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Anthony Watts is a weather presenter for KPAY-AM radio, described as a 'Chief Meteorologist' by the radio station but listed as a retired Television Seal Holder by the American Meteorological Society. He runs the climate-related blog Watts Up With That, owns ItWorks, a weather graphics company, and is founder of the SurfaceStations.org project which attempts to document the quality of weather stations.

Career

Watts became a television weather presenter in 1987 when he joined KHSL-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Chico, California. After working at KHSL for 17 years, he was replaced by Kris Kuyper in 2004. He then became the radio weather presenter for KPAY-AM, a Fox News affiliate also based in Chico, California. Watts also operates several companies that make weather graphics systems for use on television broadcasts.

SurfaceStations.org

In 2007 Watts launched the 'Surface Stations' project, whose mission is to create a publicly available database of photographs of weather stations, along with their metadata. The project relies on lay volunteers to gather the data. The project has been praised by Stephen McIntyre and Roger A. Pielke Sr., the latter having described the effort as "very important".

Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) was interviewed by the New York Times in reference to SurfaceStations.org:

In any case, he said, the evidence for human-driven warming remains robust. “Saying what they’re saying has just provided an opportunity for them to create doubt in people’s minds,” he said of the bloggers.

Watts hopes that SurfaceStations.org will "demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO₂ but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment." Even if anomalies were found in temperature stations in the USA, it would not alter the increasing temperatures recorded in the Arctic and globally.

Views on Global Warming

Watts has stated that he had "at one time been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem." He later changed his thinking when he "learned more about the science involved and found it to be lacking," and has said "you have to wonder if the whole house of cards isn't about to start falling down." Watts established the blog "Watts Up With That?" to popularise his views on global warming and the controversy around the science, and is also a regular contributor to McIntyre's blog Climate Audit.

References

1. http://newstalk1290.wordpress.com/news-staff/
2. http://www.ametsoc.org/memdir/seallist/get_listoftv.cfm List of AMS Television Seal Holders
3. Anthony Watts. "About Watts Up With That?". Watts Up With That. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
4. Anthony Watts. "About SurfaceStations.org". SurfaceStations.org. Retrieved 06 February 2009. Given such a massive failure of bureaucracy to perform something so simple as taking some photographs and making some measurements and notes of a few to a few dozen weather stations in each state, it seemed that a grass roots network of volunteers could easily accomplish this task. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
5. Pielke, R.A. (01 June 2007). "More On Obtaining The Locations Of Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) Sites". Climatesci.org. Retrieved 06 February 2009. This is a very important need for the climate science community, and you are encouraged to obtain this photographic documentation if you can, and also share with the new website under development by Anthony Watts...when his website is ready. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
6. Pielke, R.A. (16 March 2007). "Request For Photographs Of GHCN sites - A Need For Documentation". Climatesci.org. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
7. ANDREW C. REVKIN (26 August 2007). "Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight". New York Times. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
8. Bill Steigerwald (17 June 2007). "Helping along global warming". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
9. Hugo Ahlenius (June 2007). "Trends in Arctic temperature, 1880-2006". UNEP/GRID-Arendal. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
10. NASA (2009). "GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis". GISS NASA. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
11. ^ Anthony Watts (27 March 2008). "Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
12. Anthony Watts (16 May 2007). "The Nation slams Global Warming". Watts Up With That?. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

External links

• Anthony Watts personal blog
• SurfaceStations.org
• Watts being interviewed on Hannity's America

• Living people
• Meteorologists