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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It looks to me like the USC station is on a lot covered with gravel. I don’t think that is according to specification.
At least we now have the USCRN temperature station network which are supposed to be high quality.
“The stations are placed in pristine environments expected to be free of development for many decades.”
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/us-climate-reference-network-uscrn
The lack of knowledge in locating these stations is not surprising. Most installers are simply doing what they are told, and not given the underplaying criteria for an unbiased location.
I see it every day while auditing commercial properties for energy use.
I’ll agree the temperature records at the airports and the schools and such were compromised, however, I grew up in Los Angeles and let me tell you – it was extraordinarily hot. I’m curious what the readings were at Griffith Park/the Observatory & up at Mt. Wilson. Maybe Cal Tech too. Those areas haven’t changed much (especially Mt. Wilson) so you ought to be able to get a good idea of the temps compared to the same day the records were set in the past.
I wondered this as well. Surely there are some better sited weather stations in LA? What did they record? If they recorded lower temperatures, then it’s a question of cherry picking, if they recorded record high temperatures, then poorly sited locations might still provide usable data (unlikely?)
I don’t think there is a weather station located within the LA basin that has not been corrupted by local development.
San Rafael Hills (SRXC1) looks pretty good, 113F on 7/6 (Fri), 107F on 7/7.
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/timeseries.php?sid=SRXC1&num=168&wfo=lox
Not sure how to get more data for that station, anyone have a link to get a full data set?
Why don’t they stick to their own rules? Are they that stupid to think that nobody will find out? It’s irrational.
Unbelievable … these “weather ” station administrators get away with thumb on the scale bias .
Weather stations next to jet runways and tennis courts ? WTF .
Why not just stick them on power plant stacks ?
The population of LA in 1900 was 100 000. Even in 1939 only 1.5 M when the temperature at long beach was recorded as 109 F. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243141849
The city itself is now 4 M but with 18 M surrounding it and an order of magnitude more cars, even well placed stations need to break long held records by degrees before you can pretend its something unprecedented, and even then unsure because there were no measurements in the MWP and fewer places being recorded until recent times. And Long beach seems to have only hit 109F while 112F was recorded in Orange County in 1939 when 50 people died.
Off-topic question: What is the Luftwaffe plane doing parked at Van Nuys Airport?
Would you like to see it doing an air raid?
There’s a place called Hollywood near there, in case you haven’t heard. Lots of money to be made leasing period-vintage aircraft.
Besides the obvious Hollywood uses, restoring old military aircraft (often called “War Birds”) is a popular hobby amongst pilots. Just as likely, that is someone’s pet project.
There have been many airshows around LA region this summer and I see a lot of the aircraft using VNY as a base of operation. Every weekend you can see flights of 4-5 WWII aircraft either taking off or landing, very fun when you’re out driving someplace and suddenly a formation of these comes into view.
I can’t tell. It looks a fighter with an air cooled engine with a cowling. The wing tips are a bit squared off. The cockpit extends back. (That is, if the pilot looked over his shoulder, he could see what was behind him and not just the back of the cockpit.)
I’d guess a later Focke-Wulf Fw 190. But that’s just a guess.
looks like a T-6 or similar variant trainer painted in luftwaffe colors. probably one of those air combat groups that lets people “fly” in mock dogfights. There are a few of those around here.
hen I was a scientist with ICRISAT Hyderabad, I prepared a booklet on met stations to provide guidelines to students from developing countries. When they go back they should check weather station in his location fits in to the recommendation, if not correct them to the standard. Also I visited agromet stations in India and corrected deviations if any. In Africa I saw some problems basically because of paucity of funds.
In USA, urban heat island is a different issue. But the stations that does not fit in to the recommended system, they are unfit for even urban heat island effect computations.
sjreddy
There may be some truth to this but, nevertheless, it was very hot. Those thermometers were close enough to the truth. I live in Hollywood. I don’t have air conditioning. So I was in the heat. On Friday it was at least as hot as it’s ever been in the ten years I’ve lived here. I lived in Phoenix for ten years and it was one of the few days in LA when it felt like Phoenix.
How do these supposed records compare to any USCRN readings?
Long time ago (early 80’s), standing lookout watch on the Dwight D. Eisenhower, I’d be feeling cold until an F-14 took off and then for a minute, I could bask in what felt like a warm summer day.
Anthony — since you did that great study which identified trustworthy weather stations for comparison against the whole — are there ANY good stations of record in the LA basin to which these records could be compared?
And of course our various trolls still insist that an increase in the number of record highs is proof of global warming.
Deadly 11-day heat wave, with record high temps – 107 years ago:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/heat-wave-strikes-northeast?cmpid=Social_Facebook_SiteShare
Given the same conditions today, the recorded temps would have been much higher, and the globular warmunists would be screaming that we had reached warming armageddon.
Independent of human influences is (was?) the basic concept of microclimate. Ecologists used climographs (must be ancient terms, not in speller) where temperature was plotted against precipitation, usually means. Similar graphs plotting salinity against temperature were used in marine science. While good for comparing seasonal and regional differences, would these be useful otherwise. Don’t recall seeing any lately, are they around anymore?
Its pretty crazy. I have two outside thermometers, living near the beach, a second story pops out of the first story roof surrounded on 3 sides by roof. One thermometer outside a window on north side of 2nd story. The other one in a shaded narrow north south breezeway in first story. Friday during the heatwave here in Orange County, CA the upper floor thermometer maxed at 97deg and the first floor thermometer at 88 degrees. Trying to figure that out. Beach is just on the other side of a row of houses on the southside of the alleyway that I am on the north side of with about 100 yards of sand in front of that line of houses. There is a six foot space between the houses in line with my breezeway so you can see the beach from my breezeway. Light breeze was from south blowing over the Pacific Ocean. The official local weather station about 4 miles south on the beach registered the same high at 4:53pm as my 2nd story thermometer above the 1st story roof and I recall that was somewhere in the 4pm hour. So I figure it must be the first story thermometer in the breezeway was being affected by that southerly breeze coming off the ocean funneling between the 2 houses to the south right through my breezeway, sliding under the hot air like an approaching cold front. Not sure of the exact location of the Huntington Beach WD6AWP thermometer but it seems awfully crazy to assume anything about anything about thermometers and anything less than a handful of degrees. Yeah it was hot, the thermometer confirmed it so you might think of finding a cool place to sit. Is it good for anything else? I doubt it.
The area of the LA Basin is 1688 square miles. How many weather station locations are there?
It would seem that for electricity consumption the average temperature would be more important than the temperature at Burbank Airport or downtown LA.
Was electricity consumption in Southern California also at an all time record?
As is always the case, the Global Climate Change Brigade always looks for LOCAL extremes AFTER THE FACT.
If these extreme weather conditions are caused entirely by CO2 emissions, why is there such a drastic change from day to day?
CAISO shows peak load as 45,270 MW at 5 pm on Friday July 6th. The record is 50,270 on July 24th 2006.
FWIW: The closest USCRN stations recorded these max temps around 3pm on Friday 2018/7/6.
Santa Barbara (north of LA & coastal) : 31.6C (88.9F)
Fallbrook (south of LA, inland of San Diego) : 45.4C (113.7F)
The Fallbrook temp is the highest it has ever recorded (from a quick manual check) but that is since mid 2008 only.
In addition . .
This heat wave not much different than many other short term heat waves in SE Cal and Los Angeles. Take this one:
Well, it was close – Fri and Sat set record high temps – 108 and 104 respectively – for Los Angeles for the day; however, the record high temp for the month of July still stands. That was back in July, 1891 – long before there was any ‘man-made’ global warming or Urban Heat Island Effect which can add 4-6 degrees F to the natural temperatures in this massive sprawling metropolitan area.
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
Interestingly enough, there are still 5 July high temp records still standing which were set in the late 1800’s. Darn horse farts.
It’s quite possible that 4-6 degrees of Saturday’s 108 record high was because of the UHIF. Adjusting for that might actually leave the high at roughly 104. Certainly the UHIF added to the temperature. FTR – the UHIF, according to our EPA, can cause night time temps to remain up to 20 F warmer in a metropolitan city, than in the surrounding natural setting of a rural countryside area.
And now – we see that there is probably even more fake heat in these newly set daily records.
Thanks Tony – great information to have
Surface temperature is a human invention. In terms of exactness within a degree or so, it is a very site-specific measurement.
Think about what standardizing something that usually would be a very site-specific measurement means: You have to have an ideal height to place the measuring device. You have to have an ideal surface on which to place the device. You have to have ideal surroundings. You have to have all these imposed conditions that exist ONLY because humans arrange for these conditions to be imposed.
Within a few degrees, then, the whole concept of a surface temperature is like a mythical creature — something that is staged and painstakingly measured in an exact, ideal way.
What about temperatures ABOVE the ideal height ? … temperatures BELOW the ideal height ? … temperatures near VARIOUS surfaces and surroundings ? These are all valid measures too for ALL THE REST of Earth’s atmosphere.. And yet, we focus on this ideal height, ideal location, ideal surrounding mythical contrivance of a standard that cannot possibly relate to the real world, within the small range of a few degrees over which the experts in this area make all the big fuss.
It would be more efficient if they place a surface temperature station on top of the LAT building and hit it with studio lights with live action reporting on the roof.
You may disqualify at will, but I live on the rural outskirts of LA and it is easy for me to believe that the temp was 113-114. I have been in Arizona when the temps were that high, and the temp on Friday had that same ‘stepped right into the oven’ feel to it.
I have no data, just subjective experience: I cannot experientially exclude the assertion that the temp was gawdalmintyhigh.
Jan, sweating to even think about it
It would be nice to know what a good reading was. I happened to be visiting LA/Burbank Friday through Sunday and i thought I had landed in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Anthony’s point about urban heat islands just keep getting more poignant – as this was my first visit in 17 years, it became readily apparent LA sprawl keeps on growing further into the hills, with more fires.
Anthony’s point is that temperature growth is due to factors other than atmospheric CO2. Growth is regional and due to urban growth of heat retaining structures. Temperature growth is not global, it is regional (until human occupied regions begin to influence greater and greater areas of land).
Google Earth does have an available OH Walk back in time to 1989
In 1994 there were no Tennis Courts to the Northeast, it was all trees and grass.
Between 1994 and 2003, the grass and trees were removed for the new additional Tennis Courts
Between 2008 and 2009 a large hedge was planted in the grassy area directly north of the sensors effectively creating a wind block. The 11/2009 image also indicated that the Coop is subject to Shade from rather large trees to the west and southwest.
Looking from street-side today, nearly the entire pad is surrounded by 4′ high bushes effectively creating a stagnant air zone. (could this also serve to artificially raise the temperature?)
I live in Santa Ana, and now I finally know why my weather apps don’t match any thermometers around my house or in my car! THANK YOU!
They are frequently off, by up to 10 degrees!
I have even complained to the weather channel and asked them what source they were using, because it’s so untrustworthy (Apple app seems to source from the the same data).
No answer, of course…
The hotter it gets, the more skewed the data gets. I was in Palm Springs for the last heat wave… thank goodness! No air conditioning back at home. The apps said 118 and I believed it. Felt like I was on Venus outside! But no thermometers here to check.