Post by marchesarosa on Oct 13, 2012 10:41:15 GMT 1
Anthony Watts recently received funding to create user-friendly graphics to display the temperature record of the new USCRN (United States Climate Reference Network) of surface stations.
Here is a taster
wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/crnmap-monthly-avg-temp-f_stations_national_1920x1080_201209.jpg
The USCRN consists of 114 stations developed, deployed, managed, and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the continental United States for the express purpose of detecting the national signal of climate change. The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a sustainable high-quality climate observation network that 50 years from now can with the highest degree of confidence answer the question: How has the climate of the nation changed over the past 50 years? These stations were designed with climate science in mind.
These sites are supposed to be immune to the siting problems which beset the much larger set of USHCN (United States Historical Climate Network) stations so it will provide a valuable comparison.
Verity Jones comments:
Here is a taster
wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/crnmap-monthly-avg-temp-f_stations_national_1920x1080_201209.jpg
The USCRN consists of 114 stations developed, deployed, managed, and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the continental United States for the express purpose of detecting the national signal of climate change. The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a sustainable high-quality climate observation network that 50 years from now can with the highest degree of confidence answer the question: How has the climate of the nation changed over the past 50 years? These stations were designed with climate science in mind.
These sites are supposed to be immune to the siting problems which beset the much larger set of USHCN (United States Historical Climate Network) stations so it will provide a valuable comparison.
Verity Jones comments:
Anthony,
this is much needed. As you say NCDC went only part of the way (albeit the major part) in establishing the CRN sites. They did so to see if siting made a major difference. I assume you regularly keep an eye on this data and from your other work you know that it does. In the meantime the data from badly sited sensors is still used, while the CRN data is unknown to the public and broadcast media.
What some people seem to be missing is that one of great benefits of this will be that, when the MSM headlines are talking about ‘record hot’, it will be possible to have broadcast standard data accessible to show what the nearest CRN sites are reading in comparison. I suspect many broadcast meteorologists will want to use it, and the lower CRN site temperatures will educate the media and general public as to the effect of poor siting and growth of UHI at local airports and other sites showing ‘record hot’. Expect also that CRN sites may show ‘record cold’.
This will be an example of a small extra effort (that NCDC missed) being able to make a huge impact.