More Revelations from East Anglia, Temperature Stations, China, and Cover-Ups ~ Sounds Like a Spy Novel

 (Graphic's Source)

(Guardian UK Source) ...It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?

But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.

It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.

The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.

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The paper was largely ignored at the time, but Guardian investigations of the hacked emails now reveal that there was concern among Jones's colleagues about Wang's missing data – and the apparent efforts by Jones and Wang over several years to cover this up.

Those concerns were most cogently expressed to Jones by his ex-boss, and former head of the CRU, Dr Tom Wigley. In August 2007, Wigley warned Jones by email: "It seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (W-C W at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect."

Wigley was concerned partly because he had been director of the CRU when the original paper was published in 1990. As he told Jones later, in 2009: "The buck should eventually stop with me."

Wigley put to Jones the allegations made by the sceptics. "Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist."

[....]

Jones told the Guardian he was not able to comment on the allegations. Wang said: "I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more. Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them."

The story has a startling postscript. In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004....

What do they mean when they say "the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004"?  The below should explain this, and we practice this misinformation here via our temperature station.

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If Government Can't Tell Temperatures Right,

What Makes You Think They Can Run Health-Care Well?

I wanted to piggy-back on an important site and the work this person has done. He has set out to study over a thousand weather stations where the government takes temperatures that have been used in the “scare” about Global Warming. As you will see, many of these weather stations (temperature taking apparatus) are in areas that reflect heat or have been built around with concrete and steel.

This site has a purpose, that is to study 1,200 (plus) stations:

The survey project continues to move forward, even in these cold and snowy winter months. I’m pleased to announce that we have just passed the 500 mark for surveyed stations. Now with 41.1% of the network surveyed comprising 502 stations surveyed so far, that leaves 719 to go out of 1221 stations nationwide.

What a task.

Not to mention that they are government run, so the calibration would be right on or would have been neglected for some time? I will let the reader come up with the most plausible answer to that.

Here are some photos with a short explanation… by-the-by, the site where this can be found at (in the links to the right of the main blog is:

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/

This first site has some commentary from Whats Up With That researcher, enjoy... and may I add that if one stays long enough another factor that would play in this station being way off would be when the guys and gals are out washing down their firetrucks (and the like).

One of the things that happens when your work becomes well known is that people send you things to look at. Such is the case for today’s subject. Here we have a NOAA COOP station which is on the side of a mountain, well away from large cities. Only problem is, they put it right next to a parking lot.

A reader of this blog, Brad Herrick, sent me these photos of the Mt. Charleston weather station on State Route 157 west of Las Vegas. For those that don’t know, Mt. Charleston is the large mountain to the west that overlooks Las Vegas. NOAA lists it on it’s COOP-A list, meaning that it reports for the climatic database. It’s been in operation since 1949. Its been moved 3 times, but all within about 1/2 mile as the fire station changed and grew.

According to NOAA’s MMS database, here is the description: Elevation, 7600 feet. NV DIV OF FORESTRY FIRE STN KYLE CYN OUTSIDE AND 30 MI NW PO AT LAS VEGAS NV. Topographic Details: RUGGED DEEP CANYON .25 - .5 MILE WIDE, RISING TO PEAKS 3000-5000 FEET HIGHER TO NORTH, SOUTH AND WEST A DISTANCE OF 2 TO 4 MILES. Lat/Lon 36.2597, -115.6452 , COOP ID 265400

Seems pretty rural, with a mental image of “way up in the mountains” if you were researching this station. By James Hansen’s figuring, it would also be a “lights=0″ station since I doubt there is municipal street lighting for this area.

It’s certainly well enough away from the super sized Las Vegas concrete and asphalt heat island.

Here is the view from Google Earth:

Except for a few houses, it certainly looks “rural”. Any researcher at NCDC or maybe a university that might use this station in some research report would certainly think this station was well away from the building/concrete/asphalt influence of bustling Las Vegas wouldn’t they?

But then we see this:

And this:



And This:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a time series temperature graph of this station to show you since I haven’t found a place at NCDC yet to graph COOP stations that are COOP-A. If anybody knows of such a link, please let me know.

There’s nothing like convenient parking to convert a rural station to urban. But lets not forget the maintenance of the Stevenson Screen roof (see pic #2 -large), hillside, shade bushes, fire station building revisions, and portable storage unit. When did all that happen? We have no idea.

Surely, it’s easy to disentangle all that from the temperature record. Quick! Somebody create an adjustment equation.

Lampasas, TX., this weather station was found to be tucked between a building, and two parking lots, one with nearby vehicles. According to the surveyor, it is right next to the ACE Hardware store on the main street of town. While likely representative of the temperature for downtown Lampasas, one wonders how well it measures the climate of the region.

Another shot.

Miami AZ., I do not think this one needs an explanation about how bad the temperature readings must be... um, hotter than they should be???

Another shot.

Cedarville CA., looking east. Take note of the new Forest Service concrete pad for their offices.

Inside temperature structure.

Looking north. I am sure no heat radiates off the propane tanks.

Some great work on the part of this site. Holding the crazy enviro-whacker's to task as well as holding the government responsible for shoddy work!! Awesome!

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(Guardian UK Source) ...Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-­Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".

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The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought to light today indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair.

It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.