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Faulty and False Global Temperature Readings -- Anthony Watts, Meteorologist
American Thinker ^ | July 21, 2014 | Jonathon Moseley

Posted on 07/21/2014 6:40:58 AM PDT by Moseley

Temperature measurements that are the basis for claims of global warming are defective and wrong. That’s the finding of a scientific team led by Anthony Watts. Watts is a meteorologist, editor of “Watts Up With That,” founder of the “Surface Station Project,” and my personal hero for his style and bravado.

When global warming alarmists claim that the Earth is warming or that this was the hottest (year, month) ever, they are totaling up readings from rather simplistic, low-budget, small, automated weather stations scattered around the nation and the world. But about 90% of those weather stations violate the officially-published standards required for accurate measurements.

In 2007, meteorologist Anthony Watts stumbled onto an official weather station, where hot air was blowing onto the sensor from an air-conditioner’s exhaust, located on an asphalt parking lot heated by the sun.

Curious, Watts started the “Surface Station Project” to survey weather stations around the world. The “crowd sourced” response from trained scientists documented with photographs that about 90% of the weather stations are faulty. This sparked the “How Not to Measure Temperature” series highlighting individual faulty stations. Note that when Watts and his team refer to finding “siting issues” with the stations, you should read that as them discovering “royal screw ups.”

Watts was a presenter at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-9) organized by the Heartland Institute, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Watts explained in a call in to our radio show, Conservative Commandos, from the conference on July 9, 2014, that a weather station (about the size of a modest camera tripod) standing next to a brick building will give inaccurate readings, because the brick building will radiate heat at night absorbed during the day. This raises the average temperature over 24 hours

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: anthonywatts; faulty; globalwarming; temperature
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READ THE REST OF THE POST: http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/faulty_and_false_global_temperature_readings_.html
1 posted on 07/21/2014 6:40:58 AM PDT by Moseley
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To: Moseley

“... that a weather station (about the size of a modest camera tripod) standing next to a brick building will give inaccurate readings, because the brick building will radiate heat at night absorbed during the day.”

I remember seeing a weather station at the University of Oklahoma that was next to a building.


2 posted on 07/21/2014 6:51:20 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; We need a second party!)
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To: Moseley

Skewed and falsified data as a part of a conspiracy and fraud imposed on the entire world have been revealed for the hoax that it is.

Reality has a most nasty habit of coming around and biting the manipulators of fact in the Gluteus Maximus in a most painful way.

Some 95% of the personal woe in this world turns out to be self-induced. The woe these pranksters are now suffering does not gain my sympathy.


3 posted on 07/21/2014 6:52:46 AM PDT by alloysteel (Most people become who they promised they would never be.)
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To: alloysteel

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/


4 posted on 07/21/2014 6:57:51 AM PDT by Mechanicos (When did we amend the Constitution for a 2nd Federal Prohibition?)
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To: Moseley

One of my favorite stories to tell over this topic. In the early 1990s....I was a avid jogger while based in Tucson, AZ. I used to jog the whole block around Reid Park on the southern side of Tucson, roughly a three-mile run.

At the end, where 22nd Street and South Alvernon Way meet....it’s a four-way street on both avenues. ALL asphalt. About seventy-five feet away from that corner, on a pile of bedrocks is a concrete platform for an official weather station trailer. It’s got an air conditioner on one corner of it and at least ten different measuring devices for wind, temperature, rain, etc. The temperature gauge, based on my best guess is within four feet of the air conditioner.

Between the asphalt, the rocks, the concrete, the AC unit’s hot air, the aluminium trailer itself....I’d guess the temperature reading to be a minimum of three degrees higher than what it ought to be if it were two hundred feet away just on regular grass or sand.

Accurate readings? No....whoever put it at this corner....had zero knowledge of proper positioning. It was a national weather service property, and I’d question if they knew anything about their supposed career study area. I’m not a rocket scientist....but this would have been the absolutely wrong place to place it, unless your agenda was to show continued high temperatures for this area of Tucson, for some special purpose.

I admit....Tucson is extra hot in the summer. But the plain truth is....it’s listed on the national news from that Reid Park site, and that temperature is really three-to-five degrees higher than it really is.


5 posted on 07/21/2014 7:01:32 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Moseley

The blue and green stations are the good ones.

Global warming projections of a few tenths of a degree C are made with 91% of the stations in error by more the one degree C.

http://www.surfacestations.org/

6 posted on 07/21/2014 7:02:58 AM PDT by kidd
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Before the debate about the meaning of a pile of numbers can begin:

1. Where are the scientific equipment calibration certification documents for each and every sensor used to derive said numbers over the time span of the collection sampling?

2. Are all the calibration certifications verifiable and not possible to be altered by any source once the certifications are sealed? Again, chain of custody.

3. For the data from these calibrated sensors, demonstrate the chain of custody that is unalterable from the sensor, its time and date, to the output final documents (charts, graphs, tables). The data must be verifiable as unchanged, accurate and true by any and all that investigate the data. This includes surprise inspections.

If workers are required to work under these condition inside a nuke plant (and they are) why should data that supposedly affects the entire Earth in one way or another not be held to the same scrutiny?


7 posted on 07/21/2014 7:07:41 AM PDT by USCG SimTech (Honored to serve since '71)
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To: Moseley
It is even more basic than this.

One of the first things you learn in a higher education science curriculum is the topic of “significant digits”

It is a tough concept to grasp for some, but it basically means you cannot have more accuracy than your measuring device.

If all you have is a yardstick, it is impossible to tell me how long something is to a thousandth of an inch. You could tell me something is a yard and a half or 2ft. 3and 1/2 inches (if your yardstick is marked to inches), but you cannot tell me something is 3.0005 inches.

Similarly, if all you have for hundreds of years of temperature data is tree rings and ice cores, you cannot tell me temperature has risen 0.06 degrees.

And that is the claim of the global warming religious zealots- temperatures went up 0.06 degrees. I knew that was bull$hit the first time i saw such accuracy depicted.

This is a tool to achieve a political agenda, and nothing else.

8 posted on 07/21/2014 7:09:20 AM PDT by Mr. K (Palin/Cruz 2016)
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To: Moseley

I think a huge problem is that just like the airport examples, a well sited station can change if asphalt and building are built around it over the years. That makes the time-series have a trend not due to carbon dioxide or really any change in climate.


9 posted on 07/21/2014 7:13:12 AM PDT by JLS
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To: Moseley

This was reported a few years ago, that most (99%) of all temp sensors are located where they are affected by higher temps, such as being located over pavement, near air conditioner heat exchangers, and on top of buildings.


10 posted on 07/21/2014 7:22:04 AM PDT by CodeToad (Arm Up! They Are!)
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To: JLS
Or if they move the airport 35 miles like they did in Denver. How do you relate the new data to the historical data measured at the old location?
11 posted on 07/21/2014 7:25:24 AM PDT by MileHi
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To: kidd

I read an interesting story this weekend linking the California drought to changes mandated to combat “globull warming”.


12 posted on 07/21/2014 7:28:41 AM PDT by anoldafvet (Close the border!!!)
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To: pepsionice

When I was growing up in Tucson, it was a much cooler place. Most summer days hit 102 or 103. Now it will hit 110+. Why?

When I was young, there were entire 1 sq mile parcels of empty land inside the city. In a number of places, there would be a subdivision occupying 1/4 of a 1 sq mile parcel of land, with 3/4 empty. 2-story buildings were rare, and building above 3 stories almost nonexistent (except in the immediate downtown).

Now, it has filled in. The streets are 3 lanes in each direction instead of one. There is very little empty land. Subdivisions are now built with houses touching each other instead of with large backyards.

Yet somehow it is CO2 making Tucson hotter, and not the huge population increase and all the buildings...

I now live out in Vail. We are about 1000 feet higher (and about 20 miles from where I grew up). Our typical summer highs are 99-101. A thousand feet higher, and 10 deg cooler - does that sound like a normal temperature gradient?


13 posted on 07/21/2014 7:30:24 AM PDT by Mr Rogers
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To: CodeToad

It has been reported, but (1) 99% of the news media — even conservative news outlets and talk shows — have completely ignored this story, and (2) Anthony Watts is just about to come out with a new peer-reviewed scientific journal article on this


14 posted on 07/21/2014 7:40:25 AM PDT by Moseley (http://www.MoseleyComments.com)
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To: Mr. K
One of the first things you learn in a higher education science curriculum is the topic of “significant digits” It is a tough concept to grasp for some, but it basically means you cannot have more accuracy than your measuring device.

THANK YOU!!! A triumph for basic science 101 and common sense! I find it amazing how everyone forgets the basics!
15 posted on 07/21/2014 7:41:57 AM PDT by Moseley (http://www.MoseleyComments.com)
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To: Mr Rogers

Tucson’s population around 1970 was around 262,000...with massive growth in the 1960s (it was 45,000 in 1950).

If you could measure all asphalt and concrete in the city and come to ratio mix....it would explain the heat-sink concept completely. You can drive to the outer limits of Tucson and find it five to eight degrees cooler than the mid-city area. All due to infrastructure.

In Germany, we have a third-option besides concrete and asphalt....with this garden-brick arrangement. If you pull into a parking lot which has this as the base....even on a day when the temperature gets up around 90 degrees....the heated-up feeling that you’d have on normal asphalt isn’t there, so instead of 94-96 degrees in the middle of a parking lot....it’s just 90 degrees like it should be. Toss in a few trees (some shade) and you’d almost think that 90 degrees is bearable.


16 posted on 07/21/2014 7:42:55 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Moseley
In 2007, meteorologist Anthony Watts stumbled onto an official weather station, where hot air was blowing onto the sensor from an air-conditioner’s exhaust, located on an asphalt parking lot heated by the sun.

If these so-called 'environmental scientists' don't understand basic research methods, we need to STOP referring to them as 'scientists'... It would be a start.

17 posted on 07/21/2014 7:45:01 AM PDT by GOPJ (To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize-Voltaire)
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To: USCG SimTech
Before the debate about the meaning of a pile of numbers can begin: 1. Where are the scientific equipment calibration certification documents for each and every sensor used to derive said numbers over the time span of the collection sampling?

Outstanding point. Step #1 in any serious laboratory exercise -- such as junior high school -- would bet o CHECK your instruments to be sure they are calibrated against tare weight (for a weight measurement) or otherwise. Until you calibrate your instruments -- every single time you start to do serious work -- you aren't doing science. We are taught this in Lab 101 in junior high school. But the experts have forgotten this and don't practice it.
18 posted on 07/21/2014 7:46:39 AM PDT by Moseley (http://www.MoseleyComments.com)
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To: USCG SimTech

You are absolutely correct.


19 posted on 07/21/2014 7:47:01 AM PDT by FamiliarFace
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To: alloysteel

Fake data is the only data that the Climate Alarmists have.

Garbage in = Socialism out


20 posted on 07/21/2014 8:03:35 AM PDT by PATRIOT1876
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