes. Makes you think America is a big country all of a sudden. A good longterm surface record will emerge from that.
And believe me, I have rolled in the mud with the numbers. I did not use R — I put all this stuff into Excel piece by piece and reviewed it station by station. No black boxes. Every calc ran through my hands. I have been immersed in the results of their adjustment procedures. I am a wargame designer/developer. I know what they did and how they made this error and why they though homogenization worked.
It is not fraud. Not fraud. It is an error which we partially made in Fall et al., and we made omissions in both that paper and our 2012 release that we even acknowledged in the pre-release, but did not address.
If you insult and mischaracterize their errors as fraud, then you only justify their doing the same for our errors, past, present and future. I must insist that the readers here consider that they must give NOAA and BEST (etc.) every bit as much slack as we require them to grant us. Errors are allowed in science. Theirs. Ours. Even yours.
While I fully appreciate your generous fair-mindedness regarding persons you say are “ubiquitously defensive, territorial, arrogant, sanctimonious, sometimes secretive, slow to let go their own preconceptions and, from personal experience, […] sneaky”, the question isn’t whether they are outright charlatans but whether they are minimally fit for public trust as civil servants. Particularly in the sciences.
That’s a considerably higher standard than your entirely apt description of ordinary politicians who are notoriously and wisely trusted by no one.
evanmjones: “But they are not frauds, charlatans, or scam artists, and I will not countenance it.”
Really…
So what do you call this?
;mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
(...)
;
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
FOIA\documents\osborn-tree6\briffa_sep98_d.pro
Or how about “Mike’s ‘Nature’ trick”?