Email 3792, Jan 2008, Phil Jones seems remarkably relaxed about the details of how the Earth's temperature is measured: "I don't care if they are a little bit inaccurate in their locations...Maybe if we did know where they are to a greater accuracy, we could check by Google Earth whether instruments were there !!"

Email 3792

Adrian, Stephan, Dick This isn't an important email, so you can ignore till the AOPC meeting. I'm trying to help Ian Strangeways (who Adrian may know) to write a book about temperature measuring - how we calculate global T, errors etc. He's also talking to Chris Folland about SST. I'm trying to stop him going off on pointless tangents. I've sent him chapter and verse on GCOS and most of my papers. First, he wanted to put loads of AWSs around the world to measure T properly - common sensors etc. I muttered something about living in the real world... Now, he's on about the lack of detail in the locations of GSN sites and also those in Volume A. I've also told him this is pointless and what matters is getting the data from these sites. I don't care if they are a little bit inaccurate in their locations and I doubt ECMWF and the other operational centres care either. It seems as though he's found some people who do, expecting to be able to go to google earth and give it detailed locations and find a Stevenson Screen! Have a look through some of the links - the Gladstonefamily website (!!) and that for El Nahud in Sudan. I just wanted to make sure people in the WMO building and CBS are aware that at some point someone will say, we can't the weather stations WMO say are there. Maybe if we did know where they are to a greater accuracy, we could check by Google Earth whether instruments were there !! Maybe they have some resources they can give to GCOS..... Cheers Phil