During last week’s record-setting European heat wave, Germany’s previous record of 40.3C was impressively shattered by the measurement station located at the northwest city of Lingen, near the Dutch border, some 50 kilometers from where I live. The German DWD weather service and media loved it!
Controversial siting
Yet, controversy now swirls about the new record setting measurement since it has come to light that the measurement is fraught with some considerable siting issues.
As the photo published by T-online here shows, the station is located right near a DWD office building, is shielded from the wind by grown trees and is located not far from a public swimming pool.
Meteorologist Michael Theusner told t-online.de: “The monthly average of the daily highs in Lingen has been deviating more and more upwards from the average of the highs in Lower Saxony since 2010.” The station has become increasingly shielded and thus tends to heat up more.
Swiss veteran meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann wrote the extra heat possibly could be heating the station by up to another 3 degrees!
DWD accepts overheated reading
Germany’s DWD national weather service has even confirmed that the station’s siting is no longer adequate and that a move to a new site had been already long planned. But despite the acknowledged poor siting, the DWD went ahead and confirmed the reading as valid. The 42.6°C reading now stands as Germany’s new all-time recorded high temperature, no matter how questionable the reading may be.
Valid? How does Lingen compare to other temperature stations located nearby? I did a check.
Fifty kilometers to the east of Lingen where I live (Quakenbrück), my home thermometer showed a high of 38.2°C. That’s unofficial, of course, but it made the Lingen reading look suspicious. So I decided to compare Lingen to the other official stations nearby to see if their readings were as hot as Lingen’s.
The surrounding readings do indeed confirm meteorologist Kachelmann’s gut suspicion. Lingen readings are suspiciously 2 – 3C hotter than those of its neighboring stations.
What follows is a chart depicting the readings recorded by the Lingen station over the past past week. The DWD itself stated that the mercury in fact reached 42.6°C on Thursday (Do. 25.07)!
Chart: wetter24.de
Now looking at the Nordhorn station, located some 20 kilometers away, here the mercury climbed to 40.9°C, which is 1.7°C below the Lingen reading:
Chart: wetter24.de
At the Meppen station, also located some 20 km away to the north of Lingen, the mercury reached 39.2°C, a far cry (3.4°C) from Lingen’s maximum reading:
Chart: wetter24.de
At the military base in Diepholz, some 65 km to the east, the high on Thursday reached 38.7 degrees, i.e. almost 4°C below the Lingen reading!
Chart: wetter24.
In Bersenbrück, some 40 km to the east, according to wetterkontor.de, the mercury rose to 39.6°C, which is 3°C below Lingen’s record reading.
Looking at two other stations nearby, we see that Emsdetten recorded 40.6°C, and Ahaus saw 39.5°C, both significantly below Lingen’s recorded measurement.
More than 2°C hotter than surrounding stations!
A summary of all the temperature readings recorded at Lingen compared to those of 6 nearby stations for the past 5 days, July 23 – July 27:
On every single day, Lingen handily beat its neighbors by at times large margins. Did the climate aim some sort of giant heat ray at Lingen?
2.6°C hotter than adjacent stations
On the record-setting date of Thursday, July 25, 2019, the mean of the 6 neighboring stations listed in the table was an eyebrow-raising 2.6°C below the Lingen reading. All the stations cited around the Lingen station all share very similar topographical characteristics, and all are located on the north German flatlands, and thus comparable.
No doubt the reading at Lingen is accurate. But it looks like the siting of the Lingen station is causing overheated conditions. The DWD should think twice before accepting Lingen’s dubious 42.6°C reading as a valid new record and allowing it to flow into the statistics.
In the contest to be the hottest city in Germany, Lingen cheated.
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There are issues:
1. A temperature measurement can be valid, if it means a good instrument recorded this temp at this time in this place.
Let’s assume the Lingen report(s) is(are) doing just that.
A person there, at that time, would experience that temperature.
So far – so good.
This does not mean the readings are appropriate for monitoring global warming. The phrase “not fit for purpose” comes to mind.
2. In our little piece of Earth, there seems to be an Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) sensor problem. It may be related to air flow or shielding or fans.
The issue is that on hot days, say above 80°F, the ASOS at a small airport reports higher temps than nearby units. Some days it reads 7 or 8 F degrees too hot. Today, I went by the airport just 7/10ths of a mile from the location. My car, a 2016 Subaru reported 82°F. The airport claims it was 86 degrees. On Friday, a nearby home installed weather station was 7 degrees below the official National Weather Service report [98° versus 91°].
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Germany’s DWD national weather service has even confirmed that the station’s siting is no longer adequate and that a move to a new site had been already long planned. But despite the acknowledged poor siting, the DWD went ahead and confirmed the reading as valid.
The reasons for being “invalid” for global warming study are different.
Still, they accept the readings, publish them, and they get used.
And they wonder why there are skeptics. Uff da!
So Lingen temperature are anomalous compared to others round abouts, well sounds normal for so many of the recent bunch of record breaking reports across Europe so far.
The big problem is the MSM continuously equating transitory high temperatures with anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) aka Climate Change, Climate Emergency, Climate Weirding, Carbon Pollution, Climate Disruption, Climate Catastrophe, etc., etc.
Well lets wait till the winter and see if very low temperatures get equated with any global climate effects.
[…] P. Gosselin, July 28, 2019 in […]
The UK ‘record’ temperature is as dodgy as the German one, Paul Homewood (notalotofpeopleknowthat blog) did some digging around the weather station at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens, which recorded the ‘highest temperature ever record in the UK’ and the same old tired story emerged about UHI, much lower temperatures recorded a few miles away, poor siting of equipment – yarda, yarda. Don’t know what I dislike most when we have a hot humid spell, the oppressive heat or the nonsense that rains down (pun intended) from the climate change armageddon army or the ambulance chasing media.
Dodgy weather station siting is also shown by research in Australia by ‘Bill in Oz’ and ‘Ken Stewart’ as reported at Joanne Nova site (http://joannenova.com.au/2019/07/mt-barker-how-not-to-measure-the-temperature/ and http://joannenova.com.au/2019/07/murray-bridge-south-australia-where-thermometers-record-junk-every-second/ )
Germay’s DWD appears to be as negligent about both siting and record keeping as Australia’s BOM, UK’s Met Office, USA’s GISS and NOAA, or any other government’s weather agency/bureau/office just about anywhere in the world. Audits and sites’ maintenance seems to have gone to a very low priority, as official weather office push increase amounts of money into the global warming scam. It almost as if these people do not want accuracy in the records.
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M Herrera Extreme Temperatures of the world: “Lingen 42,6 questioned, likely taken under not proper conditions”… DWD?
How are temperatures determined? No, I am serious. The Lingen example shows us a perfect example of cherry-picking data to suit a certain narrative. If there are multiple measurements in a small region, should averages not be determined. I can put a thermometer outside my office where it receives maximum direct sun and is right above a lively street in a city center. the Urban Heat Island effect alone is going to make sure that it will show higher temperatures than someone just one km away in a nearby public park. How many datapoints does such a station register per day? What counts as average temperature then What a regional average, or national, or more? What’s the average temperature for the world per year? How is the Urban Heat Island effect taken care of? How other human-related factors that have little o nothing to do with climate? I never see those questions – all I see is hype around one reading. regardless of the circumstances. Oh besides, my pizza stove was hotter than Lingen – does that count?
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