90% of U.S. Weather Monitoring Stations Are Giving Flawed Data

Regular readers of Watts Up With That already know this stuff, but for those of you who haven't followed his work, this will help explain why globaloney projections are a lot of bunk:

Researchers who have inspected climate monitoring stations across the U.S. have found that almost 90 percent of the weather monitoring stations have failed to meet National Weather Service requirements.

Anthony Watts, a retired meteorologist, and a team of over 650 volunteers, photographically documented 1003 out of 1,221 of the climate monitoring stations managed by the U.S. Weather Service. The results of this survey show that the temperature cited as proof of man-made global warming is laced with false biases in favor of alarmism.

“We found stations located next to 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,” Watts said. “We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.”

The research team also determined that 89 percent did not measure up to the National Weather Service’s requirement that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating source. This means almost 9 out of every 10 stations are reporting higher temperatures because they are badly sited.

“The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperatures of 0.7 degrees C (about 1.2 degrees F) during the twentieth century,” Watts said.

An analysis of 948 stations rated as of May 31, 2009, Watts estimates that 22 percent of stations have an expected error of 1 degree C, 61 percent have an expected error of 2 degrees C, and 8 percent have an expected error of 5 degrees C.

“This record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century,” he said. “Since the U.S. record is thought to be `the best in the world,’ it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.”

Watts has often run photos of weather sites showing the problems each site has with providing accurate data. We're being told we have to jack up our electricity rates and put industries out of business to stop warming that's based on bogus data.