Mar 26 2008
Lawrenceville, New York: The Perfect Surface Station?
I’ve been on the lookout for great surface stations lately. And I think I may have hit the jackpot. This station is situated in lovely St. Lawrence County, New York. The inset is an image taken not far from the actual station, and the image appears to be quite representative of the region. The good news is that this station is already in a list of the best surface stations. I compiled that list by just looking at mesoscale influences. That is, is there any cities or towns nearby that would contribute to the urban heat island.
I’ve included a satellite image from Google Earth that shows the area around the coordinates given in the MMS database. There is a small clearing nearby with what appears to be shelters. There is a conspicuous square, white object about 4 feet by 4 feet. This could be the cotton region shelter that is at this station. 4 by 4 is much too large to be a CRS, but the white object took up about 4 pixels, so measurements could be off by a bit. The contrast with the surrounding dark landscape would make this object appear larger than it really is.
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(Click to enlarge)
It is not just the location of this station that makes it good. In the station history file, there are just two entries for this station. This means that the station has been moved only once in its almost 80 year history. It has maintained the same instrumentation: cotton region shelter, min-max thermometers, and a standard rain gauge.
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When we look at the temperatures measured at this station, there has been familiar local maximum in the 1930s, followed by the local minimum in the 1970s, and then the current rising trend to the maximum temperatures on record. The black line represents the raw data taken from the station. It has been passed through a quality control procedure that looks for outliers, but this is basically the data directly from the station.
The red line represents the filnet data. The temperatures for all the years were offset by about a degree Fahrenheit that I’ve added back so that the temperature in the last year on record was the same. This is just so the plots could be shown nicely on the same graph. It’s clear that the adjustments done to this station are very few (1), and very small.
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To quantify the degree of adjustment, I subtracted the RAW data from the FILNET data. The first vertical red line represents the first entry in the station metadata; when the station was initially installed. The second red line represents the other entry in the metadata. From the station history file, I can tell that it was moved 0.8 miles to the East, and the change in elevation was 20 feet. The blue line represents the date when the station history file was last updated.
This site has not been surveyed for microsite issues. However, judging from the satellite imagery, it appears to be a decent location. This station is rural and has had minimal moves and adjustments. Therefore, this is a perfect station with which to calibrate surrounding stations that may suffer from micro- or mesoscale influences.
Since the beginning of the record, this station has experienced a warming rate of 0.216 F/decade (0.12 C/decade).
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12 Responses to “Lawrenceville, New York: The Perfect Surface Station?”
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“Note that even the UAH data now have a substantial warming trend (0.14°C per decade). RSS find 0.18°C per decade, close to the surface temperature trend (0.17°C per decade).”
I pulled the above from a recent comment posted by Hansen at his Columbia site. Does the close correlation of satellite temp. measurements with surface temp. measurements tell us anything of value with respect to the quality (or lack thereof) of surface temp. measurements?
[Reply: I won't speculate too much since the two are actually measuring two different things. But we have 4 global temperature metrics; 2 derived from satellite measurements and 2 derived from mostly surface station measurements. The fact that these two different temperature time series are so dramatically similar implies a lot about the robustness of both of the techniques.]
I don’t think Watts actually wants to learn about how different situations ACTUALLY impact measurements. He just wants to put up cherry picked crits on the net. Lot of my skeptics are like that. I actually think that you want to find AGW and have more taxes and stuff like that. But that you would pursue and tell the truth regardless. I don’t expect that from Watts. He will rush stuiff to print if it is anti-AGW and delay if it is pro. McI is similar in ethic, but has more math brains than Watts.
[Reply: I make less than $20000 per year. The last thing I want is more taxes.]
Good find ATMOZ,
The other sites you might find interest in are the sites located in deserts. These are, in most cases, not UHI infected.
in your area I think Sonora?? ( from memory here sorry) is at a museum in the desert. anyway the point is the desert locations, one could perversely argue are the best places places to measure climate trend, free of UHI..
I looked at it a little bit, might be something there for the curious.
[Reply: I've been to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, but I did not see the weather station. Regardless, I don't believe it to be used in the USHCN.]
TCO, pick on someone your own size.
dramatic pause…..
grin. [Ed: Like this
?]
Atmoz runs a nice place. you behave my good friend.
hey thanks
for getting me back on rabbett run. I love bunny 4 lunch.
Sorry Nathan,
This station is another example of bad metadata.
The correct name is Lawrenceville 3sw, NWS station # 304647, although GISS calls it Lawrenceville (notta biggie deal).
The Cotton Regional Shelter was replaced in April 2003 with MMTS. The station and the rain gage moved that same date 200 feet WNW. Unfortunately NCDC has eliminated the exposure and obstructions field so we cannot tell if the new MMTS was moved next to the house as is usually the case.
I also looked at some of the original observer reports and noticed that they stopped recording the time of observation in Jan 1995 all the way until Feb 2008.
Also, Mosh, if you’re reading this, let everyone know that NCDC shut off the Managing Parties field again AND THE EXPOSURE AND OBSTRUCTIONS FIELD.
[Reply: The station history file was last updated in 1995. That's probably why the switch to MMTS isn't seen.]
“The fact that these two different temperature time series are so dramatically similar implies a lot about the robustness of both of the techniques”
So, why is there so much hand wringing about the so called UHI and the surface sites? Is the hand wringing valid given the apparent robustness of the surface measurements?
ok mike
Mike C. Anthony reports that the data is still there it’s just been moved to a different Tab..
Atmoz, WRT to the satillite measures and the land record measures.
What do the GCM tell us?
The trend at the troposphere should be:
A: equal to trend at the surface?
B. Greater than
C. Less than.
I have some vague recollection of the answer. I suppose I could speculate and have somebody correct me ( neat trick) or go on a literature search myself
[Reply: As I recall, the MSU lower troposphere temperature trends should be slightly greater than the surface temperatures because of the weighting functions they use. But don't quote me on that.]
Good evenin Atmoz, Very nice blog, Thanks for the learning location. good reading.
Bill
What is FILNET?
[Reply: FILNET is a correction applied to the USHCN data. NOAA describes it as:
After reading the post and the replies I got to wondering what the annual precipitation curve would look like and compare it to the temperature graph in the post. Would the high temp years, from 1985 to now, correlate to dry years. I went to the NCDC site to find the data and according to the site the data is available as total precip on a monthly basis. The only thing is the buggers want you to pay for this as a download! I am not asking for a CD but a download. Does anyody know where I can get free precipitation data?