Climate Change Weekly #503: Official Temperature Data Isn’t ‘Data’ At All

Even before our first surface stations report in 2009, The Heartland Institute led the way in reporting on problems with the surface temperature record.

We have highlighted how the surface station record did not correspond to the temperatures recorded by global satellites and weather balloons, two alternative temperature data sources whose data sets closely track each other. Heartland has repeatedly exposed instances in both the United States and abroad where official agencies tamper with past temperature data at pristine stations, adjusting it to appear cooler than what was actually recorded, while adjusting recent temperatures upward. We were all over the adjustments made by corrupt NOAA scientists in 2015 before the Paris climate treaty negotiations—mixing data from unbiased ocean buoys with heat-biased temperature measurements taken from ships’ engine water intake inlets, which made it appear the ocean was suddenly warming faster than before.

Also, first, foremost, and most forcefully, we independently documented the serious problems with the official surface temperature record arising from the fact that the vast majority of temperature stations are poorly sited. Stations fail NOAA’s own standards for quality, unbiased stations in reporting temperatures skewed by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

My colleague, award-winning meteorologist Anthony Watts, in 2009, and then again, as a follow-up, in 2022, detailed with station location data and photographic evidence the problematic surfaces stations. Stations providing official data that were sited in locations where surrounding surfaces, structures, and equipment radiated stored heat or emitted heat directly biasing or driving the recorded temperatures higher than were recorded at stations in the same region, uncompromised by the well-known UHI (that is widely ignored by alarmists and official government agencies).

Of the sampling of hundreds of stations across the country Watts and his volunteer team documented in 2009, Watts wrote:

We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations—nearly 9 of every 10—fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements …

The media and the government took notice of Watts findings, the latter producing official responses which admitted the problem, while claiming the temperature record, despite the gross violation of established rules for sound temperature data collection, was still valid and reliable.

Even while claiming “no harm, no foul,” the government shuttered some of the most egregiously sited stations highlighted in Watts’ report, and established an alternative temperature network, consisting only of unbiased stations, the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), consisting of new stations with state-of-the-art equipment sited in locations unlikely to ever be impacted by the UHI. The temperature data set from the USCRN, for anyone who cares, displays about half the warming and a slower rate of warming than the broader U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) used by the government in its official reports claiming unprecedented warming. In fact, the data from the relatively few well-sited, unbiased USHCN stations, when compared to the network as a whole, also show half the warming reported by the government. The government has good data, it just doesn’t report or count it as official.

Simultaneously, the government added thousands of previously uncounted temperature stations maintained by various agencies and private parties to the official network—existing stations added without any quality control.

The result of the latter effort was predictably disastrous from the perspective of producing a high quality, trustworthy record of surface temperatures uninfluenced by the UHI. Watts’ follow-up report, based on an investigation conducted in 2022, found that the record was now even worse. Watts and his team of volunteers documented with location data and photographs a sample of 128 stations across 11 states. (I traveled to and documented five stations in North Central and East Texas myself.) They found, as reported in a summary of the study:

Of the 128 stations surveyed, only two were found to be Class 1 (best-sited) stations: Dubois, the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Farm, and the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Farm. Just three stations were found to be Class 2 (acceptably sited), while the remaining 123 stations were found to be Class 3, 4, and 5, and therefore considered unacceptably sited.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.,” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”

Now, an investigative report by Katie Spence, a journalist at The Epoch Times, exposes an additional problem with the U.S. surface temperature record—a failing, if anything, even more egregious than the issues I’ve discussed so far: many “stations” allegedly “reporting” temperatures, don’t actually exist anymore, and haven’t for years. The government is just making up the data reported from many locations based on an averaging of temperatures recorded at other locations in the region. Describing the situation, The Epoch Times writes:

When recalling past temperatures to make comparisons to the present, and, more importantly, inform future climate policy, officials such as [United Nations secretary-general António] Guterres and President Biden rely in part on temperature readings from the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN).

The network was established to provide an “accurate, unbiased, up-to-date historical climate record for the United States,” NOAA states, and it has recorded more than 100 years of daily maximum and minimum temperatures from stations across the United States.

The problem, say experts, is that an increasing number of USHCN’s stations don’t exist anymore.

And it’s not just a few missing stations providing made-up numbers. said Lt. Col. John Shewchuk, a certified consulting meteorologist, who was interviewed by Spence for the story. He reported that:

USHCN stations reached a maximum of 1,218 stations in 1957, but after 1990 the number of active stations began declining due to aging equipment and personnel retirements.

NOAA still records data from these ghost stations by taking the temperature readings from surrounding stations, and recording their average for the ghost station, followed by an “E,” for estimate.

“NOAA fabricates temperature data for more than 30 percent of the 1,218 USHCN reporting stations that no longer exist,” [said Shewchuk.] “They are physically gone—but still report data—like magic, …”

With his hands-on experience tracking the surface stations, Watts was consulted for the report, as well. As The Epoch Times investigative journalists write, he told them:

The addition of the ghost station data means NOAA’s “monthly and yearly reports are not representative of reality,” said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute.

“If this kind of process were used in a court of law, then the evidence would be thrown out as being polluted.”

Temperature data from compromised biased stations, temperatures reported from non- existent ghost locations, temperature data adjusted or homogenized to fit a narrative, and independent sources of data from the surface (USCRN), satellites, and weather balloons, that report much less warming than recorded at the compromised, adjusted, and now evidently non-existent stations: it leads one to question why anyone should trust the official government reports on rapidly rising, regularly record-setting temperatures. Such fake data wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny in a court of law. It surely shouldn’t be relied upon to drive public policies limiting the freedom of billions of people in their personal and economic lives.

Sources: The Epoch Times; The Heartland Institute; The Heartland Institute