Global Warming - Greenhouse Effects, Global Warming, Climate Change

GLOBAL WARMING
A fraudulent notion based on corrupted data *
The central contention of these pages is that for over a decade the IPCC has published global temperature trends distorted by purely local warmth from Urban Heat Islands (UHI's). These spurious trends have been promoted as “smoking gun” evidence of greenhouse warming. The data were generated by Dr. P.D. Jones and others (1986, 91 & 94), mainly from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia at Norwich in the UK. The CRU and the IPCC claim that our atmosphere has warmed by ~0.6 to 0.8 degrees Celsius since the late 19th Century, and ascribe most of this to an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Ever since the beginning of the greenhouse scare, astute observers have suspected that urban heat was responsible for a large slice of the purported warming. The IPCC has stonewalled, telling policymakers that the urban heat island issue has "...been taken account of." This site proves the contrary. There is simply no systematic compensation for urban warming in the Jones dataset. Occasionally there is a slight adjustment in a record for a site change or other anomaly but the majority of records are used “raw”. This applies even to large cities with large, documented heat islands – e.g. Los Angeles, Chicago, Sydney, Johannesburg etc. etc. In recent years, two independent remote sensing methods – nightlight pictures and infrared heat imaging – have clarified the extent of urban heat islands. Their evidence is incontrovertible. Nightlight images show that the bulk of CRU’s records come from lit areas of the surface. Infrared imaging shows that many are from cities with huge heat islands – enough to raise the annual average temperature by 2-3 degrees Celsius compared to the surrounding countryside.

The problem should have been obvious all along. The UHI was first identified in London 200 years ago, and many studies have shown that it can raise the temperature even in small towns. But political correctness, a desire not to "rock the boat", the corrupting influence of "greenhouse funding" on the science and sheer wishful thinking have made the urban heat island a tabu subject in the greenhouse debate. This site breaks that tabu. It turns the spotlight on individual city records included in the CRU dataset, and also examines the CRU results for various "grid cells" across the globe. It leaves no doubt that the CRU temperature graphs are contaminated with pervasive and substantial urban heat which has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. Satellite images of night lights have been published by NASA and give a good indication of the location of urban areas over the entire earth. Taking the same midwest USA area as the Infra Red image above, this is a small preview of how the Jones / IPCC temperature stations are dominantly located in urban regions.

The IPCC tell policymakers that the urban heat island issue has "...been taken account of.." Sure, we can see that, their data is collected mainly from UHI areas. Follow the Earthlights link for larger images of the USA with Jones stations located. See "City reviews" link at left for UHI contamination in Chicago compared to more rural neighboring stations. Below is a classic example of century long growth in small town UHI contamination from the region shown above:

The graphic shows the Jones 1994 record for Peoria, Illinois, compared with the average of four nearby rural stations from the US HCN for the 1910-1995 period for which the most complete data is available. In 1910 Peoria is the cooler, but as its population grows it works its way up and finishes warmer than the four rurals. The trend lines generated in MS Excel demonstrate that in this case the inclusion of a small town, pop. 114,000 inserts ~0.6 degrees Celsius per century of urban warming into the IPCC / CRU / Jones compilation of "global warming". This is the "urban contamination" sceptics talk about.
Peoria (Jones 1994) compared to the average of Minonk, Galva, Rushville, La Harpe.

A few more quick comments on the Peoria graph and mid west region of USA. [1] Corrected Peoria data from NCDC and GISS follows closely the rural trend above, so Dr Jones is in a minority of one by using the UHI affected Peoria. [2] In the 5 degree grid cell containing Chicago, that is between 85 and 90 degrees west and 40 to 45 degrees north, Jones 94 uses no rural stations. Dr Jones claims to be measuring regional temperature trends by using data from Chicago (+6 million), Milwaukee (1.4 million), Grand Rapids (600,000), Madison (324,000), Fort Wayne, Green Bay, Peoria, Rockford, South Bend, and Urbana all between 100,000 and 200,000 population. The list of twelve stations is rounded off by Muskegon Air Port (listed as 40,000 population by the GHCN and nearby Grand Haven at 12,000.

* Refers to thermometer based measures of global temperature changes over the last 150 or so years as promoted by the IPCC.