Temperature Issues

Dr. Roy Spencer is a rarity in climate science, a person who is actually interested in the truth, not spewing the climate hysteria narrative.  He is fortunate that he retains government funding, due to the power of Alabama’s senators.  His work is always based in data and sound analysis.  He thinks the data suggests there may be some human-caused warming over the last few decades, but far less than claimed by the whackos and he doesn’t anticipate huge amounts of additional warming.  He is a true temperature expert because his institute runs the satellites that collect temperature and he reports every month on those temperatures and the temperature trend.  His blog is at www.drroyspencer.com.  It is a must read to get accurate climate information.

One of his recent focuses has been the extent to which the urban heat island effect impacts temperature analyses.  The urban heat island is caused by large concentrations of people in one area, with the associated buildings, paved roads, energy producing activities, etc.  All this tends to create heat which raises the measured temperature, which has nothing to do with CO2 levels.  One way of adjusting for the uban heat effect has been to use rural thermometer locations, but as Dr. Spencer notes in a new post, as even smaller towns have grown, there is a potential impact on measured temperatures.  And because one of the adjustments favored by the climate hysterics is to smear temperature in one area across adjacent areas, high urban area temperatures have a disproportionate impact across a wider region.

Dr. Spencer’s work has attempted to quantify this impact.  His most recent work suggests the effect is quite large, accounting for a big part of the supposed overall warming.  In wilderness to very rural areas, the effect is quite small, but in suburban to urban areas, the effect accounts for almost all of the alleged warming in the last 100 years.  (Spencer Post)