Four stations classed as rural in the V2 GHCN have sufficiently complete data to compare with Charleston.
These stations are Kingstree, Darlington, Cheraw and Morehead City.
In this grid cell Jones 1986 and 1991 only used the cities of Charleston,
Wilmington and the town of Florence with populations of 506,000, 56,000 and
30,000 respectively ( pop. data from the GHCN).
No additional stations were included in the 1994 update and only Charleston
has data through 1995.
Florence only has data to 1980 and Wilmington to 1990. Both of
these stations data quality is poorer than Charleston so they are not
considered further. More up to date data may turn up in the future.
There is no representation of rural data in the Jones et al compilation yet as we shall see there are rural stations available.
Charleston is used by Jones et al 1986 without any corrections and station notes show that comparisons were made with Savannah, Jacksonville and Wilmington. All stations that could be expected to have UHI contamination in the data. No comparisons were made by Jones et al with rural stations.
The map below shows the stations discussed on this page.
Four stations classed as rural in the V2 GHCN have sufficiently complete data
to compare with Charleston.
These stations are Kingstree, Darlington, Cheraw and Morehead City.
To keep the page simple the trends for Charleston from GISS and the US
HCN have not been shown but they show less warming than the Jones version
over the last century.
Charleston has data back to the 1820's and the Jones trend 1823-1995
cools by about a half degree C.
As shown in the next graphic, over the period from 1910 to 1995 the rural
stations average a cooling of near 0.5 degree C while Charleston Jones 1994
shows no trend
The most serious warming bias in the Jones data is showing up in recent decades
where Jones version for Charleston is warming at about 1.25 degrees C over
the 1969 to 1995 period.
The following two graphs shows this recent anomalous warming in the
Jones data compared to the four rural stations and the three versions of
Charleston from US climate groups.
To sum up the position in this grid cell, we find that over the last century
and in recent decades the only current Jones station, Charleston,
demonstrates artificial warming on a scale with global warming when compared
to nearby rurals and US climate groups versions of Charleston.
Posted 8, August, 2001
You saw it first here.
© Warwick Hughes, 2000, 2001
globalwarming-news.com
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