There was controversy,
over Germany’s all-time
record high temperature,
recorded last year
in North Germany,
near the Dutch border.
Last year, on July 25th,
the Lingen thermometer
reached 42.6°C., versus
the old German
record of 40.3°C.
Independent
meteorologists
said the readings
needed to be
thrown out
because the
station data
were corrupted
by serious siting
issues.
The Lingen
weather station
is located
in a depression
in the earth,
near a parking lot,
and shielded
by trees from
the wind, creating
ideal conditions
for trapping heat.
Comparisons to nearby
stations show huge
differences !
Surrounding stations
do not even come close
to the record reading
in Lingen.
Consider the six
nearby stations,
over the five day period,
July 23 – July 27, 2019:
-- On every single day,
Lingen was hotter
than its neighbors
by +3 to +4 degrees C. !
Recently:
On May 20th, 2020,
the Lingen station
had 23.6 degrees.
All neighboring stations
were below 20 degrees C.
On May 10, 2020,
the Lingen station
was 27.7 degrees C.,
while neighboring
stations were barely
over 24 degrees.
German meteorologist
Dominik Jung:
“massively doubts the results
of the station in Lingen”
and that
“it is dubious that the DWD allows
such a weather station at all.”
Jung adds:
“The station should be moved.”
Meteorologist
Dr. Karsten Brandt
of donnerwetter.de:
“The station in Lingen
has the problem that it is
located in a depression,
which heats up
the temperatures.
This is definitely not
the warmest place
in Germany.”
Germany’s DWD
National Weather Service,
which operates the station,
and loves to report
a new heat record,
ignored the siting
issues and plans
to accept the Lingen
readings, claiming
them to be of good
scientific quality.
If it was a cold
weather record,
you can be
confident the
reading would
have been
rejected due to
the poor siting !
The U.S. answer
to bad siting:
A relatively new
( 2005 ) network
of rural temperature
stations located
away from likely
economic growth
and land use changes:
“In January 2005, NOAA began recording temperatures at its newly built U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). USCRN includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states. NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.”
“The USCRN has eliminated the need to rely on, and adjust the data from, outdated temperature stations. Strikingly, as shown in the graph below, USCRN temperature stations show no warming since 2005 when the network went online. If anything, U.S. temperatures are now slightly cooler than they were 14 years ago”
“The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was established to give the most accurate temperature readings compared to the old Cooperative Observer Network (COOP) which suffers from urban encroachment, siting problems, and a multitude of human induced inhomgeneities such as station moves, incomplete data, closed stations, and runway condition stations at airports that were never designed to report climate data”