WASHINGTON – A meteorologist performing a comprehensive study of temperature-monitoring stations that provide data about global warming says the official facility at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is riddled with problems that render it useless to scientists.

But the data collected there is being used nonetheless.

Anthony Watts concludes in his investigation that the station at O'Hare is affected by an urban heat effect that would make temperature readings inaccurate as an indicator of what is actually occurring regionally.

"The community around O'Hare was much smaller during World War II, when the airport was built, than it is now," says Watts. "The area had a significantly less-urban population and lacked the acres of concrete and asphalt that exist there today."