Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Newspapers as the guardians of hot history

By

OLD newspapers hold a lot of information, some of it very valuable. I’m not only referring to last week’s The Land, but clippings that date back to editions published one hundred or more years ago.

Last week's The Land
Last week’s The Land

For example, in the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday 5th January 1909 it was reported that Bourke was experiencing a heat wave with temperatures ranging between 103 and 125 degree Fahrenheit (39 to 51.7 degree Celsius). It’s perhaps the hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere in Australia.

The recording of 125 degree Fahrenheit on 3rd January 1909 was taken from a new Stevenson screen installed in the yard at the Bourke post office in August 1908.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology there are no reliable records before 1910 because there were few Stevenson screens.

Well maybe just one in Bourke?

No.

Again, if you check the old newspapers, well, according to the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin on Saturday 28th September 1889 government meteorologist Clement Wragge was fitting a Stevenson screen at the telegraphic office before travelling on to Boulia and Cloncurry in western Queensland to do the same.

How pesky are these written reports when the Bureau would have us believe there is no such thing as a reliable temperature record before 1910.

It is interesting that the record hot day in Bourke on 3rd January 1909 was also written into the Meteorological Observation book that was kept in the Bourke post office back then, and can now be found in the national archive at Chester Hill in western Sydney.

I went and checked not only the old newspapers but also the book in the national archive, because, guess what? The Bureau of Meteorology is claiming it was all a clerical error. They have scratched this record made on 3rd January 1909 from the official record for Bourke, which means it’s also scratched from the NSW and national temperature record.

Yep. It never happened. No heatwave back in 1909.

They have also wiped the heatwave of January 1896. This was probably the hottest January on record, not just for Bourke, but Australia-wide. Yet according to the rules dictated by the Bureau, if it was recorded before 1910, it doesn’t count.

In ignoring the old records the Bureau is denying the Australian public valuable information. Its dangerous and its irresponsible.

We need to know both how hot and also how dry it was in the past if we are to adequately prepare for the future, whether or not the theory of anthropogenic global warming is ever proven.

So rather than working to make the data fit the theory, the Bureau should focus on keeping an accurate record.

This could start with them reinstating that record hot day in Bourke on 3rd January 1909. After all if it was published in the press, and in the official book at the Bourke post office it must be true. Not to mention that it was also very hot in Brewarrina that day, a warm 123 degree Fahrenheit according to the old newspapers.

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This article was first published in last week’s The Land newspaper.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Daryl McDonald says

    Well done, Detective Marohasy. I have been telling my kids for years that everywhere we go, everything we do, we leave a little trail of evidence.
    Someone needs to accurately define the”I can’t recall” syndrome that now seems indemic in our nations leaders as they are called before various commissions and inquiries.
    This BOMGATE affair is certainly worthy of a Royal Commission, as is the MDBA Plan, given the extrordinary amount of money these issues have cost the nation.

    Cheers, D Mac.

  2. Ian George says

    I can’t believe that the 3rd Jan, 1909 temperature recording is missing on Bourke’s CDO data, especially after the installation of an SS. Totally bizarre!
    The highest temp given to Bourke was 49.7C on 4th Jan, 1903. Of course this would not be recognised officially as it was prior to 1910.
    When one looks at Jan only for Bourke, it appears there were some very hot ones earlier on.
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=048013&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=01

    If they expunge all the old records it makes it easier to use the term ‘unprecedented’. Thank God for trove.

  3. Debbie says

    Very well said!!!!

    “We need to know both how hot and also how dry it was in the past if we are to adequately prepare for the future, whether or not the theory of anthropogenic global warming is ever proven.

    So rather than working to make the data fit the theory, the Bureau should focus on keeping an accurate record.”

    I’m pretty sure that most Australians would actually expect them to keep an accurate record before any other consideration. . .and they would also probably believe that’s the main reason we pay them.

    It does appear that BoM and (as Daryl points out at comment one). . . other tax payer funded entities like the MDBA, have become so enamoured with their high tech computers and their ‘grand challenge’ theories. . . that they have LOST THEIR WAY and LOST THEIR FOCUS!!!!!!

    They are first and foremost a public service, funded by the public, to safely keep accurate, accessible and transparent records FOR THE PUBLIC!!!!

  4. Ron Wilmshurst says

    Sorry guys, you’ve got it all wrong. Thousands of the world’s top scientists have spent decades of their time and billions of taxpayer dollars in developing their climate models. They simply cannot be wrong. So if the data doesn’t fit the models, then that data must be in error!
    Just be thankful that the same approach has not been applied to financial models!!

  5. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Well done Jennifer.
    As I mentioned here before, never take anything for granted and never dismiss data out of hand just because it doesn’t fit a preconceived pattern.
    There is always at least an other trace if not many traces left behind to prove or disprove.

    Research outside the usual sources saved my bacon many times.

  7. Debbie says

    Good point Ron.
    Interestingly, much of this climate modelling does use similar methods to financial models. Especially when searching for patterns and trends.
    But there does seem to be a big difference in the humility and/or hubris of those who work with financial modelling.
    🙂

  9. Beth Cooper says

    Well yer know the Orwellian ‘down-the-memery-whole’ mentality, on-going
    throughout history, burn the books, bring in the Inquisition, constrain the
    press, gate-keep the journal publications, pal review, homogenize the data,
    promote the ‘Noble Lie’ … requires constant vigilance don’t it?
    A serf.

  10. Ian Thomson says

    Mikky,
    It means that local knowledge and history and memory and RECORDS, are unreliable, when compared with climertolergist’s computer models.
    The former are hearsay and the latter are a scientific consensus

  11. Phill says

    I always read as a kid that the hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia was 127.5F (53C) recorded at Cloncurry Qld on 16 January 1889. This figure is recorded in the back of the big green Readers Digest Atlases that we all had then as the Australian record. There is a sign up as you drive into Cloncurry reminding visitors of the record and guaranteeing a “warm welcome”. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Cloncurry,_Queensland_-_sign.jpg

    Again the newspapers confirm the temperature. From the Sydney Morning Herald 18 January 1889

    THE DROUGHT IN QUEENSLAND.

    [BY TELEGRAPH.]
    (FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.)
    BRISBANE, Thursday.
    Distressing accounts are to hand from the Darling Downs and the south-western interior as to the state of the country from the want of rain. The crops are dying, the waterholes are empty, and the stock routes are very bare. The heat is excessive.
    The thermometer in the shade at Cloncurry registered 127° ; at Windorah, 123° ; Thargomindah, 121° ; Blackall, 114° ; and at Dalby, 108°. A waterhole on Westbrook Station that has never failed for 40 years is now dry.

    There are fascinating temperature and rainfall records both going back over 200 years in Australia. By 1889 the papers were recording maximum/minimum temperatures at 76 sites in NSW alone.

  14. keith goff says

    Dear Jennifer,
    ” Resolving uncertainty” should be the mantra for all scientists. Being called “scientist” does not provide unfettered protection for egos for the price of new discoveries (or old)
    Regards,
    Keith Goff.

  15. Larry Fields says

    from the article:
    “OLD newspapers hold a lot of information, some of it very valuable. I’m not only referring to last week’s The Land, but clippings that date back to editions published one hundred or more years ago.”

    Steven Goddard frequently exhumes old newspaper articles to find “inconvenient truths” about climate history. (Yeah yeah, I know that SG is a nom de plume.) Fortunately for us, His Goreness does not have a copyright on the expression, “inconvenient truth.” And now it’s coming back to bite him in the arse.

  17. Don Aitkin says

    I too much admire your persistence and energy in showing where our official records have some real problems. Now that the Bureau has released its methods, can we be sure of the real proportion of lemons in its basket?

  18. Ian George says

    Thanks handjive
    Check out the adjustments the BoM make on this page.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Adjustments

    Scroll down to the AUST mean temp anomaly chart and check the AWAP/ACORN temperature comparisons. Prior to 1970, the AWAP temps have been reduced on a regular basis, especially 1914/15, 1918, the early 1920s and early 1950s.
    Then check AWAP after 1990. Where the temperatures differ, ACORN has been increased relative to AWAP.
    So cooling the past and warming the recent years appears true.
    It then has explanations as to why these temp changes where made to individual stations. I only checked Bourke. A few relevant points but nothing about the reduction in temps for Jan 1939.
    I’m sure that someone with expertise will look at this in more detail.

  19. David Harrison says

    In George Orwell’s 1984, the hero Winston’s job is to go through all past press cuttings changing recorded history to fit the Government’s version of it. Seems like the BoM is following a similar policy of changing history – good job you got to the newspaper clippings before they did!

  20. egg says

    Phil mentioned 1889 as a hot January and I’m thinking the whole year may have been unusually warm, this from the Bulletin.

    ‘No such heat has ever occurred in Sydney this early in the month of September, with the exception of one occasion, and that was just 30 years ago, as prevailed yesterday.’

    So it was a remarkably hot day for September, unequaled since 1859. We could probably work out what was causing the unusual heat, it also appears there was a lot of rain in NSW in 1889.

  21. Daryl McDonald says

    Following Ian George’s lead, I checked the BOM’s explanation on temperature adjustments I noted that an “irrigating a lawn” can lead to a temperature anomaly.
    Logic would suggest that this would be a cooling effect. This could be the scientific breakthrough of the decade. Imagine if the 1600GL of Environmental water now held by the Government was used to grow 160,000Ha of Rice. A significant natural cooling effect on Australia’s apparently warming climate!
    There would also be the fringe benefits of providing food for around 60 million of the World’s most needy people, a few self generated dollars for struggling rural communities here, and a huge feeding ground for endangered water birds.
    .
    Cheers, D Mac.

  22. egg says

    Continuing my quest at Observatory Hill, last year Sydney had a warm September.

    ‘September was the warmest on record for Sydney, with a substantial number of records broken at Observatory Hill. Mean temperatures broke records at all six major temperature stations in the city, a consequence of widespread maximum temperatures more than 3 °C above normal and minimum temperatures more than 1 °C above normal, and persistent warm weather during the month.’

    Its only weather, that’s a relief.

  24. Siliggy says

    It may not be just old temperature records that go missing and can be exposed using newspapers.
    There seems to be at least three records from the measurements taken on the Ashmore reef or Ashmore Cartier islands.
    http://www.accuweather.com/en/au/at/ashmore-and-cartier-islands-weather
    At least one record goes back before 1971.
    http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/110456635?zoomLevel=6
    While the BoM seems to be able to afford to build lovely Willis island getaway accomidation and offices etc,( http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/97d2aee3-741d-4269-ad64-0ccfbf6908ef/files/e2011-0057-attachment-mown-area-map.pdf ) it does not seem to be able to afford to put data from any of these four on the website.