Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Ethon takes up the Climate Science challenge

The bunnies gave Ethon a brand new camera for Christmas. We now have endless postcards that have been uploaded to the world's most boring website. This week tho, the big bird on his search for new Rogers came across the weather station picture contest. Given his close relationship with the family Pielke and the starring role that Roger Sr. is playing in this farce, Eth decided to head out to Ft. Collins and visit the old guy's stomping grounds. As you may know, Roger Sr. is flacking for Anthony Watts surface station picture gallery. which is closely coupled to the same sort of jumping up and down seen at Climate Audit (thanks for the links guys, but it would be nice if you let Eli's comment through, especially as your reader keep asking him questions). We have heard about how at some of those awful weather stations there are hibachis next to the fence surrounding the site.

The picture at the top is from Roger's own weather station, when he was Colorado State Climatologist. The text describes the site
The Fort Collins Weather Station is located on the campus of Colorado State University just northwest of the Lory Student Center.

Weather observations consist of automated measurements of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, solar radiation and soil temperatures updated every 10 minutes. There are also manual measurements taken every 12 hours of precipitation, snowfall, cloud and sky conditions, visibility, evaporation, winds, temperature, humidity, and other standard weather variables.

The Fort Collins Weather Station is an historical part of the university. Data collection began near the site of the former "Old Main" in the 1870s. Daily climate records are complete and available in a variety of digital and hardcopy forms since January 1, 1889 making this one of Colorado oldest weather stations and an incredible scientific resource.

Curiously, when Eli checked, the Ft. Collins station was not pictured in the Anthony Watts archive. Obviously an oversight due to the press of work in this very important project

16 comments:

  1. So, a whole post dedicated to the fact that Watts' archive is not yet complete? Since it just opened last week, I think you should get some good mileage out of this dig. Keep grabbing at those straws Rabett.

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  2. Let's see, Roger whines that there are no pictures. Send pictures to Anthony Watt he says. So, why didn;t he? Moreover we see that the Ft. Collins station which is an "incredible scientific resource" is in a pretty heavily trafficed area, very comparible to what we see Roger moan about.

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  3. Dr. Peilke is in Europe for two weeks and the surfacestations website went live while he was away.

    Such whining here.

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  4. He posted. Besides, the point is that the Ft. Collins site has many of the problems that others are complaining about.

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  5. "...the point is that the Ft. Collins site has many of the problems that others are complaining about."

    That's exactly why they should ALL be photographed and surveyed, no matter who, what, or where they are.

    At least the Ft. Collins site has pictures on a website 99% of the older weather stations don't.

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  6. The point is shouldn't Pielke be out here defending the integrity of the data collected at his own station? Soemthing about cleaning up your own back yard, I believe.

    PS. I note that Steve has rewritten yesterday's post so it no longer appears as though he is breaking 9 year-old news.

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  7. I anxiously await the Amateur Auditor Angels squad's detailed temperature analysis of the temp change at the shelters they are importantly photographing, thus giving us their detailed statistical analysis of exactly, precisely how much hotter those badbadstations are than the surrounding area.

    This important project will, of course, totally negate the alarmist warmers' argument and collapse the entire edifice of environmentalism.

    Like the Hockey Stick totem did.

    Maybe the Amateur Auditor Angels need one of the boys to draw up a logo and totem so this important issue can get play.

    Maybe take a picture of one of the Amateur Auditor Angels doing temp transect work, PhotoShop it up into a cute teddy bear or bunny or other charismatic megafauna or something...

    Best,

    D

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  8. Some things may be pretty obviously bad, but just how does one decide what is acceptable and what is not for a station?

    That is a critical part of the quality control process and it involves a certain amount of subjectivity.

    Let's face it, there is no such thing as an "ideal station". Such an ideal is actually meaningless, since the environment is not uniform from place to place just due to topography, altitude, vegetation, water, etc.

    Also, since it is temperature anomalies that are being measured and since averaging of anomalies from many different stations within a grid is being done, doesn't that mean that some of the potentially skewing effects will have a fairly small effect on the overall trend for north America? (provided they are not indicative of all the stations)

    One would think that the greatest concern would be with those stations that have been relocated into an entirely new environment where the baseline is different.

    I am not a climate scientist, but those are the stations that I would be most concerned about.

    I would like to see a picture of every station -- not just as it is today, but as it has been in the past, along with the corresponding temperature record (and perhaps precipitation and wind records, as well since they can affect temperature).

    I think until we have that, it is a little premature to be drawing any conclusions about the overall impact of what might be termed "poor practices" from scattered stations on the overall warming trend.

    --Horatio Algeranon

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  9. Argh, why is everything in Japanese in IE at blogger.com ????

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  10. This blog should be exactly what Dano/Dan0 and Steve Bloom are looking for. All fluff, filled with ad hom, contaning no true facts, and making zero contribution to learned discussions.

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  11. In other words, just like Climate Audit.

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  12. So a fenced in area that looks to be at least 50 feet from roads, cars, trees, etc, with no bushes near the fence, inside a dirt area, with low cut grass around it not near any power lines, transformers, solar panels, bricks, etc, in what's obviously a long time location.... That's got a lot of the same problems? Looks okay to me.

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  13. "...contaning (sic) no true facts"

    "True facts"?

    As opposed to "false facts"?

    And, not to pick nits or anything, but "containing" has an "i" in it (at least for those of us who learned in school that facts are true by definition)

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  14. No spelling flames please, we didn't learn that in scool.

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  15. Sorry, Eli, but the text box has a spell checker, for Anon's sake.

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  16. But I guess that depends on the browser. I'm using Foxfire, but maybe IE spells it (containing too) without the "i" (Somehow, I wouldn't be surprised).

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