Texas Record Summer Temperatures? Or UHI.
By Paul Homewood
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/statewide/time-series/
According to NOAA, Texas has just had its second warmest summer; only 2011 was hotter. And it’s a similar story in Dallas, which uses data from the Dallas Love Field FAA Airport:
All of this must come as surprise to anybody old enough to remember the killer heatwaves of the 1930s and 50s in the State.
So step forward the small city of Corsicana, which has a population of 25000 and is located 50 miles from Dallas:
The weather station at Corsicana has been part of the high quality U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) since 1880, which for years was used to quantify national and state temperature trends. By and large, USHCN sites were in small towns and rural areas, for obvious reasons. All USHCN stations had to meet high standards of equipment, siting and recording practices, to ensure the data was reliable.
Lo and behold, when we check the data there, we find that this summer was a long way from being the second warmest. Not only was it hotter in 2011, it was also in 1925, 1934, 1954 and 1998:
http://climod2.nrcc.cornell.edu/
For instance, the summer of 1954 averaged 87.3F, compared to 86.7F this year, a difference of 0.6F. But in Dallas the comparative figures were 88.9F and 89.6F, a difference of 0.7F.
Overall since 1954 therefore, temperatures in Dallas have increased by 1.3F in comparison to Corsicana, (0.6 + 0.7F).
Obviously there can be no climatological reason for this, as the two locations are so close. And metadata confirms that there have been no significant location changes at Corsicana, or any changes in time of observation.
The only possible cause of the discrepancy is, of course, UHI.
Further evidence that the Corsicana data is telling the real story lies in the number of days over 100F. Clearly the 1930s and 50s stand out for their heat:
Meanwhile, the correct climate trends have been adjusted away by GISS, homogenised to agree with all of the big city and airport temperature data:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=USC00412019&ds=14&dt=1
According to NOAA, Texas has warmed by 1.5F since the start of the 20thC, but their own data indicated that nearly all of this “warming” has been due to UHI:
https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/tx/
Some people would call this outright fraud!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I would call it fraud – but then I am an Engineer and we have to tell the truth in our science (unless we work for the German motor industry) or we can kill people.
In truth, other motor manufacturers must have been doing much the same thing, otherwise all their fuel consumption figures would not have been so similar. French diesel engines, for instance, were not significantly different to German ones.
R
If it’s just the “second warmest summer”, it’s not a record. End of story.
Correct …I’d wish someone would tell the BBC
It seems bizarre that the plan is to concentrate us into 15 minute heat islands where “climate change” will be so much worse.
Slightly related – on GB News today they have been reporting on the weather and flooding. In a clip from Newry in N Ireland they had an IRA – oops I mean Sin Fein – councillor claiming that the flooding was ‘unprecedented’ and that it was ‘the worst I have seen in my lifetime and I have been around a very long time’ but probably less than a century and probably less than 80 years by the look of him.
A later news clip had the local MP referring to floods is the 40s and 60s so more clued up than the councillor.
When I go to the original website for the graph showing adjustments, the line for the finally adjusted temperatures is in thick black, with the other lines including the unadjusted line almost invisible. Paul’s copy does not show this so extreme, so I am wondering why. If I am seeing the original the same as others, it clearly shows that some thought has gone into taking our eyes away from noticing how earlier recordings have been cooled, and the recent ones warmed. That makes me vey sceptical of the way the adjustments have been made.
The UHI increase effect is a combination of urban-sprawl and general building work near old sites and the use of fast response temperature measurement to replace relatively slow thermometers. The cooling of the old records is hard to justify and the justifications by NOAA are not convincing. Common sense would show that the present values ought to be reduced to allow for the distortion, while historical data should stand or be deleted if it is clearly incorrect.
Reducing current readings would be a problem because we can check our own multiple thermometers and know the wrongness of that being reported. I sense this is why they went with the cooling of the old records. Sort of “between a rock and a hard place” I think.
In either case, it is nonsense to call an average temperature “climate” and base society-destroying decisions therefrom.
“Cooking” makes no sense unless they can show that there is a systemic reason why temperatures were recorded above actual temperatures. If there is random error then you would expect the errors to net out to zero, not to fall almost entirely in one direction. I have seen no explanation why the past was supposedly not recorded properly.
Paul, excellent analysis. When looking for temperature trends, he big problem in global temperature data sets is the common increase of urbanization effects over time around many weather stations. In Texas, the population and thus urbanization, has been increasing rapidly since the 1800’s, especially in and around the large urban areas. This is also true around much of the globe, where many weather stations are located in and around large urban areas. I would not be surprised if as much as 50-75% of the analyzed global surface temperature increase in the past 100 years is from urbanization effects over time. The resulting increase of UHI effects over time increases summer maximum temperatures and increases winter minimum temperatures.
We still need to be cautious with sites in smaller towns, because localized urbanization effects over time can occur in these locations as well. For example, building of a paved parking area near the site, construction of new building nearby, or even the addition of a large air conditioning unit outside a nearby building. The US Climate Reference Network should greatly help in identifying future urbanization effects here in the USA. We need something similar globally.
The Central England Temp series has similar problems. Of the three temperature sites used, one was at Ringway (Manchester International Airport) and another was at Squires Gate (Blackpool ‘International’ Airport).
The Ringway temp site was at an intersection of three taxiways, next to the engine test stands, and had an aircraft taxying past every two or three minutes. Squires Gate was again on a taxiway, and although there were only six flights a day of large jet aircraft, this would still have an effect. I used to taxi past it, five times a week.
Ringway was such a problem, that the sensor was moved to Rothamstead agricultural college in about 2005. But the college built a tropical greenhouse, which effects the temp sensor in light northerly winds.
Squires Gate was also a real problem, because it is coastal. Thus during the summer a sea-breeze would set up and the temperature would decrease by five or ten degrees c, in comparison to Ringway or Rothamsted. Just how do you integrate a sensor into a temperature series, which plunges by such a huge amount on hit days?
And these effects are mostly ‘baked in’ to the CET series. It is very difficult to go back in the past, and readjust for the rise of Ringway as an international airport, and the vast increase in the size of aircraft it handled. In 40 years they went from small turboprops, to vast B747s and B777s.
And let’s not forget the introduction of sensors that would record transient temperatures. From personal experience, I can tell you that the exhaust from a 747 is warm to hot, even from a reasonable distance away. A 747 taxying out of LHR blew me off my feet, when it was two aircraft lengths away; and this was a noticeably warm to hot tempest, on a cool winter’s day.
In short, the only reliable temperature series, has to be the satellite record.
Ralph
I remember the very hot summer of 1954 — in Western Pennsylvania.
There is info for Pittsburgh that, I suspect was from the airport, but
I was 62 miles to the northeast in a rural setting, so no information.
The point is that this was a system that spanned much of the Nation.
Very clear cooling trend from 1950 through to around 1990 in all the data. Corsicana shows 70 days out of 90 above 100F in 1934! That’s remarkably warm.
Records?
Understand that records are USELESS when analyzing climate. Outliers are tossed out. Climate tells us what to expect; weather is what we get. When you want to know the expected temperature at Portimao in March, record data does you no good, except maybe as an asterisk.
‘Climate experts’ proclaiming records reveal they don’t even know what climate means. Cirrusly, any ‘climate’ report referencing records . . . highest temperature evah . . . is a declaration of ignorance.