Surfacestations

Surfacestations is a project set up by Anthony Watts which he says is for "This website was created in response to the realization that very little physical site survey data exists for the entire United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN) surface station records worldwide". Watts claims that 90 percent of 1,200 weather stations are too close to objects such as parking lots, garbage incinerators, and airports and are affected by Urban Heat Island Effect.
History
In 2007 Watts launched the "SurfaceStations.org" project, whose mission is to create a publicly available database of photographs of weather stations, along with their metadata, in response to what he described as "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". Watts informed radio and television host Glenn Beck that he began the undertaking, wondering if the composition of weather shelter paint had "made a difference" to thermometer readings and, consequently, the U.S. temperature record. The project relies on volunteers to gather the data. Volunteers estimate the siting, usage and other conditions of weather stations in NOAA's Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) and grade them for their compliance with the standards published in the organization's Climate Reference Network Site Handbook.
By 2009, the project had documented over 860 stations using over 650 volunteers. In a report entitled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, published by the Heartland Institute, Watts concludes that "the errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature...during the twentieth century."
Reception
Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the (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.
Prompted by the Surfacestations project, NOAA issued a preliminary report that charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the rest of the dataset surveyed at that time, and concluded, "there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends." Watts issued a rebuttal in which he asserted that the preliminary analysis excluded new data on quality of surface stations, and criticized the use of homogenized data from the stations, which in his view accounts for the creation of two nearly identical graphs.
The Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres subsequently accepted for publication a study, citing Watts' Surfacestations.org, which concludes that "summary, we find no
evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting."

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