Jul 16 2007
Surface Station Temperature Data
There has been much ado (about nothing?) lately about the accuracy of the temperature measurements at surface station on the websites of those that disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change. In particular, there is surfacestations.org which is attempting to document the location of stations used in the United States Historical Climatology Network. This is a good initiative, but I doubt the motives of those conducting the survey.
The data may be flawed. However, when compared to global temperature data from other sources, it still has the same trends. For example, lets compare the temperature from CRUTEM3 and the MSU data from UAH.
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We can immediately see that there is a high correspondence between the two temperature data sets. They both have a positive temperature trend, and a sharp peak in 1998 due to the abnormally strong El Nino. There does seem to be a bias in one of the data sets; either a positive bias in the surface data or a negative bias in the MSU data. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because what we’re concerned with is the trend in the data, which is clearly increasing in both data.
Those claiming that there is a temperature bias in the surface data, due to urban heat island or micro climate effects, need to show that the effects of placement of the weather stations has an effect on the global temperature. To do this, the temperature from the surface stations need to be different that that from those measured by other means, such as satellites. Since there does not seem to be any systematic changes in the rates of the temperature, I would conclude that it is unlikely that micro climate effects have any bias on the global temperature, or that those assembling such data sets have already adjusted the temperatures of those locations that might be affected by site inhomogeneities.
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2 Responses to “Surface Station Temperature Data”
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“This is a good initiative, but I doubt the motives of those conducting the survey.”
I am having real difficulty with this logic. Surely science is independent of the motives of the people who do it ? Isn’t this just a crude, ad hominem attack ?
“The data may be flawed. However, when compared to global temperature data from other sources, it still has the same trends… Those claiming that there is a temperature bias in the surface data, due to urban heat island or micro climate effects, need to show that the effects of placement of the weather stations has an effect on the global temperature.”
Again, I am flummoxed by the logic. You say that the MSU and surface temperature trends are the same; at the same time as saying that they are different from each other.
You stipulate that the data is flawed; if you show a fundamental flaw in a measurement, then it is the people who already use this data who have to justify that it is a correct and useful measure, and that the use of a flawed measure does not bias the existing surface temperature reconstructions.
per
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