Comments on: Some China Comparisons

By: Climate Audit and NOAA FOI Policy « Climate Audit

Climate Audit and NOAA FOI Policy « Climate Audit — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:30:39 +0000

[...] Immediately on receipt of this information, I wrote some interesting posts on Chinese stations here here here . Doug Keenan followed up on this information as [...]

By: Phil Jones and the China Network: Part 2 « Climate Audit

Phil Jones and the China Network: Part 2 « Climate Audit — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:16:12 +0000

[...] 2007, following receipt of the data, I did a number of posts at CA on the Chinese network e.g. here here here here here, analysis that we now know that Jones was monitoring. One of the few mentions [...]

By: Did Jones et al 1990 "fabricate" its quality control claims? « Climate Audit

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:39:40 +0000

[...] climateaudit, noting that questions about these claims were raised here (for example, here here and here . Since then, we’ve also looked at adjustments in the USHCN, GHCN and GISS networks, observing [...]

By: bernie

bernie — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:38:05 +0000

It seems to me that since we are looking at temperature anomalies, a more productive way to classify stations is “high growth vs no growth” or “high development” versus “low development”. As noted above you can find UHI in towns of 4600 people. Based on what I saw in the census data for Cambridge Bay, Canada you could easily find UHI effects in towns of 1000 that have grown in the number of buildings by 50% in 20 years.
I assume that in China there is also the possibility of UHI tied to dramatic improvements in SOL with the parallel increase in energy consumption.

I was also interested to see that the just released paper on CO2 emissions uses a model that has population growth as a primary driver of energy consumption – the Kaya identity. The model suggests on its face that UHI should be calculated by correlating temperature changes with net changes not density per se: The rural urban distinction is bogus both in terms of actual station classifications and as a means of evaluating the UHI with respect to estimates of changes in global temperatures. This is yet another reason a reluctance to provide the locations of stations. There is almost a guaranteed positive correlation of local temperature and local population growth that would have to be partialled out before any crude aggregation! I recall seeing an equation that estimates this effect, at least on a global basis.

By: bender

bender — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:06:33 +0000

Just noticed for the first time the comment in the opening post:

Note that the rural station is warmer than the urban station here.

Duly noted!

By: bender

bender — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:04:06 +0000

Ren et al. (2007) Fig. 3 has urban temperatures cooler than rural, right up to 1990. That's more than half the reason for the urban vs. rural trend difference. Curious. That's not normal. Is this a case of agri-rural vs forested/pre-airport, with agricultural warmer than forested pre 1990?? Then, a curious statement (bolded) in the conclusion (context kept, for accuracy):

The annual urban warming at the city stations can account for about 65-80% of the overall warming in 1961-2000, and about 40-61% of the overall warming in 1981-2000. The quality control and the in-homogeneity examination and adjustment for the data of the stations used for the analysis have been made.

I'd like to see the data and code for this whole paper.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:51:59 +0000

One of the things that has come out of my first inspection of the GISS stations is the tremendous increase in the proportion of stations in the post-1990 period that come from urban airports. This is because the majority of the updated data in CRU and GISS other than the U.S. is from the automated airport weather system. I suspect that this may underpin the fanatical obstruction from CRU to even identifying their stations.

So it’s not just a UHI effect but an urban airport effect. I’ll do a post on this some time. In Toronto, the landscape around the airport has been urbanizing very rapidly. It was on the outskirts of the city when I was a boy and now it’s urban. This must be happening all over the world.

By: bender

bender — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:39:24 +0000

And the original abstract:

Temporal change in urbanization-induced warming at two national basic meteorological stations of China and its contribution to the overall warming are analyzed. Annual and seasonal mean surface air temperature for time periods of 1961-2000 and 1981-2000 at the two stations of Beijing and Wuhan Cities and their nearby rural stations all significantly increase. Annual and seasonal urbanization induced warming for the two periods at Beijing and Wuhan stations is also generally significant, with the annual urban warming accounting for about 65-80% of the overall warming in 1961-2000 and about 40-61% of the overall warming in 1981-2000. This result along with the previous researches indicates a need to pay more attention to the urbanization-induced bias probably existing in the current surface air temperature records of the national basic stations.

twq, where r u?

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:32:18 +0000

RE: #38 – one need only look at the explosion in high tension power lines and stand alone motors since 1900 to see just how much of UHI is due to energy conversion. All those electrons and BTUs need to do some work and they have and continue to do so.

By: pochas

pochas — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:02:16 +0000

This from the Idsos:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N21/C2.jsp