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Anthony Watts is a broadcast meteorologist, editor of the science blog, Watts Up With That?, owner of ItWorks, a weather graphics company, and founder of the SurfaceStations.org project, which is devoted to documenting the quality of weather stations around the world. He is currently chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio.

Career

Watts became a television meteorologist 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 meteorologist 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.

View of climate change

Watts has a skeptical view of climate change theories. He has said that he had once "been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was ... the root cause of the global warming problem" but that he later changed his thinking after learning more about the science. He established a blog "Watts Up With That?" that presents skeptical climate change news and opinion.

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 volunteers to gather the data. The project has been publicly lauded 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) has said that he was aware of Watts' work and invites anyone with expertise to contribute to the scientific process. He also said that in any case the evidence for human-driven warming remains robust. Watts still expects that the result of the SurfaceStations.org effort will be "to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment."

On July 6, 2009 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report, Talking Points related to concerns about whether the U.S. temperature record is reliable, which provided:

Q: "Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?"
A: "None at all."

The report charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the full dataset of 1221 stations. The results were near identical with the conclusion, "Clearly there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends.".

References

  1. Anthony Watts. "About Watts Up With That?". Watts Up With That. Retrieved 06 February 2009. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  2. ^ 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)
  3. 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)
  4. 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)
  5. Pielke, R.A. (16 March 2007). "Request For Photographs Of GHCN sites - A Need For Documentation". Climatesci.org. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
  6. Ryan Olsen (30 August 2007). "Scientists warm up to Watts' work". Chico Enterprise Record. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 06 February 2009. I think any effort to better understand the observation system that's used to collect data and analyze it is helpful. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  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. NOAA (6 July 2009). "Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?" (PDF). Retrieved 8 July 2009.

External links

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