Split Thread Weather stations and their data (Split from GW Discussion III)

[r-j]

If 113F and higher temps never happened, and adjustments to the data actually were made by lowering temps, then where did the 113F come from?

There never was any "slew of" 113 degree readings, nor was there a rooftop station causing the readings.

You have to realize that you can't proceed in science when somebody makes something up. It's nonsense. They used bad reasoning to lower the warm readings, to make it appear like there has been drastic warming, when there has been almost none.

The really funny part? Since GISS isn't adjusting data like BEST and NCDC, they still show no warming for Chicago. Much less the drastic nonsense the BEST "data" is trying to show for Chicago.

So if the raw data says it was cooler in the past

Why would you say that? It's the exact opposite of the evidence.

What's really bad, is that it isn't as simple as just adjusting the mean. The changes in location caused more changes than that.

 

[r-j]

So if you change for some unknown reason from measuring temperature in the afternoon to the morning, you will measure cooler temperatures.

You see that? It's like you know nothing at all about how weather stations work.

You think the temperature is measured once or twice a day? What strange world do you live in? Have you ever done any study at all?

It's just not possible.

 

[Reality Check]

There never was any "slew of" 113 degree readings, nor was there a rooftop station causing the readings.

Whoops, r-j, now you are accusing the climate scientists of lying about even the existence of the weather station, when you have no idea which weather station they are even talking about or what the records of the station show !
New daily temperature dataset from Berkeley

For example, if you were studying the history of extreme heat in Chicago, you would find a slew of days in the late 1930s and early 1940s where the station currently at the Chicago O’Hare airport reported daily max temperatures above 45 degrees C (113 F). It turns out that, prior to the airport’s construction, the station now associated with the airport was on the top of a black roofed building closer to the city. This is a common occurrence for stations in the U.S., where many stations were moved from city cores to newly constructed airports or wastewater treatment plants in the 1940s. Using the raw data without correcting for these sorts of bias would not be particularly helpful in understanding changes in extremes.

r-j (8 September 2014): Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of from 1930 to about 1950 (1930's and early 1940's) for the weather station mentioned in the RealClimate article. (etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!).

 

[Red Baron Farms]

There never was any "slew of" 113 degree readings, nor was there a rooftop station causing the readings.

You have to realize that you can't proceed in science when somebody makes something up. It's nonsense. They used bad reasoning to lower the warm readings, to make it appear like there has been drastic warming, when there has been almost none.

The really funny part? Since GISS isn't adjusting data like BEST and NCDC, they still show no warming for Chicago. Much less the drastic nonsense the BEST "data" is trying to show for Chicago.

Why would you say that? It's the exact opposite of the evidence.

What's really bad, is that it isn't as simple as just adjusting the mean. The changes in location caused more changes than that.

Look man I am asking a very simple question. If A is less than B, then A - any positive number will also be less than B. You claim the raw data shows all daily highs to be less than 113. (I'll buy that since no evidence has been shown contrary) But you also claim the adjusted data was systematically lowered back then. So if it started lower than 113 and was systematically lowered further still, then it is impossible that a slew of temps over 113F exist in any data set, raw or adjusted either one.

Yet Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde do have a slew of data points in excess of 113F. So that means somewhere sometime a different adjustment you are not taking into account happened. Maybe Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde adjusted the data upwards to take into account the negative adjustment you are complaining about? Maybe the "raw" data you are looking up isn't really raw at all? Maybe something else is happening? I don't know. But your arguments don't add up. Both your claims can't be right simultaneously.

 

[r-j]

Whoops, r-j, now you are accusing the climate scientists of lying about even the existence of the weather station,

Calling something a lie is just so ugly. It's an emotional tactic, an unscientific method which benefits nobody.

It's obvious they actually don't know anything, based on what they wrote. Probably heard it second hand, and just repeated it as fact.

Certainly they didn't actually study Chicago or the records there.

The BEST web page linked to multiple times now clearly states it is the O'Hare record they are using, which means it is the record of the official station for Chicago. Which we know a lot about.

Or rather, anyone who has studied Chicago weather history knows a lot about.

 

[r-j]

Yet Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde do have a slew of data points in excess of 113F.

Not from Chicago they don't. That's what is so ironic about it all.

So that means somewhere sometime a different adjustment you are not taking into account happened. .

You can't start with an assumption that isn't true, everything after that is just more wrong. You have to use facts.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Not from Chicago they don't. That's what is so ironic about it all.

Well if what they wrote isn't in their dataset, then your whole argument evaporates. It is irrelevant. No one builds a climate model from words. They build a climate model from the dataset and complex calculations.

 

[r-j]

But you also claim the adjusted data was systematically lowered back then.

That sounds like you think the actual temperature readings, (where somebody either looks at the thermometer, or the graph, and writes down a number), have been changed. That somebody wrote down something besides what the equipment measured. That never happened.

The only "changes" to the past readings happens in a computer, programmed by somebody. The NWS doesn't ever change the recorded information. There isn't any adjustments made by the NWS or the people doing the recording.

Just like an ASOS station doesn't change the data it sends out every minute.

 

[r-j]

Well if what they wrote isn't in their dataset, then your whole argument evaporates.

That is too funny for words.

Can you explain your reasoning.

 

[ideogram]

But you also claim the adjusted data was systematically lowered back then.

That sounds like you think the actual temperature readings have been changed.

The actual temperature readings would be the raw data. r-j is still trying to confuse you about the difference between raw data and adjusted data.

 

[Reality Check]

Calling something a lie is just so ugly...

Then why did you do it, r-j?
New daily temperature dataset from Berkeley has an example of a weather station that was on a rooftop.
Magically you know that there was no rooftop weather station: There never was any "slew of" 113 degree readings, nor was there a rooftop station causing the readings.
Thus you are accusing the climate scientists of lying about the existence of the weather station. As you say - "just so ugly".

The truth would be that the station is not named and you have been unable to find the station or its records. But that is a problem for your assertion from 8 September 2014 that you had read the records "from any weather station of any kind".

 

[Pixel42]

So on the one hand we have two professional climatologists who have access to vast databases of raw weather station records such as this one

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily/

who give a specific example of the sort of bias that needs to be removed from such raw data before it can be used to reliably estimate long term trends, and on the other hand we have an anonymous internet poster who insists that they are lying, even though he cannot point to the specific raw data in question to prove it.

Who to believe?

 

[r-j]

On the one hand, we have scientific publications, papers, the IPCC, James Hansen, GISS and a wealth of historic documents describing a theory of global warming, or as NASA says, basic global warming theory, and on the other hand, anonymous internet people claiming there is no such thing as global warming theory.

Who to believe?

Yes, who can we believe.

 

[greybeard]

So on the one hand we have two professional climatologists who have access to vast databases of raw weather station records such as this one

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily/

who give a specific example of the sort of bias that needs to be removed from such raw data before it can be used to reliably estimate long term trends, and on the other hand we have an anonymous internet poster who insists that they are lying, even though he cannot point to the specific raw data in question to prove it.

Who to believe?

Nicely put Pixel.

Also we are not just talking about any anonymous poster here. We can read all his posts and make a judgement about just how scientific, sceptical, and truthful he is.
The fact that he can take one look at the Oregon petition and tell us how impressed he is that it contains the names of 31,487 scientists. So is he the one true sceptic in the thread as he would have us believe or someone who believes what he wants to believe.
Believes that scientists around the world are involved in a conspiracy to corrupt temperature data to show warming where there is none.
Accepts any source to back this up. Including highly publicised claims by other "sceptics" that have been debunked. Doesn't acknowledge it when other posters show him he is wrong. (DC dealing with the NZ claim)
Doesn't back down from even the simplest claims he has made, like saying we haven't given him contact details of scientists. Details he couldn't find that were just a matter of clicking on About on the web page under discussion and scrolling down to contacts. They had changed @ to at, to fool spam bots though knowing that humans could work it out. There is a joke there somewhere but I'm not going to make it.
I could go on but I think I have made my point. There are good honest posters in this thread who we know are posting in good faith. They are being driven away by one who isn't and that is wrong.

 

[Reality Check]

Yes, who can we believe.

We know that we cannot believe someone who after over three weeks still cannot produce the sources to back up their original claim, r-j, about the article New daily temperature dataset from Berkeley:
r-j (8 September 2014): Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of from 1930 to about 1950 (1930's and early 1940's) for the weather station mentioned in the RealClimate article. (etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!).

You cannot even acknowledge that the data you have cited so far cannot be for that weather station, thus making the questions above moot (and your original claim baseless) :
29th September 2014: He (r-j) has been going in on about the official temperatures being the temperatures recorded by the actual weather station in the RealClimate article.
29th September 2014: r-j: The UoC Rosenwald Hall and Greenwood Ave stations were not moved to O'Hare
2 October 2014: The BEST database says the O'Hare airport weather station monthly average data extends back to 1873 !

I will split a point out from the first list:
r-j (25 September 2014) new unsupported, vague assertion that some data was adjusted "the wrong way"
This seems to be an accusation that climate scientists have faked the data to get more warming.

ETA: Missed this:

The BEST web page linked to multiple times now clearly states it is the O'Hare record they are using, which means it is the record of the official station for Chicago.

when it was you, r-j, that cited History of the Chicago and Rockford weather observation sites that has the O'Hare international airport weather station being the official station from 1/17/1980. You do know hat the article is talking about records from the late 1930s and early 1940s before the station was moved to O'Hare r-j? !

ETA: While I am thinking about this, there is also this from 11th June 2014.

While there are all kinds of reasons for adjusting data, all of which make the past colder, and the recent period warmer, like we see with WELLINGTON, NZ, that such adjustments are done, the data is actually changed, and always to show warming, it's the sort of thing that makes a skeptic seriously skeptical.

Which is a clearer implication about climate scientists changing data to show warming (i.e. faking data).
Luckily you seem to have thrown away the delusion that "the data is actually changed", r-j - the raw data is adjusted to become adjusted data.
But you are still ignorant of the fact that there are valid scientific reasons to adjust the data from weather stations when they are changed (e.g. relocated, instrumental changes, environmental changes, construction changes).

I did not notice r-j's assertion about WELLINTON NZ back on 11th June 2014. This happens to be my home town .

This sounds like the "skeptics" lie about the temperature record that was published back in 2009: NZ sceptics lie about temp records, try to smear top scientist. One major thing that they did was to ignore the movement of a weather station ("WELLINGTON NZ"?)

Temps before the mid-20s were recorded at Thorndon, near sea level, but then the recording station moved to Kelburn at 125 m above sea level. It’s pretty basic meteorology that temperatures fall as you move above sea level, so the two stations are not directly comparable. Treadgold affects not to know this… But there’s no need to throw out all the old data, you can apply a correction.
...
Enter the Wellington airport series. Like Thorndon, the station is very near sea level, and warmer at all times than Kelburn although the “ups and downs” of the record are the same. It’s a relatively easy matter to work out the difference: 0.79ºC. So if you lower both the airport and Thorndon series by that amount, you get:

 

[OMGturt1es]

I'm not exactly sure what the specific claim here is. Would someone mind posting a quick synopsis of exactly what r-j us claiming? There are easy ways of estimating relative temporal changes in land surface temperature using freely available satellite thermal images. Maybe we could do that here, depending on the dates in contention.

 

[Pixel42]

I'm not exactly sure what the specific claim here is. Would someone mind posting a quick synopsis of exactly what r-j us claiming?

The claim is that the following quote from a piece posted on RealClimate

For example, if you were studying the history of extreme heat in Chicago, you would find a slew of days in the late 1930s and early 1940s where the station currently at the Chicago O’Hare airport reported daily max temperatures above 45 degrees C (113 F). It turns out that, prior to the airport’s construction, the station now associated with the airport was on the top of a black roofed building closer to the city.

is a total fabrication, ie that there was no such black-roof-based weather station in the late 30s/early 40s which recorded temperatures above 113F.

The raw data records the two Berkeley climatologists are referring to are probably in this enormous database:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily/

but without knowing which specific station and dates they mean it's very difficult to find them.

If you use the "find a station" tool to look for Chicago stations from 1930-1945 you get several stations. The four closest to the city centre seem to be

1. Chicago Weather Bureau: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00014881/detail

2. Chicago Midway airport: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USC00111577/detail

3. Chicago University: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00014892/detail

4. Cicero: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USC00111648/detail

all of which are stated as being operational during those years, but when I try to view data for a particular month (August 1940) I get "no data" for (1) and (2).

I successfully got data for (3) and (4) but I noticed that at the top it says "These data are quality controlled and may not be identical to the original observations". So it's possible that even if we found the exact station/dates the climatologists are referring to we still wouldn't have the raw data which proves whether or not they made it up.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, who can we believe.

Well we know it can't be you. You have steadfastly refused to answer questions, admit to your errors and consider the implications of your claims. That's not a badge of reliability.

 

[OMGturt1es]

The claim is that the following quote from a piece posted on RealClimate



is a total fabrication, ie that there was no such black-roof-based weather station in the late 30s/early 40s which recorded temperatures above 113F.

The raw data records the two Berkeley climatologists are referring to are probably in this enormous database:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily/

but without knowing which specific station and dates they mean it's very difficult to find them.

If you use the "find a station" tool to look for Chicago stations from 1930-1945 you get several stations. The four closest to the city centre seem to be

1. Chicago Weather Bureau: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00014881/detail

2. Chicago Midway airport: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USC00111577/detail

3. Chicago University: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USW00014892/detail

4. Cicero: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCND/stations/GHCND:USC00111648/detail

all of which are stated as being operational during those years, but when I try to view data for a particular month (August 1940) I get "no data" for (1) and (2).

I successfully got data for (3) and (4) but I noticed that at the top it says "These data are quality controlled and may not be identical to the original observations". So it's possible that even if we found the exact station/dates the climatologists are referring to we still wouldn't have the raw data which proves whether or not they made it up.

Thanks for the summary.

I doubt the raw, uncorrected data are easily accessible. If r-j is really interested in this, I suggest he contact weather historian Christopher Burt at wunderground. Burt specializes in digging into original, historical, raw weather station data to verify temperature records and such.

 

[OMGturt1es]

That said, I can say that at least the contemporary weather station record seems accurate, as it has been generally consistent with numerous thermal remote sensing studies.