a lot of those thermometers have been operating for years or decades, in order to cherry pick each year again, you'd have to censor traces that were still used the year before, so at least such cherry picking should leave measurable traces
can you identify cherry-picked "retired thermometers" from this dataset and earlier ones by the same source(s)?
can you identify cherry-picked "retired thermometers" from this dataset and earlier ones by the same source(s)?