2010-03-27 Unsettling the Settled Science

2010-03-27 Steven F. Hayward The American \global warming denial\global warming/objections\surfacestations.org http://american.com/archive/2010/march/unsettling-the-settled-science Unsettling the Settled Science Unsettling the Settled Science  The Marysville temperature station is located at the city's fire department, next to an asphalt parking lot and a cell phone tower, and only a few feet away from two air conditioning compressors that spew out considerable heat. These sources of heat amplification mean that the temperature readings from the Marysville station are useless for determining accurate temperatures for the Marysville area.

Indeed, the Marysville station violates the quality control standards of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA admits that stations like Marysville, sited close to artificial heat sources such as parking lots, can produce errors as large as 5 degrees Celsius. That is not the only shortcoming of the Marysville data; it turns out that daily data were missing for as many as half the days of any given month. Either the device failed to self-record, or no one recorded the daily data as procedure requires. NASA simply filled in the gaps in the data by "interpolating."

The Marysville station is only one among the more than 1,200 weather stations scattered throughout the United States from which NASA and NOAA generate data for their climate research, and is one of the key data sources for the claim that the planet has experienced a 0.8 degree Celsius increase in temperature since the beginning of the 20th century. But a survey of more than two-thirds of these stations reveal that the Marysville station is not an anomaly.

To the contrary, 89 percent of the 860 temperature stations surveyed fail to meet the National Weather Service's site requirements that stations must be located at least 30 feet away from any artificial heat source. Stations seem to have been sited for purposes of convenience rather than accuracy and consistency. Some have been moved over the years with noticeable changes in reported temperature ranges, but NASA reports continuous time series data from these stations without taking note of their relocation.

This appears to be straight-up global warming denial:
 * There is no credible source for the claim that "89% of the 860 temperature stations surveyed fail to meet the National Weather Service's site requirements..."; the only source referenced in the entire article is surfacestations.org, which has been debunked.
 * This general class of objection (unreliable data) is addressed here, with discussion

&ldquo;Problems with a California temperature monitoring station represent in microcosm why the supposedly settled issue of climate change has become so unsettled in the last few months.&rdquo;   