Measurement
Scientific BBQ Phenomenon
The "What's Up With That?" Blog has been investigating temperature measurement. In this week's installment you can see an offical weather measurement station beside a BBQ. The station is surrounded by hard surface roadways as well.
In this case, you can see the Stevenson Screen paint experiment. For those unfamiliar with the screens, they are those white 'weather' screens you often see at airports. Yes - of course the color of the screen matters.
I used to work with these for a number of years. Did you know the doors open to the north? Why do you think that is?
At one time we speculated that the world temperature would drop when electronic sensors for temperature management came about (they are still new in some places). Our theory was thay no one would be breathing on the equipment during temperature measurement. On a side note, electronic measurement meant no footprints in snow, thus no man-created drifts - this of course went to the theoryof soil moisture measurement, and there being drier years with less drifting.
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Tags: Measurement Discussion
2 comments for “Scientific BBQ Phenomenon”
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For every one that’s next to a hot pavement, there’s perhaps also one in the shade, down in a valley, and so on. Not enough information to go on with this one, one would have to do a comprehensive survey of the big picture — after all, we’re talking about global averages — and one would think that scientists know (or should know) how to take anomalies into account, particularly the roasting of a temperature probe over a BBQ — whether with a nice dry rub or not.
Dave,
You have a point there.
I suspect that if we looked at all these gauges and measurement facilities, we would find that urban areas built around them in most cases. Many fo them started in open land areas, but time changed land use.