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Anthony Watts Corrects the Temperature Record

Jack Hays

Jack Hays

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Anthony Watts presented his paper today at the AGU 2015 conference. It concludes that well-sited temperature stations have recorded quite a bit less warming than those influenced by urban heat effect. And yet the good stations' temperatures have apparently been "homogenized" up to match the bad stations' records.

[h=2] Anthony Watts at AGU2015 shows that hot air rises off concrete (it does affect thermometers)[/h]
Who would have thought that temperature stations near concrete are warming faster than those over grass?
Anthony Watts carefully analyzed all 1,218 surface stations in the USA and managed to find 410 good ones in the last 35 years (1979 onwards) — which is an achievement in itself. But the real point of his paper is to see if the best stations show less warming than the rest. (The good ones are the ones that are not near artificial heat sources, and haven’t been moved around). Watts finds (again) that the NOAA homogenisation practice appears to be adjusting the good stations up to the bad ones.
About a third of the US recorded warming trend in the last 35 years may have just disappeared…
Watts presents it today at the AGU 2015 conference.
Congratulations to Anthony Watts for what must have been a mammoth amount of work. The irony is that the conclusion — that hot air radiates or rises off concrete, asphalt, and from bricks affects thermometers is banal, yet so few can demonstrate it across such a big network. We have to wonder why no one else was looking… Maybe the Earth’s climate doesn’t matter that much to NOAA? – Jo
_______________________
The Press Release
NEW STUDY OF NOAA’S U.S. CLIMATE NETWORK SHOWS A LOWER 30-YEAR TEMPERATURE TREND WHEN HIGH QUALITY TEMPERATURE STATIONS UNPERTURBED BY URBANIZATION ARE CONSIDERED

Figure 1 – Comparisons of 30 year trend for compliant Class 1,2 USHCN stations to non-compliant, Class 3,4,5 USHCN stations to NOAA final adjusted V2.5 USHCN data in the Continental United States
December 17th, 2015
SAN FRANCISO, CA – A new study about the surface temperature record presented at the 2015 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests that the 30-year trend of temperatures for the Continental United States (CONUS) since 1979 are about two thirds as strong as officially NOAA temperature trends.
Keep reading →
 
As long as climatology allows homogenization, it is a joke.
 
Poor Debater said:
Kinda makes you wonder why Tony ended his data in 2008, doesn't it? I wonder what he's hiding.
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Make you wonder, but not I:

A 410-station subset of U.S. Historical Climatology Network (version 2.5) stations is identified that experienced no changes in time of observation or station moves during the 1979-2008 period. These stations are classified based on proximity to artificial surfaces, buildings
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When you move the station or time, it is no longer correctly part of the dataset.
 
Lord of Planar said:
Make you wonder, but not I:
When you move the station or time, it is no longer correctly part of the dataset.
Click to expand...

Then perhaps you can tell us how many such stations they would have had if 2009 had been included, and 1979 had been dropped. Or if 2010 and been included, and 1980 had been dropped. Or 2011 had been included, and 1981 had been dropped.

If you still don't wonder at that, you're too wayyyy to incurious.
 
The graph too is revealing, if you actually take the trouble to look at it. There is essentially no change between 1979-1991. Then between 1992 and 1996 there is a big shift of the blue line downwards. From 1996 to the end, they're running in parallel again.

Watt's explanation is concrete, but I seriously doubt that the physics of concrete was different between 1992 and 1996 than any other period in history. More likely is that some of those 410 stations had unrecorded instrument changes during this period, not reflected in the metadata. This is the kind of thing that can be found quite easily using near-station algorithmic detection, as is routinely done nowadays.

It would be easy to tell for sure if this is the case, except for one thing: Anthony Watts is flat-out refusing to release his data. He claims that he will once his paper is published, but if this is really the issue it will never get past peer-review. Which means we may never see his data, and another urban legend is born in Denierstan.
 
Poor Debater said:
Then perhaps you can tell us how many such stations they would have had if 2009 had been included, and 1979 had been dropped. Or if 2010 and been included, and 1980 had been dropped. Or 2011 had been included, and 1981 had been dropped.

If you still don't wonder at that, you're too wayyyy to incurious.
Click to expand...

Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
 
Poor Debater said:
The graph too is revealing, if you actually take the trouble to look at it. There is essentially no change between 1979-1991. Then between 1992 and 1996 there is a big shift of the blue line downwards. From 1996 to the end, they're running in parallel again.

Watt's explanation is concrete, but I seriously doubt that the physics of concrete was different between 1992 and 1996 than any other period in history. More likely is that some of those 410 stations had unrecorded instrument changes during this period, not reflected in the metadata. This is the kind of thing that can be found quite easily using near-station algorithmic detection, as is routinely done nowadays.

It would be easy to tell for sure if this is the case, except for one thing: Anthony Watts is flat-out refusing to release his data. He claims that he will once his paper is published, but if this is really the issue it will never get past peer-review. Which means we may never see his data, and another urban legend is born in Denierstan.
Click to expand...

Unfounded allegation piled on unfounded allegation. So much fear. The truth is our friend.
 
Poor Debater said:
Then perhaps you can tell us how many such stations they would have had if 2009 had been included, and 1979 had been dropped. Or if 2010 and been included, and 1980 had been dropped. Or 2011 had been included, and 1981 had been dropped.

If you still don't wonder at that, you're too wayyyy to incurious.
Click to expand...

From the press release linked in #1 and #2:

Some might wonder why we have a 1979-2008 comparison when this is 2015. The reason is so that this speaks to Menne et al. 2009 and 2010, papers launched by NOAA/NCDC to defend their adjustment methods for the USCHN from criticisms I had launched about the quality of the surface temperature record, such as this book in 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? This sent NOAA/NCDC into a tizzy, and they responded with a hasty and ghost written flyer they circulated. In our paper, we extend the comparisons to the current USHCN dataset as well as the 1979-2008 comparison.
 
Poor Debater said:
Kinda makes you wonder why Tony ended his data in 2008, doesn't it? I wonder what he's hiding.
Click to expand...

From the press release linked in #1 and #2:

Some might wonder why we have a 1979-2008 comparison when this is 2015. The reason is so that this speaks to Menne et al. 2009 and 2010, papers launched by NOAA/NCDC to defend their adjustment methods for the USCHN from criticisms I had launched about the quality of the surface temperature record, such as this book in 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? This sent NOAA/NCDC into a tizzy, and they responded with a hasty and ghost written flyer they circulated. In our paper, we extend the comparisons to the current USHCN dataset as well as the 1979-2008 comparison.
 
Poor Debater said:
The graph too is revealing, if you actually take the trouble to look at it. There is essentially no change between 1979-1991. Then between 1992 and 1996 there is a big shift of the blue line downwards. From 1996 to the end, they're running in parallel again.

Watt's explanation is concrete, but I seriously doubt that the physics of concrete was different between 1992 and 1996 than any other period in history. More likely is that some of those 410 stations had unrecorded instrument changes during this period, not reflected in the metadata. This is the kind of thing that can be found quite easily using near-station algorithmic detection, as is routinely done nowadays.

It would be easy to tell for sure if this is the case, except for one thing: Anthony Watts is flat-out refusing to release his data. He claims that he will once his paper is published, but if this is really the issue it will never get past peer-review. Which means we may never see his data, and another urban legend is born in Denierstan.
Click to expand...

From the press release linked in #1 and #2:

We are submitting this to publication in a well respected journal. No, I won’t say which one because we don’t need any attempts at journal gate-keeping like we saw in the Climategate emails. i.e “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” and “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”.
When the journal article publishes, we’ll make all of the data, code, and methods available so that the study is entirely replicable. We feel this is very important, even if it allows unscrupulous types to launch “creative” attacks via journal publications, blog posts, and comments. When the data and paper is available, we’ll welcome real and well-founded criticism.
It should be noted that many of the USHCN stations we excluded that had station moves, equipment changes, TOBs changes, etc that were not suitable had lower trends that would have bolstered our conclusions.
 
Jack Hays said:
Unfounded allegation piled on unfounded allegation. So much fear. The truth is our friend.
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Yup. Which is why Watts won't share his data. He's afraid.
 
Poor Debater said:
Yup. Which is why Watts won't share his data. He's afraid.
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Based on the corruption exposed in Climategate, his precaution seems justified. Besides, you could fill several volumes with correspondence from McIntyre et al seeking data and being denied. It will all come out.
 
Jack Hays said:
Based on the corruption exposed in Climategate, his precaution seems justified. Besides, you could fill several volumes with correspondence from McIntyre et al seeking data and being denied. It will all come out.
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So you're justified and we're not. Typical.
 
Poor Debater said:
So you're justified and we're not. Typical.
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No one is justified, but in the real world every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Had the warmists not established their obstructionist precedent, or acted to coerce journals, the situation we are discussing here would likely be different.
 
Poor Debater said:
So you're justified and we're not. Typical.
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Whose we? Feel free to attack Watts if he doesn't publish the data along with the paper. The issue that many of us have with the warmist crowd is that they refuse to provide the data and code even AFTER publishing the paper.
 
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