Is massive UHI warming in China distorting Jones et al gridded T data ?

A recent paper discussing long term temperature trends in China presents a graphic of century long trends including the Jones data.

ZHAO Zongci, DING Yihui, LUO Yong, and WANG Shaowu, “Recent Studies on Attributions of Climate Change in China” , Acta Meteorologica Sinica 2005, Vol 19, 389-400.”

The caption refers to four trends from various sources being coloured but my copy was B & W. Anyway, it is clear there is much agreement and what really tweaked my interest was the strong warming post 1970.

Using the gridded data downloadable from www.CO2science.org comparisons have been made between the Jones data and the UAH / NASA satellite MSU data for the period (1979-2005). Results in Table A for a block of eight grid cells covering much of Eastern China were quite stunning in revealing a difference of 0.96 degrees C for the 27 year period 1979-2005.

Jones vs MSU trends 1979-2005

Can anyone have any doubt that the reason for this huge difference is in fact the influence of rapidly expanding UHI warming on China weather station data?

Similar experiments were repeated over Europe, Central Asia / Russia, Sahara to Iran(added 18 Aug) and New Zealand. Results are set out in Table A and reveal a stark contrast to the blizzard of pro-IPCC views in recent times that global temperature datasets from the surface and lower troposhere are now in substantial agreement following corrections by the UAH team.

Any agreement in global trends between the various datasets is probably due to the averaging of various errors from here and there to give an appearance of agreement.

4 thoughts on “Is massive UHI warming in China distorting Jones et al gridded T data ?”

  1. The only comment I would make here is that temperature aggregates based on grids as commonly used in climate have no physical analogs – they are essentially numerical conveniences and this ought to be removed from scientiific analysis because they have no physical meaning.

  2. Are the results similar when using the RSS satellite temps instead of the UAH satellite temps? I think the hard-core warmers will object to any results derived from Christy’s data, regardless of how accurate it is.

  3. Looking at the RSS website, their TLT channel is not updated past end 2004. I would expect RSS to be a little more than UAH. Readers can take that into account. The warmers will never accept what I say anyway NGS. The differences with Jones are hardly marginal. If anyone knows a source for RSS gridded data other than their maps, please let me know.

  4. 30 years ago, in the area of Guangdong and environs, you had essentially one big city, Hong Kong, politically separated, its growth contained by its boders, growing vertically and by landfill. Guangzhou was an old, sleepy, medium sized city. Look at what has happened since. Now, there is forming a single connurbation stretching from Macao up along the W. bank of the Pearl River / Delta up through Guangzhou then down the east side into HK. There is very little separation any more between the nodes of urbanization there. The same scenario has been repeated across the Eastern PRC. Separated, nodal UHI has become mass ATD (anthropogenic thermal dissipation).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.