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U.S. Ground Weather Station Crowd Verification Effort

Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:18 PM EDT
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By space guy
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There is a new climate website that is related to an effort to document and verify the position and condition of all of the NOAA weather sites around the nation. This is an important effort that Newsviners and others can directly contribute to making a success.

"This is a very important need for the climate science community, and you are encouraged to obtain this photographic documentation if you can, and also share with the new website under development by Anthony Watts"

This effort goes to the heart of the debate regarding climate change as it is the temperature output of these stations that is being used to document warming. If you go to the website www.groundstations.org you find a file that can be used with Google maps to find these stations. What is desired is to take multiple pictures of the temperature devices and then send them back to the website. With the advent of digital cameras this should be fairly easy to do. There is over 1000 of these stations that need to be verified. Be the first on your block to contribute!!

The reason for this is that many of these sites have been compromised by being next to buildings that have been built near the thermometers, as well as many other obstructions, parking lots, trash burning bins, and other things that can compromise the readings such as the urban heat island effect.

This is yet another way that our web community can be used to actually contribute to legitimate science. This is your world and these weather stations are being used in a key part of the battle that may determine the quality of our lives for hundreds of years to come. It is in all of our best interests to contribute!

Here is the direct link to the information needed to do your own weather station verification effort.

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=60

To make this a little more fun, It would be interesting to see how many the global warming proponents do versus the ones that don't buy anthropogenic global warming. As you get your verification's completed, you can post the link to your results (that are on www.surfacestations.org) so that all of us can see just how committed to science you are!

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ArdithDeleted
space guy

Yea this could be a really fun effort!

  • 1 vote
Reply#2 - Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:55 PM EDT
npat

There is nothing wrong with increasing the meta-data for observing stations (unless it leads to harassment of volunteers). However, in the new found enthusiasm for digital photography, many of the participants in this effort seem to have leaped to some very dubious conclusions that appear to be rooted in fundamental misunderstandings of the state of the science. Let's examine some of those apparent assumptions:

...


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-man-is-an-urban-heat-island/#more-454

    Reply#3 - Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:53 PM EDT
    space guy

    There is no downside to this effort. I for one don't doubt that there is warming, but I do think that there may be biases in the data that show more warming than is truly the case. I can attest that in my part of the country (Alabama) that there has been a cooling trend since the mid 90's that does not show up in the models and should be accounted for. It has been my personal observation that in the era from the mid 70's through early 90's, in Alabama where I live most of the time that there were far more days with temps in the 100 degree range and the temperature in Birmingham Alabama used to never drop below 70 from June 1 through Sept 1. I used to work with the Red Cross a lot back then and had access to weather data that they kept. Tonight the temperature here in Birmingham will be 64 degrees and tomorrow night it is forecast to be 61. That is a strong negative trend over 30 years. Also, where I lived a lot during the late 70's through today (I live bicoastaly) in Southern California (Ventura County) there were many more days over 100 degrees than there has been in recent years.

    Also, after looking at some of the data from this effort to characterize these sites I am appalled at the condition of some of them and where they are sited. You cannot for one instant defend the placement of the temperature station in that photo above in this article.

    I don't buy the "correction" factors for the Urban Heat Island effect either. This is part of their explanation for that.

    This is simply false. UHI effects have been documented in city environments worldwide and show that as cities become increasingly urbanised, increasing energy use, reductions in surface water (and evaporation) and increased concrete etc. tend to lead to warmer conditions than in nearby more rural areas. This is uncontroversial. However, the actual claim of IPCC is that the effects of urban heat islands effects are likely small in the gridded temperature products (such as produced by GISS and Climate Research Unit (CRU)) because of efforts to correct for those biases. For instance, GISTEMP uses satellite-derived night light observations to classify stations as rural and urban and corrects the urban stations so that they match the trends from the rural stations before gridding the data. Other techniques (such as correcting for population growth) have also been used.

    Pollution has a strong effect on the magnitude of the Urban Heat Island. From data that I have looked at from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the pollution at their site (a few blocks from the airport) indicates that pollution can absorb as much as 90 watts m^2, which is a huge positive bias. This bias can change over time as pollution curbing laws come into play. The point is that the corrects for the urban heat island are no more than semi-educated guesses that have no controls or verification.

    There are over 1000 of these yet to be verified and characterized and I am making it my goal to do at least 20 of them myself.

    How about you?

    • 2 votes
    #3.1 - Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:23 PM EDT
    npat

    I have visited dozens, maybe a hundred, of the NOAA NWS Cooperative observer stations in the Midwest while I worked for NWS from 1976-2005. I used to ride along with the Met Tech who made annual visits to many of these stations to inspect the sites and visit with the observers (many of them farmer or just weather nuts). They didn't do the observations for the token two bits, they took the daily readings over their lifetimes out of pride that they were helping in the pubic good. Now people with no knowledge of the dedication and pride that went into recording and archive the weather and climate data at the coop stations are questioning and insulting their lifetime dedication.

    • 1 vote
    #3.2 - Sun Jul 22, 2007 7:15 AM EDT
    Reply
    space guy

    Anyone who cannot handle the questioning of their data should get out of the business. This is what is called due diligence. I am quite sure than when it is over with most of the sites will be quite good. However, the question is, are their enough of them that have problems that something needs to be done to put proper corrections to the overall warming data.

    I take a lot of data myself, and I am even as this is written headed to California to examine a solar recording station located at a wind farm where we are evaluating the total solar flux and suitability for a solar farm. I am quite happy to show off my station to anyone who is interested. Don't give me this whiney "don't insult me" crap.

    • 2 votes
    Reply#4 - Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:36 PM EDT
    npat

    Space guy, most of the COOPs who took the manual readings over the last 100 years are not alive now. The sub-station network specialist for Minnesota who I went with to visit with observers and give out awards for their dedicated efforts died about five years ago. The reading are automated now. COOP observers are still need for back-up and operational networks. The stations which I use in plotting monthly, seasonal and annual average daily max, min and mean temperature data have been evaluated by NOAA NCDC, regional climate centers and myself. Data at stations in the northern tier of states across the northern Great Plains and Upper Midwest show warming that is 2-4 times more rapid than globally averaged temperature warming.

    • 1 vote
    #4.1 - Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:09 PM EDT
    space guy

    Then there is no problem is there in documenting the stations. One of the problems is that there is no traceability on these stations now that they are automated. It is quite obvious that at least a few of these stations have been compromised.

    • 1 vote
    #4.2 - Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:37 PM EDT
    npat

    NOAA NWS station networks up-keep has declined over what it was before automation. However I doubt there is much of a bias in under or over estimating the warming. I weed-out what appear to be poor stations in my selection of stations used in plotting. my plots are shown in articles at my Newsvine column and at:


    http://picasaweb.google.com/npatphotos

    http://new.photos.yahoo.com/patneuman2000/albums

    • 1 vote
    #4.3 - Sun Jul 22, 2007 7:40 PM EDT
    Reply
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