From the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER and the “weather stations near heat sources aren’t measuring climate” department, something that we already have in the USA in the form of the state-of-the-art Climate Reference Network, CRN, but we don’t have globally. This call for a better system is something I agree with, because much of the existing monitoring network has problems like you see in the photo below, among other problems.
Improving climate observations offers major return on investment
A well-designed climate observing system could deliver trillions of dollars in economic benefits.
A well-designed climate observing system could help scientists answer knotty questions about climate while delivering trillions of dollars in benefits by providing decision makers information they need to protect public health and the economy in the coming decades, according to a new paper published today.
The flip side is also true, said lead author Elizabeth Weatherhead, a scientist with CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder. The cost of failing to invest in improving our ability to predict and plan for droughts, floods, extreme heat events, famine, sea level rise and changes in freshwater availability could reach hundreds of billions of dollars each year, she and her colleagues wrote. Their paper is published in the current edition of Earth’s Future, an online journal of the American Geophysical Union.
“Improving our understanding of climate not only offers large societal benefits but also significant economic returns,” Weatherhead said. “We’re not specifying which measurement (or observing) systems to target, we’re simply saying it’s a smart investment to address the most pressing societal needs.”
Data generated by the current assemblage of observing systems, including NOAA’s satellite and ground-based observing systems, have yielded significant insights into important climate questions. However, coordinated development and expansion of climate observing systems are required to advance weather and climate prediction to address the scale of risks likely in the future.
For instance, the current observing system cannot monitor precipitation extremes throughout much of the world, and cannot forecast the likelihood of extreme flooding well enough to sufficiently guide rebuilding efforts. “The current decline of our Earth observing systems is likely to continue into the foreseeable future,” said Liz Moyer, a climate researcher at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the new assessment. “Unless action is taken–such as suggested in this paper–our ability to plan for and respond to some of the most important aspects of climate, including extreme events and water availability, will be significantly limited.”
Weatherhead and a team that included four NOAA laboratory directors and many other prominent climate scientists urge that investments focus on tackling seven “grand challenges,” such as predicting extreme weather and climate shifts, the role of clouds and circulation in regulating climate, the regional sea level change and coastal impacts, understanding the consequences melting ice, and feedback loops involving carbon cycling. In each category, observations are needed to inform process studies, to build long-term datasets against which to evaluate changing conditions,and ultimately to improve modeling and forecasting capabilities.
“We are on the threshold of a new era in prediction, drawing on our knowledge of the entire Earth system to strengthen societal resilience to potential climate and weather disasters,” said co-author Antonio Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. “Strategic investments in observing technologies will pay for themselves many times over by protecting life and property, promoting economic growth, and providing needed intelligence to decision makers.”
“Well planned observations are important to more than just understanding climate,” agreed Deon Terblanche, director of research at the World Meteorological Organization. “Predicting the weather and extreme events, and managing water availability and energy demand will all benefit,”
“Developing observation systems focused on the major scientific questions with a rigorous evaluation process to ensure the measurement quality is fit-for-purpose–as the authors propose–will more than pay off in the long run,” said Tom Gardiner, a principal research scientist at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory.
Objective evaluations of proposed observing systems, including satellites, ground-based or in-situ observations as well as new, currently unidentified observational approaches, will be needed to prioritize investments and maximize societal benefits, the authors propose.
“We need to take a critical look at what’s needed to address the most important climate questions,” said NASA scientist and co-author Bruce Wielicki.
Not all new observing strategies would necessarily require expensive new systems like satellites, the authors pointed out. For example, after a devastating flood hit Fort Collins, Colo. in 1998, the state climatologist developed a network of trained volunteers to supplement official National Weather Service precipitation measurements using low-cost measuring tools and a dedicated web portal. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow now counts thousands of volunteers nationwide who provide the data directly to the National Weather Service.
Using a rigorous evaluation process to develop a robust network of observation systems focused on the major scientific questions will more than pay off in the long run, the authors concluded.
“The economic risks from climate change are measured in trillions of dollars,” agreed Rich Sorkin, CEO of Jupiter, a Silicon Valley-based company that provides intelligence on weather and climate risks around the globe. “So an improved, properly designed observing system, with commensurate investments in science and understanding, has the potential to be of tremendous value to society.”
###
The paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000627/abstract
Designing the Climate Observing System of the Future
Weatherhead, et al., 2017
Abstract
Climate observations are needed to address a large range of important societal issues including sea level rise, droughts, floods, extreme heat events, food security, and fresh water availability in the coming decades. Past, targeted investments in specific climate questions have resulted in tremendous improvements in issues important to human health, security, and infrastructure. However, the current climate observing system was not planned in a comprehensive, focused manner required to adequately address the full range of climate needs. A potential approach to planning the observing system of the future is presented in this paper. First, this paper proposes that priority be given to the most critical needs as identified within the World Climate Research Program as Grand Challenges. These currently include seven important topics: Melting Ice and Global Consequences; Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity; Carbon Feedbacks in the Climate System; Understanding and Predicting Weather and Climate Extremes; Water for the Food Baskets of the World; Regional Sea-Level Change and Coastal Impacts; and Near-term Climate Prediction. For each Grand Challenge, observations are needed for long-term monitoring, process studies and forecasting capabilities. Second, objective evaluations of proposed observing systems, including satellites, ground-based and in situ observations as well as potentially new, unidentified observational approaches, can quantify the ability to address these climate priorities. And third, investments in effective climate observations will be economically important as they will offer a magnified return on investment that justifies a far greater development of observations to serve society’s needs.
Full article (open access PDF) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000627/epdf
For a belief that has yet to be proven conclusively; four NOAA Laboratory Directors want the United States to waste money chasing fantasies.
Those four directors that feel the need to avoid doing their job responsibly should be sacked. If they truly are directors, they should be SES executive salaried employees and subject to immediate dismissal without explanation.
Directors such as these are contributors to the world’s waste of funds towards pretending CO2 is deadly.
Any of those other “prominent climate scientists” who enjoy wasting the public’s money should have their funding removed.
I routinely download and trend the USCRN data. I compare it to the the RSS satellite data and do not see much difference.
I am not sure that the UHI effect is so noticeable in winter as some people assume large concrete and metal structures get cold also, I remember as a child standing on concrete terraces watching my local football team with my feet freezing they just take longer to do so. As regards heating then no one heats there homes to the extent that they heat the area around them , it is a question of cost. My car which is made of metal cools faster than the surrounding area and has frost even at slightly above freezing air temperatures, but the amount of cars etc. passing through urban areas may warm the climate a lot.
Place a thermometer where you park your car, then observe every night and morning…you will find that under conditions of clear sky and light (<5mph) winds, frost will form on car roofs at 38F. If there is wind or clouds, frost will not form no matter what the temp is.
Other surfaces will also get frost formation at 38F, if they are away from any over head objects, now near any concrete or other hard surfaces, and not near any heated structures. Another requirement is low heat conductance and/or low specific heat of the material of the surface in question.
Blades of grass will get frost. Metal will get frost. Large stones, bricks, and concrete will not, nor will bare moist ground, unless it is plowed or otherwise fluffed up.
Areas under or near leafed out trees will never get frost…ever.
I spent years running a commercial plant nursery in a rural part of Florida, and over a period of many years (1984 to 1998) engaged in meticulous observations of how and when frost forms, how and when it will not form, and the effect it has on a wide variety of live plants. And by meticulous, I mean spending thousands of nights sitting outside all night long, placing dozens of thermometers of various types and styles, and walking around and checking them frequently.
When every penny one has is riding on something, one pays attention, and remembers.
Reading what some very well credentialed people write about such things is eye opening…I am certain many of them have never spent a night sitting outside, or placed multiples thermometers at various locations in an area and observed the wide disparities that can often occur.
BTW…if you place a thermometer face up on the car roof, you will see it reads 32 when the frost begins to form, and the nearby air temp is 38 degrees 5 or 6 feet above the ground.
Also, the car must not be under any trees or other objects, or too close to a building. The mass of the car insulates the roof from heat from the paved driveway it is sitting on, as does the air inside the passenger compartment, the headliner and insulation above the headliner, etc.
Frost forms less readily on the trunk lid and hood of most vehicles, as these are usually just a sheet of metal, with no insulation underneath.
Another BTW…I used a lot of thermometers, and did not have tons of money to waste, and so I bought a lot of them of varying quality.
What I found was, once they are calibrated correctly, even very cheap alcohol in glass units give a fairly accurate reading…within 1 degree of a very expensive mercury in glass high/low unit. And 1 degree F is the limit of resolution of most units, so, basically…a $1.98 unit from Walmart reads the same as a $100 unit from a scientific supply house. Mostly.
Isn’t the “measure” of climate the average of 30 years of weather, ie, made up? Don’t need a new system to make sh$t up!
As someone who worked in instrumentation for a number of years, I would say that as well as properly sited instrumentation you also need to use the same instrumentation for all future comparisons. If you are allowed to cherry-pick which time series you use for analysis you can pretty much show whatever you want to show.
You can easily try this in, say, Excel. Create several columns of random numbers. Find the slope of each series then just use the ones with a positive slope in your analysis. Bingo, you have just shown that the data is trending upwards.
Climate science seems to have far too many ways to put a thumb on the scale. Just use a particular tree, for instance, or find an excuse for not using the ARGO data, or forget about a few thousand stations, or …
Bottom line.
What we have in place globally could not possibly have provided the data reliable to give a “global temperature” now.
We just don’t know.
Pass what “we just don’t know” through a computer program or model and suddenly we DO know what will happen “then” unless we spend a few trillion now?
From the paper:
“The first fuzzy lens is that of natural variability of the climate system such as El Niño, Pacific Decadal Oscillations, solar variability, and volcanic eruptions. Most of this natural variability is caused by nonlinear interactions between the atmosphere and oceans that create “noise” in the climate system (e.g. El Niño). The noise of natural variability delays the time it takes to rigorously detect anthropogenic climate signals [Weatherhead et al., 1998; Leroy et al., 2008] and can confuse the public (e.g the so called “hiatus” of warming from 1998 to
2013).”
With all that vital stuff brushed aside, they can then focus on their ‘Climate Observing System Simulation Experiments’ to show how many trillions can be saved as the planet warms, how wonderful.
A bit of research on sea surface I’ve posted before, but worth bearing in mind, especially considering the methodology of the so-called “Pause Buster” paper:
In the decades before the advent of the significant coverage of the oceans by the buoy networks, the ocean temperature data was acquired in the main by ship’s engine room water inlet temperature data.
Ship’s engine cooling water inlet temperature data is acquired from the engine room cooling inlet temperature gauges by the engineers at their convenience, ie when they can be bothered.
There is no standard for either the location of the inlets with regard especially to depth below the surface, the position in the pipework of the measuring instruments or the time of day the reading is taken. They can be anywhere from close to the point where the water comes into the ship to well inside the engine room, close to the machinery.
The instruments themselves are of industrial quality, their limit of error in °C per DIN EN 13190 is ±2 deg C. for a class 2 instrument or sometimes even ±4 deg. C, as can be seen in the tables here: DS_IN0007_GB_1334.pdf . After installation it is exceptionally unlikely that they are ever checked for calibration.
It is not clear how such readings can be compared with the readings from buoy instruments specified to a limit of error of tenths or even hundreds of a degree C. or why they are considered to have any value whatsoever for the purposes to which they are put, which is to produce historic trends apparently precise to 0.001 deg. C upon which spending of literally trillions of £/$/whatever are decided.
But hey, this is climate “science” we’re discussing so why would a little thing like that matter?
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0809/full/453601a.html