"Geneva Research Farm Weather Station", Geneva, NY(Photo by Peter Seem/NYSAES/Cornell University)
Others have suggested that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is somehow trying to "cover up" photographs of stations.
But alas, reality is sometimes different from what some might have us believe. The weather station pictured above -- the "Geneva Research Farm Station" (NOAA USHCN benchmark weather station, #3031840), Geneva, NY (pop 14,000) -- is just one of a large number of weather stations throughout the United States that have provided scientists with high quality weather data over the past century.
Geneva Research Farm station has been collecting weather data since 1883 as part of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station operated by Cornell University (another of those pesky "reality based" organizations).
Peter Seem writes about the station in 100 years of New York Weather:
"The Experiment Station’s weather station sits in a small fenced area atop a hill on the Fruit and Vegetable Research Farm off County Road #4. Additional equipment has been added since 1900. Now devices measure wind speed, evaporation, water temperature, soil temperature from 2 to 12 inches deep, soil moisture, solar radiation, surface wetness, relative humidity, and ultraviolet B radiation. Each morning, Steve Gordner or Lee Hibbard, from the Station’s Field Research Unit, visits the weather station to record precipitation, evaporation, and daily high and low temperatures. All of the other measurements are recorded daily, hourly, or every 15 minutes, then logged and stored in a database. Daily summary data is compiled and entered into the database and provided to the public over the Internet, along with over 100 years of archives at http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/weather/
After taking the readings, Hibbard calls a computer run by the National Weather Service (NWS) to dial in the previous day’s information. The data also goes to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell and the National Climate Data Center’s database." -- Peter Seem
The annual mean temperature at Geneva Research Farm station shows a warming trend of about 0.7C (1.3F) over the twentieth century. This is in keeping with a warming trend found at most of the weather stations throughout the Northeast US for that period -- and indeed, with the average warming for the earth as a whole. The warming trend is clear on the following map from "Evidence of Climate Change in the Northeast over the Past Century", ( Cameron Wake, Climate Change Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space University of New Hampshire in Proceedings: Climate Change and Northeast Agriculture (2004) ).
Click the map for a larger view.
Based on an average of 56 stations, the Northeast has warmed about 1 degree C since 1900. But there are other indications of warming as well -- the lengthening of the growing season in New England by about 10 days from 1965 to 2000, for example, as shown in the following graph (Cameron Wake, 2004):
So, if the warming is imaginary, as some would have us believe -- merely an artifact of poor temperature measurement practices -- then the people at NOAA and universities like Cornell have been very convincing in the presentation of their data. Indeed, they have convinced the farmers and their plants!
-- by Horatio Algeranon --
When Climate Auditors attempted,
NOAA bureaucrats to cajole,
The weather-station data disappeared,
Down a Rabett hole.
"I swear its a conspiracy.
They want to hide the stations.
They've painted Stevenson screens in camo,
And severed all relations."
"They won't reply to my e-mails,
And refuse to pick up the phone.
I know the station manager's there,
I see him all alone."
"By night, they're removing blacktop
and laying down the sod,
To make it all look A-OK
An A-1 site, by God."
"With guards around the perimeter,
I can't get near enough,
To take a decent photo,
You know, it's really tough."
"If only we could use satellites,
We could get the incriminating pics,
Without risking life and limb,
And dealing with the hicks."
"We gotta show the world,
What NOAA's trying to hide,
These Global-warming believers
Are taking us for a ride."
