Comments on: WUWT breaks NOAA record

By: Stanley

Stanley — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:25:22 +0000

NOAA reckoned the average temps of these 114 stations to be an adequate proxy for the average temps of the continental USA as a whole.

They also regard the average temps measured by the old network (1000+stations) to be an adequate proxy for the same area. The unders and overs balance out.

So, if A=C and B=C, then A=B. But the problem here is that the B team measures 1.2°C too high. The B team includes UHI and other interference whilst the A team does not. The inferences are very clear.

By: Richard Treadgold

Richard Treadgold — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:38:43 +0000

Well, there’s no mention of your being banned, actually, Simon, unless it was in a private email. But you ignore diplomacy at your own risk! Even though the point of fact seems a good one, your assumption that Anthony knew it when he wrote the article is a hostile allegation. Anyway, moderators are often less forgiving than their principal. Anthony might not care.

I should clarify, too, that when I applauded your point, I excepted your allegation of deliberate disingenuousness. Keeping the conversation polite is worth the effort. We try to do that here, as you’ve seen.

You assert: “The two sets of weather stations are in different places.Therefore the averages are different.”

Strictly speaking, that’s an unsupported guess. I’d agree that they could be different. If we get confirmation of that altitude difference, still, the temperature difference, as I said, is only theoretical.

That’s a great project for you, Simon: get the altitude records of the two networks and work it out!

What about the question of why NOAA installed the new network yet doesn’t use the data?

Cheers.

UPDATE: I’ve had a closer look at WUWT and seen the discussion of Nick Stokes’s altitude calculation. There’s a lot more to the matter than mentioned here. I tend to agree with Anthony when he asks for NOAA’s calculations. Just as we asked for NIWA’s, it’s a reasonable request.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:12:44 +0000

I posted the above on wattsupwiththat and the moderator deleted the last sentence and told me that I will be banned if I do that again.

By: Richard Treadgold

Richard Treadgold — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 02:25:22 +0000

Nice point, Simon. Wikipedia gives the ICAO environmental lapse rate (ELR), or rate of temperature decrease with altitude in the stationary atmosphere at a given time and location, as 6.49 K(°C)/1,000 m up to 11 km (36,000 ft). The presence of wind or water vapour will alter that. So a typical reduction in temperature over the commenter’s 178 m altitude increase would be 6.49 × 0.178 = 1.16 °C, or 2.09 °F. So that (admittedly theoretical) figure precisely matches Anthony’s 2.1 °F.

But the question of NOAA’s motivation needs answering: why install an expensive network specifically to measure climatic changes only to ignore it when giving climate information? You suppose they want compatibility with the earlier series, but that begs the question, doesn’t it?

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 02:01:14 +0000

The two sets of weather stations are in different places.Therefore the averages are different. I see that somebody in the comments section calculated the average altitude of the two sets and the historical network set was on average 178m higher. The NOAA report the historic set average so that it is directly comparable with previous years. I’m sure Watts is well aware of this and is just being deliberately disingenuous.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 20:33:45 +0000

There’s actually a weather station at my son’s school, Mackenzie College
I need to find out about it – it is well sited and a long way from coastal influences

By: Richard Treadgold

Richard Treadgold — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 20:21:08 +0000

There’s no network, but we might have the odd high-quality weather station.

By: PeterM

PeterM — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 19:44:17 +0000

Does NZ have a high quality reference station as described in Anthony’s article?

By: Stanley

Stanley — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:45:48 +0000

Well, that puts paid to any argument that the old traditional USHCN provided accurate measures of average temps within the continental USA.

NOAA runs two networks:

The old US Historical Climate Network consists of weather stations with so many flaws and faults that it has been sharply criticised in a 2011 report by the US Government Accountability Office. It needs to be adjusted and gridded by in-house analysts.

The new US Climate Reference Network consists of 114 evenly-spaced rural climate stations recently built to the highest standards to deliver accurate readings of climate changes. It requires no adjustments or gridding.

The NOAA knows precisely how inaccurate its adjusted records are. They are over-warm by 1.2°C. No other country knows precisely how inaccurate its adjusted temperature records are, but they all use similar methods.

Translating the US results to New Zealand the current average temperature would be 11.4°C rather than NIWA’s best guess of 12.6°C. That would indicate a substantial cooling since 12.1°C was recorded (without adjustments) for the 1880-1920 period.