[lug] Anyone else hate to get rid of old equipment?

[Nate Duehr]

On 6/8/2010 3:54 PM, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> I am not an expert on this by any chance, I just googled and found
> http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html which
> says:
>
> [1950 to 1980] During this time, many sites were relocated from city
> locations to airports and from roof tops to grassy areas. This often
> resulted in cooler readings than were observed at the previous sites.
>
> If you are not satisfied, you might want to ask NOAA or the authors of
> the report you question.
>
> Regards,
> Davide
>    
And there's at least one very well documented case of one moving to the 
airport in Hawaii, and going way way up due to the heating of the runway 
enviornment, while another NOAA station (that could have been used) not 
too far away showed zero change.

Guess which station is in the published data for climate research and 
which one isn't because NOAA literally forgot it existed? :-)  Heh heh...

Fun stuff.  Can't figure out where I put that link for that story now... 
it was a good one 'cause it didn't require a math geek to see the raw 
data went wacko when moved to the airport.

(As a pilot, I've always been used to having the weather from the FAA at 
airports, some of those stations are used for NOAA data, others aren't. 
I believe most of the automated stations are kept out of the 
climatological data... those stations are not all that reliable, and 
they've been around for a decade or more now.  (AWOS)  I've heard some 
AWOS stations reporting stuff that's just completely bogus... and all 
pilots are taught to listen to the recording/voice at least 3 times 
through to average out the raw data in our own heads... the station 
doesn't do it.  Wind data is especially squirrelly.  I'll take a trained 
weather spotter/air traffic controller over an AWOS any day of the week, 
and twice on Sundays... for safety reasons... but some airports only 
have AWOS, and then it's "better than nothing".)

Nate