URBAN HEAT ISLAND is alive and well

UHI is alive and well Anthony Watts California Counties by population show a distinct UHI signature. My friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist identified the statewide UHI signature issues way back in 1996. This graph had a profound effect on me, because it was the one that really made an impact on me, switching my views to being skeptical. Yes, I used to be a warmer, but that’s another story. Goodridge, J.D. (1996) Comments on “Regional Simulations of Greenhouse Warming including Natural Variability” . Bull, Amer. Meteorological Society 77:1588-1599. Goodrich (1996) showed the importance of urbanization to temperatures in his study of California counties in 1996. He found for counties with a million or more population the warming from 1910 to 1995 was 4F, for counties with 100,000 to 1 million it was 1F and for counties with less than 100,000 there was no change (0.1F). He’s been quietly toiling away in his retirement on his computer for the last 15 years or so making all sort of data comparisons. One plot which he shared with me in 2003 is a 104 year plot map of California showing station trends after painstakingly hand entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and plotting slopes of the data to produce trend dots. He used every good continuous piece of data he could get his hands on, no adjusted data like the climate modelers use, only raw from Cooperative Observing Stations, CDF stations, Weather Service Office’s and Municipal stations. The results are quite interesting. Here it is: part of an article by Anthony Watts at WUWT here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/31/uhi-is-alive-and-well/#more-15890 IPCC Big Guns may be well funded, but it's the sceptics who have the masses of volunteer informed infantry mobilised! ......... Re: URBAN HEAT ISLAND is alive and well « Reply #3 on Feb 2, 2010, 10:18am » "Holy heat sink, batman…. er, uh, Anthony! You were just commenting a day or two ago about how these stories suddenly get their legs. Could it really be happening? The last few weeks have been one revelation after another!" "If the numpties at The Guardian are finally turning there is hope for everyone." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....e-jones-chinese http://www.independent.co.uk/environment....s-1886487 .html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com....ot-1886149.html More about UHI from Mister Surface Station himself, Aaaanthony Waaaatts! (frenzied applause) here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/01/cl....es/#more-1 5945 How come it’s taken these two mighty organs of the UK press two and a half months to discover the amazing facts of CRU-IPCC corruption? The leak was on 19th November 2009. You heard about it first from MEEEE on 20th November! ....... "One is reminded of Tony Blair's response to the Chilcot committee last week, when asked about his utterly discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would take just 45 minutes to launch. A mere detail, said Blair: it was the media's fault for overstating its significance within the wider picture. After non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the British Government now wants to terrify us – and the world – with scaremongering about "man-made" weather of mass destruction. That's the scandal – not whether someone has hacked into an East Anglian computer." d.lawson@independent.co.uk ....... I was wonderinmg when the redtops would be getting in on the act now that the ALL the rest of the UK national papers are busily picking holes in the IPCC and CRU. The Sun says 30 Jan 2010 “Inconveniently for the experts global warming IS a con” http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage....g-is-a-con.html Of course, the typical prole in the street (I know some) was well ahead of The Sun in dismissing the alarmism. You can't beat the common sense of the man in the street. ......... Young Peter and his pa explain the Urban Heat Island effect in a way that anyone can understand. You see, climatology ISN'T rocket science, at all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_G_-SdAN04&feature=player_embedded ......... I know that Urban Heat Island Effect is the name of this thread but Airport Heat Island produces exactly the same upward “enhancement” of the temperature reading at surface stations. So here’s a story about a record maximim temperature recorded in Carefree, Arizona this week, on the 8th July 2010, to be exact. It was at Carefree Skyranch Airport (what delightfully uninhibited names they give places in the USA!) Turns out that, as expected, the reading was MUCH higher than a similar surface station only three quarters of a mile away but NOT at the Airport and not surrounded by tarmac. 5% degrees Fahrenheit higher in fact! Here’s the aerial view. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c....mparison_ge.jpg Detailed discussion here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/ca....ona/#more-21762 Thanks again to Mr Surface Station, Anthony Watts! Don’t you love to see a real pro going about his work? There is also an independent Urban Heat Island Effect which presumably affects both locations. Steve Goddard states “I ran the Fiesta Bowl Marathon in 1980. The race started in Carefree, which at the time was separated from Scottsdale by a good 10-15 miles. It is now part of the Phoenix Metro area – as the valley has seen massive growth. This is how NOAA describes Phoenix http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/general/safety/heat/ The southwest United States is one of the hottest areas of the United States. Temperatures in the triple-digits are common for several months of the year. In addition, the rapid expansion of major urban areas in Phoenix has caused a significant urban heat island (UHI) to develop.” Double whammy! Airport and Urban Heat Islands combined! ........ If you wish to understand why the temperature sensor at Carefree Skyranch Airport which we discussed the other day, is registering such anomalously high temperatures look at this fabulous set of photographs and the commentary which accompanies them + comments from visitors. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/photos-noaas-carefree-climate-station/ People who have just discovered that the surface stations which provide us with the global mean temperature may not be quite so accurate as we are led to believe may wish to consult this website www.surfacestations.... which gives detailed photos and locations of most of the United States Historical Climatic Network (USHCN) surface stations and others world-wide, for further evidence. Having looked at this compilation of photos and other data, a genuine piece of important empirical climate research, it is quite possible that you will never believe the global mean temperature stats again - especially the adjusted and homogenised ones! You may even be so disgusted and alarmed at the situation that you wish to contribute to the ongoing surface station project!