Weather Garbage In - Environmentalist Garbage Out?

Former TV weatherman Anthony Watts of Chico, Ca. has started a project to check on the condition of all of the 1,221 weather stations used by the NOAA. Those stations are the basis for many predictions of future weather and Watts is finding problems with many of them; they are next to parking lots, tennis courts, air conditioning units, buildings, tarmacs and even a MIG 15. One of the interesting posts notes a properly placed weather station that has not moved in 50 years, the accompanying temperature chart shows little temperature change at that location over the fifty years. Many of the offending weather stations have had notable upturns in temperature during the last few decades, in one case coinciding the construction of an apartment complex and tennis courts next to the station. Mr. Watts has put his project on at Surfacestations.org (that has crashed after an Instalaunch) to further his project and check up on the input data to these vaunted long-term computer models to predict the weather.

Hat Tip: Instapundit.