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An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S.( Temperatures)
Watts Up With That? ^ | July 29, 2012 | Anthony Watts

Posted on 07/29/2012 1:27:38 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

PRESS RELEASE

Posted on by

PRESS RELEASE – July 29th, 2012 12PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

Today, a new paper has been released that is the culmination of knowledge gleaned from five years or work by Anthony Watts and the many volunteers and contributors to the SurfaceStations project started in 2007.

This pre-publication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, is co-authored by Anthony Watts of California, Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville, is to be submitted for publication.

The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller, of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project in a June 2011 interview with Scientific American’s Michael Lemonick in “Science Talk”, said:

I know that is prior to acceptance, but in the tradition that I grew up in (under Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez) we always widely distributed “preprints” of papers prior to their publication or even submission. That guaranteed a much wider peer review than we obtained from mere referees.

The USHCN is one of the main metrics used to gauge the temperature changes in the United States. The first wide scale effort to address siting issues, Watts, (2009), a collated photographic survey, showed that approximately 90% of USHCN stations were compromised by encroachment of urbanity in the form of heat sinks and sources, such as concrete, asphalt, air conditioning system heat exchangers, roadways, airport tarmac, and other issues. This finding was backed up by an August 2011 U.S. General Accounting Office investigation and report titled: Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network

All three papers examining the station siting issue, using early data gathered by the SurfaceStations project, Menne et al (2010), authored by Dr. Matt Menne of NCDC, Fall et al, 2011, authored by Dr. Souleymane Fall of Tuskeegee University and co-authored by Anthony Watts, and Muller et al 2012, authored by Dr. Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley and founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) were inconclusive in finding effects on temperature trends used to gauge the temperature change in the United States over the last century.

Lead author of the paper, Anthony Watts, that:

“I fully accept the previous findings of these papers, including that of the Muller et al 2012 paper. These investigators found exactly what would be expected given the siting metadata they had. However, the Leroy 1999 site rating method employed, and employed in the Fall et al 2011 paper I co-authored was incomplete, and didn’t properly quantify the effects.

 

The new rating method employed finds that station siting does indeed have a significant effect on temperature trends”

Watts et al 2012 has employed a new methodology for station siting, pioneered by Michel Leroy of METEOFrance in 2010, in the paper Leroy 2010, and endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation (CIMO-XV, 2010) Fifteenth session, in September 2010 as a WMO-ISO standard, making it suitable for reevaluating previous studies on the issue of station siting.

Previous papers all used a distance only rating system from Leroy 1999, to gauge the impact of heat sinks and sources near thermometers. Leroy 2010 shows that method to be effective for siting new stations, such as was done by NCDC adopting Leroy 1999 methods with their Climate Reference Network (CRN) in 2002 but ineffective at retroactive siting evaluation.

Leroy 2010 adds one simple but effective physical metric; surface area of the heat sinks/sources within the thermometer viewshed to quantify the total heat dissipation effect.

Using the new Leroy 2010 classification system on the older siting metadata used by Fall et al. (2011), Menne et al. (2010), and Muller et al. (2012), yields dramatically different results.

Using Leroy 2010 methods, the Watts et al 2012 paper, which studies several aspects of USHCN siting issues and data adjustments, concludes that:

These factors, combined with station siting issues, have led to a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.

Other findings include, but are not limited to:

· Statistically significant differences between compliant and non-compliant stations exist, as well as urban and rural stations.

· Poorly sited station trends are adjusted sharply upward, and well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations.

· Well sited rural stations show a warming nearly three times greater after NOAA adjustment is applied.

· Urban sites warm more rapidly than semi-urban sites, which in turn warm more rapidly than rural sites.

· The raw data Tmean trend for well sited stations is 0.15°C per decade lower than adjusted Tmean trend for poorly sited stations.

· Airport USHCN stations show a significant differences in trends than other USHCN stations, and due to equipment issues and other problems, may not be representative stations for monitoring climate.

A comparison and summary of trends is shown in Figure 20 from the paper:

clip_image002

###

We will continue to investigate other issues related to bias and adjustments such as TOBs in future studies.

FILES:

This press release in PDF form: Watts_et_al_2012-PRESS RELEASE-R1 (PDF)

The paper in draft form: Watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease (PDF)

The Figures for the paper: Watts et al 2012 Figures and Tables (PDF)

A PowerPoint presentation of findings with many additional figures is available online:

Overview of the paper (PPT)

Methodology – Graphs Presentation (.PPT)

Some additional files may be added as needed.

Contact:

Anthony Watts at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/contact-2/

References:

GAO-11-800 August 31, 2011, Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network Highlights Page (PDF)   Full Report (PDF, 47 pages)   Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)

Fall, S., Watts, A., Nielsen‐Gammon, J. Jones, E. Niyogi, D. Christy, J. and Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2011, Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146, 2011

Leroy, M., 1999: Classification d’un site. Note Technique no. 35. Direction des Systèmes d’Observation, Météo-France, 12 pp.

Leroy, M., 2010: Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land, Climate, and Upper-air Observations JMA/WMO Workshop on Quality Management in Surface, Tokyo, Japan 27-30 July 2010 http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/qmws_2010/CountryReport/CS202_Leroy.pdf

Menne, M. J., C. N. Williams Jr., and M. A. Palecki, 2010: On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D11108, doi:10.1029/2009JD013094

Muller, R.A., Curry, J., Groom, D. Jacobsen, R.,Perlmutter, S. Rohde, R. Rosenfeld, A., Wickham, C., Wurtele, J., 2012: Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States. http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-station-quality.pdf

Watts, A., 2009: Is the U.S. surface temperature record reliable? Published online at: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf

World Meteorological Organization Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation, Fifteenth session, (CIMO-XV, 2010) WMO publication Number 1064, available online at: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/CIMO/CIMO15-WMO1064/1064_en.pdf

Notes:

1. The SurfaceStations project was a crowd sourcing project started in June 2007, done entirely with citizen volunteers (over 650), created in response to the realization that very little physical site survey metadata exists for the entire United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN) surface station records worldwide. This realization came about from a discussion of a paper and some new information that occurred on Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog. In particular, a thread regarding the paper: Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res.


TOPICS: Conspiracy; Science; Weather
KEYWORDS: climatechange; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax
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To: All
Link to FR Thread on the Telegraph article by Delingpole on the WUWT paper:

Global Warming? Yeah, right

21 posted on 07/29/2012 6:21:37 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?)
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To: 762X51; LibertarianLiz
"Sorry, I forgot the sarcasm tag."

'sOK. Didn't need the sarcasm tag.

22 posted on 07/29/2012 8:34:11 PM PDT by YHAOS (you betcha!)
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To: YHAOS

Thanks for the ping!


23 posted on 07/29/2012 9:17:33 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: denydenydeny

The longtime temperature station in the large city near me is located a few miles downwind (as determined by the prevailing winds) of its now large and growing downtown. The station often measures 2 to sometimes 5 degrees F higher than temperatures in the surrounding small cities located from 20 to 50 miles away from the major city.


24 posted on 07/29/2012 9:32:15 PM PDT by rustbucket
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

A hundred years ago Florida was so warm, oranges could be grown in St. Augustine. The ‘orange line’ as been moving south ever since — it’s in the Orlando area now and still moving south...


25 posted on 07/30/2012 6:33:33 AM PDT by GOPJ (Political correctness is simply George Orwell's Newspeak by a non-threatening name. FR- Bernard Marx)
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To: GOPJ

Somebody needs to study that....Global warming says it should be moving NORTH!


26 posted on 07/30/2012 10:22:21 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?)
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To: GOPJ; TigerLikesRooster; landsbaum; Signalman; NormsRevenge; steelyourfaith; Lancey Howard; ...
Regarding post #25:

Where is the research grant to study the "Orange Line"?

27 posted on 07/30/2012 10:26:08 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
From the Press Release thread Gail Combs posted:

…PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.

…These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level. source

We can do all the screeching we want, but the thugs are getting the great game in place, no matter what we do. The utilities may wail, but they do get a fixed rate of return based upon cash flow. Until this gets stopped in court with real charges of fraud, racketeering, and theft, with real jail time for the perps, the beat goes on.

28 posted on 07/30/2012 10:45:05 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party Switcheroo: Economic crisis! Zero's eligibility Trumped!! Hillary 2012!!!)
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To: Carry_Okie; Marine_Uncle; SunkenCiv

Wow!


29 posted on 07/30/2012 12:48:34 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Yep, it's the CalPowerCrisis all over again, just like I said it would be.

Writ large. Bryson is the guy who set this up, bet on it. Salazar isn't that smart; he's just a stooge in this game.

Sometimes I hate being right, but when I'm right this often, why aren't conservatives reading my stuff instead of fluff like Sowell or VDH? Oh, that's right, the MSM says they're our heroes!

I just don't get it.

30 posted on 07/30/2012 1:25:14 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party Switcheroo: Economic crisis! Zero's eligibility Trumped!! Hillary 2012!!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
"Somebody needs to study that....Global warming says it should be moving NORTH!"
Don't confuse the issues Ernie. AGW advocates have the right to inform the public in whatever strikes their fancy on a given day. Global cooling is a side effect of global warming./sarc
:)
31 posted on 07/30/2012 4:07:55 PM PDT by Marine_Uncle (Honor must be earned.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
"Wow!"
In two areas the Kenyan has been rather honest.
1. Electric rates would rise dramatically.
2. He would fundamentally change America.
32 posted on 07/30/2012 4:10:25 PM PDT by Marine_Uncle (Honor must be earned.)
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To: YHAOS; metmom

Imagine that, something for the algore “Settled science” crowd to grind their teeth on.


33 posted on 07/30/2012 9:56:39 PM PDT by tpanther (Science was, is and will forever be a small subset of God's creation.)
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To: tpanther

Settled science......

Until tomorrow when new data comes in.


34 posted on 07/31/2012 6:52:18 AM PDT by metmom (For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

No serious person still believes the global warming scam.


35 posted on 07/31/2012 6:57:55 AM PDT by SUSSA
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To: tpanther
something for the algore “Settled science” crowd to grind their teeth on.

I think that “crowd” does grind their teeth . . . in their sleep . . . every night.

36 posted on 07/31/2012 11:00:11 AM PDT by YHAOS (you betcha!)
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