chubbs

Coatesville raw data is in very good agreement with NOAA and ERA5. All the data confirm that NOAA is spot on with our local warming.

There is complete agreement on Chester County's climate between NOAA and ERA5 reanalysis. A big feather in NOAA's cap because the two series are independent, different data and methods.

Nope, can't agree. You are playing word games instead of addressing the technical content of my comment. We've been going over NOAA's Chesco climate analysis for some time now. Nothing is being changed or distorted by NOAA, On the contrary, bias-adjustment has made a big improvement in the information we have about Chester County's climate. NOAA nailed the big station moves at Coatesville and West Chester, and the warmth at Phoenixville in the 1930-50s. Of course the bias-adjusted values are different that the raw values. That is intentional, to separate station moves from real climate changes. You can't get our climate right without accounting for the changes in the temperature measuring network. You keep complaining about the how cool NOAA is vs. the raw Chesco data. But the data doesn't support your assertion. You can't draw conclusions about the raw data without considering where the measurement was made. We just went over the 1940 to 1970 period. There were only 4 stations in that period and all are warmer than Chester County as a whole: The built-up sections of Coatesville and West Chester, Phoenixville, and West Grove. All south and east. As warm as Wilmington or Philadelphia at times. Phoenixville is always warmer than NOAA today. Coatesville and West Chester cooled to NOAA's county average as soon as they moved to cooler locations. How about your analysis. You aren't getting the correct climate information from the raw data. Taking a simple average discards all of the information about where measurement was taken. The City of Coatesville is not the same as the rural area nearby, or Warwick, or any other station. The simple averages improperly combine the station and network changes into the climate estimate. That causes a large error given all the station changes in Chester County. You have made our past climate too warm, solely because the early station network is not representative of the county as a whole. Very easy to see in the chart I posted above.

What are you afraid of in the non-Chesco data? Its a red flag in any technical analysis when someone wants to exclude data without providing any technical justification, a sure sign of a flawed analysis. Not that non-Chesco data is needed to validate NOAA. Anyone familiar with the county can recognize the large shifts in the Chesco station network with time. The early network was restricted to warmer sites mainly towns in the south and east. The cooling station moves at Coatesville and West Chester are easily detected using Cherster County raw data. Chesco data also flags the warm readings at Phoenixville in the 1930-50s. Finally, as shown above, when the station moves are accounted for the Chesco station data tracks NOAA's series closely. The fact that both the Chesco and non-Chesco data validate NOAA's analysis is exactly what you expect from a technical analysis that reflects the real world.

West Chester 2NW has al long history, many sites including the Daily Local. Here is a map of 2NW locations from the NOAA Observing Data Metadata Laboratory (link below). In 1970 the station moved from the middle of West Chester (site 6) to the Daily Local News office on the western outskirts of town (site 5). In 1998 the station moved to the observer's house (site 1). Easy to see the effect of the 1970 move by comparing West Chester to other County stations. Below is a plot of monthly data before and after the move for West Chester, Coatesville and Phoenixville. The West Chester station closed at the old location at the end of the year in 1969 and re-opened at the new location in May 1970. I removed the annual temperature cycle by subtracting Coatesville and Phoenixville from West Chester. A lower value means West Chester cooled relative to the other stations. The chart shows roughly 2F cooling at the West Chester station that coincided exactly with the move. The raw data is conclusive on the move effects. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/homr/#ncdcstnid=20016596&tab=LOCATIONS

Funny, ILG is only 12 miles from my house, closer than Coatesville, West Chester, East Nantmeal; hardly "far away". No you are the one who isn't supported by raw data. The year-to-year temperature change at Coatesville and West Chester tracks PHL, ILG, and ABE closely when there isn't a station change, making the Coatesville and West Chester station moves east to detect. In the early 1940s, Coatesville and West Chester were as warm as the Philadelphia airport. After the station moves moves both stations were as cool as Allentown: Coatesville after 1948, and West Chester after 1970. Between the 1948 and 1970 Coatesville was much cooler than West Chester. The chart info is not surprising. The atmosphere doesn't know or care about the Chester County border. Weather data is correlated for hundreds of miles. Year-to-year temperature changes at PHL, ILG and ABE are all highly correlated with year-to-year temperature changes in Chester County. There is no reason to reject valuable data from outside the county. Particularly when you consider the quality and consistency of the NWS main climate sites.

I removed the fake data from your table (see post above) and updated what you are calling "Actual Chesco" by recalculating the network average. The fake data ran warm so the updated "actual Chesco" is somewhat cooler than your Table, closer to NOAA. However, even after the update, "Actual Chesco" is an outlier vs the other regional data. "Actual Chesco" is almost as warm as the Philadelphia Airport (PHL) and Wilmington (ILG) in the 1940s; but, cools with time, becoming almost as cool as Allentown (ABE) and NOAA in the 1970s. The relative cooling of "Actual Chesco" between the 1940s and 1970s is caused by the station moves at Coatesvile (1946-47) and West Chester (1970), and Phoenixville recovering from the warm bias of the 1930-50s. "Actual Chesco" is a a misnomer, doesn't follow our actual weather at all due to all of the changes in the station network that are not accounted for.

March was cooler than last year according to ERA5. Year-to-date, this year is running 0.05C cooler than last year.

Every time I look at your stuff I find more problems. The table above has fake or estimated data for Chadds Ford, Glenmoore, and partially for West Grove. Per NCDC, Chadds Ford and Glenmoore were precip only, while West Grove only has temperature data after April 1963. With your method, removing the fake data will change your result. That will be the third or fourth change to Chester County's climate you have made in the past year or two. Meanwhile NOAA is spot on.

Glad to see Grok make good use of the information in the Table. The table was criticized as "unscientific" by our local "expert" when it was originally posted

You are in dismissal mode. Throwing out the same old whatabouts. What about this. What about that. If you want the answer to your questions look at the material I have posted above. As an example, between 1945 and 1948, Coatesville moved twice and West Chester didn't. Between 1945 and 1948, Coatesville cooled by 2.1F, while West Chester only cooled by 0.3F. Using West Chester data alone justifies a 1.8F cooling adjustment to the pre-move Coatesville data. But there are many more stations besides West Chester that support the Coatesville bias adjustment. NOAA and other groups use the year-to-year changes to make bias adjustments. Why?, year-to-year temperature changes are correlated for hundreds of miles. Within a region, year-to-year temperature changes that occur at all stations are weather-related; but, year-to-year changes that occur at only one station are due to station changes not weather. When you have thousands of stations, with overlapping correlation across the county, the procedure is bullet-proof. Per chart, Allentown agrees with West Chester on the flat temperature trend between 1945 to 1948; and, there are many more regional stations that support West Chester and Allentown. The correlation of year-to-year temperature changes goes way beyond the border of Chester County. A cool year in Chester County is a cool year in the entire Mount Holly service area and beyond. The adjustments are based entirely on raw data. No, there's no doubt that the Coatesville cooling between 1945 and 1948 was due to a station move and not weather. The raw data is the proof. Now its your turn. Where's your validation? You are treating the Coatesville cooling between 1945 and 1948 as completely weather-related. Where's the evidence to support that. Same question for West Chester in 1970. You also need to justify using the City of Coatesville, the Borough of West Chester, the Borough of Kennett Square and Phoenixville as a county average. Finally to justify a simple average, you need to show that the station network doesn't change with time. Good luck with that.

When adjusted for the post-WWII station moves to a cooler location, the Coatesville data agrees very well with the NOAA county temperature series; over the entire record back to 1895. The move-adjusted series uses raw data from 3 Coatesville stations since 1948 and NOAA bias-adjustments before 1948 when the 1SW station moved between several Coatesville city sites. The Coatesville data, properly corrected for station moves, is a very good proxy for the county-average temperature. Once again NOAA is spot on.

Earth's storage of water in soil, lakes and rivers is dwindling. And it's especially bad for farming Their paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that global warming has notably reduced the amount of water that's being stored around the world in soil, lakes, rivers, snow and other places, with potentially irreversible impacts on agriculture and sea level rise. The researchers say the significant shift of water from land to the ocean is particularly worrisome for farming, and hope their work will strengthen efforts to reduce water overuse. Earth's soil moisture dropped by over 2,000 gigatons in roughly the last 20 years, the study says. For context, that's more than twice Greenland's ice loss from 2002 to 2006, the researchers noted. Meanwhile, the frequency of once-in-a-decade agricultural and ecological droughts has increased, global sea levels have risen and the Earth's pole has shifted. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-earth-storage-soil-lakes-rivers.html

CERES net radiation spiked up in January reaching pre-nino levels of monthly positive imbalance. The series is noisy and the December value was relatively low. Will have to see if January is a merely a monthly outlier or signals a return to more rapid heat uptake.

OK, but you need to understand the impact of the 1970 West Chester station move. Before 1970 there is a roughly 1.8F offset between West Chester and NOAA reflecting the warmer West Chester location in the middle of town. Per the chart below, NOAA tracks West Chester closely for the entire 1895-1969 period once the offset is removed. After the move, West Chester cooled and the offset disappeared. Once again NOAA is spot on. After the station moves are accounted for, Coatesville and West Chester validate the entire NOAA series. Phoenixville also confirms the warming over the 1895-2024 period, recognizing that Phoenixville ran too warm during the 1930s-50s, as we discovered last year. That is the vast bulk of the county long-term data supporting NOAA. Where's your validation?