Hundreds of “ghost” climate stations are no longer operational, but are still assigned temperatures from surrounding stations, raising questions about the accuracy of climate data used to inform policy.
By yourNEWS Media Staff
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts that the months of July, August, and September will be hotter than usual. For those who view warmer temperatures as problematic, this is a significant cause for concern. However, experts have raised questions about the accuracy of the temperature data used to inform climate policy.
The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) was established to provide an accurate, unbiased, up-to-date historical climate record for the United States. However, an increasing number of USHCN’s stations no longer exist, according to Lt. Col. John Shewchuk, a certified consulting meteorologist. NOAA still records data from these “ghost” stations by taking the temperature readings from surrounding stations and recording their average for the ghost station, followed by an “E,” for estimate.
Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute, said that the addition of ghost station data means NOAA’s monthly and yearly reports are not representative of reality. “If this kind of process were used in a court of law, then the evidence would be thrown out as being polluted,” he said.
NOAA’s complete record of USHCN data is available on its website, making it a vital tool for scientists examining temperature trends since before the Industrial Revolution. However, the use of ghost station data raises questions about the accuracy of the data and its usefulness in informing policy decisions.
Jamal Munshi, emeritus professor at California’s Sonoma State University, wrote in a 2017 paper that because many of the stations in the USHCN, and their data, date back to the 1800s, they have been widely used in the study of global warming. “The fear of anthropogenic global warming has generated a great interest in temperature trends such that even minute changes in the temperature record are scrutinized,” he wrote. “Energy and development policy around the world are impacted by these evaluations.”
Mr. Shewchuk said that the USHCN data is the only long-term historical temperature data the United States has. “In these days of apparent ‘climate crisis,’ you would think that maintaining actual temperature reporting stations would be a top priority—but they instead manufacture data for hundreds of non-existent stations. This is a bizarre way of monitoring a climate claimed to be an existential threat,” he said. “Observed data is real. Altered and fabricated data is not real. Period.”
The website noaacrappy lists all of the ghost, or “zombie” stations, their location, how long they’ve been closed, and then links to NOAA’s recordings. Significantly, the map shows that not all of the stations used to interpolate temperature data are near the closed station. Thus, hypothetically, it’s possible that since Oklahoma City’s stations are all “zombies,” interpolation data is coming from as far away as Gainesville, Texas, which is more than 136 miles away, and Enid, Oklahoma, which is more than 100 miles away.
Mr. Shewchuk said that fixing temperature reporting stations is not rocket science. “If we can go up to space to fix the Hubble telescope, we can surely come down to earth to fix a few thermometers,” he said.
NOAA’s use of ghost temperature stations is not a recent phenomenon. In 2014, Mr. Watts raised the issue of ghost stations and bad data with NOAA’s chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, Tom Peterson, and Texas’ state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, who confirmed there was an issue. However, the fix never materialized. “They’re still doing it, and it’s even worse,” Mr. Watts said.
NOAA’s Cooperative Observer Program, which includes the USHCN stations, is a network of daily weather observations taken by more than 8,500 volunteers, its webpage states. Mr. Watts said the process for volunteers is labor-intensive and requires a lot of dedication and effort. As a result, observers have been disappearing, and when that happens, instead of subtracting the unmanned station from the overall number of USHCN stations, NOAA creates a number from surrounding stations. “As a result, we end up with this milkshake of data that is basically a hot mess, and isn’t real in most cases,” Mr. Watts said.
Mr. Shewchuk said that as a forensic consulting meteorologist, he only used official “NOAA certified” original weather data observations. “If I were to use ‘altered’ or ‘fabricated’ data, I would have been thrown out of court,” he said.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information confirmed to The Epoch Times that it uses “ghost” station data. As an explanation, it said, “NOAA provides estimates for missing monthly temperature values in the USHCNv2.5 dataset. The approach to estimating missing values is described in the USHCN v2 overview paper, and values that are estimated are noted with a specific flag as described in the USHCN readme file.”
Mr. Shewchuk didn’t buy NOAA’s response. “It’s a shell game,” he said. “The ‘USHCN’ data is now included in a variety of larger datasets of various names, so now some can officially claim that ‘USHCN’ is not being used as a single entity. However, all the USHCN data is actually used for all historic climate studies because the USHCN data is the only data that goes back over 100 years. Without this historical data, we are climate-change blind.”
According to Mr. Watts, ghost stations are problematic but are only part of a much bigger problem. He explained that several different entities, such as the European Commission’s Copernicus, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Berkeley’s Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST), and NOAA, publish monthly and yearly climate data and advertise themselves as having “independent data.” “That is a lie,” Mr. Watts said about the independent data claim. “All these different entities out there, like NOAA, GISS, BEST, all the entities I listed, use the same data from GHCN. And they all apply their own set of ‘special sauce’ adjustments to create what they believe is true. It’s almost like each of these entities is creating their version of the real, true God. You know, it’s like a religion. They’re using different mathematical and statistical techniques to produce their version of climate reality. And it all goes back to the same original, badly-sited, badly-maintained ghost station dataset around the world. USHCN and GHCN are the same stuff. So, there is no independent temperature dataset. It’s bogus that anyone claims this.”
Mr. Shewchuk said that the warming the earth has experienced since the 1800s is much less than has been reported, but even if it weren’t, warmer temperatures are natural—not manmade—and not a cause for concern. “We are still thawing out from the Little Ice Age because the Bray and Eddy solar cycles are still in their warming phases,” he said. “[Carbon dioxide] is a greenhouse gas, but its contribution to today’s warming is trivial. Whenever someone asks me how much ‘man-made’ CO2 is increasing Earth’s temperature, I respond, ‘Does the growth of a new eyelash increase your weight?’ There is no climate emergency. In fact, all measures of severe weather are decreasing—even tornadoes and hurricanes. Furthermore, global warming (at least the little that there is) and increasing CO2 are good for life on Earth. History clearly shows us that life thrives during warm periods (like the Medieval Warm Period) and suffers during cool periods (like the Little Ice Age).”
He pointed out that even NOAA and NASA report that increased CO2 has “greened the planet” and increased plant growth, which has benefited food production. “We should celebrate CO2—not demonize it,” he said.
NOAA predicts hotter than usual temperatures for the upcoming months, intensifying concerns over global warming and the accuracy of climate data. The USHCN network, designed to provide an accurate historical climate record, faces scrutiny over its inclusion of data from stations that no longer exist. Critics argue that this practice distorts the climate record, influencing policy and public opinion on climate change.
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