How to Falsify Weather Station Data

News Brief by Kip Hansen — 5 March 2024 — 600 words/3 minutes

This is a true story. 

Two guys in Colorado took advantage of certain type of crop insurance, as explained by U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan:  ”One way the United States Department of Agriculture supports farmers and ranchers is by providing federal funding for crop insurance programs that pay indemnities when there is less than the usual amount of precipitation.” [ source ]

BBS news reports:

“The scheme was designed to benefit Jagers [and a fellow named Esch] through his crop insurance, the Rainfall Index Annual Forage Insurance Plan, which is one of several agriculture subsidies administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Crop Insurance Program. 

Federal crop insurance is typically sold through private insurance companies who are subsequently reimbursed by the federal government. The Rainfall Index plan covers annual crops and “is focused on the amount of precipitation, not on actual crop production,” as described by prosecutors in a case document. “This means that a farmer can receive a payment when precipitation is below the historical normal level even if the relevant farmland suffers no loss in productivity.”

In Colorado, this deals with “forage” — as in Annual Forage Insurance Program : “Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage.^” [ wiki ]

Paying indemnities means the US government pays farmers if it doesn’t rain enough – rainfall below average – based on the local rain gauges at Automated Surface Observing System stations regardless of actual crop yields.  For these ranchers, if there is less rain, there will be less forage for their cattle, which means less growth, which means less weight when sold, which means less profit.  At least that’s the idea.

It is as hard to make it rain less as it is to make it rain more.

But it was apparently easy to make it look like it rained less.  Just jigger the rain gauges at the local ASOS.

“The group allegedly damaged rain gauges located in Springfield, Ordway, La Junta, Walsh, and Ellicott, Colorado, and others in Syracuse, Coolidge, and Elkhart, Kansas. Wires were cut, funnels to rain collectors were filled with silicone, holes drilled or punched in collectors, parts of collectors were disassembled, and objects such as cake pans or pie tins were placed over the gauges during rainstorms.” [ CBSNews ]

The US Attorney’s Office gives this version:

“The conspirators used various means and methods to tamper with the rain gauges. Mr. Esch covered gauges in southeastern Colorado with agricultural equipment and used other means as well, such as filling gauges with silicone to prevent them from collecting moisture, cutting wires on the gauges, or detaching and then tipping over the bucket that collected precipitation. Mr. Jagers typically used an agricultural disc blade to cover up a rain gauge in Lamar, Colorado. This tampering created false records making it appear that less rain had fallen than was the case.” [ source ]

To you and I, this might seem like a lot of work for a bit of crop insurance money – not so, the two were sentenced to sentenced to “pay a combined $3.1 million in restitution”.

Bottom Line:

Those are some real climate crooks.

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Author’s Comment:

Any time the government gives away money, there are some people out there who figure out a scam to get some of that money illegally.

“An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding.” [ source ]

And yes, that means that the climate data, at least for precipitation in those areas, is not reliable for that specific time period. 

Thanks for reading.

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