This really isn't a major interest of mine but for what it's worth this is how I've thought about it.
I stipulate that NWP hasn't gotten any worse as a consequence of reducing the number of stations, and that climate GCMs haven't been directly impacted and aren't likely to be. I agree that for operational purposes some stations may be redundant. I don't think large scale dynamic models are all there is to climate science though. There may be questions we want to ask of continuous records that aren't directly consequential to large scale models but may shed light on underlying processes. An example that comes to mind is that eliminating the Milwaukee and Madison stations and replacing with one of intermediate location loses information about the microclimate effects of Lake Michigan. This may be of little interest to someone planning a picnic tomorrow hundreds of miles away but it may be of consequence, say, to someone siting a large wind generation facility nearby, planning for changes in wind climate. We can't know in advance what questions we might ask of the data. It's clear that continuity has some value, and it's not at all clear (to me) that this value has gone into the calculations of which stations to retain. I suspect this is partly because few influential people are especially career-motivated to argue for in situ data collection for scientific purposes. It would be interesting to see an animated map of the stations referred to on the GISS site vs time. There may be systematic consolidation in some places, which would be of less concern than abrupt declines elsewhere. I recall Dr S. Hastenrath at U Wisconsin lamenting the loss of continuity at several important sites in Africa. mt On 3/18/07, William M Connolley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, Michael Tobis wrote: > > Consequently, some blazingly obvious things worth doing (continuing to > > maintain existing lengthy observation series, for instance) are often > left > > undone. They are undone because it is in nobody's personal interest to > > promote them, despite the fact that it is very much in the common > interest > > that they be done. > > Its much less clear that maintaining so many sfc stations is a good idea. > Europe > is way over-dense for what you need for climate; and they aren't needed > for NWP > any more. Fairly soon they won't be needed for climate either... > > -W. > > William M Connolley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ > Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479 > > -- > This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is > subject > to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and > any > reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release > under > the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic > records management system. > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
