Has anyone been able to determine which scientific papers the media will report? It seems like a crap shoot to me. The latest is about aerosols and their effect on surface temperatures. The journal Geophysical Research Letters published a paper titled Aerosol and cloud effects on solar brightening and the recent rapid warming by a group of scientists mostly from Switzerland.

They found that the temperatures in Europe have been increasing faster than expected if greenhouse gases were the only cause. They also calculate that aerosols will cause a surface cooling. This is not news. The “surprising” part (their word) is that the cooling is mostly due to the direct aerosol effect and not the indirect cloud effect.
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I’ve been busy over the last couple days, not only with my real work, but also trying to decode the CRN data. About 2 weeks ago, Anthony Watts posted the link to the FTP site where anyone can download the temperature data from the new network. There are many files. And that’s an understatement. They have one file for every hour that has passed since the initiation of the network in late 2005.
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Yesterday I did a post called Revisiting Tucson USHCN: Regional Correction Factor. I thought it would be my last post on the UofA surface station in a while, but I guess not. The US Climate Reference Network (CRN). This is described as “a network of climate stations… Its primary goal is to provide future long-term homogeneous observations of temperature and precipitation that can be coupled to long-term historical observations for the detection and attribution of present and future climate change.”

Luckily for me, steven mosher pointed out that there is a CRN station really close to Tucson at the Arizona Senora Desert Museum. He said:
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In July 2007, the USHCN surface station at the University of Arizona was profiled for the first time. Being in a parking lot, it is a less than an ideal location. The pictures have been shown repeatedly on Watts Up and Climate Audit, as well as in presentations by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. The temperature record was defended by both me and Herman and Jones using a similar methodology.

In a recent post at Watts Up, he profiles a station that is near a concrete walkway. I commented, basically saying that just because it is near the walkway doesn’t necessarily mean it will introduce a warming bias. Which lead him to reply:
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