Continued bias at the American Meteorological Society?
HYPERLINK "http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/21/can-mulit-decadal-temperature-trends-from-poorly-sited-locations-be-corrected/" http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/21/can-mulit-decadal-temperature-trends-from-poorly-sited-locations-be-corrected/
[CSPP NOTE: We have invited both Pielke, Sr. and Dr. Peterson to present a joint Congressional Staff Seminar on this topic. Dr. Pielke has agreed, but NOAA refuses to allow Dr. Peterson to participate. We find this odd since Dr. Landsea with NOAA participated with Dr. Emanuel from MIT in a similar Hill seminar earlier this year. The AMS has also refused requests for balanced Hill briefings.]
August 21, 2006
HYPERLINK "http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/21/can-mulit-decadal-temperature-trends-from-poorly-sited-locations-be-corrected/" \o "Permanent Link: Can Multi-decadal Temperature Trends from Poorly Sited Locations Be Corrected?" Can Multi-decadal Temperature Trends from Poorly Sited Locations Be Corrected?
Roger Pielke Sr. @ 5:20 am
An article has appeared in the August 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society entitled HYPERLINK "http://ams.allenpress.com/pdfserv/10.1175%2FBAMS-87-8-1073" “Examination of Potential Biases in Air Temperature Caused by Poor Station Locations” Thomas C. Peterson, pages 1073–1089. This article was motivated by the article
Davey, C.A., and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2005: HYPERLINK "http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/R-274.pdf" Microclimate exposures of surface-based weather stations - implications for the assessment of long-term temperature trends. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Vol. 86, No. 4, 497–504.
The headline for the Peterson paper reads,
“Analysis of a small subset of U.S. Historical Climatology Network data does not find a time-depedent bias caused by current poor station siting”.
The abstract for the paper reads,
“Questions have been raised about whether poor siting practices that have existed in recent years at some in situ weather-observing stations are causing a bias in U.S. temperature change analysis. This potential bias was examined using homogeneity-adjusted maximum, minimum, and mean temperature data from five stations in eastern Colorado—two with good current siting and three with poor current siting. No siting-induced bias was found in the homogeneity-adjusted data. Furthermore, the results indicate that homogeneity-adjusted time series from the stations with poor current siting represent the temperature variability and change in the region as a whole quite well because they are very similar to the time series from stations with excellent siting.”
Tom Peterson is an excellent climate scientist. However, his paper clearly conflicts with several peer reviewed contributions which we have recently summarized on the Climate Science weblog, including:
HYPERLINK "http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027069.shtml" “Reexamination of instrument change effects in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network” by Hubbard K. and X. Lin August 12 2006 Geophysical Research Letters.
HYPERLINK "http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026358.shtml" “Land use/land cover change effects on temperature trends at U.S. Climate” by R. C. Hale, K. P. Gallo, T. W. Owen, and T. R. Loveland June 3 2006 Geophysical Research Letters
HYPERLINK "http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112518278/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0" “The Geoprofile metadata, exposure of instruments, and measurement bias in climatic record revisited” by Rezaul Mahmood, Stuart A. Foster and David Logan June 30, 2006 International Journal of Climatology
When we first heard of the Peterson article, we assumed it would be treated as a Comment on our Davey and Pielke 2005 BAMS paper. BAMS took over 3 years to process our paper, and then required that the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) prepare a Response to the Davey and Pielke article ( HYPERLINK "http://ams.allenpress.com/amsonline/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FBAMS-86-4-504" “Comments on ‘Microclimate Exposures of Surface-Based Weather Stations’” by Russell S. Vose, David R. Easterling, Thomas R. Karl, and Michael Helfert.
I assumed the Peterson article would also be published with a Reply from Christopher Davey and I. However, despite my requests to permit us to prepare a Reply to the Peterson article, it was decided that there was new information in the Peterson article. My request was refused. I was written that
“In the case of your 2005 article, Jeff Rosenfeld felt that since your work raised significant (though potentially justified) criticism of an observing network that the entire scientific community relies upon and would impact the public confidence in those networks, that a companion comment was appropriate to provide additional perspective. This does not appear to be the case with Peterson’s current article, which is simply providing scientific evidence to clarify arguments for alternative hypotheses.” [Jeff Rosenfeld is Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society].
Since the Peterson article claims to resolve the problem, yet we have serious issues with his contribution, it would seem that the same approach of two articles would have been permitted. Nonetheless, this was not allowed. This imbalance in the ability to present climate science viewpoints unfortunately permeates the scientific literature including that of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).
We have, therefore, written an article for BAMS in response to the Peterson article, and it is authored and titled
Pielke Sr., R.A, C. Davey, J. Angel, O. Bliss, M. Cai, N. Doesken, S. Fall, K. Gallo, R. Hale, K.G. Hubbard, H. Li, X. Lin, J. Nielsen-Gammon, D. Niyogi, and S. Raman, 2006: HYPERLINK "http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/R-318.pdf" Documentation of bias associated with surface temperature measurement sites. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., submitted. [it should not yet be cited or reproduced as it is currently under review; comments to us on the manuscript, however, are welcome].
There is a major change in the claims of the capabilities of the climate monitoring network of the National Climate Data Center, as reported in the Peterson article, regarding the use of poorly sited station data. He has concluded that specific poorly sited observation sites can be corrected. As we report in our paper,
“Davey and Pielke (2005) presented photographic documentation of poor observation sites within the U.S. Historical Climate Reference (USHCN) with respect to monitoring long term surface air temperature trends. Peterson (2006) compared the adjusted climate records of many of these stations and concluded that
‘ …homogeneity adjusted time series from stations with poor current siting represent the temperature variability and change in the region as a whole quite well as they are almost identical to the time series from stations with excellent siting.’
One of the objectives of the USHCN as stated in Easterling et al (1996),
‘…was to detect temporal changes in regional rather than local climate. Therefore, only stations not influenced to any substantial degree by artificial changes in their local environments were included in the network.’
Peterson’s claim relaxes this requirement with the assertion that poor station data can be corrected, so as to represent regional changes. There remain significant issues, however, with the methodology applied and the conclusion reached in the Peterson article.”
The Editor of BAMS has promised an expeditious processing of our paper. We will see and keep the readers of the Climate Science weblog updated.
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Roger,
I had to laugh when I read that BAMS handled your article so carefully (3 years to publish!) because it “…would impact the public confidence in those (temperature) networks…”
I guess the word ‘public’ is now synonymous with ‘AGW community’, for they are the only ones who would be concerned with your findings. The average Joe doesn’t really care if his local reporting station has warm bias of a degree or two over multiple decades. Heck, the average Joe doesn’t even care that the Bank sign at the corner may be 5-10 degrees too warm on a sunny day!
If the journal publishing community wants to protect the theory of an impending CO2 induced AGW crisis, they are going to have to come up with better excuses than that. In the past, it may have been easier to get away with such practices, but the internet makes it all too easy for someone to point out the Emperor’s increasing lack of clothing.
Good luck with your continued pursuit of sound, scientific understanding!
Comment by Jim Clarke — August 22, 2006 @ HYPERLINK "http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/21/can-mulit-decadal-temperature-trends-from-poorly-sited-locations-be-corrected/" \l "comment-57318" 8:16 am