THE Australian Bureau of Meteorology, BOM, doesn’t have a set of temperature thermometers regularly positioned across the landmass of Australia from which it might derive an average annual temperature. Rather many more of it’s approximately 750 temperature recording stations are in south eastern Australia, some have records that date back to the 1850s, while others only started recording last year.
How do you derive an average annual temperature for Australia from such a mix of measurements? 
The Bureau’s solution is to select a subset of about 112 stations from the 750. Some of the stations in the subset started recording temperatures in the 1850s, others not until the 1960s. Then the bureau truncates the longer temperature records, in some cases by discarding over 50 years of data, indeed everything before the somewhat arbitrary date of 1910. Data before this date is not considered reliable, but then the Bureau applies corrections to some of the rest of the data even though it should be reliable. Then the adjusted and truncated values from the subset are fitted to a grid to generate an area-weighted average of the data.
There is no single document that describes this methodology. Rather in a letter from the Bureau dated 24th January, responding to my request for information, I was directed to a mix of Bureau reports, peer-reviewed papers and also a PhD thesis by way of justification, methodology and for a list of stations.
In short, there is no straightforward way to verify the claim that last year, 2013, was the hottest calendar year on record. This is the claim the Bureau made in a media release on 3rd January 2014.
When individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s appear to be as hot as recent years.
Ever since Climategate, deeply disturbing questions have been asked about the way climate science is conducted and also the state of the climate data. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s own databases feature in the leaked emails with the infamous ‘Harry Read Me’ file complaining about jumbled values and incorrect start dates for particular stations.
The mainstream climate science community has a vested interest in the average temperature for Australia increasing year-on-year because it has embraced the theory of anthropogenic global warming and invested heavily in research that assumes this theory.
It is time that the Bureau was more transparent in how it calculated its average annual values, and that it developed a method for benchmarking these annual average values. The benchmarking could be against satellite data and also against individual stations in Australia for which there are long temperature records.
**************
Click here to download the Bureau’s reply to my letter of 9th January requesting information to enable verification of the claim that 2013 was the hottest year on record.
Click on the image to see a chart of the Bureau’s annual mean temperature anomaly for Australia, this value is derived from the annual mean.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
So sceptics will never be happy until they do their own analysis.
If that’s what you got out of the topic, no wonder we have so many insane policies!
Jen,
A start date of 1910?
Then the Federation drought is fiddled?
Since I am not the slightest bit interested in setting up my own BoM, I’ll settle for a satisfactory analysis or no analysis at all from the existing BoM. I know what fire and heat and drought have done to my own region in 1895, 1902, 1993 etc. I know what happened to Eastern Oz in the Fed and Millennial droughts, also 1908, 1939, 1967, 1983, 2009 etc etc. Heaven help us if we forget what fire was able to do to Vic in 1852. I know it’ll all come round again. I now want sane conservation, water, fire and bush management policies.
Buying a Davy Jones analysis is like buying biochar from Turney and his mates. You’d be better off on a slow boat to Antarctica. No, wait…
Jaysus wept, the BOM’s reply to you actually referred you to RealClimate and SkepticalScience blogs.
Seriously. Doesn’t BOM know how utterly biased those blogs are against anything that is not climate global warming alarmist?
And in rejecting your assertion that the 1890s and early 1900s were very hot, BOM relies on one paper produced by, wait for it, Karoly & Gergis.
Seriously, Karoly & Gergis – two of Oz’s climate change academics who most recently produced a paper asserting a hockey stick of temps for Oz which has, how shall I put it, not been replicated, and both of whom happen to be rather well known to skeptics. Doesn’t BOM know that referring any skeptic to K&G is a red flag – it will not mollify anyone of a skeptical view.
WB, Yes, Yes and Yes.
You got specific answers – and you’re still not happy – so where’s Jens’ substantiation:
“When individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s appear to be as hot as recent years.” assertion !
“Appear” ?? what does “appear” mean? uncertain? stations metadata check is?
“Ever since Climategate, deeply disturbing questions have been asked about the way climate science is conducted ” not really – assertion based on sceptic complaint as an indicator of something
“The benchmarking could be against satellite data ‘ Why? why would expect a match? Why would you trust satellite data itself subject to vast adjustment – with just a wave of the hand …. effortless – we’ll just accept it …. ta dah !
“– for example it is well established that the Cloncurry 53.1°C in 1889 was
taken in a modified beer crate on a south facing wall exposed to the sun.”
Yes ! nothing like an anecdote and a few beers
WOW!
Luke is going to shout then?
The following emails was sent by way of response earlier this evening…
Mr Neil Plummer
Assistant Director, Climate Information Services
Bureau of Meteorology
Dear Mr Plummer
Thank you for your pdf of 24th January in response to my email of 9th January. You do provide a lot of detail regarding the various adjustments, truncations and other methods used to homogenize the raw temperature data for Australia, from which you derive an area-weighted average.
In particular, the Bureau appears to select a subset of about 112 stations from the 750 available. Some of the stations in the subset started recording temperatures in the 1850s, others not until the 1960s. Then the bureau truncates the longer temperature records, in some cases by discarding over 50 years of data, indeed everything before the somewhat arbitrary date of 1910. Data before this date is not considered reliable, but then the Bureau applies ‘corrections’ to some of the rest of the data even though it should be reliable. Then the adjusted and truncated values from the subset are fitted to a grid to generate an area-weighted average of the data.
You have not provided a single document that describes this methodology. Rather in your letter you have directed me to a mix of Bureau reports, peer-reviewed papers and also a PhD thesis by way of justification, methodology and for a list of stations.
In short, there is no straightforward way to verify the claim that last year, 2013, was the hottest calendar year on record. This is the claim the Bureau made in a media release on 3rd January 2014. In this media release no mention was made of the official record only beginning in 1910, or that the average was in fact an area-weighted average based on a subset of the available data after it this had been adjusted and truncated.
Indeed the end result of all this adjusting, truncating and fitting does not produce a trend line that is consistent with any individual station for which there is a long temperature record. When the raw data for individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s often appear to be as hot, or hotter, than recent years.
Ever since Climategate, deeply disturbing questions have been asked about the way climate science is conducted and also the state of the climate data. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s own databases feature in the leaked emails with the infamous ‘Harry Read Me’ file complaining about jumbled values and incorrect start dates for particular stations.
The mainstream climate science community has a vested interest in the average temperature for Australia increasing year-on-year because it has embraced the theory of anthropogenic global warming and invested heavily in research that assumes this theory.
In my considered opinion that it is time that the Bureau was more transparent in how it calculated its average annual values, and that it developed a method for benchmarking these annual average values. The benchmarking could be against satellite data and also against individual stations in Australia for which there are long temperature records
.
Kind regards
Jennifer Marohasy
jen, you make the claim that “When individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s appear to be as hot as recent years. ” Can you pls list the stations you examined for the 1930s where they appear to be as hot as recent years. I do appreciate this is not about individual stations anyway, it is about an Australian average.
Thanks Bazza,
Lots has been posted at this blog over the years showing trends for places like Emerald (google Basil Beamish), Bathurst (by me) etcetera. You could even do some plots yourself. The bottom-line is that the Bureau needs to start benchmarking its annual average and I’m suggesting against some long data series (try Sydney Observatory and Parramatta corrected for UHI).
Instead they apply some hocus-pocus and come out with a steadily rising trend line. I’ve done enough charting. You and Luke should stop being apologists and make your wives/boyfriends/children/grandchildren proud by demanding some rigour.
Jen 1910 is not arbitrary from their response. So you either accept the generality about non-standard enclosures before that date or you don’t. If you don’t you have to present an argument as to why. if it’s beer crates surely not !
And surely you’re not going to return to a UHI debate with adjustments with Sydney region stations. They have said they are not using most Australian capital cities.
When you say you’ve done enough charting, citing a sample size of two is hardly convincing. I’m not saying you’re wrong – simply you need to prosecute your argument.
I don’t thinking sledging on climategate “emails” adds anything here on this specific issues except climate data is often problematic to work with for a variety of reasons. Gee really?
And my children and boyfriend were shocked to find out about my wife.
So what happens if you use the raw data from BoM’s list of stations in a simple as possible analysis?
If you like add some “classic stations” that they have “missed”.
It’s not about apologies – it’s about progressing some information.
In their letter of response the BOM write:
“In response to your statement that “the 1890s and early 1900s, years corresponding to the
Federation drought were exceptionally hot”, there is a recent, peer reviewed scientific paper
which explored this period using the available data and found this not to be the case. The
paper describes the curation of pre 1910 data for southeast Australia that was performed at
the University of Melbourne in conjunction with the Bureau of Meteorology.
Ashcroft L, Karoly D., and Gergis J. 2012. Temperature variations in southeastern Australia,
1860-2011, Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal 62 (2012) 227–245
(http://www.bom.gov.au/amoj/docs/2012/ashcroft.pdf)
While these data are limited to the southeast Australian region, the paper shows no
evidence of abnormally high temperatures during the Federation Drought or the wetter
decades before this. ”
Of course seeing Karoly and Gergis names together was an automatic reason to pay attention since they and others were involved in trying to pass off their Australian made ‘hockey stick’ paper which had to eventually be withdrawn due to basic “data processing errors” (read confirmation bias) which it took climate skeptics about 5 minutes to identify. You can read the whole story here: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/gergis-hockey-stick-withdrawn-this-is-what-95-certainty-looks-like-in-climate-science/
Basically Karoly and his acolytes had tried to show the warming period since 1950 was without precedent in the last 1,000 years in Australia. But they stuffed up!
It was about the same time they were producing this paper the BOM have referred you to. Now I haven’t requested a look at their data, and to be honest I haven’t even read the whole paper, I just skimmed it, but one thing stuck out like the proverbial canine testicles on page 5 of page 237 of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal 62:4 December 2012 in which the said paper appears.
Firstly it is worth pointing out that this paper which the BOM use to demonstrate that your statement that the 1890’s and early 1900’s were exceptionally hot is incorrect, only looked at “Long-term monthly
maximum and minimum temperature records from just 38 stations in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and southern Queensland”.
“Detailed homogenisation was undertaken using metadata collected from station history files and a two-step statistical process that involved individual station adjustments and comparison with neighbouring
reference series. The homogenisation process removed many non-climatic changepoints in the
previously unexamined 1860–1909 period.”
So basically what they did is adjust the heck out of the temperature data. Given the researcher’s past history with the withdrawn paper where they were convinced of the Australian ‘Hockey Stick’ which turned out not to be the case, it wouldn’t be hard to make assumptions about the expected outcome of these temperature adjustments.
So back to the paper in question.
Figure 5. in the paper shows the number of adjustments to temperature records made per decade for tmax (black columns) and tmin (white columns), 1860–1950. And why am I not surprised to find the frenzy of adjustments which appear, yes, with the 1890’s and early 1900’s? In fact more than double and triple most other decades.
The researchers ‘explain’ “that the majority of adjustments occurred in the three decades from 1880–1909. This is when most stations transitioned to Stevenson screens (Nicholls et al. 1996c).”
Not only is this an incredibly convenient explanation, especially when it has had the impact of reducing temperature records which were historically known to be high in those periods. It also doesn’t gel with the number of adjustment’s in the 1890’s and 1900’s decade being 6 times more than those in say the 1860 decade when more of the stations would have been using older less reliable equipment.
I’m sure a greater scrutiny of this and other papers confirming BOM’s methodology would show just how transparent their efforts are to prove an alarming warming world! If that were not the case, they would not make their methods of adjustment so obscure, and they would show a table which we could easily go to showing the raw data, the adjusted data for each station, and the calculation and justification for the ‘adjustment’. In this electronic age it would be a very simple matter.
A lone beer crate becomes the excuse to disappear a whole series of the record
down the memory hole. Down it goes! When mainstream climate science has
invested in global warming increasing year on year, transparency and bench-
marking are essential to eliminate confirmation bias. Non-benchmarking, non-
transparency and you are likely to get cherry picking, truncating and adjusting
of data, and we’ve seen what that leads to!
@ Luke:
“Why would you trust satellite data itself subject to vast adjustment – with just a wave of the hand …. effortless – we’ll just accept it …. ta dah !”
All types of scientists contributed to correcting the satellite data (e.g. orbital drift, satellite sensor differences, merging data, etc.). This was a large, group effort in a transparent and open process which resulted in a fairly accurate data set (even skepticalscience.com thinks so).
Now compare that to this situation. BOM clearly doesn’t want somebody double-checking their methods of adjustment. You can’t find errors if you don’t know what they are doing.
So in the end, why would you trust BOM over satellites? The transparency difference is clear (oops, I just had to).
Meanwhile the clueless MET Office get 13 out of their last 14 guesstimates TOO HIGH. Like the wishful thinking displayed by Luke and bazza when promoting their much longed for CAGW.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/met_gets_overheated_13_times_out_of_14/#commentsmore
Yet another new study shows the Arctic was warmer a thousand years ago than today. No hockey sticks found, surprise, surprise.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/28/inconvenient-study-arctic-was-warmer-than-the-present-during-the-medieval-warm-period/#more-102330
Will these fraudsters and con merchants ever wake up? And will all govts grow a brain and stop funding useless S&W energy?
Pat Michaels has found the same ongoing temp adjustments in the USA. Amazingly the fiddling always goes in the one direction, it always makes the long ago past temps lower and therefore the present temps higher.
http://www.cato.org/blog/closing-books-2013-another-year-another-nail-coffin-disastrous-global-warming
Neville – stop spamming the thread with your rat dirt.
Beth – a beer crate is a bloody massive reason to chuck the data in the dumpster – don’t do science – throw the thermometer on the bonnet of the land cruiser – that’ll do mate ! Rough as guts is OK. “When mainstream climate science has invested in global warming increasing year on year” – ERRR NO ! not before 1970s/1980s and certainly not in beer crate 1890s. Amazing dumb comments for a science discussion.
The Karoly and Gergis issue is a diversion. The proponents here need to explain as to what you should do when the met station moves from the Post Office to and Airport for example. Same region perhaps but often many kilometres away. What do you actually do if the period of overlap shows a major different background? You can’t have this both ways.
You’re either into intelligent and thoughtful analysis here or you’re not!
Says Luke the greatest spammer and spreader of rat dirt we’ve ever seen on this blog. But half the time when he links to some new gotcha study we find he doesn’t even understand the contents. Everyone else has to explain it to him.
And he follows fake hockey stick studies with a passion trying to prove some modern warming is unprecedented or unusual. Which of course it is not.
I would look at data for what it is, and not collate it into something it can’t be. That goes for Davy Jones, New Ice Age fans…the lot. Once you start making lots of judgement calls, you’ll make sure more calls go your team’s way. That’s why they have to spend all that money on international cricket umpires and why nobody would ever trust me to penalise St George. What comes out looks like science, but it’s made up of thousands of little judgement calls and it’s as scientific as Steamboat Mickey. If there wasn’t a political imperative involved (there is!) it would be easier to trust the calls. But you can’t. Human nature comes into it big time, and we all know which group has, historically, a colossal blind spot where it comes to human nature.
The other thing about temp data is that it tells you a partial story. A perfect example is the genuine record set in Sydney last year for highest daily max: the brief but extreme heat just cannot be compared to that of 1939 (La Nina!), the previous record holder, when the temp stayed high for much longer and did so over a much wider area, killing plenty of people. Coolest year (by max) in my region was 1974, hottest was 1915, with the decade from 1910 to 1919 being the only real standout for a trend (hot!), all other decades being much of a muchness. How much of the “cool” of 1974 was due to the fact that the clouds wouldn’t go away? And you couldn’t buy a cloud in 1915.
So I’ll call 1914 a good starter for hottest “ever” in my region, not because it was so statistically but because the average temp (max) was over 27C and there was a whole bunch of rain as well, with a good spread. Hey, it’s easy to be hot when things are as dry as in 1902 and 1915!
Really, everything’s an anecdote once you see it stripped to its knickers. ESPECIALLY statistics. Stats are fine, but they are what they are. The more you handle them, the more you’ll squash them.
Now I’m off to make a kayak from a beer crate!
How much longer will this nit picking about scientific data go on as an excuse to denigrate genuine scientists who are only doing a job.
OK so most on this blog who can only be called denialists, have an axe to grind and will use any wedge to further their cause but they only have look out of the window, so to speak.
Satellite pics and observations from ships and aircraft prove beyond all doubt that the summer ice in the Arctic has disappeared at an amazing rate.
The only cause for this is an increase in temperature.
The only explanation for this increase is an increase in average temperature.
What is your problem with that?
It is happening, learn to live with it.
It will eventually impinge on your life if you live long enough.
never mind how it will effect your finances it will affect your children or grand children and possibly the human race as a whole.
If you want to protect them take out an insurance by reducing the cause of the rise in temperature and never mind arguing about hypotheticals.
Summer ice in the Arctic has reduced greatly at recent September minima. Is that what Robert is talking about? Nobody took out insurance when it happened in the 1920s, and I’m not aware of any insurance policies covering it now. I don’t think Christian Turney was able to insure against the record high levels of Antarctic Ice (as measured by the exact same sat record as the Arctic decline.) When Arctic temps plunged in the 1960s and ice increased greatly in the 1970s…once again, no insurance.
Surely by “insurance” Robert does not think we can control climate by tipping billions into that shark pool misnamed the European Union and its misnamed carbon “market” which is so rigged it must be organised by the World Wrestling Federation.
Of course, if you just want to stop people emitting CO2 you can have a GFC and soaring energy prices. That’ll work. Of course, someone somewhere will still have to make the stuff we buy and use constantly. Don’t know how you can get the entire world into a recession. Or is it just the developed West that needs a kicking?
Robert, you make regular claims to 1939 being a La Nina and how come it was so hot. The answer is simple. ENSO does not march to a Roman calendar. In 1938 there was a La NIna that extended into the early months of 1939. But a protracted El Nino then kicked in mid 1939. So your statement “the brief but extreme heat just cannot be compared to that of 1939 (La Nina!),” is incorrect.
Robert LP must now tell us how to change the climate back to his ideal period. When was that time , I think we all must have missed it? Was it the LIA or the warmer Med WP or the much warmer RWP or Min WP or the Holocene climate optimum? Pity about the much higher SLs around OZ after the Hol Optimum though. And don’t forget the 16 to 1 ratio and don’t forget that India and China couldn’t care less what we say.
Come on Robert LP be the first on this blog to show us how to mitigate your CAGW.
Luke – if you wish to treat this thread as a serious science discussion PLEASE moderate your language – there is really no justification for your tirade of insults. PLEASE.
Actually, bazza, I’m in complete agreement that ENSO doesn’t march to a Roman calendar. In fact, it just manages to be a handy observation set and that is all.
January 1939 was part of a moderate La Nina, 1938-1939, which signifies very little to me but which has importance to those literalists who treat ENSO as some sort of mechanism. The BoM regards the succeeding ENSO period, 1939-40 as neutral, but a strong El Nino came along in 1940-41, and then another.
if you are not aware of what happened in the LA NINA part of 1939, namely January, I suggest you check out Trove etc. The heat and fires are still one of our greatest tragedies. The rains came in abundance AFTER Black Friday, though more in the south, just to remind us it was a La Nina. Did you miss that bit too? After autumn came a dry period for Eastern NSW.
So my statement “the brief but extreme heat just cannot be compared to that of 1939 (La Nina!)” is CORRECT. And yours is therefore INCORRECT, bazza. As fond of you as I am, I just had to say it!
If you want to see one of the most prominent warmists perform then watch this video.
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/climate-depots-marc-morano-debates-bill-nye-climate-change
Bill Nye tells us at the end that fixing the climate is like govts fixing pot holes in the road or fixing traffic lights etc ONLY BIGGER. Duhhhhhhh, you couldn’t make up the stuff this fool yaps about in this debate.
He states that China, India and Africa shouldn’t develop like the weatern countries at all. Needless to say Morano cleans him up easily using proper data and observations.
Jen has a point about average “benchmarking these annual average values”.
It is my observation that “long temperature records” (i.e CET, Armagh, and by analogy “long sea level observations i.e. Amsterdam, New Yourk Battery) do not display the same increase, or rate of increase, of the manufactured “averages”. Slightly tongue in cheek – I am usually suspicious of an average of an avaerage (even if they are dressed up as “area weighted” or whatever).
Benchmarking should not be that difficult.
I am yet to be convinced that an “Australian average temperature” is meaningful or usefull.
Is it usefull to know the average age of Australian bridges is “X”, compared to Germany’s “Y”, or a wordwide “Z”? What practical application is there for such a calculation?
Some more of that temp fiddling from the USA.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/
“Benchmarking should not be that difficult.” the usual content free thought bubble. Tell us what that evens means?
So sp – I guess the temperature of Australia in an ice age would be about the same as now. Clearly averages are meaningless. Do you ever put it in first gear sp?
blog spackfiller
Seeing Neville is happy to spam off-topic unreferenced drivel – it might be an idea to check some rampant assertions.
“It is my observation that “long temperature records” (i.e CET, Armagh, and by analogy “long sea level observations i.e. Amsterdam, New Yourk Battery) do not display the same increase, or rate of increase, of the manufactured “averages”.” opines sp
let’s pick CET then
“If we calculate the trends, we find that Central England (as well as the full UK) is warming significantly faster than the global average land temperature over the full 1880-2010 period, and at roughly the same rate during the “modern warming period” from 1970 to present.” http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/central-england-temperature/
GONG and thanks for playing sp – you’re sprouting utter rot – it’s a evidence based blog – drivel is drivel. Now back to Aussie pls.
Robert, I am familiar with some of the 1939 story. Note too that ENSO is about climate, heatwaves about weather recognising of course that heatwaves are more common in an El Nino and even more common now the temperature distribution has shifted. In Jan 1939, your mate Inigo Jones was addressing a science congress ( even HG Wells was there) in Canberra and before he got discredited he predicted the than current heatwave would end. How about that. They often do! He of course knew about the SOI which is often the most responsive indicator of ENSO events. Anyway this discussion is about an area average, no place for old reductionists full of irrelevant stuff about historical events isolated in space and time.
‘When individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s appear to be as hot as recent years.’ Here’s an example.
This is for Bourke, Jan 1939. In each case the raw temp has been reduced by up to 0.9C in the ACORN data. However, below 30C it has been adjusted upwards. There appears to be no rhyme nor reason for this. Note that the number of days over 40C in the ‘raw’ data = 17. The heatwave has now been reduced in the ACORN record.
Jan raw ACORN
1st 38.9 38.4
2nd 40 39.1
3rd 42.2 41.9
4th 38.1 37.9
5th 38.9 38.4
6th 41.7 41.5
7th 41.7 41.5
8th 43.4 43
9th 46.1 45.7
10th 48.3 47.9
11th 47.2 46.8
12th 46.2 45.8
13th 45.7 45.3
14th 46.1 45.7
15th 47.2 46.8
16th 46.7 46.3
17th 40 39.1
18th 40.1 39.1
19th 40 39.1
20th 41.9 41.7
21st 42.5 42.1
22nd 44.2 43.8
23rd 36.7 36.5
24th 40.3 39.2
25th 36.6 36.5
26th 29.4 29.5
27th 29.3 29.4
28th 28.8 28.9
29th 30.6 30.5
30th 35.6 35.4
31st 38.6 38.3
Highest daily 48.3 47.9
Lowest daily 28.8 28.9
Monthly mean 40.4 40.03
Long-term Jan average Mean=36.3
Another example was Bourke, Jan 1896. There were 22 consecutive days of 40C+ with a monthly mean of 43C. Now that’s a heatwave.
Another example similar to Cloncurry was Mildura in 1906 which had a temp of 50.7C. It’s still listed on the raw data site for Mildura but you won’t hear it mentioned when they talked about Australia’s highest temps.
Bazza, you have an odd way of admitting you are wrong. Bizarre even. The worst of the 1938-1939 heat came near the middle of a La Nina and that is that. (You did not want to be around Bathurst!). There were heavy rains after Black Friday, before the La Nina ended, and that is that. This La Nina was flanked by ENSO neutral years and that is that. You were wrong and that is that.
I think of Inigo Jones (whose mate is he?) what I think of all people who claim they know what the climate is going to do – sadly that includes you. It’s hard enough finding someone who knows what the climate has already done – just check some of your own recent statements!
I’m guessing that “old reductionists full of irrelevant stuff about historical events isolated in space and time” is your patronising name for people who mess with your rigid, literal and mechanistic view of things? That would be me.
As the Gore numbskull becomes more desperate he just tells more porkies to try and defend his clueless position.
He states that extreme weather is now 100 times more common than 30 years ago. How does this fool get away with these blantant lies?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/24/climate-change-al-gore-davos-haiyan-sandy
Ian, that is called homogenising. Putting all those pre-1910 data into a blender and knocking the highs and lows off and then selecting what you want from it.
But these are some of the highs they have thrown out:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/screenhunter_136-jan-20-16-53.gif
Only to be found in old newspaper clippings.
Those old records were on average found to be ~ 0.2c above Stevenson screen readings.
A lot more accurate than the treemometers our gatekeepers are happy to spruik when it suits them.
They should have been kept.
Thanks for the info, Ian.
The heatwave from Dec 1938 to Jan 1939 (yes, mid-La Nina!) killed more Australians than any other natural disaster, though the 1895-6 heat came very close. This was on top of the Black Friday death toll. 2009 was a comparable disaster, for heat, fire and deaths. After that comes 1907-8.
Let’s hope the discussion soon moves from manipulating climate to controlling fire and cooling humans.
Jen suggested I check Emerald to show 1930s hotter than recent. I did. It isn’t.
One beer crate does not a truckload of justification make fer letting the past record
fall off the back of the goddam truck so that temps in the 1990s appear ‘unprecedented.’
Ian George looks at raw temps in the record 1890’s to 1930’s that have been reduced
in the Acorn Record … for what reason (?) ‘hmmm, trust us for we are climate scientists.
Re early 20th century warming, the warming of 1919-32 was widespread and well
documented regardless of hockey stick adjustments. Box et al (2009)… ‘Box’ say,
I like that. 🙂 ‘The 1919-32 warming in Greenland was larger in magnitude overall
than the 1994-2007 warming. It was 0.06c greater annually for the whole ice sheet
and greater regionally in particular, by 0.06c in winter and 2.0c in spring for the north
west part of the ice sheet.’ (Fig 13 Table 6.)
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1
From your link Luke, it looks like a Nat Var recovery from the LIA to me:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Screenshot2011-02-14at32501PM.png
When I worked out in Sturt’s Stony Desert in the ’50s, it was common accepted knowledge that temps in excess of 125f [~ 52c] were periodically experienced in that area even though in my 2 year stint [during a cool period] I only experienced a max of 122f [~50c] and because union reps were a bit thin on the ground, you were expected to carry on as though it was normal.
But when all the gatekeepers are into it, why should BoM hang back:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/hidingtheusdecline1.gif
Supe Douchebag:
“If we calculate the trends, we find that Central England (as well as the full UK) is warming significantly faster than the global average land temperature over the full 1880-2010 period, and at roughly the same rate during the “modern warming period” from 1970 to present.” http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/central-england-temperature/
Explain how this was caused by CO2
Just some of the old babies the BoM threw out with the bathwater:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/maps/australia-map-heat-waves.gif
If everyone could stay on topic and stay civil and not be repetitive I won’t need to delete any comments. SP, Beth, Spangled, Robert, Ian George, Bazza, Neville and others, thanks for the relevant information and links and I’m particularly keen to hear about hottest years and general trends from individual stations.
If Ian George and Bazza could send in their data, and also if possible charts/plots for Bourke and Emerald, I will be able to upload them so others can have a look. Please also include link to where this data was download.
SP sez: “Explain how this was caused by CO2”
Jeez, sp, don’t you unnerstan correlation?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tbrown_figure3.png
Here is part of the climate component of Obama’s SOTU speech. Guess what ” the debate is settled, climate change is a fact”. Geeeezzzz I don’t think any of us knew that, NOT.
About as stupid as him telling the world that after he was elected he would stop the seas from rising. Can you believe the arrogance and stupid nonsense these fools emit?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/28/excerpts-on-climate-from-the-sotu-comments-welcome/#more-102361
Clive Hamilton goes way over the top in promoting his pet CAGW cause. Here is a quote from Bolt’s blog, incredible to think these cranks actually lecture our young people.
UPDATE
Professor Clive Hamilton, the abusive and dictatorial Gaian climate catastrophist, has already likened sceptics of catastrophic man-made warming to Holocaust-deniers, even claiming they could kill ”hundreds of millions”. I thought that was the gold-standard of abuse, but now he likens them to zealots who oppose immunisation of children:
The media treat the anti-vaccinators with the disdain they deserve, but sections of the media see no contradiction in actively promoting the same type of anti-science fanaticism when it comes to climate…
What would we think if Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared “immunisation science is crap”?
And, gosh, it turns out that my blog could kill the planet:
Hamiltons quote—-
“The anti-immunisation brigade is still at it, yet giant strides have nevertheless been made in protecting public health. There is no such luxury in the case of climate change, and it is the anti-environmental paranoia of men like Abbott and Newman, and Andrew Bolt and George Pell, that endangers the health of our planet.”
I remain astonished – even alarmed – that someone as extreme in his views and rhetoric is actually a professor, educating our young.
Spangled if Nova’s temps were measured in beer crates – they are worth NOTHING ! I’m amazed at the sheer hypocrisy – you lot obsess over heat islands yet the measuring environment is irrelevant. Might as well throw the thermometer on the Landcruiser bonnet.
Anyway – what’s the fuss about – get BoM’s list of ACORN stations (provided online and now with Jen’s list of excluded UHI sites from N Plummer) and do your own analysis – and the answer is what?
Drop results in here.
Are we going to a random walk around selected stations or get on with it? Do we have to suffer death by anecdote?
Gee Luke. If you keep making the same point over and over I will start deleting your comments. Its actually a form of propaganda. This technique you use. Its certainly not being the devil’s avocado. 🙂
We, or at least I, have already explained that we totally reject the methodology that the Bureau uses. I think Robert makes the point nicely somewhere in the above comment thread.
Indeed if the Bureau can adjust the temperature data after 1910, then they can just as easily adjust the temperature data back to 1856. And that would indeed involved excluding the beer crate data, but incorporating probably 90% or more of the rest of the data.
And I would like to see Bazza’s plot for Emerald. I haven’t looked at Emerald for some time. Is it the 1920s, rather than 1930s, that were very hot? I do get stuff wrong. Maybe, after we examined a lot of sites we would see it was the early 1900s and 1920s that were really hot, perhaps even 1914. Perhaps 1963 was very cold? I can’t remember. When did they start recording there in Emerald? Perhaps 1945? There is a lot to be learnt from individual station data, especially the long series.
Jennifer,
‘If Ian George and Bazza could send in their data’ – here it is (not sure how to upload graphs, etc).
* Bourke raw data 1939
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_nccObsCode=122&p_stn_num=048013&p_c=-461044545&p_startYear=1939
* ACORN raw data for Bourke Jan 1939 (you will need to scroll through from 1910)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn/sat/data/acorn.sat.maxT.048245.daily.txt
* Bourke raw data 1896
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=122&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=1896&p_c=-461044545&p_stn_num=048013
* Mildura 1906 (Check Jan 2nd entry)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_076077_All.shtml
Luke
The problem is that all comparisons are now made using ACORN data – 112 stations of which some don’t have much history at all. If you then homogenise the original data, then you may as well ‘throw the thermometer on the Landcruiser bonnet’, as you say above. Bourke’s temp has been reduced by 0.35C – not much in the scheme of things, but nearly 50% of the so-called warming since 1910.
Well yes I know you have rejected BoM’s methodology and you knew that before you even started.
So why not pick your national grid of stations and get on with it – with whatever your analysis proposal is.
It’s hardly answering your question about the hottest year having a stroll around a few selected stations is it?
And how exactly do you expect to adjust data back to 1856 with no reference sites – amazing Jen.
Ian – the risk of incurring more of Jen’s ire yes I know stations may not have much history, but assuming a few people of good faith actually want an answer and don’t simply want to sledge on AGW in general “we” need to come up with an approach. Otherwise further discussion is meaningless.
So you need a list of quality data. Surely we not going to advocate using data that we know is compromised. You could use long runs of data or just use what you have. Given the problems with data quality and continuity don’t we need a suggested approach. And BoM’s is obviously not agreed with.
OK how about this – would anyone like to suggest a series of steps to do an analysis from first principles. No tricks – just a simple question.
I don’t think we have any data that all would agree on. Raw data is not always reliable because of human error, change of location, different shields, etc (although it should be a fair representation after 1910).
The High Quality Data which was calculated from the raw data was adjusted, with temps prior to 1950 downgraded. This site has now been superseded by ACORN which has temps homogenized and used to do all comparisons.
Since this data base has been introduced in 2012, we have had the hottest day, month, year, etc. Coincidence?
I can’t propose a series of steps. I can only use the raw data base to make comparisons.
It’s the way-out claims the BOM make without reference to similar past events which is so frustrating – it should preface these statements with facts (not to say, since 1950).
I don’t think we have any data that all would agree on. Raw data is not always reliable because of human error, change of location, different shields, etc (although it should be a fair representation after 1910).
The High Quality Data which was calculated from the raw data was adjusted, with temps prior to 1950 downgraded. This site has now been superseded by ACORN which has temps homogenized and used to do all comparisons.
Since this data base has been introduced in 2012, we have had the hottest day, month, year, etc. Coincidence?
I can’t propose a series of steps. I can only use the raw data base to make comparisons.
It’s the way-out claims the BOM make without reference to similar past events which is so frustrating – it should preface these statements with facts (not to say, since 1950).
I reckon Luke’s proposal makes sense – what would be required to do a solid analysis of Australia’s temperature record from 1890? I know there have been a variety of analyses done in the past but I am not aware of the depth they go to. But a really solid independent analysis would be intriguing would it not?
Off topic, but has anyone been following this post at Goddard’s? I make no comment on the veracity of the claim beyond echoing the fact that it would be strange if 150 years of research had not previously uncovered this mistake. But it is fascinating reading for me especially in offering some more insight into how this whole radiation/GHE thing supposedly works…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/
@Ian G
“Raw data is not always reliable because of human error, change of location, different shields, etc”
All of that is true but can be corrected and accounted for. Not always quick and it takes time.
I offered my views on ‘adjusting’ data many times. If there is bad data discard it, don’t adjust it!
I’m currently working on some data and found discrepancies, I looked up the local newspaper for that day and compared the observations and corrected the data easily from the reports.
I’m sure that is not happening on the larger scale, lot easier to dismiss data as “unreliable”.
At the moment I’m not sure if I continue with it, can’t see much purpose, my findings will simply be ridiculed as not being “peer (read ‘pal’ reviewed)” by the usual suspects.
Besides time will tell anyway one way or other.
Johnathon
If you check Casino you will see a problem straight away. Casino had 2 w/s within 300m of each other. The manual w/s (1908-1912) was close to a tarred road and had buildings within 20/30m.
The AWS (started 1994) was situated on a grassed oval with no buildings within 60m.
The differences in the max temps were quite remarkable – the manual could be up to 1C warmer than the AWS.
The max temps have dropped in Casino since 1910 (the highest means were in the 1940s).
For instance, the av max mean temp for 1921-1950 was 27.0C.
From 1981-2010 it had dropped to 26.3C.
source 1921-1950
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=058063&p_prim_element_index=0&p_comp_element_index=0&redraw=null&p_display_type=full_statistics_table&normals_years=1921-1950&tablesizebutt=normal
Source for 1981-2010
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=058063&p_prim_element_index=0&p_comp_element_index=0&redraw=null&p_display_type=full_statistics_table&normals_years=1981-2010&tablesizebutt=normal
But this again complicated by a move from the Casino PO to the airport.
So even the raw data can be ‘unreliable’ but it is all we have to go on.
Like you, I am looking into some comparisons i.e. compiling the raw data for Jan 1896 using the ACORN sites and then compare it with this year’s Jan temp data. Like you, I wonder if there’s any point.
Funny how the CET shows warming peaks in 30-40’s that are almost as high as the 2000’s.
I think these peaks would be greatly reduced and far less than the 2000’s if BOM’s hocus-pocus methodology was applied to CET.
C’mon Supe, explain how the CET rate of increase is caused by CO2.
On another thread you demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of auditing, I think you are about to demonstrate the same lack of understanding of benchmarking on this one.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tbrown_figure3.png
Jennifer,
Not sure if this may help or hinder but perhaps if you ask Jonathan Lowe of http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com.au/ he may have some interesting comments as he appears to have done an awful lot of analysis on Australian Climate records.
Johnathan, Ian George, Graeme M, Luke,
Given the temperature thermometers are neither regularly nor randomly distributed across the landmass now, or historically, I suggest the idea of being able to calculate a weighted average mean is always going to be fraught. The BOM make it worse by adding in stations from different geographic locations for different time periods.
Furthermore, what is the intrinsic value of having a national average… beyond politics?
What is possible though, is to start fixing up the historical record for individual stations. These stations can give an idea of how temperatures have changed for particular geographic localities.
If we had good reliable time series for some localities we might be able to see whether it really is getting hotter, or whether temperatures appear to be following cycles, at least for that locality.
This is intrinsically important information.
So I think Jonathan is on the right track fixing up a station record. And I think Ian George is on the right track finding out about different station records. What is needed it to put this effort together somehow with work already done by people like Warwick Hughes and Ken Stewart and others.
Of course relative to the UK we have a great base from which to start with so much historical data already digitised and available.
And I’ve found out that the original hard data can be accessed through the national archive with Bathurst data for the Ag Station held at Chester Hill, Sydney, and for the jail held in East Burwood, Melbourne.
What would be great is if rather than focusing on developing a contrived national average temperature, the BOM worked with the community, including the community of sceptics, to develop trusted, long, reliable local temperature records.
Thanks Col for that link. Some interesting stuff. But hasn’t posted since 2011.
Jen, I agree entirely. I have no basis of expertise to justify saying so, but I don’t understand what value a contrived average is. I would rather see well analysed long series single station records showing trends for those stations alone, combined to show broad Australian trends. If GW means an increase in global temps, we should see that in evidence everywhere given long enough records.
Local variability will trump the longer term trend at short intervals, but over long enough periods we should see the unmistakeable signature of a CO2 enhanced warming. So, what do long term single stations show?
Again I apologise if this sort of info is available somewhere or if I don’t understand, but everywhere I look in my admittedly shallow consideration of the matter all I see are averages.
The BOM HQ temperature network was flawed; the most complete analysis of the HQ was done by Stockwell and Stewart:
http://landshape.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/06-Stockwell%5B1%5D.pdf
BOM changed the HQ to the ACORN I believe in response to this paper and work by Jo Nova’s team.
ACORN allegedly solved the problems with the HQ which are described here in the Audit Application:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/audit/anao-request-audit-bom.pdf
However a comparison between the HQ and ACORN showed ACORN had the same problems:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/threat-of-anao-audit-means-australias-bom-throws-out-temperature-set-starts-again-gets-same-results/#comment-1070341
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/acorn-sat-a-preliminary-assessment/
BOM used `1910 as the cutoff for temperatures allegedly because of a warming bias in the Glaisher screens which was rectified by the Stevensons; this is problematic:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/forgotten-historic-hot-temperatures-recorded-with-detail-and-care-in-adelaide/
Chris Gilham has done a comparison between the existing temperature records from 1908 compared with the alleged hottest Summer and day in 2013 based on all the sites in existence in 1908 and still going today; 1908 is hotter:
http://www.waclimate.net/1908.html
Warwick Hughes shows how the BOM’s claim that 2013 was a record in Australia is contradicted by every other major temperature indice:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2613
I could keep going on but how much BOM BS can you stand? And BOM linked to RC and SKS? Incredible.
Hi Graeme
Playing with data always takes heaps more time than you think it is going to. I am so tempted to start downloading the Burke data Ian links to, but I know it will end up keeping me up all night, and I have other stuff that must get done.
I have spent much time with data from Bathurst. You can see the plots for different stations at the following links…
http://www.mythandthemurray.org/no-increase-in-hot-days-at-bathurst-or-the-misguided-politics-of-attributing-bushfires-to-global-warming/
http://www.mythandthemurray.org/no-increase-in-warm-nights-or-mild-winters-at-bathurst/
http://www.mythandthemurray.org/last-year-2013-a-hot-year-for-australia/
Cheers,
Jen – you may find this useful.
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/view/badc.nerc.ac.uk__ATOM__dataent_11642968801511608
What would the intrinsic value of a Northern Ireland Average Temperature be? Ditto for the Republic of Ireland, and what would we learn by comparing the German Average against the Polish Average.
It must have been a hoot when there was an East and West Germany – what would have been learned by comparing their averages.
“Furthermore what is the instrinsic value of having a national average. . .beyond politics?”
I have absolutely no idea!
Good question!
National averages and politics.
The political entity called the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) could have a national average.
Should Ireland be united the national average of the new republic and the remnant Great Britain would be altered.
Should the Scots devolve they would calculate a national average, and the national average of the remnant England (and Wales) would be calculated also.
The national averages of Ireland, Scotland and England could then be compared against each other, for what purpose I have no idea, but it could be done.
The bleeding obvious outcome would be that Scotland is “colder” because it is further north, and England (on average) would likely be warmer than Ireland.
So it is obvious how useful and important national averages are. Its not just science, its CLIMATE science, so it must be really important.
Cant wait till the national average of South Sudan is calculated.
Then we will have crystal clear clarity on the role of human induced CO2 on the planets average temperature.
Willis Eschenbach has looked at the MSU satellite data plotted by UAH over the last 33 years. Apart from the north pole he can’t really find much of a trend at all.
Certainly at least 70% of the planet seems to show little warming over that 1/3 of a century. And ZIP worries about UHIE with this data set.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/29/should-we-be-worried/#more-102378
Haven’t read yet, but probably relevant, so just filing these links here…
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/CLIMARC/AustralianHistoricalDailyClimateSufacesUsingCLIMARC_nocover.pdf
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/documentation/AustralianSyntheticDailyClassAPanEvaporation.pdf
An example of how just using ACORN stations can distort the temperature record.
For Dec, 2013 NSW’s average max mean comes out as a +1.6C anomaly on the BOM’s NSW Climate Summary review (only 26 stations in NSW are used). This turns into +1.64C on the National summary.
If you go to the NSW’s BOM site, there are 95 stations which are given an anomaly. When these are calculated, you get an averaged anomaly mean of +1.36C.
If this discrepancy is mirrored across all the states, then claims of hottest day, month, season and year are meaningless.
The whole comparative record would need to be revamped so as to reflect all historical data when compared only to 112 ACORN state ons.
Source
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/nsw/summary.shtml
Ian G – it’s not so much a discrepancy as a different analysis – if you use more or less stations you will get slightly different answers. One could do some intensive testing to see how much the NSW state mean moves around with different numbers of stations. If you look in Jen’s first link above your comment it’s problematic (Fig 6.1) – as the number of reporting stations available change dramatically through time.
Luke
So basically, if you keep changing the analysis or the way data is matched, then temp comparisons are meaningless.
This might be an example of this.
Check BOM’s Annual Climate Summary for 2009. The annual mean is listed as a +0.9C anomaly and 2nd hottest after 2005, ahead of 1998 (+0.73C anomaly).
Source
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20100105.shtml
Now check the 2012 Annual Climate Summary.
2009 has dropped to 3rd place after an adjustment of some 0.1C and an increase in 1998’s mean temp.
Source
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20130103.shtml
Was this the result of ACORN comparison or a mistake made in 2009? I can find no explanation as to why.
Ian G – yep – one needs some stability in any analysis or things will wobble around. The problem with our thermometer recorded history is that stations numbers vary from hundreds current day all the way back to one or two and probably a single station somewhere in the primordial soup. And the station are not uniformly spread – higher in nicer places to live and along railway and telegraph lines.
However one could mathematically test how much the means move around with different numbers of stations. At some higher level you’d think it wouldn’t change all that much.
Of course how much do we really need to know this is the worst-est ever to six decimal places. If the trend is up and the hotter days trending up over time – that’s the real issue. Trends not the absolute best-est or worse-est as you can always nitpick it to death.
But given the national predisposition to sport and and horse racing – it’s probably not culturally compatible – people want record winners !
Luke,
The people who want records are probably not the people who need BoM to work on useful stuff.
Debbie perhaps BoM have many clients with diverse interests. You can just turn the page. Of course useful stuff might be a seasonal forecast – which might if you were unthinking you could in inadvertently base on a baseline that was shifting due to AGW. Heaven forbid ! But hey if you’re only interested in the broad social policy hand wave thing and think 80:20 is 100:0 well your mileage may vary.
Climate Science is for Second Raters
“Was Lindzen suggesting, asked Tim Yeo at this point, that scientists in the field of climate were academically inferior.
“Oh yeah,” said Lindzen. “I don’t think there’s any question that the brightest minds went into physics, math, chemistry…””
I suspect there are many “climate scientists” at BOM, you know, the “smartest people in the room / country / world” – well thats what they think – dont they Luke.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100257206/climate-science-is-for-second-raters-says-worlds-greatest-atmospheric-physicist/
Well he would say that – mindless comment from someone who’s past it and had his great ideas found wanting. Sob sob. And from Delingpole – ” “It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven’t got the time…. I am an interpreter of interpretations.” LOL !
sp – what does that even mean – it’s just filler from political activists – your mates !
I have read most of the references cited thus far and have to say I wouldn’t trust this stuff as a basis for making policy decisions, one bit.
The BOM repeatedly talks about it being all been Peer Reviewed …but given the way PR is now being exposed as generally an unsafe way of evaluating large sums of public expenditure, you would have thought they could have been a little but wiser, and underpinned that with other approaches.
The Journals referenced are nothing more that upgraded in house magazines and the peers are all part of the same clique. I would have more confidence if more independent professional statisticians had been involved, such as the ABS.
The data is full of errors, as Ken Stewart has shown and the obvious nature of the errors just casts a shadow over the whole lot. Their attention to quality control is very poor indeed, particularly when routines could have been written to detect and alert people to anomalies/typoes.
The BOM lays out their summary claims for ACORN, but closer inspection reveals that these may be and perhaps are, highly suspect, if not complete failures.
There is this also to ponder from elsewhere:
http://www.cato.org/blog/closing-books-2013-another-year-another-nail-coffin-disastrous-global-warming
“Please be advised that this history has been repeatedly “revised” to either make temperatures colder in the earlier years or warmer at the end. Not one “adjustment” has the opposite effect, a clear contravention of logic and probability.
While the US has gotten slightly warmer in recent decades, compared to the early 20th century, so have the data themselves.
Or this….
http://nipccreport.org/articles/2014/jan/29jan2014a4.html
“But wait! Fyfe et al. report that the inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming was even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998-2012), for which period they say the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08°C “was more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03°C.”
Or this from Ken Stewarts own prodigious amount of work (He being one of several who have done private citizen validation at their own expense)
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/acorn-sat-a-preliminary-assessment/
Which, in summary says:
“Acorn’s authors claim that:
• They have produced a daily record for the last 100 years.
• Increasing data quantity post 1960 gives more confidence that the warming trend is strong and increasing.
• Acorn produces similar trends to those already shown by previous Australian and international analyses, (which is true), and allows improved analysis of the frequency of hot and cold extremes.
• There is an approximate balance between positive and negative adjustments for maximum temperature but a weak tendency towards a predominance of negative adjustments (54% compared with 46% positive) for minimum temperature.
“Time for a reality check,” says Ken S. “Unfortunately,”
“• The record is much shorter than 100 years for a significant number of sites. For many others, the Acorn record has many gaps and contains spurious errors which imply poor quality control.
• Post 1960 data indeed indicate warming but this is not the case over the whole period.
• Acorn’s trends indeed reflect those of previous analyses but not those drawn from the raw data.
• Hot and cold extremes have been adjusted, usually warming winters and cooling summers, and at some sites new and more extreme records have been set.
• While there may be a numeric balance of positive and negative adjustments, analysis of a representative sample indicates that adjustments predominantly increase warming.”
And finally this gem:
• “The Acorn record is impossible to replicate.”
If their own goals are subsequently been found to have failed, and it is all impossible to replicate, then it ALL fails. Full Stop
….so much for sanctity and reliability of Peer Review and being a science based organisation.
Its unreliable.
And without knowing what BoM staff’s quals are your comment is hilarious bigoted stupidity of the worst order! Do you know what their quals are? It’s a big organisation ….
So Ken Stewart asserts – why do believe him – coz he told you so? Come on. His expertise is what?
Luke
‘If the trend is up and the hotter days trending up over time – that’s the real issue.’
Some places are definitely not and they see to be missing from the ACORN data set.
Here are 3 long-term stations in NSW – one on the North Coast, one on NW Slopes and Plains and one in the Hunter. There is no sign of warming – in fact there tends to be a cooling over the past 100 years.
Neither Murrurundi or Casino are in the ACORN data set. Gunnedah is but only goes back to 1948 despite its records going back before 1900.
Here are the graphs.
Casino
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=058063&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Gunnedah
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=055023&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Murrurundi
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=061051&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
I also ran the data for Sydney Observatory recently and found there were more +35C days between 1921-1950 than 1981-2010 (123 v 102 – 20% more).
If we were trending warmer, surely these examples would not be happening.
Even if there were no climate zombies (they walk among us!) building our Great National Temperature is like erecting a wind farm. You know at the very outset it’s a big wank for screamingly obvious reasons…but you go ahead and do it anyway.
“And without knowing what BoM staff’s quals are your comment is hilarious bigoted stupidity of the worst order! Do you know what their quals are? It’s a big organisation”.
Well clearly there are deficiencies in the services they are providing…despite their size and so called quals.
I am not enamoured by quals for their own sake ..I have met some of the biggest and shiftiest dunderheads ever imaginable with multiple degrees, and you wouldn’t trust them to light the barbecue.
I would have thought a rational person would not be bothered with those arguments from size an authority, but look at what they have, or have not delivered, and their evidence for it. But obviously you work by different standards. Bluster and quipping seem to be your limits.
Independent assessment on a number of fronts reveals that there are real problems… their basic data quality control is crap. If they are so good why are there so many basic errors in the data as transcribed.
All that so called brain power, and they haven’t got the wit to write some validation code to check for basic errors…and as for the ACORN not being openly replicable that is a basic fail right up…
As for who is a bigot in this game, and on this blog, I will leave that for others, but obviously from the many pleas from many other people herein, your standing for sincerity, knowledge and logic would be questionable.
As for Ken Stewarts work I would trust him over a simple minded bilious quip passing as an opinion from you any day
Time for your Cipramil isn’t it.?
The lads are looking at the sensitivity of the Continental Area Weighted Average temperature to changes in particular sites; and that sensitivity can be pronounced. An application of the CRUTEM gridding on ACORN-SAT temperatures is also interesting since CRUTEM use a different method to BOM for dealing with grids with no sites in them. These sites are usually in the hottest areas.
BOM also tends to ignore the GPCS in 1977 which had a pronounced affect on temperatures in Australia and globally as many studies have shown. Since cooling and heating occur at different rates the impact of a step in 1977 and another in 1998 would have an impact on DTR.
The point is BOM has invested in AGW to such an extent that real meaning in the temp data is not being treated.
It’s a pity the NIWA case in New Zealand came a cropper. But NIWA proved one thing; if anyone comes knocking on BOM’s doors it won’t be with a retired accountant and a couple of part time statisticians.
Re adjustments
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/29/important-study-on-temperature-adjustments-homogenization-can-lead-to-a-significant-overestimate-of-rising-trends-of-surface-air-temperature/
Late 19th Century photographic evidence of the Stevenson Screen in Australian meteorology:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=604
Let’s hope Jennifer, Cohenite, Ken Stewart and others have the time to look at the Chinese study shown at Another Ian’s link above.
They seem to have found plenty of hocus pocus extra warming involved in their study. Seems to back up Anthony Watts work and study to be released soon.
So basically, the BOM has to go back to raw original data and make comparisons from there.
Dropping out stations as the years go back. Once a break in a stations data because it was moved or modified
then that stations data locality gets ignored as you cannot use it for comparisons of trends. I feel
likewise that stations in obvious heat island effected localities should also be ignored but hey do 2 graphs
likewise perhaps show population growth pressures on temperature by doing 2 graphs for stations in major cities and not. I have little doubt stations in cities n heat island effected areas will show rising temps. But its an effect across the country and the globe we want to see not in cities.
Perhaps do several in regions to show some regions not being effected by population growth. these would be the most interesting.
Any data that is suspect or not there just doesnt get included, no fiddling, no creating data etc.
Before you guys attack the Bureau’s methods,you should take note of the BEST project. The skeptics were left with egg (goat’s cheese ?) on face when their so-called independent analysis of global temperature records confirmed the experts’ findings.
Now, you dont want to suffer the same fate do you?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth)
“The team’s preliminary findings, data sets and programs were made available to the public in October 2011, and their results have been published as peer-reviewed scientific papers beginning in December 2012. The study addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias. The Berkeley Earth group concluded that the warming trend is real, that over the past 50 years (between the decades of the 1950s and 2000s) the land surface warmed by 0.91±0.05°C, and their results mirrors those obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Hadley Centre, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis, and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The study also found that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from these earlier studies.”
Of course there is one other issue that has not yet been addressed:
Every thermometer drifts with age. This is particularly the case with glass thermometers as they encounter fluctuations in temperature.
This fact requires that, in order to produce meaningful data, every weather station thermometer must be calibrated at least at the start of every season.
I would be willing to bet all of the moths in my wallet that the thermometers in our weather stations are rarely, if ever calibrated.
That being the case, what is the value of any of the readings? Certainly the reported warming of the planet of 0.8 degrees is totally meaningless.
Neville, the new Chinese study is really just another nail in the coffin of the attempt by AGW science, in particular BEST, to negate UHIE [Urban Heat Island Effect].
McIntyre defined UHIE as
“Extra UHI warming (W) is proportional to the log of the population, so W = log P.
The population is growing at a compounding rate, thus it is P = k^t.
To get the derivative (warming rate) we must apply the chain rule of differentiation. With any luck you will get this answer:
dW/dt = (dW/dP) * (dP/dt)
= (d/dP . log P) * (d/dt . k^t)
= (1/P) * (k^t * log k)
= (1/k^t) * (k^t * log k)
= log k
Thus the warming rate is the same wherever the population growth rate is the same, regardless of their difference in population. On top of that, due to the logarithm, even if their population growth rates are significantly different (eg 1.07 versus 1.03) you still end up with very similar constant ratio between town and city in the trends.
Intuitively this should be the case, because the warming rate of a city is a linear extension of the warming rate it had when it was just a small town.
Therefore any small town and city near each other contemporaneously will have basically the same warming rate if they have nearly equal growth rates, DESPITE having hugely different populations and having measurably different night time temperatures due to a very real and significant UHI. A comparison between places that never grew and places that grew quickly should show a difference in temperature trend regardless of current population.
And the fact is that UHI is easily measured in any city. It leads to a DTR reduction which is locally indistinguishable from an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Since UHI is measurable, it is pointless to try to find a way to prove it doesn’t exist. Because it exists it must have influenced temperature records in high growth areas. The only mystery is why you would believe a statistic instead of photos.”
What Muller and BEST did was eliminate UHIE from consideration by the very construction of their “New Mathematical Framework” for analysing temperature data (Described in their methodology document “Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process”; which unfortunately I no longer have a link to).
When you look at equations 1 and 2 (on page 7) of the document, you see that the only non stationary effect acknowledged on a temperature series is defined as Global Temperature Change. That is, any effect that doesn’t average to zero over a few years is defined as a change in Global Temperature.
Since, in the real world, UHIE is non-stationary (populations continue to grow as McIntyre’s formula shows), the “New Mathematical Framework” guarantees that UHIE will be considered to be “Global Warming”.
The Chinese paper says homogenisation which ignores UHIE, in particular as manifested in DTR can create a false warming trend unless the UHIE is properly accounted for in the DTR. Figure 6 is of especial interest since it is similar to the alternative homogenisation process proposed by Stockwell and Stewart; see Figure 1:
http://landshape.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/06-Stockwell%5B1%5D.pdf
Cohenite,
That landshape.org…. link doesn’t work and its didn’t for the first time you provided it above
Well not for me it doesn’t .
Ian George,
Wonderful temp series for Casino, Gunnedah and Murrurundi from the last lot of links your provided at 11am. Bravo. And I didn’t realise it was possible to generate a chart directly at the BOM site. What a time saver!
Dr No,
I’d be interested to know why you think the ‘BEST study’ was genuine and that the guy who did it was sincere with his intensions and methodology. Also Wikipedia is a notoriously bad place to find information on contentious issues like AGW. If you ever doubted as much read what wikipedia says about ‘Climategate’ and then read the original Climategate emails or even Fred Pearce’s book on the subject. Pearce writes for The Guardian.
Minister, I don’t know why that is happening; it works for me; abstract is here:
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/qp70131222554607/
I’ll see if I can’t find another PDF link.
Trying to impugn an area average using point data???. Started life as a travesty – ended up a joke. I asked Jen for a list of the 1930 stations examined as stated in her letter to BOM “When individual stations with long temperature records are examined the late 1890 and 1930s appear to be as hot as recent years. ” I was told to do my own analysis including of Emerald. I did. Her claim was not supported. So we don’t know which stations were examined and why it is not to be revealed. It gets worse. We were all invited to send in our data that might show the 1930s were as hot as recent years. The joke is that even if a couple are found and the comparison is valid, it is still a joke trying to impugn an area average using point data. Time to move on. I know hocus when I see it.
Richard Muller of Berkely Earth was actually once a skeptic. I was in the bathroom at the time, so I missed it.
Wikipedia:
– Climate Science
– BEST
– William Connolly (co-founder SKS) – Wikipedia editor
– Say no more
– Nudge Nudge
– Wink Wink (or should that be wank wank?)
“Trying to impugn an area average using point data???. ”
You’re talking through your hat bazza. If individual sites are adjusted/homogenised incorrectly that can have a profound effect on the National average temperature. Alice Springs, for example, being hundreds of kilometres from the nearest neighbouring site, contributes 7 – 10% of the national warming signal.
http://www.cato.org/blog/closing-books-2013-another-year-another-nail-coffin-disastrous-global-warming
“It’s a fact that if you just take all the thousands of fairly evenly-spaced “official” weather stations around the country and average them up since 1895, that you won’t get much of a warming trend at all.”
And according to Dr No, and the BEST study involving William Connelly of Wikipedia manipulation fame.
“The study also found that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from these earlier studies.”
Well it all depends doesn’t it.
I’d go with SP as being closer the mark with trustworthiness.
Bazza (4:29)
‘I was told to do my own analysis including of Emerald. I did. Her claim was not supported.’
Here’s Emerald from the BOM’s site.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=035027&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Lot warmer in the 20’s.
Cohenite, I reckon you might be on to something with your Alice Spring example. With say 10% weighting, you would only need to impugn a 1C error and given it would be in the direction you want, it could reduce the 2013 Australia average by 0.1C. But the process could be unpredictable and you could easily get a year such as 2009 as the hottest. The problem is a lot of extremes are, or at least used to be, in El Niño years. And El Niño impacts are spatially coherent, they cover large areas. Some interpolations might depend on correlations with neighbouring areas. The best way to attack this would be to first pick which year you want to be the hottest. Lets say you go for 1914 which was pretty hot. Then pick the Australian average temperature you want and work out by Monte Carlo simulation a weighting scheme and also a few well chosen adjustments to get the right answer.
Bazza,
My memory, and some times even my maths, lets me down. But I was pointing you, and even the Bureau, in the right direction.
So temperatures in the 1920s, not the 1930s, were a bit warmer at Emerald that they are now.
Can we agree on that?
Ian George,
Thank you!
Wes, go back and check Jens claim. And where is the data for the last 20 years?
Here it is, Bazza.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=035264&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Station moved to the airport in mid-1992, but lower over the past twenty years. Do you agree? Especially the four of the last five years.
Ian George, Jens claim was for the 1930s and I asked her for the stations she drew on in her letter to BOM. I am still waiting.
Jen, as I think you have said, it can be a great waste of time chasing stuff. As I have said it is a joke trying to discredit a national average figure with point data, often from stations that have not been quality controlled etc. And most of the encumbents here were all to eager to wade in without even giving BOM the courtesy of checking out what information was readily available.
Bazza
I suggested that temperatures in the 1930s were as hot, or hotter, than they are now. Eyeballing the two charts would confirm this. That is back then the annual average was often above 29, over the last few years it has been below 29 degree celsius.
But the really important point to take away from the charts is that the 1920s were really hot, indeed much hotter than temperatures since.
Indeed the more time you spend plotting data for individual stations, and I’ve always done it the long way by downloading the files first and matching them up etcetera, then the more evident it is that the Bureau has betrayed our trust.
Jen, 2002 at Emerald exceeded the Airport average by more than any year in the 30s exceeded the PO average!
Emerald is located where ENSO has the greatest impacts. The last few years obviously reflect La NIna. Interesting that Emerald has been the site for many climate change studies. The min was up 2C last century and the average frost free period was about 20 days by 2000 compared with 80 in 1900. ( how could that be if the data is fudged – farmers know it to be true!)
You are seriously deluded if you think your plotting data for individual stations can show anything of any generality. BOM has temperature trends by states and regions and I think you will find NSW is the main area where temps were up in the 30s. But you will always find another conspiracy.
Bazza
No conspiracy. More like betrayal.
After I suggested you look at the temperature data for Emerald you came back and announced that I was wrong.
You were going to play semantics. I had pointed you in the right direction, but it was in fact hottest in the 1920s, not the 1930s as I had suggested for that particular station.
You are typical of an increasing percentage of bureaucrats, and clearly those who control the calculation of our national average temperature, you deceive at every turn.
And as each day passes more and more Australians shall begin to loathe you that much more.
ENSO – the last refuge of the scoundrel with nothing useful to say
Inland Queensland was rain deficient or in full drought for much of the twenties and thirties, including the big dry run after 1927. Curiously, the BoM presently does not rate any year between 1925-6 and 1940-1 as El Nino. While more extreme heatwaves were recorded before and after this dry period, I’m guessing a decade + without enough cloud cover is going to give you high averages for a place like Emerald. (Lack of cloud will also explain some big frosts of course. Those nineties winter mornings made my place look like Perisher Valley.)
Never mind, they’re only stats. Stats are okay if you don’t squeeze ’em and process them into a “product”. Just let ’em be the handy, shabby old things they actually are.
OK, average temps for the following decades in Emerald.
1921-1930 30.1C
1931-1940 29.56C
2001-2010 29.52C
Or, if you prefer
2004-2013 29.45C (last ten years if 2013 was 30.2C)
Hottest year was 1926 with 32.4C.
So 1920s and 1930s were as warm as, or warmer than, now (as Jennifer suggests).
I mean, what else do I have to do with my time.
The 2013 temp is calculated by averaging the data at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW4042.latest.shtml
Whoops – sorry Bazza and Jen
2001-2010 29.87C
So Bazza correct on the decadal average re 1930s, Jen correct on the past ten years.
Pretty sure all the rest are correct.
That’s what you get when you do calculations at 3 in the morning.
Symptoms..: ” excited and obstinate refusal to comply with reasonable requests….fits of hysteria and temper tantrums …”
Prescribed medicine..: “Ritilin all ’round!”
Re the BEST study.
Judging by your replies, you obviously do not know anything about the BEST project.
Or, are deliberately ignoring it.
It represents a classic case whereby many high profile skeptics supported an independent study but then repudiated after it did not confirm their biases.
(Wikpedia is only one convenient starting point for you to learn about it)
I went through all this with a science writer at a local paper many years ago. When I gave him the higher temps and lower rainfall for a given area he became angry and insisted the earlier BOM record wasn’t reliable.
He had been telling the readers that the later record held all the higher temps and that was clearly wrong.
I then directed him to another nearby town that backed up my position he then ended our dialogue.
But trying to argue with Luke and bazza is a hopeless task because facts mean nothing to these religious fundamentalists. Fanatics don’t worry about facts.
This entire mess is falling apart for them in every country, probably most in the EU and come July we will hopefully get rid of this imbecillic co2 tax here in OZ.
But there should be a proper inquiry into our BOM record with the best people involved in all the areas.
More fiddling with the temp record at GISS.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/doublemint-climate-science/#comments
Comment from the Stevengoddardlink by Neville above:
“GISS’s Gavin Schmidt is confusing the poor munchkins at the Australian BOM.
He keeps saying an huge El Niño is starting, and the BOM ENSO models say nuetral for next two years. Is it because the whole USA is freezing that he is trying to divert attention or is he just a complete dill?”
http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-28/el-nino-may-develop-as-most-models-predict-pacific-ocean-warming
Reply
Andy Oz says:
January 30, 2014 at 9:56 pm
Latest ENSO link in Australia.
FWIW I’m voting that Gavin is freezing and a dill.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
I cherry pick Georgetown, Qld !
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=030018&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=030018&p_nccObsCode=38&p_month=13
Looks like one of them thar trend thangs
“This entire mess is falling apart for them in every country” – said every day by screecher Nifty for 10 years. Boring.
This is a prime example of sheer unadulterated drivel from sp – so blindly stupid that it defies any rationality and why sp should simply shutup forever as not understanding anything. The greatest dill of all time award.
“BOM ENSO models say nuetral for next two years.” UMMMM – NO !!!!!!!!!! totally mad comment bereft of any ability
bazza’s dismissal of the particular in favour of the general is a real wood for trees situation.
A recent article at OLO drawing on Ken Stewart’s excellent work looks at this very point in the context of BOM’s and the then Climate Commission’s claim that the 2013 summer was the hottest; the article is here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14784&page=0
And Ken’s post is here:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/a-tale-of-two-records/
Ken’s point was the claim of a hottest summer was based on only one regional maximum temperature. That particular hot region was narrowed down by Ken to 2 possible areas:
http://kenskingdom.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/summer1213-regions-responsible.jpg
The problem is the BOM did not disclose their methodology for reaching their conclusion that 2013 summer was the hottest.
No doubt the national average could be the warmest ever despite NO record at any particular point or part of the nation, or in this case just one.
Also no doubt, despite the BOM not releasing their methodology for concluding that the mew metric of the hottest summer occurred, it is apparent that some sort of weighting between the states and regions occurred as David Stockwell suggested:
States Anomaly Area Contribution
NSW/Act 2.79 0.104 0.29016
NT 1.88 0.175 0.329
Qld 2 0.225 0.45
SA 1.88 0.127 0.23876
Tas 0.52 0.009 0.00468
Vic 1.28 0.03 0.0384
WA 1.23 0.33 0.4059
Weighted Average 1.7569
Australia(BoM) 1.76
Now why would that particular weighting be applied which decreased the impact of the cooler regions and increased the impact of the warmer regions?
Luke says;
‘I cherry pick Georgetown, Qld !’
And so did the BOM. Georgetown is included in the ACORN data set.
Why were some stations included and others not? We know that some areas/stations are cooler than or similar to, the years before 1950.
It would be interesting to see which ACORN stations are ‘warmers’ and which stations are ‘coolers’.
Above I mention Casino, Gunnedah and Murrurundi. Only Gunnedah makes the cut but ACORN starts its record at 1948 even though its records start prior to 1890.
And I make the point again. For December, 2013 for NSW, all the 95 stations averaged out gives an anomaly of +1.34C .
When the 26 stations for NSW on the ACORN data set are averaged, the anomaly jumps to +1.64C.
I’m sure that the BOM didn’t deliberately select specific stations but ever since it did, we have had all these record-breaking heat events (except for Oodnadatta’s 50.7 in 1960).
Ian George,
Much thanks for going to the trouble of calculating the decadal averages and more.
Luke,
Thanks for finding Georgetown. Georgetown is about as good as I’ve ever seen a ‘warming trend’ for a single site without UHI.
But can you find a better one also within ACORN?
I’ve NOT looked recently, but my guess is that they are there, there must be a site in SA that has been particularly hot last year? I’ve information from Bob F-J suggesting that when you look state by state at last year it is SA that has contributed overwhelmingly to the record for 2013.
Cohenite and others,
Much thanks for the continuing great information.
Supe – you need to earn to read, and understand who said what:
“The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) remains in a neutral state (neither El Niño nor La Niña). Climate models suggest an ENSO-neutral state to persist until at least the end of the austral autumn, with some warming of the tropical Pacific likely ….. Most climate models surveyed by the Bureau suggest the tropical Pacific Ocean will warm through the southern autumn and winter. Some, but not all, models predict this warming may approach El Niño thresholds by early winter. Model outlooks that span autumn have lower skill than forecasts made at other times of the year, hence long-range model outlooks should be used cautiously at this time.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
“An El Nino weather pattern, which can parch Australia and parts of Asia while bringing rains to South America, may occur in the coming months as the Pacific Ocean warms, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology …… Most climate models suggest the tropical Pacific will warm through the southern autumn and winter, the bureau said in a statement today. Some models predict this warming may approach El Nino thresholds by early winter, it said. Australia’s autumn runs from March to May and winter is from June to August ….. An El Nino trend is likely to develop this year, Gavin Schmidt, deputy director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said this month. … Depending on the size of the El Nino, it may push 2014 and, more likely, 2015 up the rankings of warmest years on record, the Goddard Institute’s Schmidt said on a conference call.”
http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-28/el-nino-may-develop-as-most-models-predict-pacific-ocean-warming
sp et al.
Kevin Long forecast the extra ice in the Antarctic, and I think is forecasting an El Nino for next year.
I need to do a blog post on his stuff…
http://thelongview.com.au
sp – you’re clueless and silly. BoM don’t have two year ENSO forecasts. We’re entering the austral autumn predictability barrier where ENSO can do anything. You have utterly no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t pretend you do. You said “BOM ENSO models say nuetral for next two years.” – ROT ! Don’t associate mid 2014 to mid 2015 with 2 years – its’ one year. The Roman calendar is quite an arbitrary construct.
ENSO and anti-ENSO events typically run from autumn to autumn over the Xmas calendar year boundary. A few reform to become multi-year back to back events.
You were right in associating ENSO with scoundrels. YOU !
the Long View… an interesting read, especially the bit about the Chinese Effect. Don’t think I like his forecasts for the next 10-15 years…
Cohenite and Ken Stewart also clearly have a very sophisticated view of sample and spatial variability “The point Ken makes is that a record maximum in one part of Australia may have produced an overall summer mean record. If this is the case the summer temperature record is not based on a Nation-wide mean temperature heating event; it is based instead on a statistical extrapolation of a different temperature type which only has correlation with weather and climate causes in the area where the record occurred.”
I would be interested in the year when there was “a Nation-wide mean temperature heating event”?
It gets even more interesting with Cohenite wondering how to calculate a weighted national average from state data given they have different areas.
Jen at the risk of incurring your disdain – I just picked Georgetown almost at random – had a long history and was out of the way basically.
Broken Hill has a magnificent minimum story.
So if it was me – I’d just pick all the best long term records – make the list ignoring capital cities – and do an analysis. Just do it ! (cue Jen for saying I’m trolling)
BUT googling your Rayner links above there is an alternative analysis for 60% of Queensland based on interpolated raw data. See http://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/state-of-the-environment/report-2007/pdf/soe-report-2007.pdf
Page 130 for description and see Figures 4.11, 4.12 and 4.13
What do I take out of it – Qld has definitely warmed and wheat farmers know that from frost frequency.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442(1996)009%3C1896%3AFINATA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
But maxima is more complicated and you’d have to get into the issue of site instruments – were pre-1910 Stevenson screens? Warwick Hughes has blogged that Stevenson screens were more widespread than asserted but his information is very qualitative and anecdotal (IMO). Exact numbers in real use? Dates? Were they experiments or in service? Supposedly BoM have looked at all this instrument issue but you’d reject their analysis a priori I’d assume.
So there is one alternative analysis for 60% of Qld !
Thanks Luke,
But I’m keen to find the few sites in SA that the BOM may have exploited to generate a record for 2013. So if you could spend some time looking at ACORN temps for individual stations in SA?
I’m unable to do the job, because am otherwise engaged attempting to earn my keep without the security of a regular income or healthy superannuation balance.
“It gets even more interesting with Cohenite wondering how to calculate a weighted national average from state data given they have different areas.”
Don’t be a smart-a bazza. In my comment above I gave you David Stockwell’s weighting which may have been used by BOM since it gives the same result as BOM’s average temperature for the “Angry Summer” of 2013, the “Nation-wide mean temperature heating event”?
As you can see [?] David divides the temperature anomaly for each state by its relative area to obtain the weighting.
Another way of achieving BOM’s record “Angry Summer”, the “event”, temperature was suggested by Jo Nova. Jo simply took out the coolest sites in each area to obtain the BOM National temperature:
“Australia 339 out of 721
NSW 91 out of 172
Northern Territory 27 out of 54
Queensland 54 out of 125
South Australia 45 out of 80
Tasmania 57 out of 57
Victoria 68 out of 94
Western Australia 60 out of 139
In other words, if you chose the hottest 339 weather stations in Australia on 7 January 2013 and ignored the other 382, you’d find an average maximum of 40.3C.”
How do you think BOM achieved their “Angry Summer” record?
Luke,
Warwick Hughes
has published on the issue of Stevenson Screens, see
International Journal of Climatology
Volume 15, Pages 231-234. 1995.
Could you tell me why the Bureau chooses to ignore this publication and how you didn’t even know about it?
Luke, by way of being helpful in terms of inserting the hocus pokus bias you want I can help pick whatever cherries you want. You can eyeball from the BOM mean temperature trend maps that the warming trend from 1910 is smaller in much of SE Australia, actually where the population and the gauges are . So if you use area-unweighted data as was often done a century ago, and still is amazingly, you can cherry pick a cool bias .
But on the other hand if you want to show warming, you would only use data from 1970 which shows most rapid warming across southern Australia compared with northern, and you would just average the gauges.
“ oh, what a tangled web…….
Warwick has done some good work on the Stevenson/Glashier issue and luke has given him a serve for which he got a mention in dispatches:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Parker%20Int%20J%20Clim%2094.pdf
The Stevenson has certainly been around in Australia well before 1910:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/84861079?zoomLevel=5
There is a lot of info on the Stevenson/Glashier dispute including the Parker paper:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Parker%20Int%20J%20Clim%2094.pdf
Various reports:
http://www.john-daly.com/screens.htm
Both the Reports and Parker paper conclude that this warming bias was in the order of 0.2C. However there was no consideration to the idea that the Stevenson screen was at fault or had inherent bias; the Glaisher screen warming bias was the default assumption.
The Parker paper says this:
“
this bias, implied by comparisons between Stevenson screens and the tropical sheds then in use, is confirmed by comparisons between coastal land surface air temperatures and nearby marine surface temperatures, and was probably of the order of 0.2c.
At 4.1 of the Parker paper it is noted that the Glaisher stand consistently records warmer than the Stevenson during the day at various locations around the world; but the conclusion that it is the Glaisher stand which is at fault is assumed; that is, it could be the Stevenson which has a cooling bias is not considered in the paper or Reports; there is, therefore, no Null Hypothesis, or rather the Null that it is the Stevenson and not the Glaisher is not tested, merely assumed.
Then there is this BOM report which at page 5 says:
“A 60-year set of parallel observations at Adelaide (Fig. 3) showed a warm
bias in maximum temperatures measured using the Glaisher stand relative to those measured in
the Stevenson screen (Nicholls et al., 1996), that ranged from 0.2 to 0.6°C in annual means, and
reached up to 1.0°C in mean summer maximum temperatures and 2-3°C on some individual hot
days, most likely due to heat re-radiated from the ground, from which the floorless Glaisher
stand provides no protection. Minimum Glaisher stand temperatures tended to have a cool bias
of 0.2-0.3°C all year, and the diurnal temperature range thus has a positive bias”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/documents/ACORN-SAT_Observation_practices_WEB.pdf
However, the denigration of the Glashiers and the advancement of the Stevensons because the Glashiers were too hot simply does not wash when the old records are scrutinised as Jo does here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/forgotten-historic-hot-temperatures-recorded-with-detail-and-care-in-adelaide/
The fact is the cooling of the old temperatures in BOM homogenisation is as subjective and problematic as Dell-Marta et al describe.
Cohenite @ 1:23 pm
Re: the angry 2013 summer. If you go here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=1202&ave_yr=3
to the BoM time-series for Australia – Summer including the menu optional 3-year smoothing, it is evident that amongst the noise, what with 2011 &2011 being below the 30-year average, then 2013 has no significant trend indication at this time.
Also, rather worryingly if you then use the drop-down menu for the seven State and Territory divisions, all of them have had higher temperatures at very random short to long term earlier times. Some were spectacularly hotter including SA.
The BoM also made a claim for the hottest January on record, but if you check-out through the drop-down menu in the above, it is much the same story. Also, puzzlingly, December and February were markedly cool. (according to their time series graphics)
Bob Fernley-Jones
Bob F-J.
In a comment in the above thread I’ve mentioned your assessment about SA contributing overwhelmingly to the 2013 annual average record. … and my need to do a post on what you have already sent me.
I’m coming across and quickly commenting at this thread, but haven’t been able to clear the decks to write something that does your work justice so far.
The ANGRY summer is like SUPERSTORM Sandy. if people say it often enough, the climate tricksters get to spin on for a bit longer. Who knew that POLAR VORTEX would be a nifty way of blaming our CO2 for the snow dumping down in Atlanta?
We could complain to the BoM – but all we’d get is an angry super-vortex of wanky bureaucratese and lots of hotlinks to check out by way of punishment homework.
Jen @ 2:34 pm
Thanks for your interest, and no worries if you need more time, including waiting for refined Google data that I hope to advise on 3/Feb.
Meanwhile, I’m sure that Luke can keep us enthralled with his wondrous episods of great wisdom.
Jen – had a quick look at Kevin Long forecast – possible weak link in his case, that may overshadow his work?:
“gravitational forces resultant of the unions of Jupiter/Saturn and Uranus or Neptune. To paraphrase the arguments, the changing gravitational bulges in the earth’s crust are the resultant energy force that adds extra frictional heat to the earth’s molten core and tectonic
plates, which is then transferred to the seas and Earth’s atmosphere.”
I have not followed his links on this particular aspect.
http://thelongview.com.au/documents/TRIPLE-CROWN-OF-GLOBAL-COOLING-Kevin-Long.pdf
This comment from Ferdberple at BT’s WUWT article is most interesting and comes up every now and then on the sceptic blogs.
ferdberple says:
January 31, 2014 at 6:38 am
“http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
What I’d like to hear is am explanation for the above graph, showing a long term decrease in atmospheric moisture. This is clearly opposite to the predictions of Climate Science that atmospheric moisture should increase with global warming, and in fact is the basis for the predicted 3x amplifying effect of CO2 warming.
This graph clearly shows that we are not seeing any amplification of CO2 warming. Rather, what we are seeing is that moisture is going in the opposite direction to that predicted by CO2 theory, which in any other field of science would be the proof that the theory was wrong.”
My comments—-
This is a bit like OBSERVED SLR that also seems to show a lack of correlation to co2 increases.
Sorry I’ll try that link to climate4you again. I hope it’s active this time.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
At the bottom of the source of that graph on the Climate4You site was “Pre-1973 data from the United States is not homogeneous according to Elliot and Gaffen (1991)” and “It has, however, recently been suggested that it that the negative long-term specific humidity trends shown by the above data series are doubtful, and that instead the trend is towards increasing specific humidity (see, e.g., Dessler and Davis 2010). ”
So again Neville can’t help himself but keep lying with reckless context free gay abandon. Shameful.
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler10.pdf
HELLO – this is the silly 2 year ENSO forecast “sp” is it? Come on. Clueless.
BOM recommends Realclimate to the Australian public, explain why Gavin provides contradictory advice:
“An El Nino trend is likely to develop this year, Gavin Schmidt, deputy director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said this month. … Depending on the size of the El Nino, it may push 2014 and, more likely, 2015 up the rankings of warmest years on record, the Goddard Institute’s Schmidt said on a conference call.”
I think I’ll link to Jo Nova’s post on the Dessler paper. Richard Courtney has an interesting response on the satellite data in comments as well.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/dessler-2010-how-to-call-vast-amounts-of-data-spurious/
Garth Paltridge has posted a response to Dessler on Judith Curry’s site . Meanwhile no hot spot can be found at 10 klm height over the tropics at all.
Further my comment of 31/Jan@2:25, Re: the angry summer 2013, (a misleading claim).
I forgot to mention that on some of the BoM time-series plots the dates are confusingly labeled and poorly scaled on the x axis.
A case in point was the first chart I linked to here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=1202&ave_yr=3
If you click on raw data, the date information at bottom of list is:
201212201302 which translates to 2012 December 2013 February.
However the chart is unhelpfully labeled 1910 -2012 as are all the States for summer 2012/2013, which oddly are all cooler than in earlier times.
Jo Nova – has she published something? Nuh ! As you wouldn’t know Neville – the data simply aren’t good enough to prove anything – you are a sillius billius http://www.climatedialogue.org/the-missing-tropical-hot-spot/ your knowledge of any of this is trifling just like the deniers you list. More careless reckless Nifty Nev rubbish. Just zero duty of care.
Tough, Bob FJ, all very confusing and definitely needs a rigorous approach with a dash of curiosity. – Pity you can only get data for the last summer and the discussion has been about the calendar year 2013. If you wait till March, you will get the last data point as the summer of 2013-14, the graph will be headed to 2013 and the anomalies will be plotted from 1910.
Interesting too your use of the 3 year moving average – how could you get a record in 2013 when the 3 year moving average to 2013 is clearly plunging! As you point out “what with 2011 &2011 (sic) being below the 30-year average, then 2013 has no significant trend indication at this time.” Stay tuned. What do you think caused that plunge?
Finally, you point out “However the chart is unhelpfully labeled 1910 -2012 as are all the States for summer 2012/2013, which oddly are all cooler than in earlier times”. It must be thought unlikely that you can get a national record without one in the States. Their record are all fairly recent ( now why would that be?), for example SA and Vic in 2001-02, NSW and Qld in 2005-06, and WA in 2009-10. As you would realise, you would certainly get a record if they all hit their record in the same year. We will just have to hope in such a big country with El Niño mainly in the eastern half, that concurrence does not happen.
I do look forward to seeing your googling analysis on “SA contributing overwhelmingly to the 2013 annual average record”. I am sure you would have had a good look at the anomalies for 2013. They do show much of SA with anomalies in the range 1-1.5C, more than Vic for example at 0.5-1. But maybe SA is more variable. Then again there are bigger anomalies in patches around SA.
Neville @ 10:41 am
Also Roy Spencer has published close together in the same GRL journal as Dessler a few years ago and started a bit of a war between them about water vapour.
I had email exchanges with Dessler back then when he was regularly posting on I recall Grist, &/or maybe RealClimate but out of disgust I have not been there for a long time and may have lost touch.
I remember Dessler saying that he would debunk one-a-day of various scientists on a then recent list that did not believe his mantras. However, he shot himself in the foot so often that he soon gave up. Apart from the entertainment value from Dessler, he seems to be excelled by more rational commentary
BF_J thanks for that further info about Dessler. I must re-read that Spencer Dessler discussion, but Luke is just trying it on as usual, so we can forget about him.
Half the time his gotchas end up biting him on the bum.
Interesting but the satellite humidity studies don’t seem to match up that well either. the ERA40 and ECMWF studies both show different results from 1000 to 200 on the graph.
Certainly ERA40 is negative from about 500 to 230 while ECMWF is positive from 400 to 230 and then changes to negative while ERA40 changes to positive at about 230.
Looks like Dessler may have left out the proper impact from clouds in his study.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/ceres-and-the-shortwave-cloud-feedback/
Troy CA has had posts at Cimate etc , Lucia, Climate audit etc and references since from WUWT.
Impacts seem to be more negative with clouds but Dessler seems to prefer clear skies.
Oh Neville – don’t try and wiggle out of it. AGAIN caught snipping without reading. Fraudulent or reckless – what would you like? And you’ve only had the whole day to catch up “oh shit better google real quick – crikey they know I’m a flake – google google google” – just like you did a runner from Bazza. He reeled you in slowly and did you like noob you are. Owned ! Then you knicked off for a sulk. One day you’ll learn to background, quote from source, and seek other views.
Luke I think we all know when you’ve been caught out AGAIN. And bazza can dream up all the numbers he likes , but fortunately he can’t change the agreed forecast of the EIA.
Just because you live in a fantasy world it doesn’t mean the rest of us want to reside there. Go away you silly little duffer.
Tis, Tisn’t. Owned.
Roy Spencer tells us more about the clueless Dessler fool.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/dessler-north-demonstrate-why-scientists-appear-clueless/
Luke: Can you please clarify do you mean “owned” in the same sense that richardcfromnz owns you?
In the event you wish further information not covered in this email, we refer you to the
significant body of information contained in the links provided in the attachment to this letter.
I hope this information is of assistance to you, and wish you well with your own
investigations.
Yours sincerely
Mr Neil Plummer
Assistant Director, Climate Information Services
Bureau of Meteorology
There are some excellent sites that are explicitly aimed at answering common questions on climate
change. Some of these take significant contributions from working climate scientists, and have been
internationally recognised for the work they do in communicating science. Two notable examples in
this category, that are updated regularly, are:
Real Climate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here
Skeptical Science http://www.skepticalscience.com/
======================================================================
Above BOM directs Australian taxpayers to Skeptical Science as a site that is “notable for answering common questions on climate change”.
Dana Nuccitelli is a regular contributor to Skeptical Science and also blogs at the Guardian newspaper where he presented data purportedly from Dr Richard Lindzen:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jan/06/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism
and this data was considered to be fraudulent:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/danas-fraudulent-lindzen-projection-beats-hansen/
Luke – do you think it reasonable for the taxpayer funded BOM to direct taxpayers to a site that hosts the work of an author considered fraudulent?
Quite correct sp – that’s why BoM wouldn’t refer you to any lying denialist filth sites.
Luke – so you think its OK to refer Australian taxpayers to a lying alarmist filth site!
Luke: Did you mean “owned” in the same sense that richardcfromnz owns you?
I wonder of the Minister and Parliament would consider referring taxpayers to here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2013-SkS-Weekly-News-Roundup_46B.html
which in turns refers to here:
http://www.wme.com.au/categories/sustainable/november9_2013.php
as appropriate use of taxpayers money.
I would like to see Mr Mr Neil Plummer of BOM explain to the Minister what selection criteria he, and BOM, used to choose Skeptical Science from the many sites available.
The criteria would be to not use exposed liars and shills. sp it would take you about 10 minutes googling to have massive doubts about Goddard. Including his backdowns and apologies. It’s really the prime indicator of your stupidity and gullibility. You’ve already made it abundantly clear on a number of simply silly trivial posts that you are clueless. 2 year ENSO forecasts from BoM – ROFL !!!
It’s pretty easy mate – try to quote at source not second hand or indirect references – make sure you read the paper not just the abstract, look at alternative views, and don’t believe everything you’re told.
You don’t – you wouldn’t run your business this way (or maybe you do – heaven help the clients) You just believe any old crappola. A telling sign is the rapidity of information generation by SG and Watts. If it’s too quick – it simply has to be of the lowest quality.
So sp – you’re a second rate troll. Unintelligent, no leadership and gullible as trucjk.
I can only wonder what the Prime Minister would think of this scientific statement:
“Judging by Abbott’s denialist talking points, he seems to obtain his climate information from climate deniers and non-experts. No doubt South African President Mbeki relied upon the advice of non-experts, but as history shows he was spectacularly wrong. Mbeki’s failure to heed the advice of the appropriate scientific experts resulted in needless suffering and death.”
http://www.wme.com.au/categories/sustainable/november9_2013.php
Good use of taxpayers money?
Luke: Try again – Did you mean “owned” in the same sense that richardcfromnz owns you?
Well your last comment at 11:54 again goes to the last line of my post above 11:41. That’s your opinion based on your rank stupidity. It’s what you perceive. If you listened to just 10% of what I tell you you’d be a better troll but still mindless and a slave to drivel.
So pooned like a newb ! OWNED !
BTW sp – universities don’t kowtow to governments of the day. Academic freedom and all that. I’m sure Jen would advocate free and robust debate, herself supporting robust independent input from regional universities. I guess being a totalitarian lil’ feller you’d like all your stormtroopers in jackboots all lined up for the book burnings.
BOM is not a university – its a government agency.
Its good to see that the protagonists (sp and guess who?) above are in vehement agreement, that the BOM is an agency of the Federal Govt accountable to a Federal Minister, and that the Univ of Qld is not.
In which case, can we get back to the questions that “sp” raised originally, namely:
“Above BOM directs Australian taxpayers to Skeptical Science as a site that is “notable for answering common questions on climate change”.
Dana Nuccitelli is a regular contributor to Skeptical Science and also blogs at the Guardian newspaper where he presented data purportedly from Dr Richard Lindzen:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jan/06/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism
and this data was considered to be fraudulent:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/danas-fraudulent-lindzen-projection-beats-hansen/
Luke – do you think it reasonable for the taxpayer funded BOM to direct taxpayers to a site that hosts the work of an author considered fraudulent?”
Further he also asks:
“I wonder if the Minister and Parliament would consider referring taxpayers to here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2013-SkS-Weekly-News-Roundup_46B.html
which in turns refers to here:
http://www.wme.com.au/categories/sustainable/november9_2013.php
as appropriate use of taxpayers money.
I would like to see Mr Neil Plummer of BOM explain to the Minister what selection criteria he, and BOM, used to choose Skeptical Science from the many sites available.”
Yes, I would like to see Plummer answer these questions as well.
bazza @February 1st, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Just a couple of quick responses
1) You are certainly perceptive in advising “Stay tuned” (as in “Watch this space”?)
The BoM has published data for Jan 2014, which despite all the talk of severe heatwaves in the SE, shows an anomaly much less than in 2013 for the whole of Australia. (similarly December)
Start your clicking here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=01&ave_yr=3
From the raw data, date & anomaly in C:
201212 1.08 }
201301 1.76 } 2012/2013 summer average (201212201302) 1.11
201302 0.50 }
So far this summer is much cooler:
201312 0.58
201401 0.91
2) The Google search that I referred to Jen was not for the reason you assumed.
Tomorrow will be a month since Dr David Jones of the BoM enthusiastically gave misleading statements all over the ABC. This went viral around the world and in a complex advance search coding last week it showed 3,880 hits. Tomorrow I can use coding restricting it simply to the past month, (“hottest year” 2013 australia) which may be more reliable.
At the time it may have seemed a great giggle to throw in the reference to “some excellent sites” and particularly “two notable examples in this category, that are updated regularly”, namely Real Climate and
Skeptical Science. There is a general rule in the PS that if you are not prepared to put it in writing, sign and place it on the public record, then you should likely not be thinking it or doing it. That BOM has recommended taxpaying Australians go to SKS and RC for climate change information is now on the public record. As a government agency, accountable to the Minister, who in turn is accountable to the public, I think Mr Neil Plummer must be questioning the wisdom of signing that piece of paper. He has now associated BOM, SKS and RC – that is on the public record. Reviewing statement from BOM, SKS and RC, it is becoming difficult to differentiate statement from these groups, the accountable Minister may find it difficult to differentiate. The minister may not be able to query SKS and RC statements,but I think should be able to seek clarification BOM and Mr Neil Plummer – it is not wise to direct taxpaying Australians to sites that produce propaganda which may not be in Australia’s national interest – information that may confuse or mislead Australian’s going about their daily activities. Who are Australian taxpayers to trust? BOM, SKS or RC?
Again I wonder what the Minister and Prim Minister would of BOM referring taxpaying Australians to a site that provides the following “scientific” information:
“Australians have long associated summer with the acrid smell of smoke and images of singed koalas. As Prime Minister Tony Abbott said defensively, bush fires are “just a function of life in Australia.” But we have just had the hottest year on record. The real question is: How does global warming affect the probability and severity of fires?
Most scientists agree that higher temperatures are more likely to create drier soil, increase the length of the fire season, and create more dangerous fire conditions. So why are we so reluctant to accept this? And why are we regularly asked to trust poll-driven politicians more than data-driven scientists?
When the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, said that there was clear evidence that heat waves in Asia, Europe and Australia were on the rise, and that fires are an example of the “doom and gloom” the world may be facing,” our prime minister said Ms. Figueres was “talking through her hat.” When Al Gore weighed in to suggest there was a link, Mr. Abbott called it “absolute hogwash.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/baird-australias-politics-of-global-warming.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail0=y&emc=edit_tnt_20131114&_r=1&
So BOM associates itself with SKS, and by implication thinks national policy should be set by Christiana Figueres (who thinks communism is a better model to implement her climate policies).
I think questions should be asked in Parliament and Mr Neil Plummer invited to explain – BOM is a Government agency, accountable to the Minister, and the Australian public.
Perhaps the BOM reply should be forwarded to the Minster? That would be one way to find out if BOM in line with Government policy and the expectations of the Australian public.
Shonk Neville does his usual no duty of care style contribution. Didn’t even read the comment. Typical reckless Nifty. “Yes sp go the RC and learn how to turn data on its head to get the result you want”. No it’s about a MOOC down by other parties doofus.
Then we have the usual sp sceptic drivel attack – take a snippet from a BoM letter of reply and over-generalise it. A really big sook about a comment that RC and sks being an answer to many questions about climate change – in how many words? Good lord.
Incidentally BoM won’t back down on targeting sceptic rot and have gone on record on Hansard to do so. Don’t think you can try it on sp – it’s not your paid for comment dodgy contracting business. Who do you think you are (oh I forgot – an idiot who misquotes BoM on 2 year ENSO forecasts – how’s that working out for you BTW).
Remember the smackdown
Dr. Greg Ayers on Climate Science, Pell and Plimer for the Hansard record
Hansard transcript ENVIRONMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
ESTIMATES (Additional Estimates)
MONDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2011
Hey reckon you could do the MOOC course sp – I reckon you wouldn’t even pass. First whiff of something quantitative and you’d be in trouble.
Luke – provide a clear and simple definition of OWNED and we can proceed from there.
BALANCE – perhaps Mr Neil Plummer should also be invited to explain why (say) two sites that present an alternative climate perspective were not also included in the somewhat intemperate BOM reply.
Why just SKS and RC? The perspectives presented at both sites are blatantly partisan – no balance there.
I trust the Australian public to form their own opinions after being presented with the facts. It is clear that SKS presents spurious “facts” and is laden with opinion.
Taxpaying Australian citizens are entitled to request clarification from their local member or ministers.
The best democratic outcomes are derived from robust debate where both sides of he argument are presented. Australia has fine democratic institutions and traditions – like Westminster tradition of ministerial accountability.
It seems to me BOM has presented only one side of the argument and should be invited to explain why to the minister and parliament.
BOM should provide facts to assist Australians act in the national interest. SKS presents opinion that is manifestly not in Australia’s national interest.
Who should the tax paying Australian public trust – BOM or SKS?
sp – RC and sks are holy writ compared to the squalid disinformation sites you lot frequent. What serious scientist would be caught dead quoting a denier site. There is no “other side” of the argument. It’s like presenting the other side of the flat earth argument? Surely you’re joking.
MPs are used to a plurality of views in the electorate. It seems lil’ old totalitarian book-burning you does not. Get over it.
“Australia has fine democratic institutions and traditions – like Westminster tradition of ministerial accountability.” ah come on – I’m gonna start crying soon.
Anyway how’s that 2 year ENSO forecast going?
And via SKS:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=abbott&x=0&y=0
there is this:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/01/03-3
“Tony Abbott’s a reckless ideologue who ignores the science and is intent on listening to people who are part of the tinfoil hat brigade,” Greens leader Richard di Natale told reporters in Melbourne, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
“In fact, the only people that don’t believe that climate change is real are prime minister Abbott, his cabinet and some of his advisers,” Labor leader Penny Wong told reporters in Adelaide, according to The Guardian. “He thinks [the climate science] absolute crap and the policy he has is a con job that you have when you think climate change is absolute crap.”
BOM has directed taxpaying Australians to this site for a BALANCED perspective.
I can only wonder what the accountable Minister would make of that. And the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The resident idiot has failed to grasp one simple point of realpolitik – there is a new government in office, and I suspect BOM has failed to grasp the same point.
Who should the tax paying Australian public trust – BOM or SKS?
A difficult question since BOM has chosen to be associated with SKS.
sp @10:33 am
Another aspect of Mr Plummer’s recommendation of SKS & RC websites, of which I know little other than in rebuttal reports from various rational sites is that they are rather low in traffic.
Immensely more visited and which have attracted “bloggies awards” regionally for best scientific sites are:
Locally; Jo Nova
UK; Tallblokes
USA; WUWT
This site and many others such as Steve McIntyre’s and Bishop Hill’s are also close contenders I think.
Mr Plummer seems to live in a very small world.
An El Nino trend is likely to develop this year, Gavin Schmidt, deputy director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said this month. … Depending on the size of the El Nino, it may push 2014 and, more likely, 2015 up the rankings of warmest years on record, the Goddard Institute’s Schmidt said on a conference call.”
http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-28/el-nino-may-develop-as-most-models-predict-pacific-ocean-warming
Some, but not all, models predict this warming may approach El Niño thresholds by early winter. Model outlooks that span autumn have lower skill than forecasts made at other times of the year, hence long-range model outlooks should be used cautiously at this time.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Who should the tax paying Australian public trust – BOM or (Gavin from) RC?
Which of this advice is in Australia’s national interest.
As you say Bob FJ at 901 am , how could it be? ”The BoM has published data for Jan 2014, which despite all the talk of severe heatwaves in the SE, shows an anomaly much less than in 2013 for the whole of Australia. (similarly December)”. So which data are you questioning, the Jan 2014 or the Jan 2013 and why. I think you would have your answer if you hit the moving average button for monthly data. I cant wait for the next instalment due end of Feb for the summer of 13-14. My guess it will show the record heat giving rise to the 2013 record is over and that will make you wonder whether there ever was a record year. Lucky Feb is a short month – will that bias it?
Jennifer,
Are you planning to write again with supplementary questions? You seem to have deduced some of the BoM methodology for creating an Australian temperature figure. The thing I missed was an account of the method and reasoning for the adjustment of individual thermometer records.