Category Archives: Surface Record

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record, Urban Heat Islands

Evidence for a strong urbanization signal; 0.3 degrees C per decade in Canberra Airport temperature data 1997-2009

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Canberra/Queanbeyan is a sprawling collection of suburbs population 300,000 plus – which extends over 30km north south and nearly 20km east west. Canberra was selected as the Australian Federal Capital early last century and urbanisation would have started after the “old” Parliament House started operating in the late 1920’s. The post WWII boom in Australia plus increasing migration accelerated the addition of new suburbs to Canberra, a process which continues to this day.

There are monthly maximum and minimum temperature data from the Airport starting March 1939 running complete to the present time. During 1996 the ACT Govt in conjunction with the BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) installed an air-monitoring station at Tuggeranong in Canberra southern suburbs where there are air quality issues.

As part of this instrumentation, temperature is recorded and the BoM publishes monthly mean max and mean min at this website, look for Site name: TUGGERANONG (ISABELLA PLAINS) AWS Site number: 70339 and you can download the data for yourself. Canberra Airport data is Site name: CANBERRA AIRPORT Site number: 70014, and I understand the BoM instruments are on the Fairbairn RAAF Base side of the airport, that is several hundred metres across the runways, NE of the main passenger terminal . See GoogleEarth map thanks to MartinH of Canberra


View Larger Map

The difference between Canberra Airport and Tuggeranong is 0.3 degrees C per decade – a very significant indication of urban effects in the Canberra data. Remember too that the Tuggeranong data will have some UHI contamination too, so the true UHI at Canberra Airport could be in excess of 0.3 degrees C per decade.

Canberra Airport - Tuggeranong mean annual T

This site shows how even small urban areas can be significantly affected by the UHI effect.
Continue reading Evidence for a strong urbanization signal; 0.3 degrees C per decade in Canberra Airport temperature data 1997-2009 →

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Canberra Airport – rejected by Jones et al 1986 – pardoned in the 1990’s – now corrected (again) by UKMO

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While experimenting with BoM raw Canberra Airport data I was surprised to find the UKMO have corrected the data here and there. It is noteworthy that Jones et al 1986 rejected Canberra (WMO 949260) with an 80 code which translates as “Non-homogenous and uncorrectable” – after comparing it with Sydney.

Canberra was “pardoned” and included in Jones 1994 station data – but oddly it never made the cut for the 1226 station 1996 update, which is confined to stations still reporting.
Canberra T trends

For larger graphic.

In the newly discovered Jones 1999 station data CANBERRA-AIRP 949260 is included again, with different “corrections” – all undocumented now of course and secret until ClimateGate.

Then the UKMO version just released under pressure of ClimateGate has a different set of “corrections” again and of course their reasons for the corrections are so far – secret.

The trends in degrees C per decade vary as follows: UKMO09 0.1, BoM 0.13, Jones94 1951-80 0.1, Jones99 0.057

IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Surface minus satellites – some differences look political

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Lately I have had people pulling my chain telling me that the lower troposphere satellite temperature trends are very close to those at the surface. I just want to point out that this is far from so everywhere.

Wayback in 2006 I drew attention to, “Satellites vs surface, amazing agreement over the USA.” I know that over Australia and Europe trends are fairly close.

Almost a decade ago I drew attention to how hard it was to discover IPCC GW in USSR station data in high warming grid cells – “USSR High Magnitude Climate Warming Anomalies 1901-1996”. Following all that work I formed a view that IPCC GW is to a large extent USSR warming.

Comparing the Spencer & Christy lower troposphere satellite data with HadCRUT3 both downloadable at the KNMI Climate Explorer – for three noteworthy regions -all cases use the 30 year period 1979-2008.

For Asia:

  • HadCRUT3 warms at 0.46
  • UAH MSU warms at 0.33
  • Possible Surface data error of 0.13 per decade

For East China:

  • HadCRUT3 warms at 0.44
  • UAH MSU warms at 0.21
  • Possible Surface data error of 0.23 per decade

For Africa:

  • HadCRUT3 warms at 0.315
  • UAH MSU warms at 0.013
  • Possible Surface data error of 0.302 per decade

So I am saying there are HUGE inconsistencies in satellite minus surface figures around the globe. Post ClimateGate – it is interesting that we heard the Russians speaking out against the quota of warming IPCC/CRU/Jones find in Russian datasets.

IPCC, Jones et al, News and Views, Surface Record

Jones & Moberg 2003 – ~$10Mill worth of landmark IPCC climate research – now struck out at CRU

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This CRU webpage where you can still download the CRUTEM3 datasets reveals the stunning fact that they no longer include the landmark paper Jones & Moberg 2003 in the list of references.

Instead, to keep their “chain of evidence” alive the CRU-Meisters now jump back to Jones et al 1999.
CRU front page 29 Dec 2009

This raises all sorts of questions because the latest masterwork Brohan et al 2006:

is written as an evolution from Jones & Moberg 2003 – further and surprisingly there is NO REFERENCE to Jones 1999 in Brohan et al 2006.

Reading the Abstract and first paragraph of the Introduction to Jones & Moberg 2003 – the authors are clearly updating directly from Jones 1994, ignoring the more recent and we would assume improved over 1994 – Jones et al 1999.

So I am saying that there is much evidence here of striking out references to previously lauded Jones versions that one would expect to be naturally included in the “chain of evidence”.

I can only conclude that for example, Jones & Moberg 2003 does not measure up now as a work that CRU or the UKMO wants to refer to.

Taxpayers may never know the reasons for these odd visible twists and turns in the cloistered and highly secretive IPCC world.

IPCC, Jones et al, News and Views, Surface Record

Hide the decline – new Jones station data file from 1999

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While discussing Darwin data I was pointed to this file master.dat.com in the FOIA(leaked ClimateGate file) documents folders. I was amazed to find the 14MB file is in fact the Jones et al 1999 station data – another gem from FOIA.

So this is a considerable step forward in our uncovering of Jones et al station data – the previous most recent Jones station data I had was the much expanded Jones 1994 data. (note the 1996 update has few stations).

I was amazed to find that the 1999 station list (2664) has fewer stations than the 1994 update (2961 quoted in the paper but 3555 in the digital download from CRU). If I had been asked my opinion I would have bet that Jones steadily increased his stations list with each new version.
Jones total stations varying over 20 years
Notes re graphic added 2 Jan 2010. 1986, total from journal papers, 1994 ditto, 1995 total from digital file of monthly T data ex CRU website, 1999 total from digital file of monthly T data ex FOIA file ClimateGate, 2003 total from Jones & Moberg journal paper, 2006 total from Brohan et al journal paper, 2007 station list released by CRU on their website, UKMO09 – partial release of station monthly T data – presumably they have another ~2000+ to release. My use of “hide the decline” refs to the drop in station numbers from 2961 in 1994 to 2664 in 1999. Note this issue is NOTHING to do with the number of stations open and recording at any time. A good guide to that % can be arrived at by the Jones 1996 update file which listed only stations currently recording and that had 1226 stations. So at that time less than half of all stations used by Jones were still recording.
Now we only need to discover the Jones & Moberg 2003 monthly station T data – then if the UKMO station data keeps emerging, we are in sight of a sequence of how Jones et al stations changed over over 20 years.

The 1999 station data file relates to this paper.
Jones, P.D., M. New, D.E. Parker, S. Martin, and I.G. Rigor. 1999. Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37:173-199. (Free pdf available)

My use of the well known phrase from ClimateGate emails, “hide the decline” is to highlight the decrease in station numbers from the 1994 list to 1999. IMHO this is somewhat at odds with the following dscription from Jones et al 1999.

In section 2.1. Land Component on page 174

“Here we use the land station data set developed by Jones [1994]. All 2000+ station time series used have been assessed for homogeneity by subjective interstation comparisons performed on a local basis. Many stations were adjusted and some omitted because of anomalous warming trends and/or numerous nonclimatic jumps (complete details are given by Jones et al. [1985, 1986c]).”

My comments on the above Jones et al 1999 paragraph.

[1] I take the first sentence to mean that no new stations were examined or used – only those in Jones 1994.
[2] Surely all 1994 stations passed the Jones homogeneity checks as described in his 1985 & 1986c references, the DoE TR022 and TR027 books.
[3] Yet Jones et al 1999 above speaks of, “Many stations were adjusted and some omitted because of anomalous warming trends and/or numerous nonclimatic jumps..”
[4] The obvious question arises, why were stations omitted when all stations were from Jones 1994 which had already gone through the homogenization process ?
[5] Also why were many stations further adjusted when all stations were from Jones 1994 which had already gone through the homogenization process ?
[6] Why did not reviewers ask for some better precision than the use of 2000+ and some clear explanation of what was involved in the statement, “Many stations were adjusted and some omitted because of anomalous warming trends and/or numerous nonclimatic jumps..” ?

Post ClimateGate we know that Jones et al operated in a cozy bubble of permissive peer review populated by friendly allies.

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record, Urban Heat Islands

Some rare balance on the taxpayer funded ABC for a change

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Article by Alan Moran pointing out that the behaviour of pro IPCC scientists as revealed in the Climategate emails, is nothing new. There is much to tell about the BoM of the early 1990’s.

The Balling, Idso and Hughes. 1992 paper “Long-Term and Recent Anomalous Temperature Changes in Australia.” – referred to in the ABC article is now scanned online.

Timeline of AGW research from two decades ago

  • 1986 – Jones et al papers compiling hemispheric temperature trends, truly the birth of IPCC global warming. Note each journal paper was backed by the non peer reviewed “phone book” sized TR022 and TR027 station documentation and description of project methodology books published by the US Dept of Energy (now out of print).

I am working at getting both books online – probably too big a job for me – but the smaller southern hemisphere book TR027 should be done within a week – will be a world first.

If anybody could assist with scanning circa 250 A4 pages, we could get the giant northern hemisphere TR022 online – which would greatly assist a scheme to review data from the old USSR, the core of GW. Back to the timeline.

  • 1988 – Dr Fred Wood published in the Elsevier journal his critique of Jones et al 1986 – online with the tetchy Wigley & Jones team reply. Reading Wood and the team reply is a great way to build your understanding of the poor science prevailing around the birth of GW.
  • 1990 – The Australian BoM assembled their paper “Trends in Australian Temperature Records”, scanned online scroll a third way down page. This page found chapter and verse evidence of UHI bias in Australian city temperature records yet the BoM failed to Comment on Jones et al 1986 in the journals.
  • 1991 – I started researching Australian temperature data at the Tasman Institute in Melbourne. By the end of 1991 I had three draft papers that were all circulated to the BoM and others for comments.
  1. The Australian Record on “Global Warming” (TARGW), a 20 odd A4 page review of the Australian component of Jones et al 1986. I am progressively getting this online – some capital city figures have not survived in the word doc and I am reconstructing those. This blog article was on a section of TARGW.
  2. The Introduction of the Stevenson Screen and the phasing out of Open Thermometer Stands, in Australian Meteorology. This was eventually published in 1995 in the International Journal of Climatology.
  3. Heat Islands in Country Towns – South Eastern Australia. I have the text but graphics have not survived – would be a big job to reconstruct. (If anybody knows of a copy, please let me know).
  • 1992 – The Balling, Idso and Hughes paper, “Long-Term and Recent Anomalous Temperature Changes in Australia.” published in Geophysical Research Letters – referred to in the ABC article is now scanned online. This was attacked by the BoM who ended up failing to get their Comment into GRL – the story of this is far too long for now and can wait till 2010.

It highlighted warming bias in the Australian component of the key IPCC paper – Jones et al 1990 letter to Nature Jones PD, Groisman PYa, Coughlan M, Plummer N, Wang WC, Karl TR (1990) Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperatures over land. Nature 347:169-172

No wonder Hughes and Balling (~1995) was killed in review. The pro IPCC processes revealed in the Climategate emails are not new.

In 1991 I was lucky to obtain 2 diskettes of rural South African data from a source in the Weerburo. The above paper spells out the urban warming bias in Jones et al southern African grid point data.

IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Wattsup with Darwin Zero

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Many of us have seen the article by Willis Eschenbach over at the Anthony Watts site, “Smoking gun at Darwin Zero” (SGDZ) . I disagree with Willis that the strongly warming GHCN Darwin 0 data has been used by CRU.

Fig 1 in SGDZ shows a small IPCC diagram with a sketch temperature trend for Northern Australia for the period 1900’s to 2000. Willis found that the GHCN adjusted Zero version for Darwin warmed very strongly post 1940, see his Fig 8.

That trend in Fig 1 looks to me to agree with the land only CRUT3 trend that anyone can generate for that Northern Australia region using the useful KNMI Climate Explorer page which lets you interrogate many monthly global databases – enter link on right to Monthly observations.

Downloading CRUT3 and NCDC GHCN for the period 1907-2000 I get trends over the 94 years of 0.48 for CRUT3 and 0.87 for NCDC GHCN.

Following four graphics all from KNMI Climate Explorer

IPCC Northern Australia region – trend for CRUT3
IPCC Northern Australia region – trend for NCDC GHCN

Darwin grid cell – trend for CRUT3 (I think they are wrong to join Darwin Post Office to Aiport like that) No sign of Darwin Zero here.
Darwin CRUT3

Darwin grid cell – trend for NCDC GHCN
Darwin GHCN

To wrap up this section re Darwin Zero, I am saying the GHCN Darwin Zero data is not used in CRUT3. What a shambles the global T datasets are.

Willis says in SGDZ “One of the things that was revealed in the released CRU emails is that the CRU basically uses the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) dataset for its raw data.”

IMHO you have taken this idea too far Willis and this has lead to the mistaken impression that GHCN Zero is causing the trend in the Fig 1 IPCC graphic at SGDZ.

Jones et al 1986 constructed their foundation data before GHCN was even published !! We have Jones et al station documentation for those 20 year old versions of CRUT (they included Darwin from 1882) – that provided global warming trends for the commencing of the IPCC at the end of the 1980’s – the Rio Conference in 1992 – Jones et al 1986 was in every way the BIRTH OF GLOBAL WARMING as we now know it. The GHCN followed along afterwards and basically agreed.

Sure, from his Jones 1994 update – Jones inserted many more stations and common sense tells you many of these must equate to GHCN sites. But I would bet my bottom dollar that they were all carefully sifted, scrutinised and altered where required by Jones / CRU before being used. Remember we do have the Jones 94 station data – but we do NOT have 1994 station documentation equivalent to the 1986-1991 TR022 and TR027 books published by the US Dept of Energy, CDIAC, refs here

These books are out of print, I hope people ask CDIAC to do another print run of the 1991 edition. It would be great to ask CDIAC for updated documentation books with all current station data too. Remember the DoE have been funding Jones / CRU from the early 1980 and I bet still do.

Back to Willis’ contention that “..CRU basically uses the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) dataset..”.
The Jones & Moberg 2003 update was a monster cut n paste n fill – mix n match, as stations numbers blew out to over 5,000.

There was no station data or TR022-27 type documentation for this version – but we have to assume their methods were basically as set out in TR022 and TR027. IMHO around this time senior UKMO people got uneasy at the developing shambles that was CRUT2 and planned the ending of that series in 2005 and the migration of the project across to the UKMO / Hadley Centre as CRUT3 with Jones as the “tail end author” in the Brohan paper.

See my; Huge variations now between the 3 main global T datasets

An example in detail: Hadley Centre inserts more warming into New Zealand climate history

I notice 24 Nov 09 statements by CRU saying, “It is well known within the scientific community and particularly those who are sceptical of climate change that over 95% of the raw station data has been accessible through the Global Historical Climatology Network for several years”. IMHO that was a classic example of misinformation and obfuscation – of which there are many examples in the last 25 years of climate saga. We should not be lead astray by CRU / Jones attempts to divert us from requiring that they reveal all their station data. As I say above, any GHCN stations incorporated in Jones et al data would have been “..carefully sifted, scrutinised and altered where required by Jones / CRU before being used”.

Let me just finish by saying, nobody will ever understand what Jones / CRU have done by studying the GHCN – which is riddled with its own errors.

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Jones et al 1986 methodical insertion of warming bias

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Jones et al 1986 looked at 86 Australian stations and rejected 46 (25 Short term – 21 long term). Of the 40 they used 27 were short term and 13 long term. Of the long term there were 5 large cities.
The 27 short term stations were mostly only quoted from 1951 onward – regardless of what data was available. It just so happens that the years just post WWII were not prominently warm in Australia so an “automatic” warming trend was reinforced into the CRU Australian component.
Here are 11 examples where Jones et al systematically truncated pre-1951 data or ignored more rural data around many small town Australian stations. These graphics and text have been extracted from a 1992 vintage Word doc that somehow survived the decades and how many HDD’s. Note 27 Nov 09 to clear up any ambiguity – check my comment (WSH) 17 below.
Continue reading Jones et al 1986 methodical insertion of warming bias →

BoM Australia, News and Views, Surface Record

Warmest winter on record for Victoria ? or BoM mistake ? (that’s Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

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TV news and weather presenters are gloating lately as they report Australia’s “hottest winter ever”. I was traveling by car on the 27th August and Dr David Jones of the Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Centre was being interviewed by the ABC 666 just after 9am. I suppose “interview” is not quite correct, a mutual gush session might be more accurate. Dr Jones was talking up the notion of our “hottest winter” despite there being a few more days yet to run.
Anyway, the BoM now have a new media release which is slightly less trumpeting. They say we just missed the “hottest winter” label except for New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.
To get a handle on our winter warmth you can make contour maps of maximum temperature anomalies and minimum temperature anomalies at this useful BoM webpage.
Maximum temperature anomalies
and at night time
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Remember from the above BoM media release that the state of Victoria is mentioned as actually experiencing its “warmest winter on record”.
Now check the state of Victoria on both maps I say Victoria has been too near average this winter to have a “snowball chance in hell” of having its “warmest winter on record”.
So I say to the BoM – if your maps are right or near right – then your claim that Victoria has just experienced its “warmest winter on record” has to be wrong.