By Anthony Watts has been doing an incredible job inventorying all the weather stations in the United States. He has so far found that 90% of the weather stations in the country are surrounded by heat trapping concrete, asphalt, buildings, machinery, etc. like what is shown below that is giving inflated temperature readings:
This picture from the Rome airport shows how at least this one weather station is setup between a large parking lot filled with semi-trucks and airplanes preparing for take off:
I can only imagine what all that concrete and blowing exhuast has done to the temperature readings at that weather station. Anyway this got me thinking about how weather stations in Korea are set up? Does anyone know where any of the weather stations in Korea are at? If so it would be interesting to get some pictures of a few of them and see if they to are set up in heat islands as well that artificially increasing the temperature readings.
5:20 pm on July 7th, 2009 1
I saw a weather station set up under water, that station reported 10,000mm of rain everyday.
Another weather station was set up inside a metal smelting furnace, that station reported temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees.
Wow, thanks GI you have solved the mystery. Please report your findings to the scientific community, you have really done your homework!
A+
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6:57 pm on July 7th, 2009 2
Yeah, it’s a bit of a red herring, isn’t it? Data on climate isn’t collected from stationary weather stations located in the US only.
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8:45 pm on July 7th, 2009 3
Well, actually, they mostly are based on those observations. Remember that satellite and oceanographic tempurature records are relatively new, and only cover the last 20-30 years. Additionally, there is an overdependance on US data because the majority of other countries lack the same weather observing network that we see in the US, particularly when it comes to these surface observations. Also remember that those records that do exist in non-US countries are typically located only in major cities, which contributes to potential contamination from the urban heat island effect.
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9:03 pm on July 7th, 2009 4
Why would anyone in Moscow (for example) rely on weather observations made at a weather station in downtown Detroit or in Appalachian Mountains?
What do you make of all the fixed weather stations located in the middle of nowhere?
http://www.sailwx.info/wxobs/stationpick.phtml
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July 7th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I can’t attest to the configuration of every weather station (especially those in Joe Schmo’s backyard), but I can give you a little insight on how they are configured at airports (I’m a USAF Weather Forecaster/Observer). Normally there are 3 instrumentation sites on an airfield (maybe more on airifields with several runways), with one on each side of the runway and another located at midfield. The temperature sensors are normally housed under a protective cover, which shields it from erroneous readings caused by direct sunlight etc. The location of the instrumentation on the airfield should normally provide a buffer between urban heat islands and other objects that can cause interference. Speaking from experience, the majority of airfields I have worked at contain sensors that are normally located fairly far away from outside interference and most other blackbody surfaces that retain heat.
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:01 am
I think you are replying to the wrong comment. I’m not the one who’s arguing that weather forecasters are morons.
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July 8th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Sorry, I just hit reply on the last comment on the page. Not directed at you specifically, just an FYI for anyone reading.
12:08 am on July 8th, 2009 5
I don’t know how climatologists do it, but when I was taking Astronomy labs we had to do a lot of data reduction that, I assumed, worked similarly.
If you’re looking at temperature variations, you would presumably start by taking a baseline at each sensor and filter out regular interference that is likely to be specific to that sensor. You would then normalize your data against that baseline (and the baseline would probably not be a straight line, but a multiorder differential equation, depending on how precise you need your data to be).
“Noisy” sites like that would more likely mask temperature variations — crappy signal-to-noise-ratio.
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July 8th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
That all depends if the data from that particular site is reliable at all. If you have a site in which the site is incorrectly set up, then the tempeatures will be higher than it’s supposed to be. You can run all of the baseline stuff you want and your measurements will still be wrong.
It would be like measuring the line loss of a cable with measuring equipment that was not calibrated. Yea, you get data, but every measurment will be off.
Blue, just by having a measuring site on an airport your injecting extra heating which is coming off of the concrete. That’s why the measuring equipment has to be a certain distance from the runway to give accurate measurments. Here in Ohio, the tempeature measuring station is located at the airport which is about 10 miles away from where I lived. Our tempeatures were always 5 degrees cooler due to the fact we had alot of trees around.
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12:56 am on July 8th, 2009 6
All those methods take way too much time and an objective mind. It is much easier to just take the data from a previously warmer month from a sensor if it is acting up or it no longer exists and you are a global warming proponet. Or you can just average in that 30 degree hotter than record temperature with the record low ones in the US and you still prove that man is killing the planet.
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Thanks Al Gore! I knew I could count on your logic to carry me through my darkest hour.
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July 8th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Nice conspiracy theory.
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
(Quasi, that was sarcasm) Teadrinker or Coolaidedrinker what conspiracy? You eco-loons have been cooking the data all along, it has nothing to do with science. Don’t have data from Siberia this month…let’s use a previous month that is traditionaly hotter! Global tempatures have cooled…lets cook the algorithm and refuse to release the data! A historic mountain is losing its ice cap…It’s GLOBAL WARMING! Feel free to shout down the honest scientist who doesn’t have a dog in the fight, but wishes to point out that the region is going through a historically dry period and the ice is not melting…. I can’t use as much energy as Al Gore’s home, but I can see it from space.
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July 9th, 2009 at 2:07 am
What’s with the name calling?
Eco-loon? I drive a brand-spanking new SUV.
Global warming is happening, but I’m not convinced that we are the only ones to blame for it.
It might have something to do with cyclical fluctuations in the temperature of deep oceans (the largest reservoir of CO2). The theory is that as the water warms up, less carbon dioxide can be dissolved. Where does the gas go? Into the atmosphere, where it would contribute to global warming.
All that to say that global warming might be a natural phenomenon.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Teadrinker Fair enough, I believe I jumped the gun. It’s amazing to me that the earth cooled then heated throughout its history mostly without any humans, but the current crisis can only be faulted on us. As all Gore noted, “The science is settled!” which is amazing since all of my good professors would note that most of what we know is an approximation, or just flat out wrong.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Global warming may also have something to do with the sun itself.
Either way, the real disaster would be if we found ourselves in another ice age.
In any case, if we don’t run out of fossil fuels soon, they will become so expensive that we’ll have no choice but to use alternative sources of energy (just look at how any little incident in an oil producing country (big or small) is enough for the media to sensationalize the affect it will have on the price of oil…and it actually drives up the prices!).
July 9th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Hamilton, that was sarcasm too! You gotta have a sense of humor about things….
5:54 pm on July 8th, 2009 7
As the hype about global warming is actually an average increase of less than one degree, I’m curious how this relates to the margin of error in the measuring equipment and installation.
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