According to surfacestations.org, the main reason by officials for not performing up to date surveys on questionable sites is due to costs and meager budgets. What a surprise!

Thank you for highlighting this crucial fact.

It leads to a fundamental question:

Do the critics who proclaim these concerns propose to increase or decrease funding?

For example, JP has often written about the shortcomings of our current observation network. He has also offered an estimate of the cost to correct those shortcomings -- my recollection is that it was several billion dollars.

If JP and the similar critics propose to fund the effort needed to correct these problems, and cite their criticisms in support of that funding, then I wholeheartedly agree.

If, on the other hand, the real intent is to disconnect them, discount their data, and further bury our heads in the sand about the world around us, then I think they are not only wrong but dangerously so.

The dubious quality of this observational data is surely one of the motivations for the statistical corrections, adjustments, and normalizations that so many of our contrarians/denialists criticize so loudly. Perhaps even our contrarians/denialists will agree that better observational data collection technology will reduce the need to manipulate the resulting data once it is gathered.

So let me offer it as a direct question to our contrarians, especially JP:

Do you support or oppose the increased funding needed to correct the problems in our observation network?

The nearest historical weather site for myself was established shortly after the Civil War and run by soldiers. A few years later it was moved to a downtown building and the thermometer was placed on a window sill for convience. The thermometer was in the sun during the warmest parts of the day!

Around the 1870's or so, a record high was recorded of 101F. Within a few years, it was decided to move the thermometer away from the window and temperature records have been no where near as high ever since. We hit soemthing like 97F this past summer.

The current location is in the observers back yard with huge trees providing all types of shade. So, his temperatures are very cool compared to what most of the surrounding country side of open farm fields.

Reply: the problem with all those trees is the fact that they will act as a canopy at night, trapping more of the day's warmth, leading to a higher low temperature reading than you would normally get in an open area. Brett

So, some skeptics may look at the stations data and wrongly claim that there has been cooling of the climate. However, the site is also near a Lake Ontario. Over the last decade very little ice has formed during the winter. Back in the 1800s, the lake would freeze all the way to the horizon. In other words, a clear sign of warming.

Anyhow, while there are problems with instrumental records, there are other sources of data throughout the world like ice cores and sediment cores that show how much the world has warmed.

In addition, satellites are used to measure tempearures now, much more accurately than anything else.

Hi Brett,

Let us not forget that a lot of places use to old mercury thermometers and they have a accuracy of +/- 0.5 degree C. Also most temperature readings prior to the 1970's used these instruments.

While there are certainly many microsite issues, some important points must be noted:

1) If a site is consistently 2 deg C higher, it will still measure a trend accurately. Reply: true, but these errors usually change over time, and even short periods of time, which will alter the trend.

2) There are also many sites with cooling biases. Reply: true again. Central Park, NY and PHL come to mind, especially with their high temps.

3) Sites are adjusted for homogeneity, which helps to eliminate bad data.
4) No one has been able to show that poor sites differ in their measurement of trend. In fact, analysis shows no difference between good and bad sites in terms of trend. Reply: maybe so, but I still do not think this is acceptable
5) Data from satellite measurements are nearly identical to surface measurements for the satellite era (1978-present). This holds true for global temperatures AND US temperatures.

In short, whatever effect there is from microsite issues, the trends are unaffected.

Hansen's whole story is based on about 0.6 degrees. Seems fairly apparent that is within the standard deviation of error.

AKA - bad science

Meagers budgets? AGW is a multibillion $$$ a year industry - why don't they spend some of that $$$ on getting good data before they begin their speculations upon it?

AGW has things exactly backwards - science MUST begin with good data.

No wonder the science isn't settled.

Brookline Tom-
Obviously it is due to lack of funding that the data stations often provide inaccurate data. This has nothing to do with the bad data though. You can't use false data under any pretense and certainly using data, proven to be quite inaccurate to support a theory is ridiculous. The data, which is stated to have ranges that end up several degrees high or low, is to inaccurate to use in definitive predictions. We are talking about warming of less than a degree celcius, and the +/- of the data is not sufficient to prove anything. Before any "consensus" or proof is to occur, there needs to be an accurate way to read temperatures, and to factor in all the other factors. From what I understand we are incredibly far away from that.
Yes I think funding should probably be increased, but it has to be taken away from something else. There is absolutely no reason to raise taxes to fund stations further, the money is already in the government. Though I could see that as a rationale to raise taxes by some global warming advocates like Boxer. Editing bad data, does not make it useable, bad data is just that, bad, and needs to thrown out. At most the data that is recorded can be used to support a HYPOTHESIS which is what the human caused global warming idea is. It needs to be stated as such, instead of as fact.

Andrew-
The idea of using thermometers is to have everything set to a scale. These were upgrades to looking at a pond and deciding how much more or less it froze in a given year. Looking at natural phenomenae such as that is wildly inaccurate. Your other point about temp. stations being in cooler places now, such as under trees and away from windows is also questionable. A bigger issue, I believe has been the urbanization of areas around older reading stations. The greater prevalence of concrete buildings and pavement, allow for a large increase in temperature over time. For example at the Detroit Metro Airport temperatures trend about 3-5 degrees cooler than those in Detroit city (5-10 miles away) during both the day and night. Even if you average the two together the number will be at least two or three degrees above the actual temperature. It's called the urban heat island effect, and it is real, an it definetely throws off temperature trends in those areas. Also the record high temperatures are unimportant. It is the average that we are concerned with. Last year in South Lyon, MI we only topped 90 three or four times, as opposed to several days over a hundred several years ago. This is not a sign of cooling, as the average temperatures have been almost exactly the same, and certainly over the last few decades.

Elliot

Bad science indeed.

Bad data + bad models = bad science.

Boris - the burden lies upon the AGW crowd to examine the data thoroughly and clean it up before any analyses can be performed. It is not the responsibility of AGW skeptics to prove the bad data creates biases in AGW analyses. All scientific 'research' involving this data should cease immediately until data QC is done.

An email quote from a climatologist friend. Location removed to protect the innocent.

I am in charge of the (location removed) weather station so I know the data here intimately. It is one of very few stations in the western U.S. that has maintained the same instrumentation and same time of observation through all of history. However, until about 1960 our setting was very rural and in the past 45 years the city has grown up around us and buildings and pavement have encroached upon the station. Most of the observed warming is simply the creation of a "Urban Heat Island" which is very common in developed urban areas.

“Ten years ago the Conference on the World Climate Research....concluded that the ability to monitor the global climate was inadequate and deteriorating.”
Translation: we have been inputting garbage into our models, all our papers, and we expect everybody to believe us. Couple that with “No prior reviews of forecasting methodology for climate models” and the AGW crowd wonders why people question their religion?
Folks that isn’t science….it’s a combination astrology, a Quiji board which is then written in dreadful English prose using multisyllabic Latin words to sound knowledgeable and confuse the mass of people who trust you.
Just making up numbers and calling it “adjustments” to suit your ideas is unconscionable. When questioned the AGW crowd says, “Math Error” and that is to supposed to mollify dissent. It doesn’t! It makes a mockery of the term “science”. Let’s be honest, the AGW people are just guessing.
How can somebody who is mentally competent and works in a scientific field, acknowledge all these issues and still believes this nonsense?
Again this whole “science field” is just people using scientific instruments (badly) and then making a guess using NO scientific methodology.
Instead of spending billions on remedies that we still don't know it needed, we update and correct the places where we get our data from? Spend a few million to get accurate information? What a novel idea in this "science".
Maybe then we can actually have a scientific discussion....or is the AGW religion AFRAID of what it may be found without "math errors" and "adjustments"?
LOL You folks keep me laughing! Have a great weekend.

Brookline Tom

I do not support or oppose increased funding. I do fully support precise and accurate measurement of critical weather and climate data. If more money is needed fine. If tighter controls are needed than do so.

I am still pondering your statement on reducing the need to "manipulate the resulting data once it is gathered".

What is this need you are referring to? The need to fudge the data in a certain direction to get the answer you are looking for?

Boris et al;
Bad siteing will indeed show a trend in temperatures. Agreed.
Unfortunately the trend is often no more than the UHI increase as population grows added to the normal background warming.
BT: I would most definately support spending the money to fix these stations. It would likely show ultimately that the gradual slow warming comming out of the LIA has been steady and not ACCELLERATING OUT OF CONTROL.
We could then make allocate resources to resolving real problems in the world instead of wasting them on chasing fantoms.
Good suggestion.

BT & Andrew
At least you are admitting a problem with the data.
I put this to you ... why are most of Hansen's adjustments up? I know the answer, do you?
Also, this is the US data which I suspect is the best & yet everyone keeps commenting on the ROW data as if the African data or the Chinese data etc is likely to be accurate ... what a joke!
Andrew the satelites were showing no warming until it was determined by the GLO-BULL warmers that they too must be adjusted ... is anyone surprised that now they show warming?
Andrew the satellite data base is too short to yield statistically meaningful data .... but of course that isn't a problem in this field of science is it? The best work is done with bad data that needs the most fudging .... I mean correcting.

Have a great weekend folks,
Rick.

I believe that the old computer expression, "garbage in, garbage out" applies to this topic. Climate models are notorously unreliable. Two articles of interest are linked below. The first is from Climate Audit and illustrates a bad site for collecting temp data.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2090

The second article is from World Climate Report (Sept. 21, 2007) and discusses the lack of soil moisture data in climate models and the important role they play in "predicting more floods, more droughts, more hurricanes, more glacial melting, more sea level rise, more species extinctions, more anything you can possibly name (assuming what you name is potentially catastrophic)."
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

Call me a skeptic or a denier or whatever you like, but if I ignore information like this and simply follow the AGW true believers and their endless excuses for why their theory doesn't hold up then I am a fool.

Obviously, if you just have a very small percentage of poor sites, then it is probably not too much of an issue, but it seems that the problem is bigger than that.

Brett the problem is not huge, I went through the slide show bearing in mind that only 27% of the sites hd been inspected. I do not remember how many sites there are in total but rest assured the US is well covered with hundreds of stations where by now there is barely any room left to squeeze another one in. Perhaps its time to think about urban consolidation instead of looking for more real-estate.

I began to notice that just about every site shown in the slide show had something wrong with it. There were issues of shade caused by natural formations and architectural encroachment, there were unnatural ground cover, aircon vents too close to boxes, even the wrong paint used to make the boxes white and even more worrying white boxes in jet black tarmac car parks.

The huge problem is that there are few places that are actually suitable, something is always not quite perfect for a box, but what always remains the same is that the conditions inside the box will be the same in that box day after day. consequently the day to day measurements taken inside that box will still maintain an accurate reading of the temperatures and conditions of the box itself and isn�t that really all the box is useful for?

Once the measurements are all bought together, how each box affected the temperatures taken no longer matters because a decrease or rise in the overall temperature of the entire continent will still be evident.

There is no such thing as time Brett, the only way to really really know what time means is to wait for a bus. Temperature depends on how you measure it, what you use, when it�s done and where you are. Therefore to get a good indication of average national temperatures use a scatter gun , get lots of data do it often and compare the results.

and that is exactly what they have done.

Tom said:

"Boris - the burden lies upon the AGW crowd to examine the data thoroughly and clean it up before any analyses can be performed."

Yes, and that is exactly what they did. But if you don't like the ground based temps, you can look at satellite trends, which show the same trend.

Gary said:
"Unfortunately the trend is often no more than the UHI increase as population grows added to the normal background warming."

UHI has been studied extensively. It has only a small effect, and is adjusted for in GISS. Arctic temps are increasing the fastest, and there aren't many urban areas in the arctic.

Just saw something bizarre. This site made a radical change from yesterday.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/MonthTDeptUS.png

I refreshed the page from Sept. 19 to Sept. 20 and it was completely different. One thing they changed was the scale (switched from one degree to two degree intervals.) but what didn't make sense was that the ratio of above normal to below normal temperatures went up dramatically. Particularly in areas like Arizona which have been having cool weather recently.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KFLG/2007/9/21/MonthlyHistory.html

I wonder if NOAA is changing their methodology?

The NCDC reports global average temperatures every month and has a data set going back over 100 years. Here is a link to the sceintific paper on how they do it.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/Smith-Reynolds-dataset-2005.pdf

If anybody has some criticism with their techniques, then please share it.

rick,

I do not even know if what you post about Hansen (GISS) is true of if he has anything to do with the NOAA and the NCDC reported temperatures. Satellites have been in place for a while. Hard to believe it has not been enough to establish a trend.

Accordng to the NCDC data, there has been a very significant warming over the last 30 years and we also know that record melting occured in the arctic this summer as well as sea levels that are continously rising as well. Similarly, just about every land based glacier is in serious retreat. There is also plenty of proxiy data (tree rings, ice cores, sea floor sediment and coral borings) that points to record warmth in recent years.

rick said:

"Andrew the satelites were showing no warming until it was determined by the GLO-BULL warmers that they too must be adjusted"

It was only the UAH satellite record that was revised, the RSS record has always shown warming. Everyone in the scientific community--even skeptics--accepts the corrections. So are you proposing a conspiracy theory?

And yes, the satellite trends, even though they are short, are statistically significant. Did I mention that GISS matches extremely well with satellites on both the global and regional US level?

Another Rick said:

"Climate models are notorously unreliable."

Quite untrue, as anyone who has looked at the GCM's hindcasting and their prediction of the global response to Mt. Pinatubo knows full well.

Boris - uhhh, no they haven't QC'd the data, never mind corrected it. Why else would Hansen change his 'adjustments' daily. The AGW crowd has been caught with its pants around it ankles. AGW is a house of cards which is crumbling down.

Simon - the problem with trying to extract an AGW signal from this data is any signal could be due to many things, such as the gradual encroachment of civilization upon what were once rural stations and thus an increasing trend caused by UHI.

Boris;
UHI has been studied extensively. It has only a small effect, and is adjusted for in GISS.

Thanks for that. We are all painfull aware of the adjusting that is going on at GISS. I believe the term Fudging would be more accurate.

Concensus Question:
What do any of you think would be the reaction of the AGW industry if a Skeptic were to use similar data and fudging methods in preparing a research paper?
Does anyone think it would stand a snowballs chance in greenland of getting published?

Opinions?

It's funny to keep watching our resident deniers talk about their wild conspiracy theories. I guess they have no other recourse since their arguments have not only been discredited, but torn to shreds.

Satellites have confirmed the lower tropospheric warming over the past thirty years. And I'm sure the rapid ice loss in the Arctic this year was due to the "urban heat island signal" at the North Pole. Right.

Keep denying, keep cherry picking, it's all a part of the denialist noise machine.