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A Reexamination of Climate Change Issues

The SurfaceStations.Org Project

 December 4, 2009

A large proportion of official weather stations are misconfigured to bias temperature readings to be higher than they should be.
A large proportion of official weather stations are misconfigured to bias temperature readings to be higher than they should be.

Grass roots efforts by a website SurfaceStations.org has surveyed over 1000 USHCN weather measuring stations so far, checking the legitimacy of their configurations. It is shown that a large proportion of the stations have issues such as being placed too close to hot air conditioner exhaust or being surrounded by pavement and concrete.

Criteria used are based on NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Site Handbook.



Noticeable Temperature Differences Depending on Weather Station Configurations

A large proportion of weather measuring stations across the country are shown to bias their readings, due to initially being misconfigured and also due to changing land use over time which increasingly surrounds the stations with environmental factors such as asphalt or concrete, and also such heat generating objects as air conditioners.


Data collected shows that over half of the temperature measuring stations in the United States may bias their temperatures by as much as 2 degrees C.


“Here is a well maintained and well suited USHCN station. This station in Orland, CA has been in the same location for over 100 years.”


“This site in Marysville, CA has been around for about the same amount of time, but has been encroached upon by growth in a most serious way by micro-site effects.”






Images of Misconfigured Weather Stations from SurfaceStations.org

Following are samples of images of misconfigured weather stations from the website SurfaceStations.org. Currenly the configurations of over 1000 stations across the country have been documented on this site.

Santa Rose, CA


Paso Robles, CA


Eastport, Maine


Titusville, FLA


Forestgrove, OR


Lovelock, NV. (A large light bulb is in the thermometer shelter as well.)


Marysville, CA


Roseburg, OR


Detroit Lakes, MN


Tahoe City, CA












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