Heating Up the Big Apple

Essay by fencer1989University, Bachelor'sA+, May 2004

download word file, 2 pages 3.0

Heating Up the Big AppleIn the November/December 1998 issue of Weatherwise, Bob Smith of Providence, Rhode Island, asked... We are a group of 12 young men interested in meteorology. We meet regularly to discuss our favorite hobby and compare notes. We are puzzled Central Park in New York City consistently reports the highest minimum temperatures in the region. In the autumn, New York City is often one of the last stations reporting a freezing temperature in the East, sometimes even after locations like Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Richmond, Virginia; and Charlotte, North Carolina. The "straw that broke our camel's back" was a 41 degrees Fahrenheit minimum at Central Park on November 21, 1997. We were all in New York City on that morning, and, believe us, temperatures fell into the 30s. Bridgeport, Connecticut, reported 28 degrees Fahrenheit, Newark, New Jersey 34 degrees Fahrenheit, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 36 degrees Fahrenheit, Atlantic City, New Jersey 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and Baltimore, Maryland 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Please look into this. Could the instruments be defective? ?ANSWER: I am grateful to Mike Wyllie, meteorologist-in-charge at the Upton, New York, National Weather Service office for the following information. Observations have been taken regularly in Central Park since 1869. Until 1993, when the NWS office in New York City moved about 70 miles east to Upton, New York, NWS employees made the observations themselves. Arguing successfully that such a long-term observing site should not be closed down just because the office was moving, Wyllie arranged for the installation of new automatic recording instruments as part of the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), which was replacing many other surface observing systems across the country at the time. The ASOS instruments were collocated with the old instruments and, before their commissioning, lengthy comparisons of both sets of measurements were...