Environment C‑class | ||||||||||
|
Weather C‑class Mid‑importance | ||||||||||
|
|
Keenan alleges fraud by Wang on UHI relied on by IPCC
Added:
Douglas J. Keenan has “formally alleged that Wei-Chyung Wang committed fraud in some of his research,including research cited by the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007) on “urban heat islands” (a critical issue).”[1]
This is a formal published allegation. Some web sites with further information:
- Douglas Keenan's remarks on his exposé, “The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”. Informath.org
- Douglas Keenan, InformathAllegations of fraud at Albany - the Wang case scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com
- Climate Science Fraud at Albany University? WattsUpWithThat.com DLH (talk) 02:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
- Reverting this. E&E is not a reliable source for scientific studies (its a non-peer reviewed social science journal). Given that the researcher's University officially cleared him of any wrongdoing, there is a pretty high bar to overcome before the evidence of any fraud (or willful coverup by his University) is valid and merits an inclusion here. Furthermore, Jones et al is hardly the only study out there on UHI...Zeke Hausfather (talk) 05:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
- Read something this a while ago but can't remember the details (ha ha, this I suppose). If you are correct that the researcher has been cleared, then either the original addition was deliberately partial with the truth or just doesn't know the issue well; neither speaks well for inclusion. I don't know whether this has any substance or merits inclusion William M. Connolley (talk) 08:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
- Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI) considers its articles in Energy and Environment as peer reviewed. What evidence that it is not "peer reviewed"? It lists a large number of reviewers. DLH (talk) 05:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
- It claims to be peer reviewed, but the process has been severely criticized. As KDP (IIRC) found out, Scopus lists it as a trade journal, and ISI does not index it at all. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Looking for some peer-reviewed literature about urban heat island effect and global temperatures? As far as I know this story primarily involves Chinese temperature records. In this case, I recommend you the following one:
P. D. Jones, D. H. Lister, Q. Li: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China. Journal of Geophysical Research, 2008. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
From the abstract: "Global surface temperature trends, based on land and marine data, show warming of about 0.8°C over the last 100 years. This rate of warming is sometimes questioned because of the existence of well-known Urban Heat Islands (UHIs). [...] In the main part of the paper, for China, we compare a new homogenized station data set with gridded temperature products and attempt to assess possible urban influences using sea surface temperature (SST) data sets for the area east of the Chinese mainland. We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C/decade over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period."
So in the case of China the amount of warming caused by urban heat islands over the period between 1951-2004 is 0.53 deg.C according to the paper above, and if I try to extrapolate the linear trend until this year, I will get 0.59 deg.C in 59 years. Compared to the observed surface warming in the last 150 years, it is lightyears away from being insignificant (even if it's only a local effect, but I think not).
To anyone who is interested in UHIs personally: go to GISTEMP surface station data browse page ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ ) and search for some urban stations, and then compare their records with neighbouring rural stations. You will have interesting results... I recommend this one first:
NY Central Park http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425725030010&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1 West Point http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425725030050&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.144.178.41 (talk) 15:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Just to throw it out there
The "adjustment" that NASA did for the urban heat island effect [1] was done by adjusting urban temperatures by using rural stations. The obvious problem with that method is that people tend to settle in coastal areas or next to water (look at the night sky map they used) and coastal areas tend to be cooler than inland areas. So if they are adjusting urban areas (more likely to be close to water) based on data from rural (more likely to be inland) areas, then their adjustments would show higher temperatures.
Anyone with access to full text research databases know if anyone has done a study on this or adjusted for this rather obvious problem? TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
- Well, first any adjustments are not done is such a naive way, but typically using equivalent stations or gridded averages. But, more importantly, you compare temperature changes, not absolute temperatures. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
- Being equivalent isn't the same as being equal. Last time I checked they didn't even try to correct for something as obvious as the UHI until nearly the year 2000. Also, comparing temperature changes in these different areas wouldn't make much sense - obviously the changes would be greater in inland areas due to less wind and more heat absorption (due to less albedo). TheGoodLocust (talk) 16:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
- Well, maybe you should either check more carefully or more often then. And you don't seem to get the gist of my comment. Yes, the procedure you wrongly presume has been used would not be a good one. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
- How do I wrongly presume such a procedure was used? I am describing their method as described in my nasa link (next topic). TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
- ^ The Fraud Allegation Against Some Climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang, Energy & Environment, Vol. 18, No. 7+8, 2007 pp 985-995