There is tremendous good news this week. The United States Climate Reference Network is operational, and the folks who run it at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. Actually, it has been operational since 2008.

It is some of the better money the taxpayers have provided the climate community. It is is a network of climate stations developed by NOAA to provide future long-term homogeneous temperature and precipitation observations that can be coupled to long-term historical observations for the detection and attribution of present and future climate change.

The USCRN provides the United States with a reference network that meets the requirements of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The network consists of 114 commissioned stations in the contiguous United States, 6 stations in Alaska, and 2 stations in Hawaii.

It has a lot of great features. The sites are placed in pristine locations and are far more advanced in the types and frequency of data collected. Uncertainties due to poor siting or urban encroachment are eliminated from the data stream, which will preclude the necessity of activist scientists from “adjusting” historical temperature measurements.

Funny thing about that- the older temperatures always seem to be adjusted downward, while modern data gets the reverse treatment. Just a coincidence, I am sure.

Data from the USCRN is used in operational climate monitoring activities and for placing current climate anomalies into an historical perspective. The historic perspective naturally is limited to six years with the network, so just because there has been a mild cooling trend identified through the limited record doesn’t mean much- and I would say the same thing if there was a mild warming trend.

The satellite era of measurements- the only place we get synoptic coverage of ice mass at the poles, sea-level rise and all that- only goes back to 1978.

The USCRN will be able to show us unadjusted trends. Won’t that be comforting? We might actually have an accurate way to measure whatever it is that is happening. And then accurately compare it to what happened before.

What a concept.

There is other stuff to talk about this morning, but like, who cares?

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Twitter: @jayare303