Originally posted on Climate Realism
Via Linnea Lueken
A recent post from Daily skepticism describes new research conducted by scientists to accurately determine the surface temperature of the United States after the effects of the urban heat island effect have been removed. The results show that the eastern US has experienced 50% less warming in the past 50 years than official records show. This important study confirms a recent Heartland Institute report, “Broken climate station: Official US surface temperature record still severely skewed“It was found that the official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature stations produce corrupted data due to their location in man-made hotspots.
Daily skepticism article, titled “US warming over the past 50 years has been exaggerated by as much as 50%, new evidence shows,” describes the study conducted by atmospheric scientists Roy Spencer, Ph.D. and Professor John Christy, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. A link to Spencer’s original post describing their reasons for doing the project and the methods they used can be found on his website, here.
Job Description, Chris Morrison’s Daily skepticism writes “research effort to eliminate distortions caused by increasing urban temperatures and use over 50 years of human-generated structural density data provided by Landsat satellite.“
The scientists first worked to determine how much impact cities and related structures – such as concrete and metal – have on local warming, which was then measured by weather stations. The local warming caused by the urban environment is known as the “Urban Heat Island” (UHI) effect. UHI and has long been cited as a possible explanation for some of the differences between terrestrial and satellite temperature measurements.
Climate realism have also pointed out this issue, in posts like “Science Focus ‘Fact Check’ Test – Ignoring UHI is StupidBy meteorologist Anthony Watts.
Using the artificial structure densification dataset from the EU’s European Commission Global human settlement layer project, as well as hourly reported weather station temperature data, the scientists were finally able to create a regression-based algorithm to eliminate urban thermal bias. After the algorithm was applied to temperature station data across 37 eastern states, the measured warming appeared to be significantly less than the temperatures reported by NOAA.
Commenting on the report at his blog, Spencer wrote, “[t]His results for the eastern US resulted in a 50-year warming trend that was 50% less than that from the official NOAA uniform surface temperature data set. (See picture below).
The finding is important in determining whether the world faces a climate crisis that justifies the pronounced restrictions on fossil fuel use.
Morrison thinks this kind of research probably won’t be presented at the COP27 climate conference. He writes that “any warning of future temperature rise will refer to politically accurate surface datasets, and any climate temperature projections will have the authority of climate models.” Queen”.
Sadly, Morrison will almost certainly be proven right in that prediction. Morrison and Daily skepticism should be applauded for covering this important study, which is being ignored by the mainstream media. It shows that the data being used to demonstrate global warming is severely compromised, magnifying warming by a significant amount. Urbanization must be taken into account. It cannot be ignored or “identified” away. Temperature deviations from the UHI must be eliminated if we are to base our climate policies on an accurate assessment of the state of the planet. Such research by Spencer and Christy is an important – if not available – tool for determining the true extent of climate change.
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