Berkeley Earth claims that UHI has no effect on the temperature trends. This is in direct opposition to other studies, satellite data, radiosonde data, and common sense.
Dr. Roy Spencer has demonstrated that UHI has a huge effect.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/03/global-urban-heat-island-effect-study-an-update/
Both sets of satellite data indicate that BEST surface temperatures are warming much faster than the air over the land.
www.woodfortrees.org/data/best/from:1979/plot/rss-land/plot/uah-land
Radiosonde data shows the same thing. Reported land temperatures are rising much faster than the atmosphere.
Global warming theory requires that the atmosphere warm faster than the surface. Obviously what Berkeley Earth is seeing is not due to global warming.
Everybody understands that suburban sprawl, snow removal, pavement, brick, dark roofs, huge amounts of fuel being burned, etc. causes temperatures to rise. It defies explanation how scientists could accept a finding that UHI is not affecting the temperature record.
Steven, as I said on the “Putting Curry And Mosher To The Test” thread, they have a very good UHI Adjustment they call ““Regional Expectation””, however they do not appear to use it on anything that they present to the Public, countries and Cities etc. But I am not sure if it feeds in to their Global data set.
They do use it for Public viewing of Stations though.
One problem with it is that it also does a “Negative UHI” adjustment and makes cooler stations warmer.
A classic example is Valentia Observatory, see this
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/155842
It cannot cope with coastal sites which are climatically controlled by the Sea and Prevailing Winds.
Obviously it is not a very good adjustment
Not when it warms a cooling trend, which they say doesn’t fit their “Regional Expectation”.
But it does work for identifying UHI, which murders GISS adjustments.
Berkeley Earth says that UHI does not affect the temperature trend. I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.
I am not sure if we have a language problem with your US English not matching my English English or you think I am arguing against you, where as I am supplying supporting evidence.
It appears that BEST have a mechanism to remove UHI but do not use it for normal public consumption.
They only use it to show how a temperature Station varies from their “Regional Expectation”, however that is computed.
Berkeley Earth – confirmation bias writ large; a warming temperature had to be found, it was a foregone conclusion. It would have been a travesty and a tragedy for the warm-ists and hot-ists alike should proper science have been performed and -no warming- been found in their ‘massaged’ data …
They use UHI to cool the past and warm the present; otherwise there would be a cooling trend and end the CAGW scam. So, from their prospective, they are indeed using UHI correctly — just as a Mafia hit man uses his gun correctly.
Even the dumbest among the Climate Liars realizes UHI is real. For any of those creeps to deny it exists is an outright blatant lie. But lying is what they do because it’s the only thing they have left to confirm their silly theory of global warming. They will become very desperate and will try to impose laws and jail sentences against anyone who disagrees with their evil viewpoints. The EPA will be their tool of jackbooted justice, among other means.
These people are among the most corrupt I’ve ever seen and read about. They disgust me.
Looks like Berkeley could use a communication system of some sort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYrj3aplVpI
Maybe Berkeley should talk to NASA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnBO4vX82Fs
Or maybe Berkeley just needs a new weatherman. Listen to what this meteorologist says at the 2:07 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HX2WRPmQdY
Or maybe the entire town with university at Berzerkly needs to just go away!!!!!
Tom Nelson points to a comparison of 1997 with 2014. It shows NOAA lowering past global temperature by more than 4F since 1997.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2015/02/noaa-settled-science-earth-at-5824f-in.html
NOAA hoist by their Global Analysis.
We need our own independent data network:
All the tools are available and won’t break the bank.
Raspberry PI weatherstation school project: http://www.raspberrypi.org/school-weather-station-project/
Tools of freedom and independence:
Wordpress, Raspberry PI, FreeNas, OpenBTS…
Look at that slope from 2 to 10 persons/km^2! Shows why stations deemed to be pristine rural can be contaminated with UHI. Using these “rural” stations for comparison to urban to determine UHI for the urban stations will lead to a severe underestimation of UHI. Sloppy shortcut methods of determining station quality such as MODIS measurement of night time light emissions just does not cut it. It will take more than Mosher hand waving to convince me that they have a handle on UHI in the surface temperature reconstructions.
I live well outside of any infrastructure, in between towns that have populations of less than 400 people. I typically see a 1-2F lower reading here than the hamlets on either side of me.
Interesting that compared to what Roy Spencer found Modis has only been around less than 20 years, so it is totally meaningless when looking for UHI starting 100 years ago, 75 years ago, 50 years ago.
But they are quite confident to make their adjusments (or not) accordingly.
You must get to a Saturation Point with UHI where it’s trend slows down, because of Urban Sprawl taking the new builds further from the Station which is centrally located.
The opposite of Urban Sprawl approaching a station location.
I suppose at saturation point what it will do is hold that heat bit longer at night.
There seems to be some confusion between UHI showing up at a global scale and the validity of extrapolating surface temperatures whose station distribution is heavily biased to urban areas. Everybody (with any sense) knows that urban areas represent a very small portion of the land surface.
Wickham et al first discovered that the BE dataset had a spatial resolution of only 6-7 miles, insufficient to determine if a station was urban or rural. This automatically precludes an explicit evaluation of UHI. What they do is select a subset of the data that is “way rural”, homogenize it further by using station trends, and compare the average trends of this subset to the average trends of the whole.
The net effect of all this is that they show no significant difference between the trends of way rural stations and the whole. It is just a laborious way of saying UHI is insignificant when averaged over the entire land surface and it continues a BE tradition of making “well, duh” pronouncements with great fanfare.
They acknowledge that real UHI effects are lurking in the average. The specific objection we all have is extrapolating this data to infill areas with no data. This procedure will unjustifiably amplify the urban siting bias.
https://geosciencebigpicture.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/uah-giss-best.png
To be fair, Wickham et al suggests that the BE trend which is steeper than GISS or UAH is not due to UHI effects alone. Thermometers in a box at something like human nose height have their own inherent bias. We get better information from satellites.