Ok, I see you’re just regurgitating WMO policy. I thought we were discussing what should be done, which is to measure the temperature of the spherical slice of atmosphere. I never realized when I was walking through the forest that I was actually walking through land. I should have been like a Horta and screamed “Pain” about the missing “children”.
My reporting of the scientific methods used successfully for a lifetime is certainly not what you incorrectly describe as “ just regurgitating WMO policy.” I am presenting some valid answers in response to your question: “What are we trying to measure?” It makes no difference whether you believe we are talking about past and current WMO policies and practices or future such policies and practices.
Bürger CPD submission
I hope that you are following the lively discussion about Bürger and Cubasch at Climates of the Past here , where Mann aka Anonymous Referee #2 is carrying on in a quite extraodinary way. I’ll probably try to weigh in over there at some point. The dialogue has exploded fairly quickly and I’ve collated some of the discussion in the post here.
Bürger and Cubasch report a very high RE statistic for the "nonsense" relationship betwen the number of reporting gridcells and NH temperature.
Climate Audit 