I’ve been in this part of the world, and during summer they can be used heaps (tourist traffic). It’s also military, just north of the Kurdish area of Turkey, which has been of concern to the government for decades. The area is not sparsely populated at all - like most of these areas in Europe and Asia there is just heaps of stuff going on.

Some detail. That airport is mixed military/civilian, and there are 21 towns within a 5nm radius. The closest one is Gezkoy 2.1nm to the south, population about 4300. (Reference: http://www.fallingrain.com/icao/LTCE.html)

So this statement from section 2 of the paper “There are no buildings or human activities around the station except for the cultivated area which is 4 km from the station”

is flat out wrong. Check out Google Maps, apart from planes (which I count as human activity, but the author doesn’t), the place is surrounded by villages, small towns and at least one national highway (that’s the E80 to the south) and a railway line.

Here (http://www.farecompare.com/flights/Erzurum-ERZ/city.html) there’s a little more data on the airbase itself. Over 28 flights (scheduled) a week and 4500 passengers. In summer that could be higher due to charters (and there are a lot of charters in this part of the world during summer. Often they outnumber the scheduled flights, but I don’t know if that happens here). Don’t know how many private flights, but maybe not many.

I can’t get military data, but in this part of the world military activity is frequent and continuous. The Kurdistan area is just to the south where the Turks have been suppressing a revolt for years, and just south of there is Iraq. It’s got two runways so I’d expect a fair bit of activity.

By comparison, Santorini, an extremely popular Greek Island destination has only one even though it is big enough to have two.

If you’re unfamiliar with European package tours you also may not have realized that the beaches to the north are plenty accessible from here for charter flights, and Turkey is a popular destination right across Europe. It’s much cheaper than Greece and very similar in culture and beaches.

Another point, the mixing effect could very well be small, last para Sec 2 ” calm (windless or less than 2 m/s daily) [days]“. This airport is also in a valley surrounded by hills about 10km away on all sides.

The guy who did this is a landscape architect, not a scientist so maybe the quality of his work isn’t all that good.

I’ll put my money on turbine exhausts.

REPLY: I’m glad you agree that we should throw out airport weather station observations due to such influences as turbine exhausts. Many USHNC stations are now located in taxiway areas of airports.

Radiation vs. convection experimentation should be done, too.

Also to be considered is altitude (c. 2000m) and that Yilmaz measures 2m from the ground while surface stations are at 1.5m.

The Rev usually rates airport stations as CRN3, not CRN5, btw.

So far, LeRoy, Yilmaz , and the Lampasas and Baltimore observations all seem to be singing the same basic tune. Lampasas and Baltimore both used hooded stations.

Also, the new CRN station is wonderfully sited and will be running in tandem with the old USHCN stations, so we’ll have that comparison too, before long.

I will be willing to wait for further study. Since this is a “hot topic”, I am confident we’ll have a lot more to look at Real Soon Now.

It’s at the end of the runway! That thermometer is going to get regular blasts of hot air.

The grass one is directly between the two runways (which are not close together) ie. at the side of both away from direct exhaust blasts.

Secondly, your measurement site here is dealing with radiated heat, not convected heat. Thermometers are protected from radiation but open to convection.

And he’s an architect. Since when do architects get training in experimental design?

Jet exhaust effect would cover both concrete and nearby grass. This would not exaggerte the effects. If anything it would minimize them. Assuming he chose active areas of the airport (which I doubt).

I am happy to wait until further results are in. (I also guess the effects would be even greater at sea level.)

And, of course, there is LeRoy (1999) which is where NOAA got those estimates.

The gold speck in what LaDochy shows is that a constant sink exaggerates not only the offset but the actual trend. I repeat, the trend.

Aren’t we talking about microclimate? An airport runway is a pretty hot microclimate. I agree differences would be masked - by engine exhaust - and this study doesn’t compensate for it. Rather than smaller, the differences would be larger. (In fact, given the heat and volume of air from turbine exhausts the differences shown are more likely to be somewhere around 100% due to engine exhaust IMHO)

I can’t see the energy being radiated by a few square meters of concrete being anything like the same as required to get a plane in the air, it’s just silly.

What you have over the little slab is a small volume of air being heated and mixing with the much larger volume in the surrounding environment. No doubt you’ve been in front of a bar radiator? You’ll know then that you get very little convective heating, it’s all radiation, which the thermometer is shielded from.

I just don’t buy it. But if you want to prove me wrong, by inferring the installation date of the path and the magnitude of the “bias” from the data record - be my guest. How long before Anthony gets the data? A few days or will it be in June?

ps - LaDochy is looking at different regions and locations, not surfaces - at least as far as I can make out from the abstract, so I don’t think it’s that relevant to this particular site.

LaDochy, Medina, Patzert. 2007. Recent California climate variability: spatial and temporal patterns in temperature trends. Climate Research, 33
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v33/n2/p159-169/

Yes, which I noted earlier. it makes me more likely to believe it, not less, as it is not tied up in AGW politics.

Also, if it was conducted under typical airport UHI, the differences would be masked and made to appear smaller than they actually were.

But Yilmaz is merely in support of the LeRoy estimates from 1999, which are included in the NOAA/CRN handbook.

(Rev: You could have included the “HOT-L Baltimore” observations.)

You’ve also pointed out that stations are frequently resited, presumably because the old site is no longer compliant but the new site is.
. . .
Resiting most probably introduces negative “bias”

Your presumption, while not unreasonable, as such, turns out, on closer examination, to be not correct (or even close). Don’t blame yourself. Blame (grossly) inadequate SHAP on the part of the NOAA.

The MMTS switchover was the main reason for resiting. And that is the main reason there are so many CRN4 violations. Cable issues drew them right next to their housing. Result: massive numbers of violations. (Not adjusted for.)

I think you missed my point here. The data extends over 30 years (or even longer), and I don’t think very many stations would have been installed initially in violation of those standards. So the siting issues must come from changes that occurred in the surrounding environment *after* installation. On average those would have occurred at the half way point.

That means that only about half the data exhibits the “bias” you’re referring to.

You’ve also pointed out that stations are frequently resited, presumably because the old site is no longer compliant but the new site is.

So while I can accept that there is probably some positive skew, I can’t accept that it is all positive. Resiting most probably introduces negative “bias”

REPLY: No worries, Evan Jones posted it here oroginally.