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Does global warming diminish with accurate temperature measurements? Part 1
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If we don't know what the temperature is today, how can we say it is getting warmer? If we don't know what the temperature was in the past, how can we say it is, umm, getting warmer?
There are controversies brewing about measurements in global warming. Some of them are very new, some of them have been bubbling along unsettled for a while. Let's review, starting with measurements of land temperatures here in the United States.
If you click here you will be taken to a picture of an official temperature measurement site in Hillsboro Ohio. Here's one in Honolulu, Hawaii. Anthony Watts, a meteorologist (and principal contributor to Watts Up With That, voted Science Blog of the Year), has organised an all-volunteer effort to photograph and classify all 1,221 surface temperature measurement stations. So far, they've surveyed an impressive 80% of the total. Sadly, only 11% meet government specifications regarding which direction to face, how far they should be from heating sources or even walls, etc. In addition, many of these stations have had cities grow up around them, which tends to raise temperatures more than they should.
He wrote a 28-page paper titled, 'Is the U.S. Surface Temperatue Record Reliable?' in March of this year.
Money quote: "We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas. In fact, we 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.
Watts began the project by measuring the effect of changing the paint used on the boxes holding the temperature measuring equipment. Putting three stations side by side by side, he measured a 0.3 degree Fahrenheit difference in maximum temperatures and a 0.8 degree Fahrenheit difference in minimum temperatures when comparing the old whitewashed stations (which produced the cooler temperatures) and the newer latex paint used nowadays. For reference, the total estimated global warming of the past century is 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit, so the difference is important. (Other problems with measurement, siting and even adjustments meant to correct for such difficulties may make the problem even worse.)
This type of volunteer public service effort would, one would think, earn Anthony Watts the grateful thanks of both the nation and the community of scientists studying climate change. However, as word of his efforts began to spread Watts received more criticism than praise. When the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) got around to responding to the issue, they failed to even acknowledge Watts' paper, much less the incredible amount of work he and his volunteers had put in to do something that it seems obvious the NCDC should have done itself.
Perhaps understandably, their language was a bit defensive: "According to their (Watt's) web site of early June 2009, they classified 70 USHCN version 2 stations as good or best (class 1 or 2). The criteria used to make that classification is based on NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Site Handbook so the criteria are clear. But, as many different individuals participated in the site evaluations, with varying levels of expertise, the degree of standardization and reproducibility of this process is unknown. However, at the present time this is the only large scale site evaluation information available so we conducted a preliminary analysis." Their analysis found no appreciable corruption of data.
Enter climate scientist Roger Pielke Sr., who we interviewed recently (see here and here). In an article posted on his weblog July 3rd, Pielke writes: "Their answer confirms what Anthony Watts and colleagues have carefully documented. An obvious question is why did not NCDC elevate this as a priority sooner? Moreover, if the current sites can be “adjusted” to be regionally representative, why does NOAA even need the new Climate Reference Network? The answer to that is that they have recognized for years that there is a problem with the siting of the surface stations, but deliberately attempted to bury this issue until Anthony Watts and colleagues confronted NCDC with the issue."
In Watt's report he writes, "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. The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7º C (about 1.2º F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have
occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be “the best in the world,” it follows
that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable."
The NCDC responded, "The linear trend in adjusted temperature series over the period examined was nearly identical between the stations with good siting and the stations with poor siting, with the stations having poor siting showing slightly less warming."
To which Roger Pielke responded on his weblog, "This is blatantly untrue and the author of these talking points know that. Tom Peterson, for example, was even a reviewer of the Pielke 2007a and 2007b papers, and was aware of the Pielke et al 2002 paper.
Pielke Sr., R.A., T. Stohlgren, L. Schell, W. Parton, N. Doesken, K. Redmond, J. Moeny, T. McKee, and T.G.F. Kittel, 2002: Problems in evaluating regional and local trends in temperature: An example from eastern Colorado, USA. Int. J. Climatol., 22, 421-434.
Pielke Sr., R.A. J. Nielsen-Gammon, C. Davey, J. Angel, O. Bliss, N. Doesken, M. Cai., S. Fall, D. Niyogi, K. Gallo, R. Hale, K.G. Hubbard, X. Lin, H. Li, and S. Raman, 2007a: Documentation of uncertainties and biases associated with surface temperature measurement sites for climate change assessment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 88:6, 913-928.
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, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007b: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
In the second paper, we wrote,“Peterson’s approach and conclusions, therefore, provide a false sense of confidence with these data for temperature change studies by seeming to indicate that the errors can be corrected.”
The decision of the NCDC Talking Points to ignore these papers illustrates the state that NCDC is in with respect to Climate Science. NCDC, as led by Tom Karl, is not interested in an inclusive assessment of climate science issues (in this case the multi-decadal surface temperature trends), but are only interested in promoting their particular agenda and in protecting their particular data set.
And that's only the start of the scientific argument--I urge readers to see Pielke's presentation of the rest here. (But he closes with this: "NCDC would be a much more valuable resource in the climate community if they worked to be inclusive in presenting all peer reviewed perspectives in climate science. Currently, they are only reporting on information that supports their agenda and not communicating real world observational data that conflicts with that agenda. The fault for this failure in leadership is with Tom Karl who is Director of NCDC.")
If this were the only problem with temperature measurements, it might be (just barely) forgiveable. After all, the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's land mass. Most of the world is covered by water, and we should see global warming there, right? Satellite measurements will correct for the errors introduced by sloppy work on land measurements, anyways... right? Umm, right? And in any event, all climate models indicate that the killer evidence of global warming will be found in the atmosphere, 6 to 10 miles up, in the tropics. So this is just a minor thing... right?
The rest of this series will document problems with temperature measurements, changes in methodology, problems with measuring past temperatures and other issues that, taken together, question our knowledge of current and past temperatures, leading to serious questions about the breadth and extent of global warming itself.
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, if we were serious about global warming, one of the first things we would do is make sure that we are collecting good data. If we do not do this, and pretty darn quickly, it will leave proponents of AGW vulnerable to charges of forcing major decisions on the populace that are based on bad data.
Part 2 of this series can be found here.
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