Thanks for bringing this up beckah!

Out of the thousands of posts I've made the past 2 decades on weather/climate, the number that I've brought up on this specific topic?

ZERO

Don't get me wrong. It's a great topic, especially because others like to discuss it relentlessly.

However, it tries to apply a small issue in a misleading way to suggest the temperature data readings are cheating to make it warmer. 

There are other things like the underestimated impact of the Urban Heat Island effect(where observation sites from 100 years ago that were rural are now more urban because of expanding cities)

And with cities expanding, some of those sites are now extremely poorly sited......near asphalt for example when decades ago it was vegetation.

This can add a few tenths of a degree that isn't being corrected.

However,  phantom sites(that don't exist anymore) that get assigned a temperature of the average of the sites around them, though this is not the best thing, I'm not sure how much this creates a large, accumulated bias. in 1 direction, like the UHI impact underestimation does.

Think of it this way. Compared to 100 years ago, we are measuring MUCH, MUCH more of the surface, atmosphere and oceans now.  Outside of the UHI warming bias, we have MUCH more information from  many more thermometers that are in general, much closer to each other than they were a century ago.

This greatly offsets the suggested bias implied by this article.

It's blatantly obvious that the planet is warming and even if you didn't want to believe the thermometers on land, it takes 1,000 times more heat to warm the oceans by the same amount that it takes to warm the atmosphere. 

So the ocean warming lags a bit but it continues to catch up and the magnitude of the ocean warming, 100% decidedly confirms the thermometers on land.

Disputing a couple of tenths of a degree is really bickering over something trivial..........because:

The amount of warming is NOT a crisis.

Climate models that warm it 6-10 deg. F by the end of this century are NOT tenths of a degree. They are junk science/nonsense used to perpetrate the hoax of a climate crisis, during this climate optimum for most life on this greening planet. Most life would prefer it to be slightly warmer and CO2 to be double this.......the optimal level.

So don't waste time on this. It just damages credibility and takes the focus AWAY from what's actually important!

Pick the right battles based on authentic science and biology. 

In addition,

We are having a monstrous authenticity  problem in all scientific fields related to climate right now.

There are 2 sides that treat this like politics and like a competition, where the objective is to defeat the other side NOT to represent authentic science.

 Actually, climate science has been hijacked by one side and the other side, in an attempt to expose them.........goes to the other extreme with junk science.

They only look for things that line up with what they want to believe or with what supports their position and contradicts their opponents position.

Whatever it is, they go with it if lines up with what they want to believe. Doesn't matter if its legit. 

They search online for information that lines up with what they want to believe. They don't fact check or scrutinize or apply the scientific method. 

If its good for their side, regardless of the authentic science, they use it.

They cherry pick data that represents an outlier/exception. They exaggerate. They distort and manipulate data. 

I admit that I search the internet for studies/science that line up with my view. 

However, I always scrutinize everything, including stuff that I agree with, using my understanding as an atmospheric scientist. 

I also look for studies that show things which contradict what I think I know and honestly/sincerely hope that I find something that I'm wrong about.........to be celebrated because:

1. I just learned something new!

2. I can stop stating the wrong thing from that point forward!

Anyway, this particular topic in this thread, on thermometer readings not being reliable reminds me of that frame of mind by a lot of smart people that are obsessed with trying to use anything they can to attack the other side.........no matter what.

Insinuating that the temperature measurements are not reliable because of the interpolation process going on with phantom thermometers/site,  so we can't trust the main body of the observed data that shows global warming.

As if  this flawed data means the increase in CO2 from 290 ppm to 420 ppm isn't really warming the planet that much.

The starting point for everybody on both sides of  this topic ought to be recognizing the 1 deg. C of warming over the last century+ and recognizing the indisputable physics which causes increasing CO2 to warm the planet. Then, to recognize things like, what a 1 deg. C atmosphere does(holds more moisture for instance).

If one side can't even acknowledge those  rock solid proven science facts from the get go............they've completely lost the authentic science debate. ...no matter how many good points they might have after that!

 I do note the sudden drop in stations in the last decade below which is something that needs explaining.

However, the % coverage is still high and close to the highest. Close to 90% in the Northern Hemisphere and close to 80% in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Was the data better from this source, 10 years ago with higher coverage and more stations?

Yes!

However, there isn't global cooling hiding in the other 10% of the Northern Hemisphere that's being covered up. 

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/