David Parker is head of climate monitoring at the
Hadley Centre
The Met Office Hadley Centre — named in honour of George Hadley — is one of the United Kingdom's leading centres for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. It is part of, and based at the headquarters of the Met Off ...
, Exeter, England.
He has published extensively on the land and marine temperature record and its consistency. In 2002, he was an organiser of a "Workshop on Advances in the Use of Historical Marine Climate Data".
In 2004, he has published a paper in
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
, showing that the
urban heat island
An urban heat island (UHI) is an urban or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparen ...
effect has not affected the
historical temperature record
The instrumental temperature record is a record of temperatures within Earth's climate based on direct, instrument-based measurements of air temperature and ocean temperature. Instrumental temperature records are distinguished from indirect rec ...
. In this article, Parker shares his observations of the minimum temperature over 24 hours worldwide since 1950 that were expressed as anomalies. Also it includes his reasoning to why urbanization has not systematically exaggerated the observed global warming trends in minimum temperature. He further goes on to mention how the criterion for “calm” was changed while the global trend for minimum temperature remained unchanged. From his analysis he finds that windy and calm nights warmed at the same rate. Both the windy and calm increased at a rate of (0.16 + 0.03 C). He compares his small sample of 26 stations in North America and Siberia with global trends from 1950 to 1953, covering over 5,000 stations. Estimates of recent global warming, supported by Parker’s analysis shows that urban warming has not introduced significant biases. “The reality and magnitude of global-scale warming is supported by the near-equality of temperature trends on windy nights with trends based on all data.” (Parker) This paper has been commented on by
Roger Pielke, Sr., et al.
References
External links
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4021197.stm
* https://web.archive.org/web/20050129231335/http://www.metoffice.com/research/hadleycentre/pubs/HCTN/
British climatologists
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead authors
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
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