The National Weather Service says the thermometer at Sea-Tac Airport checks out as OK after questions were raised about its accuracy in a blog by well-known University of Washington research meteorologist Cliff Mass.
But the broader issue of where to best record our most important weather records remains as the airport environment continues to change.
“The integrity of these records is very, very important,” said Mass, who has spotted inconsistencies in temperature readings at Sea-Tac and other airports before.
What he found was the thermometer at Sea-Tac was reading three to four degrees hotter than a weather station 10 blocks away. If the airport thermometer was out of calibration, that would mean we may not be having the near record-breaking hot weather trend we are in.
Weather readings are taken in hundreds, if not thousands, of places around Western Washington, but the official spot of record is the weather station between the center and eastern runways at Sea-Tac Airport. The airport became the official recording station after it was moved there in 1945 from the rooftop of the old Federal Building in downtown Seattle, which had recorded the weather since 1880.
While 73 years of consistent record keeping in one spot is important, a lot has changed everywhere, says KING 5 meteorologist Rich Marriott. But the airport - which was once out in the country - has become a city unto itself with more heat absorbing concrete, more buildings and more planes flying in and out.
“When I want to look for a long-term trend, I look for rural stations where the environment has not changed around,” said Mass.
Environments with more vegetation are more unchanged over time. In the last 20 years, much of the vegetation on the west side of Sea-Tac has been removed for the third runway.
