Beware Thermometer Temperature Data
Posted by jennifer, January 4th, 2009 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
In the next week/s the institutions responsible for collecting and collating thermometer temperature data will complete their analysis for December 2008 thus enabling a comparison of the entire year with other years typically back to the 1860s.
There will be much discussion about how warm the year 2008 was, relative to other years in Australia, North America, and globally.
While this news will no doubt grab mainstream media headlines it is unlikely there will be any discussion in the same media about how reliable the information actually is.
Meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, has been surveying official weather stations in the US since May 2007 and his findings often make incredible reading. Indeed, many official weather stations are very poorly located – including one beside a barbeque and others immediately above air conditioner exhausts.
Mr Watts recently posted part 80 of “how not to measure temperature” showing an official US climate monitoring station at a funeral home in downtown Fort Scott, Kansas. Like so many official weather stations in the US the environment surrounding this weather station, between a water fountain and a brick wall near the centre of the city, will probably not provide high quality data.
It is unclear that the situation is much better in Australia – noone has done the type of audit being undertaken by Mr Watts in the US.
Long time Australian Bureau of Meteorology critic, Warwick Hughes, recently suggested there has been a decline in the quality of rainfall data held by the Bureau with values missing from series for no apparent reason.
In conclusion, while the average global citizen might assume that with all the kerfuffle about global warming the data would be beyond reproach, or at least improving, but his is not necessarily the case at least when it comes to the much quoted thermometer temperature data. So, perhaps be prepared to be entertained by the likely barrage of commentary on temperatures over the next week/s, but also be a little skeptical.
I have previously written that in not so many years time weather station data will be collected more for fun, a sense of history and for site-specific information, than for serious regional and global climate statistics. In the future it will be data from satellites that is recognised as much more reliable for understanding regional and global temperature trends.
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Photograph of the official weather station at a Funeral Home in Fort Scott, Kansas, from Anthony Watts.
Gordon,
Not sure if you’re referring to that paper by Morner, Tooley, and Possnert but if you are, it was well and truly kicked into touch by these guys http://staff.acecrc.org.au/~johunter/Church_et_al_2006_published.pdf
I particularly liked the bit that says … “in contrast to Mörner et al. (2004), we find that there is no indication of a fall in sea-level of 20 to 30 cm at any time in the last 30 yrs (which would imply a rate of fall of between 7 and 10 mm yr−1 over 30 yrs, and double that over the “1970s to early 1980s” specified by Mörner et al. (2004)). This drop in sea-level has also been shown to be inconsistent with geological data (Woodroffe, 2005;Kench et al.,2005).”
Man, they sure smoked that sick puppy of a paper didn’t they ?
At base though, the cohenite/louis contradiction is is yet another golden thread in the rich tapestry of confused denialist thinking. CURRENT denialer beliefs would seem to encompass the following …
There is no warming,
There is warming, but its the Sun, stupid.
There is warming from CO2, but the rate is WAY less than the IPCC says, so no problem.
There is warming, but that’s a good thing.
There is warming from CO2, but we should fix world hunger first.
There is warming from CO2, but we’ll bankrupt ourselves if we spend a small % of GDP on
mitigation.
There is warming from CO2, but we’re arrogant to think man can do anything about it.
etc, etc and multiple permutations of each of the above.
And now of course:
Sea level is falling
Sea level is rising, but it would be wrong to attribute it to AGW
Doesn’t seem to be very consistency-rich now does it ?
Look, here’s some gratutitous advice … you all agree on ONE point to argue with us realists about (feel free to incorporate the usual levels of denialist stupidity and misrepresentation though) then hammer the cr*p out of that single issue.
You know it makes sense.
I did not know where to post my observations, so I found something related to being careful.
I was perusing material on Wikipedia today and found some relatively limited and slanted material on CO2, ocean CO2, and the Little Ice Age. I added some relevant and referenced science to balance the material. For example, the text mentioned that humans emit 130 times the CO2 of volcanoes and leaves it at that. What they do not do is mention that the IPCC describes human emissions as only 2-3% of natural annual emissions. Within minutes this addition was removed. I put it back. Poof! Gone again.
The Little Ice Age Causes section details that the plagues, population decrease, and farmland reforestation fixed so much carbon that it caused the Little Ice Age. That and Europeans contacting the American Indian and decimating their populations with disease. They claim that land use changes were the cause? They neglect to admit that the world population and land use was much to smal to have such an effect. The are references to some researcher who finds evidence of carbon fixation and jumps to the conclusion that CO2 changes drove the climate cold. I simply added that, considering the relatively small human population and the low agriculture and technology of the times, it would be overestimating land use effects and CO2 changes to claim these effects. It was gone in minutes also.
I added some a reasonable statement to “Ocean CO2″ to add that addition of CO2 to the carbonic acid/bicarbonate/carbonate equilibrium must increase carbonate concentration and increase availability to organisms. As the H+ produced by this equilibrium is part of the equilibrium it will have no effect. Furthermore, as CO2 has been much higher for much f the last 600 million years, it is no surprise that most marine organisms are fine with a slight pH drop, photosynthesis raises the pH, and the reefs are thriving. Again it was gone in seconds.
Some ad hominem comments to me by the author/monitor/changer threatened to have me banned from editing. He called my input “twaddle”, made disparaging comments about Beck (”junk science”) and Jaworowski and was very sarcastic. One arrogant jerk.
A little sleuthing and I find that the person policing the content is one of Dr Mann’s colleagues, William M. Connolley. He apparently patrols certain parts of Wikipedia to make sure that the material follows the bad, limited point of view and junk science of the IPCC and, of course, Mann’s hockeystick point of view.
I want to spread the word in general to be careful of material related to climate change as it is pointedly being policed by global warming bullies who squat on the science and limit what the readers of Wikipedia can see. I believe their activities degrade Wikipedia severely and makes these bullies non-scientists and patently dishonest.
I would be glad to find out where I can place observations such as this for a wider audience. I would appreciate the input.
I have been messing with getting a blog started, but I do not know how to get it out there.
Cheers, C. Higley