With those hot weather records in Los Angeles being set, it’s important to remember where measurements are taken. I’ve done an investigation and found that every “all time high” reported by the LA Times is from a station compromised by heat sources and heat sinks. In my opinion, the data from these stations is worthless.
It’s been going on for some time, for example, back in 2010, because there’s been a questionable high reading reading at USC of 113°F. This 2010 LA Times article tells why:
How hot was it? The National Weather Service’s thermometer downtown reached 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877 — and then stopped working. The record highs follow a summer of record lows.
September 27, 2010 | By Bob Pool and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times
It was so hot Monday that it broke the all-time record — and the weatherman’s thermometer.
The National Weather Service’s thermometer for downtown Los Angeles headed into uncharted territory at 12:15 p.m. Monday, reaching 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877.
Shortly after that banner moment, the temperature dipped back to 111, and then climbed back to 112. Then at 1 p.m., the thermometer stopped working.The weather service office in Oxnard rushed an electronics technician 60 miles southeast to the USC campus to repair the thermometer, which is actually a highly sensitive wire connected to electronic equipment. Because of the snafu, officials said it’s possible Monday’s temperature actually was hotter than 113 — but they might never know.
Or, the data was just bogus because the sensor was failing…but we’ll never know.
Here’s the USC weather station that had ‘all time record high’ surrounded by cars and asphalt. I wonder what it looked like when original record was set?
The ASOS type station used at USC is notorious for producing false record highs where there aren’t any. For example, Honolulu and Tucson.
And just look where the USC weather station is located: (click to enlarge)
Here is a close-up view.
Look at all the service vehicles parked around it. One wonders recent record high that was claimed there is just another result of a vehicle being parked to close to it like the Ice Cream Truck debacle that denied a new all-time record high for Scotland a few days ago.
Then there’s the downtown Los Angeles station, which set a record high the other day. It’s on top of the parking garage at the LA Department of Power and Light, which I first identified in 2008.
More vehicles right next to the weather station…Downtown L.A. set a new record of 104 degrees on Saturday, from this station.
Let’s look at some of the other locations for record high temperatures set in LA this past week. According to this LA Times article:
Among the places that hit that milestone Friday were Van Nuys Airport (117 degrees), Burbank Airport (114), UCLA (111) and Santa Ana (114).
Let’s have a look at those stations.
Van Nuys Airport:
It’s another ASOS station snuggled between an industrial park, runway, road, and taxiway. Note the row of planes and private homes near the taxiway.
Street view of Van Nuys airport weather station:
I wonder, did a plane come out of the driveway and blow hot exhaust fumes that day? if so, we can apparently blame the Germans for this one.
Burbank Airport:
Yes, the weather station is virtually surrounded by asphalt runways, taxiways, and aircraft parking ramps. The likelihood for the station to get in the middle of a 400F jetwash is almost a certainty, being so close to taxiways with turns. This is a ridiculous place to measure for high temperatures.
Back in the day, the Burbank airport didn’t have as much of these biasing factors.
UCLA’s weather station is on the roof of the Math Sciences/Atmospheric Sciences building. Why? there’s no place else to put it. There’s hardly a free and open space left. Here’s the ground view from Google Street View
And the rooftop view. Note the squirrel cage blower and exhaust vent nearby.
And here’s the piece d’ resistance, Santa Ana:
Yes that’s right, it’s on a rooftop at the fire station there.
Here is a closeup view:
A rooftop with air conditioners, a perfect place for measuring high temperature records that are guaranteed to be wrong becuase they are upwardly biased by the roof, the building, and the AC heat exchanger exhausts. But let’s just ignore all that and blame “CO2 induced warming” and demand people stop driving, using so much electricity, and eating meat. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
A reminder, NOAA’s own requirements for the placement of thermometers to record climate data has been violated on every one of these stations.
Thermometers
Thermometers should be shielded from the sun, rain, snow and other sources of light, heat, or cold that can cause erroneous readings. If an instrument shelter is used, it should be designed to allow the maximum possible free flow of air while providing protection from heat, precipitation and light. A shady location on the northeast side of the school is a preferred site.
The thermometer should be 4.5 to 6 feet above the ground and in a grassy location. (You may need to keep a step stool nearby for short people because readings are taken at eye level to minimize parallax error.) A flat, open clearing is desirable so that the thermometer is freely ventilated by the flow of air. Stay at least 100 feet away from concrete or paved surfaces. Avoid balconies, patios, enclosed porches, and beneath eaves.
This is why every one of these high temperature readings made by the stations above should be disqualified.
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But they all fit the narrative, so. . .
so …. nothing to see here, trust us and move along, there’s a good chap!
Well done. Surely anybody with a even half a brain must agree that those stations are compromised.
well that disqualifies all the climatistas right there.
Duh, no, because satellite data is showing a steady increase.
Only if you use the recent El Nino as your end point.
Duh!! We did not have satellites in the 1930s!!
I see a steady increase of stupid with comments such as that, offering no citation or evidence to examine.
Good job kiddo… Almost. Well no, not even in the ballpark of intelligent
This is going straight to the “Chris comment Hall of Shame”, no need to wait five years. Does “Duh, no” apply to David or wws? Either Chris is saying those stations are not compromised (in defiance of observed evidence-not his first defiance-of-evidence venture) because, satellites? or is he saying climatistas are not disqualified because, satellites? Chris, that counts as a twofer, non sequiter wise.
It’s not so complicated Paul. You can choose to accept ground based data, or choose not to. Research has been done on the issue of urban versus rural stations, and whether urban sites are causing a UHI-induced increase in temperature that is unrelated to AGW or other causes. One such paper is here: http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/UHI-GIGS-1-104.pdf
As you can see on p. 5, the rural only versus all stations graph shows little difference. The point I was making was that even if you choose not to accept land based data, satellite data shows an increase in temperature as well.
It seems as though in these discussions there’s a consistent reply along the lines of regardless of what data is removed the result is the same.
Either the result is robust, or maybe the data processing is just producing a consistent result regardless of input data.
Science. Climate science that is.
Climate science is not involved here. This is a newspaper, in its local section, telling people about the daily temperature records at their local station. People read thermometers long before climate science was a thing.
Bullshit Nick. NOAA puts these into the database, then NASA GlSS etc. Why don’t you just go on record saying you don’t give a damn about accuracy in data collection. Sheesh #$=(%:!
“then NASA GlSS etc”
The USC station is in GHCN Monthly because it is a long term record, and so it is recorded by GISS. Burbank has not been there since 1966. Van Nuyts, Santa Ana are not in GHCN-M at all. And GHCN is what climate scientists mostly use. GISS just passes along information from GHCN (except for their UHI treatment).
So effing what Nick? The point is the DATA IS CORRUPTED AND BIASED. But you can’t bring yourself to admit that. You aren’t an honest researcher. Your own bias blinds you.
These stations get used in homogenization, and their errors collectively bias the entire climatic record upward.
Truly Nick doesn’t give a damn about accuracy in data collection. He’s a paid troll.
I’m really done with you. Go away.
Don’t feed the troll!
Well said, Anthony. And thank you for all your amazing work over the years. I’m sure science will eventually regain its integrity – and you have contributed a huge amount, which must help – but I’m not holding my breath.
I think this climate change catastrophe – encouraged and cheered on by people like Nick – has some way to run yet. (Obviously, the catastrophe is certainly man-made, but it’s not the climate, it’s the alarmism that has caused world governments to squander trillions of dollars, incompetently trying to solve a problem that almost certainly doesn’t exist).
Chris
“I’m done with you.” So what? Who freaking cares? Other than on WUWT, how does that affect anything? The few AGW believers who post here and are willing to politely explain their reasoning get chased away, one by one. The world is cooking and WUWT spends its time jumping all over individual weather stations.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/weather-records-2018-heatwave-breaking-14868281
https://www.sciencealert.com/all-time-heat-records-have-been-set-all-over-the-world-this-week-ireland-scotland-canada-middle-east-climate-change
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/all-time-record-high-temperatures-set-in-southern-california-including-los
Self awareness was never a design criteria for the warmistas.
In order to refute an article that points to the many problems with these so called record warm readings Chris declares, it doesn’t matter, just look at how many warm records there are.
BTW, this last winter when people were pointing out all the cold records Chris was in the forefront declaring that it didn’t matter, they were just weather.
So take out this station, MarkW, and see what impact it has on the overall readings for So Cal. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Once again the troll tries to pretend that the issue is only this one, single station.
PS, check how homogenization is used to spread the bad data from one defective sensor over to other sensors.
Chris: We’ll get to work on that, right after you find a station in the network that biases to lower readings for temp., and show us observations (like the photos above) that prove the low-bias. Just one. We’ll wait.
Chris, the main problem is averaging different locations together. That’s a Bozo No-No, but everyone seems to do it. You can certainly compare it to a nearby station that isn’t so compromised, but no averaging the two together.
It’s good that you use the word “believers”. Now think about that.
No need to think about it. It’s shorter than typing “those who accept the scientific evidence of AGW.”
Since there is no scientific evidence of AGW, believers was probably the more accurate term.
Oh dear Chris
You really have fallen for the spin!!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/uhi-proves-global-warming/
I suspect he’s one of those who wants to use global warming as a trojan horse to get hands on more OPM.
How much can you make as a troll? Is the pay decent? Anyone see what kind of car Nick Stokes is driving or where he vacations nowadays?
“The USC station is in GHCN Monthly because it is a long term record” when the term started what was around the station? Is it useful as a long term reference if a parking lot was built next to it part way through the term? Should we keep measuring ocean water salinity at the same spot if the the runoff from the french fry plant starts flowing there?
See the paper I posted above. Then continue to flail about regarding UHI, it’s rather amusing to watch.
And I got “snipped” by a moderator for saying no matter how much data, analysis, etc provided to Nick he will not change his position and will continue to defend all aspects of the orthodoxy. Nick is obviously a smart guy but his continued defense of obvious problems within the whole AGW scenario is rather strange. One ask to ask why? I worked with scientists like Nick who stubbornly defended their view of the world even after presented with massive amounts of data and research to the opposite.
I’ve protected Nick in the past from angry/disparaging comments, but he’s outdone himself in denying these problems here in this thread. He can continue to comment if he wants, but the gloves are off unless he starts to recognize that this station bias issue is real, and in fact it does affect climate science.
So, it’s all good?
Reading badly sited instruments is the same as well-sited?
Bureaucrats putting their hot thumbs on the scales is OK?
Well, some read sites that are 1200 kms away…so rubbish data is par for the course in Cli-Sci.
Close enough for government work!
GIGO!
Nick, The problem that I have noted in the temperature, ice, sea level, polar bear, tree ring, proxy. And other measurements used in climate science is a lack of error analysis. All measurements have errors and you can’t average them away. The siting errors that Anthony has identified are one of the errors. This is a large error and it violates NOAA’s siting standards.
I once corresponded with one of the engineers who was working on satellite sea level measurements. I asked him how could claim an accuracy of millimeters using microwaves with wavelengths more then an order of magnitude larger than his claimed accuracy. He told me that he did many measurements and the error reduced. The problem is that the accuracy does not improve. Intrinsic errors, as Anthony noted with temperature sensor sites, can only be reduced by improving the measurement technique.
As per AW Nick, BS. It is utter BS that GISS, NOAA and all the other ‘climate science’ institutions who know better are NOT all over the media for this sort of hyperbolic drivel. Anyone with half a brain knows that overwhelmingly what is being recorded is the local UHI effect. I imagine the overall LA UHI is in the 5-10˚ range (let alone what local anomaly to even that) , ie an order of magnitude greater than any purported global warming. The potential for data corruption is massive.
Are you gaoing hard at the LA times for publishing such utter drivel and helping to inform the public about the disservice to proper science theis sort of crap is doing?
Both USC and UCLA have experienced massive buildup over the past 20-30 years.
I went to UCLA 30 years ago–I walked by that building hundreds of times. Even then it the area around the math/science building (Boelter Hall) was almost completely occupied with buildings or pavement. Since then there has been a significant building boom–several very large research buildings have been built directly south of Boelter, the south end of the campus has changed dramatically.
And records over time from sensors at that location cannot be assumed to be unbiased.
Ever get the feeling that Nick’s posts are edited by a group and somewhat nonsensical? Maybe the posts are intended to disrupt comments on inconvenient truths. My take is if you want to measure UHI temperature, look at city temperature stations. If you want to measure greenhouse gas, look at baloon and satellite data.
I see no reason to think his comments are the work of more than one person. They are certainly always consistent in style: Where there is a valid point being made, he will seek to distract from it by contesting some essentially irrelevant technical point, and ignore the main thrust.
Which is ironic, because there is already a well established scientific phenomenon named “The Stokes Shift”.
no reason to think his comments are the work of more than one person.
Bot.
Nick Stokes: Climate science is not involved here.
You are not denying, are you, that those locations have temp readings that are biased upwards?
Indeed. I can’t locate the exact station, but there is a station on a UK lighthouse that has seen no local development ever.
Nor has the equipment been upgraded.
It shows no ‘global warming’ at all over its multi-decade history…it’s apparently random variation.
I’ve spent the whole of a cloudless week outside, but yesterday instead of the countryside it was in London. Tarmac capital of Britain.
At LEAST 2 degrees hotter.
You know how it works Nick. Your presence on here is probably part of the big dirty game. Don’t be all coy.
Such ‘local’ stories are the mainstay of the fraud being promoted by relentless, unscientific, dishonest stories fed into the MSM alarmist/CAGW reinforcement industry.
The undue promotion of such insignificant unverified dubious thermometer readings, and the pre-announcement of records that will be broken (but don’t actually fall), and the constant announcement of records that aren’t actually records at all or are records manufactured by selection of a vast range of criteria.None of the stories ever get corrected, so most of the public is left with the impression the CAGW industry wants.
Nearly every day the BBC tells us the current UK warm spell is ‘record breaking’. What significant records have actually been broken – none? Record breaking = the warmest day so far this year, in England, then Scotland……………. what a load of codswallop.
I haven’t seen any responses from Nick Stokes in quite some time. You think Anthony blocked him?
I hope not, we should be able to read everyone’s ideas.
I would think that station by station we could learn from trends in each station’s temperature data over many years. Accuracy is less important.
Breaking records is a result of coincidences in the synoptic pattern, ridging and ridge axis positions and warm air advection at the low levels, limits on night time heat losses due to clouds and winds. Do we care about coincidences?
I doubt it, Nick hasn’t violated any of the usage standards. More likely Nick realized he went too far out on that limb and it was cut off.
He’s going to be quiet for awhile and hope everyone forgets. Then he’ll be back.
Love the reference to Billy Sol Estes.
Nick, even for you that’s desperate.
If these stations are merely local and of no consequence, then why are they so frequently cited as evidence that the world is getting warmer?
“If these stations are merely local and of no consequence, then why are they so frequently cited as evidence that the world is getting warmer?”
They are not used as climate, as Nick says.
Try looking at the ever sensationalist media.
Chris’s post of a couple of minutes ago makes a liar out of you.
From a story yesterday in the LA Times: “Among the communities setting records for the day: Downtown L.A. (104 degrees), Burbank (105), Van Nuys (110), Woodland Hills (113), Santa Ana (103), Riverside (113), Escondido (109) and Ramona (108).”
But hey, let’s focus all our criticism on one station at USC.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-record-heat-20180707-story.html
But the point is are any of those actual records, can one go through each and show that its station’s site has not been corrupted by UHI? It was hot, but was it hotter than any time in the past 150 years?
E.g. Santa Ana is dubious given the station location (see picture above).
I was looking at some Riverside stations and haven’t seen a 113F yet, but so far all of the stations only have data from ~1995, so they any of their high records is useless in a climate discussion.
Records for the day?
Do you know how many days there are in a year, Chris, or are you being deliberately obtuse?
And have you asked the LAT how far back these records go? In most cases I have checked up on, less than 30 yrs or so – ie utterly meaningless
Paul – these match up to the records that the LAT’s posts on it’s weather page every day – NWS, I believe. It’s quite telling that so many were set in the 1800’s – long before any UHIE. Were more horse farts back then, I surmise.
http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we04.php
As I posted a bit earlier:
July 24, 1891 – 103
July 25, 1891 – 109 – Still standing as the all time record high for the month of July.
July 26, 1891 – 102
Notice how the troll tries to change the subject. The article talks about many badly placed and maintained stations, but he wants us all to believe that only this one station has a problem.
The Riverside 113F seems to be from Riverside Municipal Airport (KRAL).
Only been there since 1956 and at an airport …
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/homr/#ncdcstnid=20001646&tab=LOCATIONS
Riverside Municipal Airport station is about 5.5 miles from UC Riverside station. Here’s the maxes for 7/6 and 7/7.
Airport: 118F, 113F
UCR___: 110F, 101F
The station at UCR is about 200 feet higher elevation.
Apparently you didn’t read the article completely, only the first part. All of those other stations are mentioned and analysed in the article.
All stations are local, and should only be treated that way. Averaging intensive properties is bad. There is no global temperature or global anomaly.
It’s the same everywhere. The other day I drove into town and my truck thermometer said it was 10 C until I got into a dense, built up area, where the temp jumped to 12C. Meanwhile, the radio was reporting it was 17 C. The official thermometer is at the airport on the highest height of land in the region. Asphalt everywhere, and most of the tree cover is gone. It’s always 2 to 10 C higher at the airport than anywhere else.
The thing about airport weather stations is that they are very important to the aircraft taking off and landing and the local conditions of temperature wind and visibility are the most important. The jets need to know the temperature of the ground conditions from which they are attempting to take off and land.
These are intended for the airport and should be used as such, not so much for determining regional data.
I suppose in the days of large open grass fields, biplanes and silk scarves they were well sited. Not any more.
I agree, safe flight is the goal. 100% of airport stations should excluded from official weather and climate records.
Which reminds me of George Carlin’s character, Al Sleet; the hippy-hippy weatherman: “Right now it’s 72 degrees at the airport, which is stupid because I don’t know anyone who lives at the airport”
Saw the same thing driving from Krakow to Warsaw. The highways have roadside temp signs so drivers know when to expect ice. As we went from open country to large town or even village the temp went up 2 to 4 degrees c.
BTW the reference in our lead story “we can apparently blame the Germans for this one.” presumable refers to the ‘plane with wartime German markings.
The ‘plane looks to me like an AT6 (SNJ) or Harvard which was made by North American (they also made the Mach 3 B70 Valkyrie). The Harvard was not quite that fast (at least when I flew it here in NZ).
Every media outlet reporting the “heat” story should be confronted with this issue along with a request to cease and desist misleading their viewers.
Misleading? Those high temperatures are definitely mann made.
Yabut now that Pruitt is compromised it must be troo.
True, but if they are the subject of an urban heat island they are just anomalies. I live near Wash D.C and all of the weather stations are at airports. While that does raise the temperature of that immediate area, if you go outside D.C. by 15 miles, it drops 3 degrees. So if you base all of your measurements on faulty placed equipment then you get biased data and poor policy.
If you take the temperature in your house and your thermometer is on your oven, then you have biased data. It is not good science to talk about averages for the globe when your data collection is based on crappy site collection.
Don’t the record highs…get adjusted for UHI first?
….snark
Yes, they do.
They bring up the readings in the surrounding rural areas to match the urban ones.
Literally.
The urban sites are more likely to have gaps in the record, which according to the warmistas make them low quality sites. To fill in the gaps, they look at nearby sites that are better quality and assume that the missing data would have behaved the same way.
Beautiful work, Anthony. Really beautiful.
Beware of geeks blaring shifts (in temperature).
Thanks
You violate a fundamental rule of modern journalism: “This story is too good to check.”
(snip, just too stupid to print here, sorry, mod)
Send the LA Times into moderation as well and then delete all nonsense there. They then might change their name into
“Intentionally left blank”.
NO AA man!
I can see them planting grass on the roof and thinking that’s sufficient. Just curious, are electronic temperature sensors used at all? You think one could read temperatures every minute and easily spot anomalies like AC blowing. Mercury bulb is just the standard for some reason?
Then they just take every spike as the high, like in Australia.
Surely whether the stations are useful depends on what you want to measure. If you want to measure the temperature in downtown LA then you need to place a thermometer in downtown LA surrounds by tarmac, vehicles etc. It will measure a temperature that will then correspond to what people walking about will experience. Whether or not you should use it for climate research is a completely different question.
On hot summer days, people in downtown LA spend more time in air-conditioned buildings than walking about outside. That’s why it’s such an UHI.
Yes! And, interestingly, the temps measured are only the temps _outside_.
I up-voted your comment, but I don’t think there are very many people walking around on the roof of the fire station.
Percy, you are exactly on point with your comment. The original intent of the national temperature monitoring stations was to record the actual temperature at a station. As you said, it is what people, animals, and crops would experience. It was not intended to provide information about what the station temperature would have been if there was no human development.
The expected overall accuracy of local temperature measurement was expected to be plus or minus a degree or two Fahrenheit. That was certainly considered sufficient accuracy for the system’s intended purpose. Towards that end, stations were supplied with thermometers accurate to a fraction of a degree that were to be sited in specified enclosures at locations with specified local environmental factors (cleared area, surface character, etc). As seen in Anthony’s research, station siting specifications have been only casually followed.
Using data from this temperature monitoring service for climate research is justified simply by it being what is available. However, claims of analysis algorithms that can remove inherent siting and instrumentation variations over time to provide an overall accuracy of better than a tenth of a degree Celsius are invalid from an instrumentation engineering perspective.
And that is the problem with nearly 100% of the ground based weather network.
All of the stations were designed to measure local conditions for the use of the locals.
They were never designed to be used to figure out global climate.
Using a sensor in a way that it wasn’t designed to be used is not scientific, and neither is most so called climate science.
Exactly.
Planes need the local conditions to take off and land.
Airports tend to be manned 24/7. Other locations that are manned 24/7 and provide temp data tend to be in urban areas.
All that data is fine for LOCAL conditions.
But most of the globe is water. Most of the land is rural.
They are trying to use the abundant urban data to produce a GLOBAL measure of temperature.
Data not suited to purpose. (And they’ve fiddled with it on top of that.)
PS Many have wondered why Anthony is so “miffed” at Nick Stokes.
I suspect that Anthony knows that Nick knows just what “data” goes into the various “global” temp databases.
Anthony doesn’t mind disagreement but he does value honesty. Nick has been dishonest here.
All stations should be recorded. You don’t hide results, ever. What if you want to study UHI? How are you going to do that if you don’t record everything. Exactly what stations you use for what purpose is another issue. Do you actually know which temperature records use which stations? Most don’t use even close to all stations.
Well, it was stinking hot – Friday I was looking at 106 F on the old min/max buried in the shade of my Pop’s east side of the house patio in Laguna Niguel. And that was at 6PM. Sat I drove across LA on my way home and it had that heat wave look – no wind and strange thin clouds. Certainly not the first time I’ve seen that in the 50 years I’ve been in the area. Of course, it was a humdrum 112 here in the north Mojave.
Geoengineering spray clouds
“UCLA’s weather station is on the roof of the Math Sciences/Atmospheric Sciences building.”
Because there was nowhere else to put it.
Won’t reveal the university, but one geophysics academic revealed to me in ’70 that the telescope on the top of the Geophysics Building, and so near to the light pollution of the city, was put there to provide a staircase to the roof..
Umbrellas and drinks up there for grad students.
Use it or lose it budget wisdom.
A variation on ‘nowhere else to put it’ … say.. noway else to pay for it.
Anthony..typo ?
“Yes, the weather station is virtuallt surrounded by asphalt runways” virtually ?
and here:
A rooftop with air conditioners, a perfect place for measuring high temperature records that are guaranteed to be wrong becuase
one more here:
This is why every one of these high temperature readings made the the stations above should be disqualified.
Yeah it’s a typo
It’s OK, the pope says you can stick your thermometer where ever you want.
If you like your thermometer, you can keep your thermometer.
And if it’s one that goes where the sun don’t shine, you’d BETTER keep it!
But the records will have been “adjusted” for location factors, surely????
“The all time record high temperatures for Los Angeles “
Was there a claim of an all-time record there (this year). The LA Times article listed a number of daily records for various stations. But I don’t see how that could be disqualified. Stations seem to have a daily record for every day of the year. If you disqualify this one, why would the last one be better? It seems to me that if stations are reporting temperatures, somewhere there will be a maximum that people will note, and I don’t see how that can be prevented.
That’s the problem Nick, you can’t see anything. Just shut up, really. Your comments are literally beyond belief these days and clearly you are trolling. Clearly you don’t give a damn about accuracy in measurement, only the resulting numbers as long as they fit your narrative.
Well, if you are in downtown LA in the middle of an urban heat island, you will indeed experience the temperatures shown. That’s what matters immediately if you are actually there. How useful this is in examining climate is another issue. I didn’t see anything in the article trying to make a point about climate or global warming based on the recorded temperature at those locations.
What are they suppose to say?
“Well, it’s stinking hot down here, but it doesn’t count because UHI, so leave your jumper on”
I’d be fascinated to know exactly why the people who clicked “-” did so? Let me have it. Go for gold.
It’ll be hotter on a roof than it will be on the street.
Heat getting to you, Tony? You sound cranky.
The stations ENTIRE record should be disqualified …
I for one always value Nick’s input.
Nick is anything but a tr@ll, and usually puts forward a reasoned position together with supporting evidence/links. As sceptics, we should welcome seeing the other side’s arguments, and we should take the time to evaluate their worth. It is important that sceptics do not get blinded by group think, or merely jumping to dismiss any opinion that we do not like.
This site is populated by people who are literate, for the main scientifically literate, and who can form their own views on the worth of any comment that Nick makes, and whether the comment may (or may not) be tainted by bias and/or lack of objectivity.
Personally, and I emphasise that this is my own personal opinion, I see little point in pointing out that the comment is biased or not objective, and it should be left to the reader to make up their own minds.
Turning now to the issue, a station whose siting is compromised should never be used as an indicator of absolute temperatures, but even if it is biased by siting issues, it does not necessarily follow that its anomalies will not be informative, at least over the period when bias was continuous. For example, it may be that this station can tell us nothing of temperatures when compared to the 1880s or the 1930s/1940s, but can tell us something when compared to say the temperatures of the 1990s.
Nick knows my position. all stations (worldwide) should have been audited, any station not ideally situated should have been thrown out. We should be using only the best sited stations which we would now retrofit with the same equipment (LIG thermometers, same enclosure type, same paint etc) as historically used at that station, and we should then take modern day measurements using the same TOB as used at each station, so that we can obtain modern day unadjusted RAW data which can be directly compared to past unadjusted RAW data on a station by station basis.
We should only compare stations with themselves, and not seek to construct some global or Hemisphere construct. We would then know a definite fact, namely whether temperature at point A, had or had not increased from the temperature at point A back in the 1930s/1940s. The same with point B, point C etc. There would be no fancy statistics (krigging, infilling, spatial adjustments, homogenisation and the like) to distort the results.
There is plenty of money in this science. Let us see what say the best 200 sited station when compared individually with themselves.
Haven’t you heard? According to Anthony he isn’t just a tr@ll, but a paid tr@ll!
Nick, like Griff, is a professional troll.
I don’t know whether they are paid or not, but what characterises their posts is that they simply do not retract even when they are shown to be lying. Their motive is clearly not to arrive at the truth, but to achieve a result that vindicates global warming.
This is similar to skepticalscience.
Some years ago I wrote a piece on why renewable energy wont work – basically picking up on the work of Professor David Mackay – essentially highlighting the issue of energy density and what that meant for ‘green technology’ and developing the arguments against it based ion its intermittency – a topic that was almost unmentioned then, but is now recognised as a key drawback.
It was the first time I had used my real name online since 1986
As SOON as that paper was starting to be given positive feedback, a post from someone like Nick Stokes came up saying that the ‘well known climate denier Leo Smith “whose ideas had been refuted years ago” should be simply ignored’.
Now at that time I was still undecided about global warming., I had not actually made any posts about it at all. I had merely as an engineer, expressed deep reservations about the holistic efficacy of renewable energy.
Needless to say that response convinced me that climate change too must be a false premise, otherwise why attack me as a climate denier, when all I had denied was that renewable energy was a viable cost effective solution?
There most certainly are one or more groups of people who communicate by social media and whose apparent aim is to descend on any site or any post that challenges climate or renewable energy ‘orthodoxy’ and use any means at their disposal to trash it, flood it with disinformation and generally use all the agitprop and astroturf style techniques to devalue it that they have learnt.
Whether – as in the case of Microsoft – they are actually paid to do it, I do not know.
BUT it is entirely consistent with the way the hard left and other firmer Sovbloc funded groups operate. The aim is never to arrive at the truth, but to destabilise and disrupt and sow dissension, in order to achieve narrow political – and these days commercial – aims.
I have reported various people to the ASA for fraudulent support of renewable energy based on false claims, but the response has been ‘religious, political and political lobbyists are not bound by the Advertising Standards Authority.
What this means, and its highly alarming, is that commercial sponsorship of trade associations like Renewable UK, and money channelled to organisations like Greenpeace, can be used to further political and commercial interests without actually being subject to any restraint whatsoever.
And those are the organisations to which the UK government deferred when formulating energy and climate policy. Paid liars.
When I ran an anti-windfarm campaign, the website reported that the highest number of hits came from the PR firm employed by the large company behind the wind farm.
I ended up directing propaganda exactly at them – from decrying windmills, to basically attacks on the character and nature of the billion pound company itself.
The windfarm never got built.
But when seeking support from other organisations I got another shock. The political parties attempted to take over our campaign and water it down. Local conservation societies would not go against the government either, as they were in receipt of grants from the government and the EU.
Britain it appeared was totally as corrupt as any third world dictatorship. A network of support grants, public sector employment and the like is basically used to coerce individuals, right down to local level, to go along with lines drawn up by political and commercial influences behind the scenes.
Focus groups, opinion polls, and market research are tools used to discover how well any given campaign is going, and massive PR releases to media, pressure exerted on editors, ensure that the MSM is ‘on message’ and then the independent news sites like this one are covered by paid and unpaid trolls whose function is to give the impressions to the casual observer that dissent exists and to discredit no matter how risibly and demonstrably falsely, any line that is likely to contradict the ‘on message’ position.
I know this from personal experience, so it seems does Anthony. My journey into essentially exposing renewable energy’s deficiencies, and opposing a local windfarm convinced me of something I simply did not believe before: Namely that the media and the government and most of the action and lobby groups were fully bought and paid up puppets of organisations with very deep pockets, and that not a single piece of news is allowed to be published that does not, by and large, fit the message.
The likes of Nick Stokes are identifiable elements of that corruption, and to be fair, in a society where fewer and fewer people are needed to do actual productive work, the chance of a salary doing something as reprehensible as being a climate troll, is probably no worse than prostitution.
With due respect to the likes of Willis, I have to say that my experience is that this is not about the science, and it is not about the technology. It is about the depth to which marketing has replaced information in the media. This is a direction that started in WWII and reached unheard of heights in the Cold War, where the residue that is left (or Left) is what you in the US would call ‘Liberal’ thinking – left over from Russian bloc funding to ‘peace’ ‘social justice’ and ‘anti-nuclear’ groups who morphed into ‘environmental’ groups as the likes of Greenpeace were infiltrated and subverted to the Cause..
It is not far fetched to say that 97% of everything you read in the media is carefully crafted propaganda whose message and whose funding originates in places few suspect. And who will if challenged ascribe those that oppose the message to being funded by those who are in fact funding the message!
These people are the people they warned you about!
Nearly all of the Left is owned by the ‘Capitalist Scum’ they rail against 🙂
What started out as a way to destabilise and demoralise the West, because the Soviet bloc lacked the economic power to challenge in the arms race, has been taken up by other political and commercial interests as a tool that can be used to further their own interests.
They own Hillary Clinton, And they own much of the Republican party, but it is not clear that they own Donald Trump.
Yet…
They certainly own Nick Stokes. Whether he knows it or not.
Yeah, well, while you rant on about politics and ideology, he keeps talking about science. Even if you don’t agree with him, he has an excellent record of explaining himself in a manner that allows understanding of why he thinks what he does, allowing for people to make their own mind up about his conclusions.
riiiiiight. He has an excellent record of obfuscation and red herrings. He nitpicks fine detail (unrelated to intent, while only supporting adjusted status-quo narrative data) all-the-while denying the reality of the politics behind the false narrative, just as yourself constantly evidence with your posts.
@Philip Schaeffer
The issue isn’t really about whether or not a particular station is part of the GHCN, and Nick knows it. Nick it just throwing up a smoke screen. The point of the post is that these temperature readings are being used by the MSM to bolster the claim of global warming. In response to that effort, it matters very much that their suitability for climate purposes be thoroughly vetted, or in these cases, trashed.
Yeah, well, while you rant on about ranting on the science has turned into political science…
whether he is paid is debatable. I am intrigued by Mr. Watts frustration, but I certainly can appreciate the reason. I am surprised though because it doesn’t look well upon us to tell him to shut up. To be fair though, I call him a liar, because Nick Stokes is a liar. So…I suppose it could be viewed as excessive, even though it is an accurate appraisal.
Are there paid trolls? A quick search found:
https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-hires-internet-trolls-2401703407.html
http://allthatsinteresting.com/astroturfing-internet-comments
https://gizmodo.com/5681617/programmer-develops-twitter-bot-to-troll-climate-change-deniers
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/02/and-climate-internet-trols-are-some-of-the-worst/
Thanks, Leo.
This is Comment of the Day.
The formation and changing of political views was and is a major focus of study of the Frankfurt School, including Erich Fromm, etc. They figured out the nuts and bolts of how we come to be aware of issues (via education, media, and informal networks), form our opinions (we want to be correct and we want to be virtuous, and not one of the uninformed or ignorant people so we adopt those opinions that allow us to be so), and how we can be influenced to change our opinions (education, media, informal friends).
All of that is genuine Social Technology, just as many here know engineering technologies. Once known, this technology has been used against us to advance the Marxist views held by the Frankfurt School, and all of the Institutes of Social Science Research that dotted up across academia once Frankfurt School came to the U.S and set theirs up at Columbia.
Leo, all you describe is exactly what I came to concluded about half way through my career while working in environmental science, politics, the bureaucracies and the news media at all levels. At first I was in disbelief and denial. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing and experiencing. I describe myself today as a recovering idealist. Yet even as a cynic and skeptic I couldn’t believe how naive I had been. Yet as I dug deeper, did detailed research on the situation, it became undeniable. When I challenged people and events I was attacked, investigated, and accused of being bought and paid for. Even a couple of my devout enemies said the last just was not possible.
I would note, I wrote back in the early 1990s that while the USSR was split up all it really did was rebrand itself. Putin, once destined to be the head of the KGB, has stated one of the worse tragedies in world history, was the dismantling of the Soviet Union. He has clearly blamed the USA of such historical tragedy. The idea that he wouldn’t use all the old and new evil tools, as well as useful idiots and fellow travelers developed by the KGB to disrupt the West, especially the USA, is being extremely naive and shows a lack of imagination.
As has been said many times, those that do not learn from history——
CAGW has very little to do with saving the earth. While humans do things that harm the planet, burning fossil fuels is not one of them. Spending trillions to fix CAGW while simpler environmental problems with proven solutions exist which cost much less, is the real problem.
Reasonable. Nick Stokes isn’t a troll, less paid. But he could be smart and support your intention in Watts’ piece. Out with those stations! Verney gives us the recipe: the best 200 sited station when compared individually with themselves.
He is and I suspect he may well be.
and if true would obviously never admit it
Great comment! Let us see what the best sited stations show! Any number (even much less than 200) of the best sited stations would be very valuable, any time period.
Just don’t average them together. That equals nonsense.
Jeff Alberts
“Just don’t average them together. That equals nonsense.”
That’s right, we should just use any trends we can find and keep the trends separate. I don’t see how averaging them will make the data more reliable for climate questions.
Interpolation is done in the data grids for numerical weather prediction, but that’s repeatable and testable on a daily basis. It’s not averaging.
Well, all stations should be recorded. Which ones you choose to use is another issue.
Anthony, I read the “Press Release – Watts at #AGU15 The quality of temperature station siting matters for temperature trends” article from 2015.
I’m curious to know how big the difference in trend is between your “ideal” set when compared to the stations that are actually used in the most commonly used temperature records, as opposed to only comparing against ALL stations. (assuming I have understood correctly what is being shown in the graph at the top of that article)
If this has already been done (by you or anyone else), I’d appreciate a link to it.
Basically, I’m trying to determine if the magnitude of the difference in the trend is the same as what I see there when comparing to the temperature records that are most commonly used by scientists, which don’t use all stations.
I suggest that you follow what Tony Heller does:
https://realclimatescience.com/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/
The guy who has been banned from Watts Up With That?
I haven’t seen anyone suggest that data be thrown away completely.
Does anyone have a copy of the chart that shows how these stations are rated?
If memory serves, they are ranked from 1 to 5. A 5, which these stations clearly are would be expected to have errors of greater than 5C degrees.
Found one:
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Philip, I completely disagree. No scientist should use a measurement device that doesn’t match stringent standards. We should accept no station which isn’t classified as a 1 or a 2. I understand the desire to know what the temperature is at a given time in Los Angeles, but if the NOAA uses a station classified as 3 or higher it’s going to skew data and therefore damage science.
So how are you going to know what the temperature is in UHI areas if you throw away the figures. You keep everything. What you use and for what purpose is another matter. If you are in downtown LA in a large UHI, then the temperature you are going to feel is what is measured there.
If you are telling people what temperature they will experience in downtown LA, you don’t say “well, I could tell you how hot it is downtown, but it doesn’t count because UHI”
What stations you use when assessing climate is another issue.
You know as well as I do, satellite measurements have superseded these antiquated stations… satellite data does not support any of these records.
Once again, Nick tries to defend the indefensible by claiming: It’s all we’ve got.
If the sensor is not suited for the task at hand, then it should be disqualified and all it’s data rejected. Period.
It was hot out here in the East San Gabriel Valley. I saw 118 on the Bank and 117 in my car. Weather Underground had 119 in Glendora. I know these are all unofficial but all I’m saying is it was damned hot Friday.
Yes it was, but your bank and your car will always read high, just like these stations, there’s a built-in bias.
Anthony, are the thermometers in vehicles biased in one way or dependent upon how long it has been running?
Typically in Denver, my 2007 Dodge Ram 1500 Laramie model with Hemi displays a temperature when I start it, but after I drive a bit it cools down slightly (typically once I get moving away from downtown). Then, once I travel about 10 miles Northwest to Arvada (much less dense and slightly higher elevation) it is almost always 3-5 degrees less.
The other day I left G-force motorsports off Wadsworth and Colfax, and my truck read 91 while a few blocks up the way at the cemetery their sign said 97. I was pulling about 1300lbs between the trailer and the ATV I was towing on the trailer. I can’t make heads or tails of my vehicle thermometer and the degree of accuracy it actually has.
I’m assuming 5 degrees +/- is not unexpected?
And to be fair, it has been scalding hot in Colorado these past few weeks, and of course, the media is just playing up the CAGW like mad. I have a special type of anger for radio sports talk shock jocks who mention global warming casually, not understanding the goal post has been moved, and of course, they have zero time invested into investigating what they have been told. So they put all that false information out into the ether for unassuming listeners. It is mind control plain and simple, whether or not intentional, and it absolutely contributes to the general perception.
Pardon, two thoughts thrown in together but I felt it was applicable.
Reminds me of a fun drive a few years back, here in Los Angeles. Was talking to my Dad on the phone (he’s in San Antonio area – hill country), and I was driving over the Mulholland Pass on the 405 freeway (was actually moving well – at 70mph+). Was a hot summer day in the valley – and the car read about 102F – as I headed south to the West side to Culver City. Told my Dad – that I’d read the temps to him as they dropped from the top of the hill, going down. By time I got home, some 12-15 minutes later, the temp read 74, as I pulled into my driveway. Dad really got a kick out of that.
I think that we topped out here at our house on Fri (the hottest day of this heat wave) at about 96. Fortunately, the humidity was below 20.
The temperature sensor is biased by where it is located within your vehicle. Most are located under the hood near the engine. They are located presumably in air flow, but as such will only measure the temperature under the hood, not the temperature of the neighborhood.
Bright sun heating the metal of your car is what the thermometer reads.
“The temperature sensor is biased by where it is located within your vehicle.”
On my Toyota Matrix it’s located in front of the radiator. Don’t know if they’ve shielded it at all from radiator/engine heat. But I notice it always reads lower than the one on the big sign in the parking lot at the equipment rental place I pass by every day. Sometimes they’re within a degree or two, sometimes by 4 or 5 degrees.
the temperature change after first starting up is due to heat soak. Your car was collecting heat from just sitting in the sun, and the dead air around the temp sensor was higher than the air outside (just like the air in the cabin is hotter when you first open it up). when you drive around a bit the airflow pushes that abnormal heat out and you get a truer measure of external temp. You can also see this on cold days when you get in the car and the temp warms a bit while driving.
edit: TBH though, because of the heat from the car and all it’s system the Temp will have some positive bias compared to external air. You may see this if you are running but sitting at idle.
Yeah. My work van has a temp sensor for outside temp. It might read 90 after sitting in the parking lot for hours during midday (clearly I’m not working enough). But when I start moving it cools down a bit.
I was driving to Nevada and stuck in the traffic Jam at the 15/215 interchange (leaving the LA Basin). Traffic was stop and go at about 5mph. My truck registered 118F at 1:50PM in that mess. Ten minutes and about a half mile later, as I broke out of the jam and traffic opened up the temperature dropped to 109F. 9 degree difference between the trapped air around the cars and the open air (still over the freeway concrete). Vehicle temp sensors are generally well shielded from convective effects so they tend to show dead air temperatures.
On Saturday in Mesguite NV, my truck had been parked all day in a driveway (grey concrete, heat soaked til 4pm) and registered a temp of 109F As I backed out of the driveway over the black top the temperature increased to 112F in the space of less than 2 min.
The sensors on vehicles may not be laboratory grade but delta readings give a good indication of changes in the environment. UHI and the effect of concrete and asphalt is massive.
The weak ridge axis is actually trailing west-southwest, so it didn’t look like a particularly hot pattern. But WAA everywhere, which is not typical for your low levels, so it must have been enough, along with clear skies, and the Sun very high early in July.
“This is why every one of these high temperature readings made the the stations above should be disqualified.” –> This is why every one of these high temperature readings made BY the stations above should be disqualified.
Here’s Johnny:
“It was so hot today I saw a robin dipping his worm in Nestea. ”
“It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, “if you want it your way, cook it yourself.”
Best use of hot temperatures ever!
Is there any precise info on the temp station at SeaTac airport, south of Seattle? One day this May, they reported 88 deg F (allegedly a record for that day), while my suburban thermometer, 25 miles away, was reading 78 deg.
The Puget Sound area is a diverse place such that 25 miles from SeaTac can put you out at North Bend, or 1,000 feet higher, or in a valley with cool air descending, or near a cool surface lake.
Do several loops around your area, both morning (cool) and late afternoon (warmer) and log the temps as you go. If your rig doesn’t have in-dash temp, borrow one that does. The changes should be striking.
The host of WUWT will sell you an in-car temperature logger, if you want to get serious about this.
Alternatively, ride a bike up and down the hills and feel the changes.
Maxbert, I posted some sample info for SeaTac in another article.
See here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/07/ouargla-africa-washington-post-promotes-another-potentially-bogus-all-time-high-temperature-record/#comment-2398731
Thanks for the link to your post.
If you use Google Earth, you can go back in time via the clock button.
Do that and move the slider back to 7/2006. The area west of the then existing runways
is bare earth [ compare to the previous image 6/2006 ].
I wonder if that construction period altered the temp readings ?
Excellent work, Anthony!
The siting conditions for these sites are beyond belief bad, such that no one of a sound mind would try to defend them. And then, unbelievably, Nick stokes the faux flames of AGW in his alternate universe attempted defense of this crap. Also beyond belief bad….
Nick is the smartest blinders wearing man I know. He only sees within his own world, and then tries to tell embody else what they are seeing is wrong. He’s really overdone it this time.
Here is the thing Anthony, I have felt that Nick presents his arguments in a way where discussion is possible. Dave Appell is another sort of activist, and I use that word on purpose. I understand DA’s scientific credentials, but he doesn’t conduct himself in a scientific manner on the discussion boards who tolerate him. He does his argument a disservice in terms of persuasion. UHI is your expertise, so I think that Nick may have struck a nerve. BTW, thanks for the great article.
Well, some analysis of exactly which of these stations are used for what would be useful. All information should be recorded, but not all should be used to examine climate.
The question is how old are those weather stations? If the article is comparing new stations located such that the readings are skewed compared to older stations placed in cooler areas, then they have a point. But, if these same stations are comparing data to their own history, then there is no problem with the data. I only have 1/2 a brain and I done figgered that out nice and quick like.
Nope, use that half a brain to think harder. You missed the point entirely.
Well, the data is fit for purpose – if you are studying the effects of various environmental changes on UHI. Not for anything else, of course.
My outdoor thermometer is fit for purpose, too – it’s the temperature of the area where I spend most of my time when I step out back. Sited on a beam of the porch, with the block wall on the back of my house not quite six feet away. Says nothing about the temperature anywhere else in town (even my next door neighbor’s back yard, consistently reading about five degrees cooler – but his back wall is wood, he has a lot more greenery, the retaining wall is also wood where mine is again block, and his thermometer is out by his koi pond).
The location is unacceptable…
I am sure the ‘all time record high’ stories are because there hasn’t been enough warming in the data sets.
Our news in NZ has been filled with AGW stories recently. Our Climate Change Minister (and Leader of the Green Party) is introducing a Zero Carbon Bill to Parliament.
Coincidence?
I think not.
https://www.mfe.govt.nz/have-your-say-zero-carbon
No more beer?
Exactly.
They clearly don’t comprehend the consequences.