By H. Sterling Burnett
For years, I have written about the poor quality control exercised by government entities promoting the theory human fossil fuel use is causing dangerous climate change. When federal agencies in the United States, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), university researchers, and weather agencies abroad, aren’t outright manipulating data (as numerous previous issues of Climate Change Weekly and other Heartland Institute publications show they’ve done) to prove their assertion the Earth is warming rapidly and to a dangerous degree, they are using data from severely compromised sources.
A recent report in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society (JAMS) reconfirms the latter claim, showing NOAA has underestimated the extent to which the heat island effect has compromised its recorded temperatures.
Two features about this work are of particular note: (1) two of the researchers involved in the study actually work for NOAA, the organization whose temperature records their research is bringing into question; and (2) the experiment conducted by the researchers serving as the basis of their conclusions was part of NOAA’s attempt to refute work of Anthony Watts, a meteorologist with more than 40 years of experience who founded the award-winning climate website Watts Up With That. Watt, who recently joined The Heartland Institute as a senior fellow, has for more than a decade produced research showing the National Weather Service’s (NWS) climate monitoring stations, which NOAA uses to compile its temperature records and trend lines, were compromised, failing to meet the agency’s published standards for data quality.
In 2009, The Heartland Institute published a study by Watts exploring problems with NWS’s weather monitoring locations. Watts wrote,
The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
[A examination of] 860 of these temperature stations … found that 89 percent of the stations—nearly 9 of every 10—fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.
It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.
The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.
Working with others, Watts continued examining potential sources of bias at NWS climate monitoring sites, concluding in a 2015 presentation to a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, “the 30-year trend of temperatures for the Continental United States (CONUS) since 1979 are [sic] about two thirds as strong as official NOAA temperature trends.”
Watts’ research generated wide media coverage. NOAA felt obligated to respond. By 2012, NOAA researchers had begun an experiment to refute Watts’ claims about the integrity of its weather monitoring system.
The results of NOAA’s experiment are now in, and to the extent it tested Watts’ claims, his concerns were verified. The coauthors of the JAMS paper found “small-scale urban encroachment within 50 meters of a station can have important impacts on daily temperature extrema (maximum and minimum)….”
This extends the area for which temperature recordings by NWS stations are compromised by 66 percent beyond what the agency previously admitted was a problem, leading to the question: How many more monitoring stations’ data are compromised above what Watts previously found?
In particular the JAMS study confirmed what Watts and other researchers have consistently maintained: even relatively modest development near temperature recording devices can skew their measurements, particularly by narrowing the diurnal temperature range—the difference between the daily maximum and minimum temperatures. Anthropogenic heat sources such as motors and exhaust from machinery located near measuring stations, as well as built-up concrete and other types of development, accumulate and store heat during each day’s hottest period and release it only slowly overnight, resulting in higher nighttime lows being recorded, and a smaller diurnal range. Because the vast majority of the much-hyped average global warming of the latter part of the twentieth century stems not from higher high temperatures being recorded but from higher low temperatures usually recorded at night, much of NOAA’s reported temperature rise is likely an artifact of compromised data from poorly sited NWS monitors.
Ground-based temperature measurements, although below those projected by climate models, are still the closest of the three sources of temperature data (ground monitors, satellites, and weather balloons) to matching the models’ projections and trends. Skeptics have long used more accurate satellite and weather balloon data to justify their position that the models’ temperature estimates and projections don’t match real-world measurements. If, as seems to be the case, even the ground-based temperature measurements and trends are lower than NOAA and others have previously claimed, there is little if any reason to trust model projections of temperature. And if this is so, there is even less reason to trust other projections of climate doom spun out by models that are purported to flow from their temperature projections.
The conclusion media pundits, the general public, and politicians alike should draw from this new research is that there is little justification for imposing costly restrictions on fossil fuel use to fight a warming that is, in fact, not severe at all.
I fear, however, their response will be much more akin to the closing lines of Don McLean’s classic song “Vincent”:
“They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will.”
SOURCES: Watts Up With That; Journal of the American Meteorological Society (behind paywall); The Heartland Institute; Climate Change Weekly; Climate Change Weekly; Climate Change Weekly
“the 30-year trend of temperatures for the Continental United States (CONUS) since 1979 are [sic] about two thirds as strong as official NOAA temperature trends.”
If up to 80% of the warming is at night, then my immediate suspicion would be that up to 80% of the warming trend is caused by gradual changes in the area around the weather stations, not just a third. Would be increased average cloud cover account for warming that happens only at night?
“The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human emissions reduces the amount of radiation released into space, which increases both the night-time and day-time temperatures. However, because at night there is a much smaller volume of air that gets warmed, the extra energy added to the climate system from carbon dioxide leads to a greater warming at night than during the day.”
https://phys.org/news/2016-03-nights-warmer-faster-days.html
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/joc.4688
Ah, thank you!
I propose an experiment:
On the Autumnal Equinox, using a calibrated IR temperature gauge, from a distance and height of 6′, take the temp of the four exterior walls of a contemporary suburban brick-veneer home, selected for walls with westward-, southward-, eastward- and northward-facing red brick surfaces which are not shaded by trees or other buildings during the course of the day.
Begin the measurements at Sunrise (first showing of the sun’s partial disk, straight East), each wall in the same order. Also, take the temperature of the grass at the measurer’s feet, 6′ out from the base of the wall, and completing all 8 measurements within 2 minutes.
Repeat the measurements each 15 minutes, for the ~24 hours until the next sunrise. Plot the results.
The hypothesis is that you’ll find measureable differences in the wall temperature change characteristics during the day, which in advance can reasonably characterized as follow:
The north wall, which does not receive any direct sunlight during the day, is only warmed from its interior, by ambient external air temperature, and by whatever IR is being returned from the atmosphere and the surface.
The other three walls will have varying amounts of insolation during the day, based on the angle of the sun as the day proceeds.
The East wall insolation will taper off as sidereal noon approaches, and end at noon, and the grass 6′ away will go into shade sometime later, depending on the height of the wall.
The south wall insolation will increase from nearly nothing until sidereal noon, and then decrease to nearly nothing right about sunset. The grass at the foot of this wall will have the same schedule of insolation, but will be at a different angle with respect to the sun’s rays.
The grass at the foot of the west wall will get its first insolation some time before noon, depending on the height of the wall. The wall itself will get its first insolation at sidereal noon, which will increase as the angle between the sun’s rays and the wall changes. Insolation of both the wall and the grass will cease at sunset, though the insolation of the grass will be at a different angle with respect to the sun’s rays as the afternoon progresses. The highest insolation of the grass will be at noon, and will decrease as the afternoon proceeds.
Plot the temps in a time-series, all 8 measured values for each 15-minute sample interval stacked.
My hypothesis is that the varying influence of direct insolation will be measurable as a function of the time-of-day, and the surface being measured. The North-facing wall is the control, as it receives no direct sunlight, only being influenced by the ambient air temp, internal home temp, and whatever IR may be present. The grass at its base will similarly lack insolation, though (depending on latitude) may get some direct sunlight at midday. The other three walls get time-varying amounts of sunlight, and the grass is cooled by evaporation, warmed by insolation, and perhaps also by IR.
Looking forward to the publication of your results in Nature – Climate
Creepy jack as usual. Brett Keane
“Would be increased average cloud cover account for warming that happens only at night?”
No.
It’s the dominating effect of the GHE as caused by non-condensing GHGs.
The back-radiated LWIR required to reduce cooling under a shallow surface inversion is much smaller than during the day – when convection increases (mostly) the atmospheric depth.
A simple solution. All such weather stations should be in the country, they are automated, so no walking to them to read.
And if the results differ wildly from those obtained by the time tested balloons, plus the satillites, then its clear that fiddling of the figures by the various government agencies is still taking place.
But we still come back to the fact that the Green blob is now big business. Far too many business people are now quite happy with the results of CC, as its a steady supply of money.
And what would all of the Universities and so called scientists do without CC. Its too big, just as the Worlds Banks were considered to be too important during the Global financial crash of 1987 to be allowed to be declared Bankrupt.
It will probably be a slow process, such as the Red -blue team idea by Pres. TRUMP, if it ever happens.
NJE VK5ELL
In 100 years, pictures like the one above will appear in the science textbooks for 6th graders. The authors will mock our generation mercilessly for being so bad at Science that we spent trillions of dollars before discovering that we had climate stations located in parking lots.
They’ll regard us the same way we think of people who spent a year’s wages on a tulip bulb in the 1,600’s.
And this is from the most technologically advanced single largest country on the planet earth.
Let’s not even start to talk about the other 9/10ths of the planet’s records, or the almost complete lack of records for the 2/3rds of the planet’s surface covered in water.
This “Man Made Global Warming” stuff is as bad a “science” as the flat earth society.
“Two features about this work are of particular note: (1) two of the researchers involved in the study actually work for NOAA, the organization whose temperature records their research is bringing into question; and (2) the experiment conducted by the researchers serving as the basis of their conclusions was part of NOAA’s attempt to refute work of Anthony Watts, a meteorologist with more than 40 years of experience who founded the award-winning climate website Watts Up With That. Watt, who recently joined The Heartland Institute as a senior fellow, has for more than a decade produced research showing the National Weather Service’s (NWS) climate monitoring stations, which NOAA uses to compile its temperature records and trend lines, were compromised, failing to meet the agency’s published standards for data quality.”
Wrong. It was not and attempt to prove anthony’s speculations wrong.
1. There are NO feild tests of micro site using LeRoys criteria. The CRN classification system (CRN1-5)
has never been FIELD tested. LeRoy just made it up. His associate did limited undocumented testing.
How do I know, well FFS I asked them before we wrote our paper.
The lack of any proper FIELD TEST of the leroy classification system is pretty well known
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/s10546-014-9918-2
“It is difficult to install and maintain sites that satisfy the recommendations of WMO (2006)
in spite of the efforts of observing network managers because of costs and the urbanization
surrounding the sites. Minimizing errors arising from the surroundings of the sites is required
of network managers, while the observing sites have been selected mainly by drawing on
the experience of installers (WMO 1993). The reason is there is no quantitative method for
evaluating the observation environment or estimating the influence of an artificial surface.
Therefore, a quantitative method for evaluating the temperature observation environment is
necessary.
In recent years, classifying sites into classes 1–5 has been considered and discussed in
WMO (2010). A site classified as class 1 can be regarded as a reference site, while a site
of class 5 has a poor environment where the meteorological observation are suspect and to
be avoided. The classification of the temperature observation site is based on the artificial
surface ratio among the inside of a circle where a thermometer is located at the centre. It is
a practical method but lacks a scientific basis.”
2. There is only ONE documented test of the effect of pavement , for example.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/9/0/9_2013-013/_pdf/-char/en
3. NOAA saw an opportunity to put numbers on the speculation, on the HYPOTHESIS that
microsite matters.
“The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was designed to create a bias free
2 climate record for the United States, in addition to serving as a reference to quantify the impacts
3 of station biases, including urbanization (Diamond et al. 2013, Leeper et al. 2015). To achieve
4 this goal, the USCRN used criteria in the selection process that inversely awarded points to a
5 location based upon its proximity to local bias sources (urban, water bodies, tree canopy, and
6 other obstacles; Leroy 1998, NOAA 2002, WMO 2014 ANNEX 1.B). These points were then
7 used to classify candidate sites and assess their sensitivity to local influences and
8 representativeness of the surrounding area. For temperature, preference was given to sites located
9 further than 100 m from artificial heating sources or water bodies. The USCRN site selection
10 process balanced the representativeness score with the anticipated temporal stability of the site
11 (likelihood of future changes that may impact a site) and its accessibility in the selection process.
12 After installation, each site was visited annually for maintenance and calibration and to
13 photographically document changes in the vicinity of the station.
14 During one of these annual visits, site technicians noted encroachment at the Kingston,
15 RI, Plains Road Site station. From discussions with the site host, there were plans to expand a
16 parking lot, reroute a road, and move a heated greenhouse all within 100 m of the station. Rather
17 than remove this station prior to construction, it was decided to leave the station in place and
18 record the nature of the air temperature changes caused by the encroachment. This decision was
19 feasible due to the existence of a second Kingston USCRN station (Peckham Farm Site) only 1.4
20 km to the south that assured continuity of the climate record at this location, and provided an
21 unbiased observation set for comparisons.”
the big question is statistical significance
The reach of the urban bias differed between day time and night time conditions. It was
largest during evenings following sunny days, when light winds were from the direction of the
built environment. The mean urban bias for these conditions quickly dropped from 0.84 °C at
small-scale built environment. Despite a mean urban signal near 0.9 °C at tower-A, the mean urban biases were not statistically significant given the magnitude of the towers standard
2 deviations; 0.44, 0.40, 0.37, and 0.31 °C for tower-A, -B, -B’, and -C respectively.
#######################
The situation is actually very funny. With no specific evidence ( measurements, controlled tests ) that
microsite matters, people reasoned from experience, they reasoned from basic physics, to conclude that
microsite must matter. This is like those guys who reason from Physics about huricanes that warmer water will lead to more hurricanes. REASONABLE hypothesis, but you dont know until you test.
There have been NO TESTS of LeRoy’s classification system.
To date there have been TWO tests of elements of the system.
1. A test by a road
2. Noaa’s test.
the NOAA results dont achieve statistical significance. However, its still wise to keep the site
clear of heat sources… until more testing shows otherwise.
Some final points
“The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”
USHCN is not an official source anymore. Sorry, its not used.
last point. Anthony reclassified the stations in 2012.
Refuses to release the data or even a portion of the data .
Still haven’t learned how to spell “field” Steve ?
No need to play the man, Marcus
“1. There are NO feild tests of micro site using LeRoys criteria. “
The best network of climate surface stations in the world is the U.S. Climate Reference Network, USCRN. NOAA\GISS don’t use it directly; their best data to present US climate data. It shows no warming. Instead they use badly sited weather stations, and modify them (slightly down, I guess). This modification for UHI nighttime temperatures is less than actual UHI nighttime additions to temperature. It would be so much more accurate for NOAA/GISS to use USCRN directly; with no adjustments.
I guess we should be thankful they’re not adjusting the raw USCRN readings?
“It would be so much more accurate for NOAA/GISS to use USCRN directly; with no adjustments.”
Well, here it is. On a NOAA site, they show USCRN, along with USHCN until its termination, and its replacement ClimDiv. You can put them all on the same plot.
“So much more accurate”? It’s almost exactly the same. Just a smidgin higher trend in USCRN.
What is a smidgin? I’ve seen reports touting degrees to the thousandths place (0.001). Are those a smidgin too?
“What is a smidgin? “
A smidgin more than I thought, as Olof pointed out above. USCRN rises by 0.48°C/decade since 2006, ClimDiv 0.36. It’s quite a lot in proportional terms, but both are small, especially relative to the variation, and also the OLS uncertainties, which are respectively 957 and 711°C/decade.
EM Smith (Chiefo) has analysed, over the past few months, in great detail, the differences vetween GHCN versions 3 and 4. This is well worth a look as it shows the problem with instrument changes and data adjustments (fiddling).
I strongly recommend people reviewing all the posts he has made in connection with this analysis. This can be found set out at: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/tag/ghcn/ He has all the codes so his work can be double checked.
richard verney
Do you really trust in people like EM Smith alias Chiefio ??? Wow.
Never in my life I will forget this:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/ghcn-the-global-analysis/
This is the most ridiculous head post concerning temperature measurement I ever have read.
Bindy: State your case or be quiet . Brett Keane
H. Sterling Burnett
Nice explanations, but then please explain in addition why 46 of the 71 USHCN stations selected by surfacestations.org (i.e., so I suppose, under the direction of Anthony Watts) compare so well with over 8000 GHCN daily stations located in CONUS:
1. 1900-2018
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B4TzVe7rFLidKIb-dUOLwdittauW2oVY/view
As you can see, the GHCN daily plot is even above that for USHCN, what of course means that its trend over 1900-2018 is lower than that of the latter.
And believe me: GHCN daily is a raw raw data set.
2. 1979-2018
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Khxeii6he3PhW-xKJL-nhlJkA1frWmS/view
By the way: feel free to have a look at the excellent correlation between CONUS’ surface and lower troposphere data.
When you get a really closer look at station data, it becomes more and more difficult to accept the claims you reproduce here.
A decade ago, more and more station data was rejected due to UHI.
After some people had shown how small the difference between rural and urban/suburban locations in fact are, rural measurements were rejected as well.
And what do I read here in the comments below your guest post? Satellite measurements above urban corners are to be rejected too. Is that not simpy ridiculous?
We definitely leave climate science here, and enter bare politics.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
The opening sentence from above: “For years, I have written about the poor quality control exercised by government entities promoting the theory human fossil fuel use is causing dangerous climate change.”
Please, do not give these govt entities any more credit than they deserve: regarding potential AGW they are promoting a HYPOTHESIS; not a THEORY. Their notion, which may or may not be true, is DEFINITELY UNPROVEN; therefore, clearly, a HYPOTHESIS … at best.
“The conclusion media pundits, the general public, and politicians alike should draw from this new research is that there is little justification for imposing costly restrictions on fossil fuel use to fight a warming that is, in fact, not severe at all.”
Weaponize our water, weather, energy, food, thought, et cetera to control the masses. That is the goal….the agenda. Do as we dictate or else.
The opening sentence from above: “For years, I have written about the poor quality control exercised by government entities promoting the theory human fossil fuel use is causing dangerous climate change.”
Please, do not give these govt entities — or any of their like-minded colleagues — any more credit than they deserve: regarding potential AGW they are promoting a HYPOTHESIS; not a THEORY. Their notion, which may or may not be true, is DEFINITELY UNPROVEN; therefore, clearly, a HYPOTHESIS … at best.