There has been much controversy over “hottest” years or months lately, mostly citing differences of less than one degree Fahrenheit. In a sane world such arguments should be academic, but policy advocates conflate any inkling of apparent support for their position into dire predictions that demand immediate action.

What is the real temperature? The answer is fraught with great uncertainty because it depends on where you put the thermometers, which readings are counted, and how they are averaged.

Two experiments demonstrate the problem. The newest, still on-going, experiment is being conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They set out an array of five thermometers in a field adjacent to a building (see photo below). They found that night time temperatures become warmer as the building is approached. This is true whether the wind is blowing toward or away from the building. The researchers suggest this happens because of infra-red radiation from the building. So, which thermometer records the “true” temperature? (See more of the story here).

I’ve reported on the second experiment before (see here). NOAA, keepers of the official temperature record, maintains two sets of stations, the older U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) and the newer U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). The newer stations are located away from warming urban influence. These stations record temperatures 0.5°C on average, up to almost 4.0°C (0.9°F to 7.2°F) lower than the older stations upon which the official record is based.

These experiments support a 5-year study by Anthony Watts which showed that with a combination of poor station siting and “adjustments” performed by NOAA, the official U.S. temperature record is warm-biased and does not reflect the true temperature.

Perceived trends in the surface temperature record are used by advocates to attribute a cause, such as carbon dioxide emissions, and to pretend there is a crisis. But, as these data show, the causes are complex and very uncertain, too uncertain to be the basis of major policy decisions. But much money depends on maintaining the mythical crisis, from subsidies for wind and solar projects to the indulgence of renting “clean” air through the trading of carbon credits.

One other question: What is the “right” temperature for this planet?

See also:

Cooking the books – was 2012 really the hottest ever in the US?

New study shows that 50% of warming claimed by IPCC is fake

NOAA temperature record “adjustments” could account for almost all “warming” since 1973

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains an official temperature record for the United States through its network of weather stations called U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN). There are many problems with this network including instrumental errors and siting in or near urban areas where stations are subject to the artificial warming of the urban heat island effect. These problems have been documented here, here, and here.

NOAA has also established a parallel set of weather stations, operating for about 10 years now, that address the many problems of the USHCN. That network is United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). These are modern stations, sited well away from urban influence, that use state of the art instrumentation and are therefore not subject to the problems associated with the old USHCN network.

The difference in temperatures recorded by the two networks shows that the old USHCN has been overstating the temperature anywhere from +0.5°C on average, up to almost +4.0°C (+0.9°F to +7.2°F) in some locations during the summer months. Remember that when you see headlines blaring that a certain day, week,  month, year was the warmest since…. whenever. The new USCRN data is more in line with the satellite temperature record.

The situation is neatly summed up by C3Healines (in spite of its provocative headline):

NOAA Conducts Large-Scale Experiment And Proves Global Warming Skeptics Correct

 Most global warming skeptics believe that humans have some measurable impact on global temperatures and the climate, but that natural climate forces, over longer periods, will overwhelm the human influence. In addition, skeptics believe that the human influence will not result in the hysterical catastrophic climate disasters presented by doomsday pundits. And finally, global warming skeptics believe, for a multitude of reasons, human errors/mistakes/failings have caused late 20th century global warming to be significantly overstated.

This article addresses this last point. What if the climate experts conducted an actual experiment that would prove whether the global warming skeptics were right or wrong about world-wide warming being overstated? ( click to get larger image at source: one, two, three )

Well, NOAA has actually conducted said experiment by building their U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), which precisely, and automatically, measures temperature and weather conditions across the U.S. The USCRN effort is based on the concept that the best way to measure the impact of greenhouse gases on global temperatures is to place state-of-the-art climate stations in pristine rural areas that are little impacted by people, buildings, vehicles, equipment, asphalt and etc.

An example of one of NOAA’s pristine climate measurement stations is the top image (Image #1). And the middle image depicts the location of each pristine station – there are currently 114 of them, and clearly they are well dispersed providing good U.S. coverage.

By carefully planning and maintaining these pristine stations and by using the best technology available, this large-scale experiment eliminates the following problems with the older weather measurement network:

There are no observer or transcription errors to correct.

There is no time of observation bias, nor need for correction of it.

There is no broad scale missing data, requiring filling in data from potentially bad surrounding stations.

There are no needs for bias adjustments for equipment types since all equipment is identical.

There is no need for urbanization adjustments, since all stations are rural and well sited.

There are no regular sensor errors due to air aspiration and triple redundant lab grade sensors. Any errors detected in one sensor are identified and managed by two others, ensuring quality data.

Due to the near perfect geospatial distribution of stations in the USA, there isn’t a need for gridding to get a national average temperature.

So, what has this NOAA experiment found? The bottom image (Image #3) tells that story – when compared to measurements from the old, inaccurate, non-pristine network, temperature “warming” in the U.S. is being overstated anywhere from +0.5°C on average, up to almost +4.0°C (+0.9°F to +7.2°F) in some locations during the summer months.

To clarify, this range of overstatement depends on the given new and old stations being compared. However, when the new network versus old network results are examined in total, for the recent summer heat wave in the U.S., the old stations were reporting bogus warming during July that amounted to some +2.1°F higher than the actual temperatures.

What does this mean? Within the climate science realm, the old climate/weather station system had long been considered the best and most complete measurement network in the world. But when pitted against a brand new climate measurement system that has the best qualities that science can provide, we find that the traditional U.S. methodology is significantly overstating the “global warming” phenomenon. This means that if other countries replaced their own low quality network with NOAA’s greatest and latest technology, with the best location site standards applied, we would discover that world-wide temperature increases have been wildly overstated also.

Conclusions: A large-scale NOAA experiment has proven that global warming skeptics were correct: temperature warming in the U.S. has been significantly overstated in recent decades. This NOAA experiment should be expanded to other continents and countries since it is now obvious that the combined older technology and substandard weather station sites have well overstated the global warming phenomenon. Before any further dollars are spent on climate change adaptation and/or mitigation, the world needs to upgrade their global weather/climate reporting network to the USCRN standard so that policymakers have correct temperature change measurements to base their decisions on.

Those who claim that human carbon dioxide emissions are the major cause of recent warming (AGW) fail to produce physical evidence to support that position. Some cite computer statistical studies that conclude that a certain percentage of the warming must be due to human influence, only because they can’t think of anything else. The bottom line, however, is that computer simulations are not physical evidence and the AGW position is unsupported by anything other than speculation. Government policies designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions therefore have no basis in science, no proof that such policies would make a real difference in climate. But such policies have a great detrimental effect on our economy, jobs, and national security. This phantom menace should be put to rest so that we can direct our resources toward solving real problems.

See also:

Which comes first, rise in global CO₂ or rise in global temperature?

NOAA temperature record “adjustments” could account for almost all “warming” since 1973

July 2012 not hottest according to NOAA data

US Temperature trends show a spurious doubling says Anthony Watts

Urban heat island effect on temperatures, a tale of two cities

Most US maximum temperature records set in the 1930s

The State of our Surface Temperature Records

The headline in the Arizona Daily Star read: “July sets record as hottest ever in US.” And, once again, the Star failed to get the rest of the story.

The AP story printed by the Star was based on a press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that read in part:

“The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the hottest July and the hottest month on record for the nation. The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936 when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F. The warm July temperatures contributed to a record-warm first seven months of the year and the warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since record keeping began in 1895.”

Those temperature records were based on the old US historical climate network stations (USHCN) which are shown to be inaccurate due to siting problems, encroachment of urban areas, and poor instrumentation. (See my post: US Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments says a new study)

But there is another, more modern, group of weather stations established by NOAA called the United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). These are modern stations, sited well away from urban influence, that use state of the art instrumentation and are therefore not subject to the problems associated with the old USHCN network.

Those USCRN stations show the monthly average U.S.temperature for July 2012 was 75.51°F, some 2.1 F cooler than the touted results from the old USHCN stations, and 1.9°F cooler than July, 1936. See the full story details from Anthony Watts here. See also as Dr. Roy Spencer weighs in on this issue here.

For some perspective and contrast, while July in the U.S. was warm, it was not so in the U.K. When I was in the U.K. in June, it was colder and wetter than normal. That trend has continued into July with U.K. temperatures almost 2°F below the long-term average. (Source)  The implication, of course, is that U.S. temperatures don’t necessarily reflect global conditions.

See also:

Do newspapers have a responsibility to check wire-service stories?

Urban heat island effect on temperatures, a tale of two cities

Most US maximum temperature records set in the 1930s

NOAA temperature record “adjustments” could account for almost all “warming” since 1973

New study shows that 50% of warming claimed by IPCC is fake