Fabricating Temperatures on the DEW Line

Would you want to do this every day?

Photos Courtesy Brian Jeffrey - click image for more photos from the era

Stevenson Screen placement in relation to heated buildings- click for larger image

Today I received an email that contained some startling revelations about the Weather Stations that were put in place on the DEW Line, a network of cold war era radar monitoring stations in Canada and Alaska, that have now been abandoned. It makes for interesting reading. The sender Robert J. Chouinard was stationed at one of these and responsible for the weather observations. I don’t doubt the accuracy of his report.

You see, in the early to mid 60’s, during the height of the cold war, I was stationed in the Canadian Arctic as a radar and communications technician on the Distant Early Warning Radar Line (DEW Line).  Besides our main objective of spotting Russian bombers coming over the pole to drop atomic bombs on North American cities, we were tasked with making weather observations and synoptically reporting to a data collection center somewhere down south.  This was well before satellites and maybe even before mainframe computers were employed for this task.  The synoptic reports were compiled by elves and analyzed by someone who was supposed to know what they were doing.  Their objective was to forecast the immediate weather which they didn’t do very well.  The whole process was considered a joke by everyone who was involved in the process but we had to play along with the charade.

For numerous reasons many reports were fabricated. No one imagined their fabrications would comprise a data set that would, in future years, be used to detect minor global warming trends and trigger a panic in the world.

Some of the reasons why the reports were fabricated:
1.  Their purpose was only to help with, what was considered, the futile efforts at weather forecasting, not studies on global warming.  (The significance of the difference between -55F and -45F was not appreciated.  Both temperatures would freeze your balls off.  So why split hairs?)
2.  Often, this activity interfered with our primary objective.  This was because of manning problems which would take a lot of explaining and which I will not go into.
3.  Some of the other reasons for fabricating reports:
(a.)  physical discomfort of leaving a warm environment and venturing out into the extreme weather conditions to read mercury thermometers located about 200 ft. from the living modules.
(b.) fear of frost bite, getting disoriented by limited visibility, or being mauled by marauding polar bears.  (Did you know that more Eskimos get killed from polar bears in Greenland than die of heart attack?  I have always been stoic about dying, but being mauled by a polar bear was my greatest nightmare.)
(c.)  plain old laziness.
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When you feed this tainted old data into computers for analysis, well GIGO.  I realize that the referenced study covered a later period but I doubt that the human element changed much.  What more can I say?

Tough choice: get the temperature, get mauled, or stay safely indoors and make something up. Photo Courtesy Brian Jeffrey

Indeed, the human element has always been the weakest point of any of our temperature measurement systems, otherwise NCDC would not need FILNET to “fill in” missing data from stations by interpolating other data from nearby stations.

Missing data happens even when polar bears aren’t prowling between you and the thermometer. For example, look at this B91 form provided by the Marysville California observer (PDF format). Note all the missing days. Thanks to NCDC’s FILNET program, those missing days get made up into a complete data set much like the data on the DEW line did. With a “best guess” programmed into a data sorting and analysis program.

Fabricating or guessing data is usually met with serious repercussions in other fields, yet the current state of climate science seems to accept FILNET created data or data from remote outposts like these without question. My question is, if the human network is this unreliable, how do you know that the data from nearby stations your are interpolating from isn’t a product of “just plain laziness”?

I wonder how well the Russians did with their temperature data gathering in similar remote outposts?

UPDATE: Name of DEW line observer added with permission, and new photo added at 7:30AM 7/18/08

UPDATE2: Some clarifications from the original source have been added below.

Dear Mr. Watts:

Here is some follow-up information which you can do with as you wish.  Maybe you could post it as a comment.

Robert J. Chouinard

APS Editor Reverses Position on Global Warming- cites “Considerable presence” of skeptics

Viscount Monckton gives a presentation during the 2007 Conference on Climate Change

From Mike Asher at the DailyTech:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.  The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.   A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Complete article here

(h/t Fred)

 

UPDATE: 7/18/08 9PM PST It appears there is some discord at the APS over the issue.

The higher ups at the American Physical Society, apparently do not agree with the editor that made the initial post and reaffirms the statement on human caused global warming, posting this statement on their web site www.aps.org:

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

There has certainly been a lot of argument and rhetoric surrounding this issue, and I’ve taken a fair amount of criticism for even posting it, with one commenter exclaiming that I was “popping champagne corks” while another said that “I couldn’t wait to talk about it as a major hole in the case for doing something to clean up air pollution.” which is curious, since I never made any comments about “celebrating with champagne”, “air pollution” or “major hole in the case”.

What this story does is demonstrate how politically and emotionally charged the issue has become. And when politics, emotions, and science mix, the outcome is never good.