Grassy Knolls & Rabett Holes

"Geneva Research Farm Weather Station", Geneva, NY
(Photo by Peter Seem/NYSAES/Cornell University)

It has been suggested by some that recent photographs of weather stations scattered here and there across the US cast doubt upon the validity of the surface temperature record over the past century -- and by extension, on the conclusion of climate scientists that the US and most of the world has experienced a warming trend of about 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) over that period.

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!

Grassy Knolls & Rabett Holes*

-- by Horatio Algeranon --

*Like "rabbit holes", but much more twisted.

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."

Inspired by Eli Rabett's Down The Rabett Hole and first posted there by me anonymusely in the comments.

NOAA 's(n)Ark?

Click graphic to enlarge

The above graph is a composite created from a NOAA graph showing Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (blue line) and Total Greenhouse Gas Forcing relative to 1850 (gray line), from a graph labeled "Greenhouse Gas Forcing Over the Industrial Period", in this presentation by Stephen Schwartz .

--- The graph was inspired by the inflamous Bunny Curve by Eli Rabett, which shows the CO2 increase (by special request) as opposed to the increase in Total Greenhouse Gas Radiative Forcing and as you can see by comparing the two graphs, the two are closely related. CO2 increase largely determines forcing increase which in turn drives the temperature upward.



If scientific explanations aren't your thing, but goofy poetry is, you can skip the following and read NOAA's(n)Ark just below.


Greenhouse Gases and Radiative Forcing

The increase in CO2 since the beginning of the industrial period in about 1850 is responsible for most of the increase in the "Radiative Forcing", which is a measure of the earth's "energy imbalance". In other words, it measures how much more energy is coming into the earth/atmosphere system than is leaving it. It basically determines how much the earth's surface temperature goes up.

Total greenhouse gas forcing is the overall effect from all the greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, CFC's, nitrogen oxides, ozone and a few others -- but excluding water) and it goes up logarithmically (rather than linearly) with the increasing greenhouse gas concentration. What this means is that as the greenhouse gas concentration "ramps up", the forcing ramps up less steeply (increases more slowly).

The change in temperature of the air near the earth's surface is determined primarily by the change in forcing. Because temperature change is proportional to forcing change, the temperature also changes logarithmically with gas concentration. In other words, temperature basically ramps up like forcing (see above graph) -- more slowly than concentration.

In a nutshell, what all of this means is that the climate has a certain "sensitivity" to CO2 increases and to increases of other greenhouse gases (but CO2 is the main one). According to what is known as the Arrhenius Law, doubling the concentration of the CO2 does not double the temperature, but instead raises it by the an amount given by the "sensitivity", for which the best current estimate is about 3 degrees Celsius. The doubling in CO2 from the start of the industrial period is expected to be reached sometime around the turn of the century.

Each time the concentration doubles, the temperature goes up by the same amount -- even though the concentration goes up more each time (since we start at a higher concentration). So there is a "law of diminishing returns" at work here. The temperature increase for a certain amount of concentration increase at each stage gets less and less as we pump more and more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

That does not mean it's OK to continue this little experiment ad infinitum with our atmosphere, of course, since continued warming of the climate could have some undesirable effects, the subject of the little ditty below.

NOAA's(n)Ark?
--By Horatio Algeranon--

As NOAA sails the ocean blue,
We keep on spewing CO2.
They measure its unending climb,
And we say "we'll take our sweet time."

NOAA also notes the temp
Has climbed by quite a lot.
But we go on with business,
As things get really hot.

"It must be solar increase,"
"It must be cosmic rays,"
"It must be barbecues."
That's what the "skeptic" says.

But NOAA says "Not true !"
"You can see it on the plot."
"The CO2 has climbed for sure,"
"That's why it's getting hot!"

They warn us we don't have the time,
To lounge and wait and see,
The consequences may be bad,
For folks like you and me.

If glaciers keep on melting,
And Greenland wastes away,
The seas will keep on rising,
"It's not if but when" they say.

Perhaps they're just "Al-armists"
So why should we take note?
But then again, it is a fact
That NOAA has the boat.