A new study from USGS by Keven Gallo and George Xian verifies what we’ve already learned and published on via the Surface Stations project; that concrete and asphalt (aka impervious surfaces) have increased near weather stations that are used to monitor climate. In this case, it is the much studied USHCN, that climate network I presented a poster on at AGU 2015. Details here.
What is most important about this paper is that it quantifies the percentage of stations that have had increased amounts of impervious surface area getting closer to the stations. As I have long since maintained, such things act as heat sinks, which increase the night-time temperature when they released the stored energy from the sun that was absorbed during the day as infrared, warming the air near the thermometer, and thus biasing the minimum temperature upwards.
In this study, they have observed over 32% of the USHCN stations exhibited an increase in impervious surface area of ⩾20% between 2001 and 2011. When the 1000 m radius associated with each station was examined, over 52% (over 600) of the stations exhibited an increase in ISA of ⩾20% within at least 1% of the grid cells within that radius.
What this suggests, is that like Las Vegas, which has had huge infrastructure boosts in the last 50 years, that the minimum temperature is creeping upwards, and that biases the mean temperature used to look for the “global warming signal”. NOAA would do well to remove stations that have been encroached upon like this, but they stubbornly hold onto this flawed data, insisting they can “adjust” it to be accurate. I say bollocks to that. Since the USA is so highly over-sampled with thousands of weather stations, it is far better to discard noisy and imperfect data, and use only those stations that have not been biased by infrastructure increases, but retain only the best stations with pristine data.
This is what you get when we did exactly that, and found a statistically significant lower 30 year trend.
Here is the new paper:
Changes in satellite-derived impervious surface area at US historical climatology network stations
Kevin Gallo, George Xian
Abstract
The difference between 30 m gridded impervious surface area (ISA) between 2001 and 2011 was evaluated within 100 and 1000 m radii of the locations of climate stations that comprise the US Historical Climatology Network. The amount of area associated with observed increases in ISA above specific thresholds was documented for the climate stations. Over 32% of the USHCN stations exhibited an increase in ISA of ⩾20% between 2001 and 2011 for at least 1% of the grid cells within a 100 m radius of the station. However, as the required area associated with ISA change was increased from ⩾1% to ⩾10%, the number of stations that were observed with a ⩾20% increase in ISA between 2001 and 2011 decreased to 113 (9% of stations). When the 1000 m radius associated with each station was examined, over 52% (over 600) of the stations exhibited an increase in ISA of ⩾20% within at least 1% of the grid cells within that radius. However, as the required area associated with ISA change was increased to ⩾10% the number of stations that were observed with a ⩾20% increase in ISA between 2001 and 2011 decreased to 35 (less than 3% of the stations). The gridded ISA data provides an opportunity to characterize the environment around climate stations with a consistently measured indicator of a surface feature. Periodic evaluations of changes in the ISA near the USHCN and other networks of stations are recommended to assure the local environment around the stations has not significantly changed such that observations at the stations may be impacted.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2016.08.006
Kevin Gallo is the Corresponding author at: USGS, Earth Observations and Science (EROS) Center, 47914 252nd Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57198-0001, USA.
Note from Anthony: Full disclosure, I was an invited reviewer for this paper, and I submitted reviews that caused improvements (according to the editor) to the paper.
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That now defuncticated UAT “weather” station is what I use for my desktop wallpaper. It reminds me that that there is nothing wrong with urban heat islands, or measuring the Temperature there, so long as you don’t use that Temperature to represent some place 1200 km away from there as Jim Hansen seems to think is ok.
One Yamal Charlie Brown Christmas tree, does not a climate map make.
Same goes for thermometers on air field runways, used to measure the air Temperature over the runway. That’s what pilots want to know to determine if it is safe to take off with their current plane load. The don’t give a hoot about global climate; they just want to know the weather around their intended flight path.
G
And congratulations Anthony for finally being recognized as a Citizen Research Scientist.
When grass roots are replaced by concrete blocks (literally), crap happens.
G
Good! An attempt to quantify UHI.
Better late than never!
Credit to Tony where credit is due for beating the drum on this stuff.
A case can be made that it is the reason for the difference between satellite / balloon and surface temps. But since the people who “own” the surface stations are also the same people “homogenizing” the data they will NEVER acquiesce. NEVER!
The road to hell is paved.
No wonder it’s so hot eh?
And how does this affect the bible story? maybe it’s not so bad down there after all, is the heat actually an example of the IIE (Inferno Island Effect) created by paving the Road to Hell?.
Not the same. Good intentions are not impermeable. 😉
(It’s not from the Bible, Jon.)
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
The expression is often attributed to the Cistercian abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153).
Well it’s not so bad there now anyway.
You can’t get that close to the fire, because of all the lawyers there.
g
You need good intentions to pave the road to hell. I seriously question whether the Watermelons have good intentions.
…I agree, most are just trying to buy atonement for their past and present personal sins by making everyone else pay the cost, while they still fly around in jets, drive their SUV’s and party on their 100 ft. yachts in exotic locations….! The liberal Elite have no moral ground to stand on…
SMC — You win best comment. — Eugene WR Gallun
+1000, SMC.
The road to hell is paved with collectivist intentions.
I always thought the road to hell was paved with lawyers?
[No. No. The road to should be paved with lawyers. (But they wear out too fast under traffic.)
Good intentions never wear out, never fall apart, and are infinitely renewable. And infinitely costly. .mod]
A 100 ft. yacht is passe these days.
You need about a hundred metres to be in contention.
g
Warmists need it paved. Easier and faster to get there when they die.
As far as I am concerned, legitimate temperature recording stations used for temperature data purposes, should all be rural.
But there’s no Starbucks near rural stations.
There’s always a Denny’s, and an Arco Gas station, and a Burger King at any legitimate weather station.
g
Verdamnis ! I forgot the Motel 6.
g
If not a Denny’s it’s a Waffle House.
Dunkin Donuts in New England.
Dairy Queen or nothing. The Texas Stop Sign.
Sole problem – rural areas getting ever more plastered with windelecs.
Although it is not as widely discussed, even rural stations have their issues. Intense farming changes in land cover can have effects that are just as serious as UHI when you are attempting to understand weather changes. Shifts from sod to plowed land, from grazing to crop land, from dry crops to irrigated crops are all problems.
Excellent point duster! And even micro climate changes occur. Our station witch was wide open just a few years ago now has changed because in our area farms have disappeared and housing with new landscaping have changed wind patterns ( Not by a lot but changes can happen even in rural areas).
Can station witches control the climate?
And ONLY rural!
There have been many changes in rural practices that have an arguably large an effect on local temperatures as urban changes. Increases in irrigation, changes in irrigation practices (eg flood to drip), field drainage, hedgerow and tree removal, double cropping to name some. Only pristine locations far from buildings and agriculture can give an accurate picture of temperature changes due to the global climate, and the reality is there are very few such locations.
Will the Watts study be published?
It’s published here and there are a lot more real scientists AND reviewers here I am sorry to say! Hell, I cite it in all of my presentations cause I trust the source more than any hockey stick, spaghetti or not 🙂
So, they verified (and somewhat quantified) something that was already known to anyone that was paying attention.
Maybe co2islife finally got to them.
How did we get so far along with the climate stations without any reasonable standards?
We had very reasonable standards. The problem was that few people were following them.
Do they “Compensate” for the fact that some stations are no longer in the complete open. On a recent trip I noticed a station near a rural airport that had trees that were about 25 years old within about 100 yds. Would not these trees reduce airflow around the station and affect the data?
They “compensate” by adjusting the current temperatures upward and older temperatures downward.
Ha ha, Duh!
They don’t even compensate for the fact that some stations are no longer.
Since 1850, the number of weather stations in the arctic (north of 60 deg. N Lat.) has gone from a few up to many and back down to not so many.
No wonder the surface numbers are rather worthless.
G
Good on you Mr. Watts. You’ve been pointing this out for quite some time. I wonder how the Watermelons will react to this… or will they conveniently ignore it?
I’ll take Door #2, SMC.
Well, it is faster than the Vatican at responding to Captain Obvious Science. I guess the little agencies and outposts did not get the memo and required training sessions from the political agents.
I was involved in CRD (climate-responsive design) research 20+ years ago. We found that a 200mm thick masonry block wall adversely exposed to the sun at 19°S,eg from early afternoon onwards, would continuously re-radiate heat on the reverse side of the wall (a residential interior) for seven months.
A) is your 19 deg. the same secret as Richard C. Hoagland’s magic 19 deg. or izzit something else ??
B) How do you stop the sun from coming around again tomorrow, so you can track the re-radiation for the next seven months ??
g
Why was the USCRN created in the first place? Simple, previous weather network stations fail to pass citing criteria/standards. Aggregated data are so poor that no amount of “correction” is possible. That is why the US Climate Reference Network was created to provide the kind of long term surface temperature data that are needed to assess climatic changes over time.
The same observation applies to Europe, most data are bad. When you eliminate the corrupt data then the long term “global warming” vanishes. There are a few good surface stations. They show no warming.
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/ruti/europe/western-europe-rural-temperature-trend.php
Another example are the Antarctic science stations that have good quality data since 1958, they also show zero warming. Eg. Amundsen-Scott, Vostok, Halley and Davis.
This is also why temperature measuring satellites and ARGO flouts were funded.
Unfortunately, this more accurate data proved embarrassing to the political party propaganda line, and was at first ignored, then later discredited and attacked.
See: Karl, et al.
It does seem to be a while since we had any update on the progress of USCRN here at wuwt Anthony.
Well the global Temperature has remained between 12 deg. C and 22 deg. C for the last 600 million years, so why do we continue to measure it at all ? That is a perfectly comfortable Temperature range.
g
“so why do we continue to measure it at all”
It gives climate scientists something to do.
Yet even with this know encroachment that drives the measured temperatures only up, they still feel it’s necessary to adjust those temperatures even higher???
Here in Houston the “official” temperature is taken at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Temperature is always 5-10 degrees higher than where I live in Webster.
…If NASA only used the daytime highs for calculating “GloBull Warming”, there would be none to see ! How can warmer nights be bad ? ( I acknowledge that I live in Canada, so my opinion may be a little bias)
Its the same as the old USSR adoption of the data ? from Lysenco regarding the growing of wheat. Being Green is now Big Business, with the taxpayers money being used to keep it going.
Perhaps Trump if elected will close it down ?
Michael Elliott
“ts the same as the old USSR”
There is actually a climate version of this: as a centrally controlled economy, the amount of coal a city would get was determined in Moscow. So, if your city was thousands of km away…you goosed the temps down a bit to get more coal….
Good analogy. The Soviets were masters of beating the system until it collapsed. A lesson many of learned but not enough.
This time it’s going to work, because better people are going to be in charge.
Or so I’ve been told.
It’s the concept of some people being in charge that worries me !
I don’t have a need for anyone to be ” in charge ”
G
Wow, someone actually did the scientific thing and examine (and replicated) someone else’s results. Congrats to you, Anthony.
Unleash the adjustment teams in Asheville and instruct the legions of bias to just ignore it.
The adjustment teams in Asheville will find a way to adjust the temp trend “up” again as a result of this study. This is what they do with any new information.
Well, duh.
If only some private party had researched this years ago! Oh, wait . . . .
White Knight Anthony Watts get an armor polish. — Eugene WR Gallun
this ole hillbilly live in downtown of a town of 5000 in appalachia, it didnt require study to notice it was cooler out in the hills around town than it was in town………the heat island effect is likely most all of the land based increases found…..
No S**t Sherlock
I would think it would be basic science to make sure your instruments are calibrated before doing an experiment. Don’t scientists know about stuff like that anymore?
The network was designed to provide basic information that could be used to make short term weather forecasts. It was never designed to provide long term data on the climate.
“I do not think that word means what you think it means.” Calibration is a process that either corrects instrument readings against a known standard or adjusts the instrument to provide the correct output against a know standard.
In the first case, if I have a liquid-in-glass thermometer I might do a 3-point calibration against the freezing and boiling points of water at standard pressure and say, the melting point of gallium (0F, 85.58F, and 212F). My LIG reads -0.5, 92, and 210 respectively. I make a chart or create a curve to correct my thermometer readings. This assumes the deviation of my thermometer is well-behaved over the interval of interest and can be represented by a smooth function, but that’s a discussion for another day. When my thermometer reads -0.5, I know the temperature is really 0, etc.
For a digital instrument I might adjust the zero and span so that I get 32 on the readout for freezing water and 212 for boiling water, again assuming that the instrument response is linear over this interval.
What you’re talking about is trying to determine what the temperature would be if we converted the asphalt parking lot into a woodland meadow, or something similar. That is a much more problematic undertaking. You would have to first define the ideal measuring environment (“an open field with a radius of 1,000m covered with red fescue to a height of not more than 4″ receiving the equivalent irrigation of 2.5” of rain per week, said field having a slope not greater than 0.25%, etc, etc, etc) and then model the deviation of the actual measuring environment under each condition of measurement; day, night, rain, fog, overcast, sunny, snow and for each time of measurement. Daunting to say the least.
On a similar note…what is happening to the USCRN data.
I saw a post here recently that our pristine unadjusted data was being damaged by dropping stations that showed cooling.
Has anyone investigated that claim?