What is this #&*!??? Global Dumbing conspiracy?
First, Ponder the Maunder presents:
A reminder to support the project at Surfacestations.org! Eastport Maine temperature station that has the temperature sensor 2 feet downwind of the air conditioner exhaust. There I am feeling the heat from this Eastport Maine temperature station air conditioner. Remember the photo of the thermometer 2 feet down wind from the air conditioner exhaust that I posted on my site 3 weeks ago before I went on vacation? Can you think of a problem that is more real? Or how about this rooftop temperature station in Presque Isle, Maine that was posted in the same article? Since some people just don’t believe in reality, I would challenge Eli to come to Maine and help me find one single surface station in this state that is any good. Send along a phone number, Eli. Kristen. Scholarship Fund and Science Foundation Follies in Measuring Global Warming Details of temperature stations that are being used to measure global warming. WHAT A JOKE! This link will take you to GlobalWarmingHoax.com that reprints all of my work with 20,000 times the traffic capacity. Senior Scientist at NASA GISS and Al Gore’s Scientific Advisor, James Hansen: Will his history of allowing money and politics to affect his science stop him from fixing the recently discovered human errors in the temperature record as photographed by researchers? How you can help. 
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Then there is the Watt's up with that? site...
uly 09, 2007
How not to measure temperature, part 19
In traveling around California and Nevada to look at NOAA USHCN climate monitoring weather stations I've seen some odd things. I've seen temperature sensors near asphalt and concrete, sensors placed within feet of buildings and cars, sensors placed near air conditioner exhausts, and sensors that had barbeque grills in the vicinity.
Last Friday June 6th, I traveled to Santa Rosa, CA to the Press Democrat Newspaper, a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York Times, which according to NOAA, has the climate station of record for Santa Rosa.
I figured it would be a fairly straightforward survey, and that I'd probably find the temperature sensor near the back of the building by the parking lot, as I've found many others placed. I figured it would look a lot like our local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record (owned by Media News Group), weather station. It is in the rear, in a bit of disrepair, missing some slats and part of its roof assembly, but otherwise ok. It is seen below:
But nothing prepared me for what I was about to find at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
When I arrived, I couldn't locate the NOAA MMTS sensor anywhere around the building, but I did see a tower on the roof of the building, and in the rear of the building they had a Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station on a pole. I knew that wasn't the official climate temperature sensor provided by NOAA. So, after doing a perimeter search twice, I went inside to inquire within. Everything in the lobby said "go away". I guess it was the bullet proof glass, and the cameras, and the security guard. After getting a name of the person resonsible for their weather page from the front desk, I called on my cell phone, no answer.
Undeterred, I decided to try looking outside again. It was then I noticed the 5 level parking garage about a block north.
From the top of the parking garage a quick scan with my binoculars located the NOAA MMTS temperature sensor. It was there, about 8-10 feet above the roof, surrounded by a sea of air conditioners and exhaust vents!
Here is what I saw from my binoculars:
And here is a panorama of the entire rooftop of the Press Democrat. Click on the image to get a full sized view with panning functions:
A complete photo essay is available on my surfacestations.org website.
An independent check of aerial photos that I had access to confirmed the placement of the sensor in the middle of several air conditioning units.
I've seen some poorly thought out places to measure temperature, but this one takes the cake. Not only do we have the sensor above a sea of air conditioners with warm air exhausts, there are two rooftop building exhausts, plus the roof and building itself, and then lets not forget that the Press Democrat itself is in a sea of buildings in downtown Santa Rosa, all of which to contribute to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) the thermometer is exposed to.
Yes folks, this is an official USHCN Climate station of record. The data from this station goes into the national climatic database. But given the absurd and irresponsible placement of this NOAA MMTS thermometer, is it any wonder at all that the graph of temperature at Santa Rosa looks like it does?
This isn't a case of gradual encroachment by localized site changes that happened around the thermometer, like what happened in Marysville. This is a deliberate placement of an official thermometer in the worst possible measurement scenario. Somebody had to choose this location, the building and air conditioners did not grow up around it. July 08, 2007
How not to measure temperature, part 18
On Friday June 6th, I made a trip though northern California to visit four official climate monitoring stations that are part of the US Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) which has been the subject of study on my photographic database website www.surfacestations.org
Here is the Napa State Hospital, which has a long history of observing temperature and precipitation. The MMTS and rain gauge are located at the Fire Station that serves the hospital grounds:
Here we see what seems to be the ubiquitous close by parking which has been almost as a theme in recent station surveys. Lots of asphalt surrounding the sensor too, and a building about 10 feet away. This of course makes the station out of compliance with NOAA siting specifications.
Another view shows an even greater problem; an air conditioner unit mounted at the same height as the MMTS in a window and a mere 10 feet away:
You can see a full set of pictures, at the surfacestations.org image database.
For an independent confirmation of this finding you can see the National Weather Service's web page photo of Napa.
More pictures from my 4 station survey trip will be posted each day, tomorrow, Santa Rosa's USHCN climate station of record located on the roof of the Press Democrat building in downtown Santa Rosa.
June 23, 2007
How not to measure temperature, part 12
One of the really odd discoveries that I've made while surveying climate monitoring stations around the USA is the fact that many of the official stations are located at sewage treatment plants. For example, the one in Colusa, CA is at their sewage treatment plant. I've visited it.
A couple of volunteers for www.surfacestations.org have been going around Washington and Oregon locating stations there and have also reported a number of stations at waste-water treatment facilities. I'll get to why locating a temperature monitoring station at these facilities is a really bad idea later, but first I want to tell you why many of them are located at these places.
It has to do with the fact that somebody must read the thermometer once a day, write down the max and min temperatures for the last 24 hours in a logbook, then send in the page of the logbook to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) once a month. When stations were assigned to cities, they needed to locate them at a place where there was somebody 7 days a week. Sewage is a 24/7 operation. Police and fire stations have some stations for the same reason, somebody is always there.
Ok this picture comes in today from from surfacestations.org volunteer Steve Tiemeier, who visited the climate station of record located at the Urbana, Ohio Waste Water Treatment Plant:
The small item in the center of the picture labeled "MMTS" is the temperature sensor that is used to submit monthly climate reports to NCDC.
Now in case you don't see some of the obvious problems with this location and why its a terrible place to measure temperature, I'll list them one by one:
- Sensor is attached to the building, just mere inches away from brickwork
- Sensor is near windows, which radiate heat from heated interior rooms in winter
- Sensor is directly above effluent grates for waste-water, Waste-water is often warmer than the air many months of the year
- Sensor is between three buildings, restricting wind flow
- Sensor is between three buildings, acting as a corner reflector for infrared
- Several exhaust fans near sensor, even though one is disable, there are two more on the walls (silver domes)
- Air conditioner within 35 feet of sensor, enclosed area will tend to trap the exhaust air near sensor
- Sensor is directly over concrete slab
- Refrigeration unit nearby, exhausts air into the enclosed area
- Shadows of all buildings create a valley effect related to sunlight at certain times
- There are two nearby digester pools, which release heat and humidity in the sensor vicinity
- Heat and humidity plume over the site from digesters is often tens of degrees warmer than the air in the wintertime
Here is wider view that shows the temperature sensor in relation to the digester tank:
More picture on my image database here: http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=5322
I don't know if any readers of this blog have ever driven by a sewage treatment plant in the winter, in the midwest, as I have, but I can tell you from experience it looks like a hot springs with steam rising into the air.
Talk about your urban heat island effect...not only that, sewage treatment plants effluent volume is a direct indicator of population growth. So as more water is treated, more local effects from the heat/humidity plume occur, which can affect the temperature readings.
There are dozens, possibly hundreds of USHCN climate monitoring stations sited at sewage treatment plants around the USA. I'll have more reports on this in the future.
Who knew? I've been working in meteorology 25 years and I didn't until this week.
here are some other stations at a sewage treatment plants:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1489
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=4658
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=4388
Here's another one:
une 03, 2007
How not to measure temperature, part 6
Ok folks, just when you think I could not possibly post any worse pictures of official climate stations, I yet again have more. I’d like to point out that I’ve only surveyed about 10 stations in California so far, and what you see posted here represents samples from those.
It gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.
Ok here is Tahoe City California, GISS ID 425724880010 and an active station of record. I was unable to locate the observer for this station but was able to speak with the property management people for the nearby condos.
The first picture is looking south over lake Tahoe. BTW the van is not mine, but belongs to the groundskeeper, and yes that's where he parks it regularly. Note the doggie bags. There's a walking path nearby.
Next picture, looking north, whats that, a tennis court within 25 feet of the station? Horrors.
Final picture. It seems the groundskeeper likes to burn the trash and paper he picks up on the grounds, guess where he does it?
Honest folks, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
The property management person I spoke with said the tennis court and condos was built in the early 80’s.
Here is the GISS plot, showing the data trends used in NASA's Model E global Climate computer model
Note the jump and sustained plateau of temperature after 1980. Tennis anyone?