Posts by Evan M. Jones

Forget 'climate convert' Muller: Here's the real warming blockbuster

Re: Simple! Just ignore data you don't like

Yes.

Also, if the environment has NOT changed, is the trend (sic) higher for the poor stations. That is exactly what we are measuring.

It is.

Re: Not accurate

Right.

Re: My Criticism

Fair comment.

But one will make note from the PowerPoint presentation that good and bad stations are adjusted to almost the identical level. Logically, that indicates it is a result of homogenization, not TOBS.

FWIW, we will be addressing TOBS. But USHCN TOBS adjustment is only a little over 0.1 C per Century (sic). That will have little effect on out findings. Or so we expect. (And we will be checking it out either in the final presentation of this paper or in a followup.)

BIG OIL, WHERE ARE YOU? YOO-HOO!

This study has been conducted with no funding whatsoever. None. Zip.

None of the volunteers received a thin dime. Not even a puff of secondhand Heartland smoke.

Anthony's proposed funding is to provide a site that provides hard-to-access NOAA/NCDC data in clear, easy to absorb form. Nothing whatever more than that.

Re: Seems like good science

Anthony and I are both "Lukewarmers".

Re: Keeping thermometer next to the incinerator

Well, to be fair, the question is whether it increases the TREND.

And that was anyone's guess.

Re: Not accurate

It is not in question that cities are warmer.

The question is whether they warm FASTER. They do. They warm 0.1 C/decade faster than rural stations.

Ironically, microsite quality in cities is quite similar to that of rural and semi-urban areas.

Leroy (2010) methodology is indeed included. It is in one of the links accompanying the paper.

It is also carefully explained in the PowerPoint sheet.

And we are not measuring temperatures. We are measuring temperature TRENDS only. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.

Anthony cites a number of papers examining heat transfer, etc., in the paper itself.

What we do is rate the stations for heat source/sink proximity are area coverage using Leroy (2010) methodology. The paper is not trying to find out WHY there are differences. The paper is trying to determine IF there are differences and how great those differences are.

Re: Quoting George Carlin

Yes, the absolute temperatures are cooler in airports. But the temperature TRENDS (sic) in downtown urban and airports are much the same (i.e., each is exaggerated by c. 0.1 C per decade).

Re: Still warming, but less so

"but only about half what's been claimed"

Half using all Class 1\2 stations.

If you use rural stations excluding airports, the number is nearly three times smaller (+0.108 per decade).

Bear in mind that the study period is 1979 to 2008, so in 29 out of 30 years of the study the PDO was in positive (i.e., naturally warming) mode. Considering our findings, there is some small amount of wiggle room for AGW during this period, not not much, really.

Re: Not likely

Actually, I made the maps.

And rated all the stations.

And calculated the numbers in each region on the map.

And gridded the data.

(And wrote the comment in question, for that matter.)

NOAA has no idea what the trends are for Class 1\2 vs. Class 3\4\5 using Leroy (2010) methodology. They never bothered to find out.

Re: But isn't the fact [Facts and Factors]

But the factors affecting the stations are NOT representative of the topography the stations purport to represent.

10% of the stations we rated are urban and 25% semi-urban. That is an over-representation approaching 500%. And 6% of rated stations are ASOS (i.e., bad equipment) in airports. Rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero % of land surface is airport environment.

So, bad mesosite (regardless of microsite, i.e., Class 1 - 5 ratings) dominates fully 40% of the USHCN surface record.

Re: Simple! Just ignore data you don't like

Well, that's exactly what NOAA appears to do with its homogenization process: Identified the cool-running stations (that just so happen to be, on average, well sited) as outliers. And then adjusts their trends warmer.

What I did was rate the stations by quality -- regardless of their high or low trend -- deliberately concealing the trends from view when doing the ratings, in fact.

THEN I examined the trend to see if bad siting makes a difference.

Comprende, comrade?