Comments on: Jones and the Russian UHI

By: Philip_B

Philip_B — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:56:09 +0000

Interesting study of UHI in Singapore. You can literally see Changi Airport and the docks (also large expanse of concrete) in the thermal image.

http://www.bca.gov.sg/ResearchInnovation/others/UHI%20_2004-001_%20rev.pdf

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:20:20 +0000

RE: #96 – Indeed. Let me pick a region out of the air – the I-80 corridor – aka the following California counties – Solano, Yolo, Sacramento, Placer, and Nevada. Look at what has happened in these counties since the end of WW2. Can anyone in their right mind believe that there has not been a general increase in temperature in these places, owing strictly to the increase in human caused local energy flux combined with amazing and extensive albedo modifications in urban, suburban and rural portions of this corridor? Consider also the amount of conversion of rural land to other types during that same period.

By: Hans Erren

Hans Erren — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:52:34 +0000

roger you don’t need a website, you can use imageshack
http://imageshack.us/

By: roger dueck

roger dueck — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:32:51 +0000

Steve M – You fellows are much more adept at handling large volume of GISS data than I, but I have taken a look at a few UHI phenomenon in several areas:
San Antonio TX
Oklahoma City OK
Edmonton AB
These cities all have a number of “rural” stations at various point surrounding. They all show significant and consistently increasing UHI effect. I don’t think there is any doubt that the UHI effect is real and significant, as my observation is that the increase is 0.75C per century for San Antone and 1.1C per century for OK City.
In the case of Edmonton, I compared the Municiple Airpot, near city centre, to the International Airport, some 30 km to the south and adjacent to Leduc and Nisku, two areas with recent rapid oilfield industrial growth. The startling thing is that you can track Edmonton population growth by the increasing temp differential until the mid-70′s when the industrial complex adjacent to the Int Airport went through a growth spurt, along with the Leduc population. I guess we could use the differential as a population proxy!
I think any attempt to “correct” this data for UHI is frivolous and misleading, as the differences are greater the the apparent global warming of the past century.
I don’t have a website to post the graphs but could forward to you to post.

Regards
RD

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:48:52 +0000

I’ve excerpted Russian station data from the most recent GHCN listing for Warwick Hughes who is making progress at possible identifications of the Jones stations. See his website. For reference, here’s the script for reading and excerpting the stations:

url< -"ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/inventories/STNLIST-SORTED.TXT"
fred<-readLines(url,n=25)
#[13] "NUMBER CALL NAME + COUNTRY/STATE LAT LON ELEV "
#[14] ""
#[17] "990061 DB061 ENVIRONM BUOY 52079 ** +0000 +14700 +0000"
#[18] "134900 RESERVED FOR NAVY ** -9999 -99999 -9999"
#[19] "993194 SHIP BLOCK 19 ** -9999 -99999 -9999"
#[20] "691810 KQLH TUZLA ** +4453 +01871 "
test<-read.fwf(url,widths=c(6,1,6,1,20,2,6,7,6),fill=TRUE,skip=14 )
test<-test[,c(5,1,7,8,9)]
test$start0<-NA
test$end0<-NA
test[,3:4]<-test[,3:4]/100
test$jones<-jones(test[,3],test[,4])
names(test)<-names(russia[[1]])
levels(test$site)<-sub(' +$', '', levels(test$site)) ## spaces only
capwords <- function(s, strict = FALSE) {
cap <- function(s) paste(toupper(substring(s,1,1)),
{s <- substring(s,2); if(strict) tolower(s) else s},
sep = "", collapse = " " )
sapply(strsplit(s, split = " "), cap, USE.NAMES = !is.null(names(s)))
}
levels(test$site)<-capwords(casefold(levels(test$site))) #for readability but optional

temp42)&(test$long<85)&(test$long>25)&!is.na(test$lat)&!is.na(test$long)
sum(temp) #46
test< -test[temp,]
test<-test[order(test$jones),]
write.table(test,file="d:/climate/data/jones/stations/ghcn.russia.txt",sep="\t",row.names=FALSE)

This extracts 1764 stations extending a list of 1359 stations from which Warwick has matched many plausible candidates.

By: Errors in IPCC climate science » Blog Archive » Does anybody have a very detailed list of Russian met station locations ?

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:20:33 +0000

[...] ClimateAudit, Steve McIntyre has a Feb 19 2007 post ” Jones and the Russian UHI”, tackling the issue of replicating what was done in the highly influential Jones et al 1990 Letter [...]

By: Christopher Morbey

Christopher Morbey — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 06:27:09 +0000

“…The total temperature increase from 1850 – 1899 to 2001 – 2005 is 0.76 [0.57 to 0.95]°C. Urban heat island effects are real but local, and have a negligible influence (less than 0.006°C per decade over land and zero over the oceans) on these values.”

There you have it! Half the world’s population of urban-dwellers (and their engines) provide negligible influence on global warming.

Therefore, farmers and hermits are the culprits?

By: Dave B

Dave B — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:05:50 +0000

91…or more in my neck of the woods, plattsburgh, NY air force base (closed) in the adirondacks. or niagara falls, NY air force base, (not closed due to political wrangling, but not being used as much as its acreage would support). lots of blacktop, very low population, still a likely high UHI.

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 23:07:28 +0000

RE: #90 – I wonder what the impact is of, for example, the Mojave Airport (and other large aircraft mothball areas)? What is the impact of turning massive areas of desert caliche into well cultivated and well watered top soil with crops growing in it a goodly percentage of each year? Etc, etc, etc …

By: Dave B

Dave B — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:21:13 +0000

#86, 88…

my thought is that PEOPLE are not the primary cause of UHI. STRUCTURE, ie blacktop, buildings, perhaps electronic infrastructure are what cause UHI. in the absense of significant human population, my local weather station at the airport will register a higher temperature, secondary to the many acres of blacktop and concrete in the immediate area. population may end up being a matter of only secondary importance.