Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Some things worth remembering …
We are persuaded not by truth, but by fidelity to evidence and context.
It is important to understand the difference between propaganda and information.
Objectivity is a research method, not a philosophy.

Photograph by Lyndon Mechielson
Photograph by Lyndon Mechielson

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Comments

  1. Debbie says

    Great article in the Land Jen.
    Combined with your work with Graham Lloyd & your interview on 2GB. . .People are starting to ask some good questions.
    Re the Jones interview. . .I do wish he had just let you say what needed to be said rather than interjecting with exaggeration.
    I realise that’s his style. . .but in this instance there really is no need to exaggerate.
    BoM has applied that program to the data and it has changed the ‘trend’.
    BoM can’t explain WHY it was necessary to apply the program or what public BENEFIT has been achieved by applying that program to Australian data.
    So far, amongst a lot of talk about ‘peer review’, all BoM has said is that they applied it because everybody else did.
    That reminds me of those well known sayings about ostriches and lemmings 🙂
    We do expect better from our public institutions.

  4. Jennifer Marohay says

    Hey Peter C

    I have a photograph of the record as written into the ledger on the 3rd January 1909 and also the audit of this done at the end of that month, January 1909. I will publish this at this blog, or in a manuscript, in due course.

  5. Neville says

    Bob Tisdale looks at the increase in climate porn from the delusional eco-loons. You couldn’t be more maths challenged than these fools if you tried.
    Also their level of simple comprehension hasn’t even reached the level of a five year old.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/05/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-possibly-get-any-sleazier-the-return-of-climate-porn-wmo-style/

    The graph from the BP stats review of world energy tells the full story about co2 emissions since 1975. The developed world has increased co2 emissions by 251 million tonnes a decade while the developing world ( China, India etc) has increased emissions by 4,084 M Ts per decade , or about 16.3 times as much. over that 39 year period. Unbelievable.

    https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/co2-emissions-developed-v-developing.png

  6. egg says

    The online India Today here reports that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday:

    “Climate has not changed. We have changed. Our habits have changed. Our habits have got spoiled. Due to that, we have destroyed our entire environment,” he said while addressing students and replying to their questions through video conferencing in the first-ever initiative.”

    – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.IzlRk0GU.dpuf

  13. Robert says

    I wonder how Nobbys could have suffered a quarter of a century of clerical error or distorted readings. So many high annual and monthly averages occurring before 1889, after readings only began in 1862. And what was going on 1877-8? That was some serious heat for an ocean site, if accurate.

    I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but when you consider that the very wet 1890 shows as by far the coolest in the 152 year Nobbys record, it’s a fair bet the thermometer wasn’t kept near the beacon or over a spirit cooker. It’s also a fair bet that the people in charge were very conscientious, because mugs didn’t last long in 19th century Australia.

    Very different to the Sydney record, which shows a cluster of hotter years after 2000 and very average temps for the years before 1889. (Sydney Observatory shows a narrow, almost neat, range of average annual temps, with 1890 not being especially cool, and a steady mounting of temps post 1980.)

    This is completely different again from my own locality, where the period between 1910 and 1919 saw the worst heat. Grafton, to the north of here, had its hottest cluster in the 1930s. Would love to have 19th century readings for those sites.

    I’m in no position to draw conclusions. Just observing. There may well be no conclusions to be drawn.

  15. Siliggy says

    I smell another rat at Amberley.
    Along comes Friday the 2nd of December 1949. According to the BoM raw data and including that Monday, only two days that week had made it up above the November average and none had made it up above the December average. Friday itself was 5 and a half degrees C below the Amberley December average. Yet Ipswich broke its all time water usage record of 2.62 Million gallons by more than adding a million gallons to the average dialy usage (1.63 million galons) at 2.7 Million gallons.

    The following day Saturday the 3rd of December things got worse. Amberley was still reading more than 3 degrees C below average maximum temperature but water usage at Ipswich climbed to 2.9 million gallons. On Sunday as temperatures just made it up to the mean Ipswich used a phenominal 2.94 million gallons. Then it took just one above average day Monday the 5th for the water system to begin to fail. Oddly as the temperature according to the BoM went up the water usage went down but was still at 2.85 million gallons suburbs began to have no water that evening.

    By Tuesday the RAAF station at Amberley was without water, the pressure at the hospital was low and was also low at most suburbs. This story no doubt goes on because the temperatures went up again for another two days but thats it for now. Except to say that ACORN was not adjusted from raw for these days even though the people at the time mistakenly thought they had a heatwave.
    http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/124633729?zoomLevel=5
    Lance

  16. Siliggy says

    Oooops Sentence above should read.
    According to the BoM raw data and including that FRIDAY so it is the week leading up to and including the first day of high water usage that is cool. Then the second day of high water usage is cool, The third is average and the fourth is the first above average day of high water usage.
    Sorry for confusion.

  17. Ian George says

    Jennifer
    I have just been revisiting the Bourke data and found a somewhat interesting situation.

    Checking the CDO data, all daily max temp records from 30 Dec 1998 to 28 Aug 2002 for Bourke AWS (048245) have all been rounded off to the nearest whole degree. The ACORN record mirrors the same rounding off procedure.
    The now closed Bourke AP site (048239) which overlaps the AWS by one month (closed Jan 1999) shows no such rounding off.
    In another interesting twist, the min temps for that period have been rounded off in the CDO record but readjusted in the ACORN.
    Maybe someone just forgot to do the maximums.

    I don’t know if this has been mentioned before by anyone but surely it brings into question the ACORN ‘best practice’ meme.

    Jennifer, have you found in your research any instances where the temps have been adjusted through homogenisation in the past say 20 years (as was done to past temps)?

    Bourke CDO max temps (048245)
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=048245
    Bourke ACORN max temps
    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn/sat/data/acorn.sat.maxT.048245.daily.txt

  18. Avatar photojennifer says

    Hey Ian George

    Thanks for that info for Bourke. They moved the weather station from the PO to the airport and then stuff-up the initial set of measurements twice… including by not measuring to the correct degree of decimal places.

    So, we went from having a near perfect 125 year record for Bourke while the PO staff were in charge. To repeated stuff-ups once the Bureau took over… and a record from 1996 now full of discontinuities.

    Regarding recent homogenising… probably the largest recent unjustifiable change has been at Amberley in 1996 as detailed in my paper to the Sydney Institute. A 0.5 degree jump-up in 1996.

  20. Debbie says

    ROFL! 🙂
    The more evidence that comes to light, the more likely it is that we’re just dealing with plain old bureaucratic incompetence.
    Why am I not surprised?
    That is NOT something that peer reviewed, scientific publications can fix!
    I am actually starting to feel a bit sorry for those poor people at BoM who have probably applied those algorithms to the data because someone else with greater authority told them to.
    They probably just thought they were doing their job. . . and did not believe it was their job to question why the algorithms were being applied in the first place.
    There does not seem to be any simple or sensible justification for applying those algorithms to the data sets that have so far been highlighted (Amberley, Rutherglen, Deniliquin, Bourke etc)
    Steve Goddard’s simple graphic representation of the large GHCN data sets indicates to me that those 4 stations are probably just the start?
    I’m really very relieved that at this point BoM does NOT(!) hold a monopoly over our weather data. . . even though many think they do or they should.
    It may be worth your while to check the data sets from Yanco Jen?
    The research station should have access to close to 100 years of well kept weather records and Yanco Agricultural High School has also religiously kept good records from the late 1920s. . .both with the S(?forgotten how to spell?) Screens.
    http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/centres/yanco/history
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanco_Agricultural_High_School
    Further, the WC&IC was set up in Leeton in this same time frame and there should also be some very good and well maintained weather data sets archived somewhere by the NSW State Government.

  24. Robert says

    “Either the general population will take back control of its own destiny and concern itself with community interests, guided by values such as community, solidarity and concern for others…”

    Of course, that general population will need to be guided by choice spirits such as Peter Burdon and Noam Chomsky. We could be updated on our collective aspirations nightly on the ABC.

    Considering Chomsky’s kind assessment of the Khmer Rouge, I have a pretty good idea of the kind and degree of guidance we can expect.

  25. Debbie says

    Good grief!
    That has got to be a case of biting the hand that feeds you!
    Democracy may have its pitfalls but it beats the crapola out of any other governance system!
    Where else would he be able to have something like that published EXCEPT in a functioning democracy?

  32. Debbie says

    Hmmmmmm?

    From Handjive’s link.

    “Western New South Wales, particularly that Tibooburra area, has got some of the fastest rates of increase in temperatures across Australia, so I think this in part of the world, that threat of increasing temperature is really important.”

    Do Jen or Ken or Bob or Ian have time to take a quick look at those particular temp records?

    Broken Hill has been operating for long enough to have a decent data set I think?
    And which data set are they referring to re Tibooburra?

    I have been out in some of those areas in Summer. . .it gets pretty damn hot and even the walls on houses and sheds are sometimes too hot to touch. I particularly remember a visit there in 1982.
    It can also get pretty damn chilly at night in Summer months when there is no cloud cover.
    It is after all semi arid and marginal country out there!

  35. Ian George says

    Deb
    These are the long-term annual max mean graphs for most of the stations in the area taken from the BoM’s CDO site. Not all of them go to 2013 as sites have been changed and upgraded to AWS. Some show warming of late but little change from the beginning of their records.
    Tibooburra
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=046037&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    Broken Hill
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=047007&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    Willcania
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=046043&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    Brewarrina
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=048015&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    Walgett
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=052026&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    Bourke
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=048013&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13

    BTW, Bourke has the highest long-term annual max mean of all the listed stations.
    Here is the

    But Jen is right. Ken S is the author and his comparisons between the CDO and ACORN data have revealed the extent of the problem.

  36. egg says

    ‘A complete audit of the whole network is urgently needed.’

    Totally agree with Ken on this.

    ———-

    Looking at the Bourke temperatures it appears that the late 19th century was warmest. It may just be a coincidence, Bathurst max temp at 44.7 C was recorded on the 12th January 1878 and its coldest was -10.8 C on 31 July 1873.

  37. egg says

    Tipping Point

    ‘Meteorologists and weather science experts at the National Weather Service (NWS) say that there is a 99% chance that the we will start to see a massive cold-front sooner in the year than has ever happened, which will produce not just record-breaking snowfall, but according to Dr. Boris Scvediok, a doctor of global weather sciences, record shattering snow storms across the board, affecting the entire United States.’

    Empire News

  38. Beth Cooper says

    redress re the ABC and democracy …

    Guvuhmint
    of the people
    by the experts,
    especially
    survey
    conn-structivists
    slithy
    statisticians
    and data
    homogenizers.

  39. Debbie says

    Thanks Ian.
    I agree that there does seem to be a developing issue that probably needs an independent audit.
    Love your quip Beth.
    🙂

  42. Robert says

    Thanks, Ian. It seems that much of the science consists of a simple tilt…much like the head of a hockeystick. “Just remember team, the left side has to be the lower.”

    Seems the serf might be right about slithy statisticians.

  44. egg says

    ‘Finding one of the ships from the Franklin Expedition from 1845 is particularly important because it indicates that all the historic sea ice reconstructions are faulty.

    ‘The Nimbus satellite pics from September 1964 showed the sea ice extent at only 6.9M km2 and finding the Franklin ship in an area which would be completely/nearly impossible for a wooden sailing ship to reach at today’s 5.02M minimum let alone the estimated 8.0M km2 (or 9.0M or 10.0M) in the historic sea ice reconstructions, means that all of the reconstructions were just faulty, alarmist.’

    Bill Illis

  45. Debbie says

    Thanks again Ian 🙂
    The difference between the original data set and the homogenised data set, version 4 at Tibooburra looks like it’s telling the same story as the sets from Bourke, Amberley, Rutherglen, Deniliquin, Bathurst etc?
    Considering ‘climate activist’ (according to the ABC link above) Tim Flannery is running a workshop out there. . .perhaps Graham Lloyd or Jen or someone can let him know about this problem?
    Or maybe they might have more luck talking to the locals who are going to attend that workshop?
    I’m also extremely curious to know what the ABC means by calling Tim Flannery a ‘climate activist’?
    What on earth is a ‘climate activist’ ????????????????
    How does one become a ‘climate activist’ and then get paid to run workshops in Broken Hill about whether cattle in marginal areas can have problems from something like heat stress?
    Wouldn’t a practising Vet from that area be the much better qualified person?
    Actually. . . wouldn’t a generational cattle farmer be likely to know more about this sort of stuff than the ‘climate activist’ Tim Flannery?

  46. Ian George says

    Let’s hope some of the older farmers/graziers whose families have run their properties since the late 1880s will have enough nous to tell Flannery some home truths about weather and climate. Maybe he might learn something – if he listens.

    Egg
    Yes, it’s amazing AWGers keep up with this meme re the Arctic. Amundsen sailed the NW passage in the early 1900s. The ice melt was well noted in 1922. The USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole in the 1950s. Now this latest discovery.
    How long can they keep it up?

  49. Ender says

    Well here is a blast from the past. I haven’t had this sort of rubbish from this blogger for many a long year. I wonder if I can dredge up the threads where you dodged and weaved to not answer specific questions?

    And yet here you are again still peddling the same sort of dross.

    Care for some more rounds with the old Ender? Do I really have to revive the old persona?

  50. egg says

    ‘THE Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to publish details of all changes made to historic temperature records as part of its homogenisation process to establish the nation’s climate change trend. Publication of the reasons for all data adjustments was a key recommendation of the bureau’s independent peer review panel which approved the bureau’s ACORN SAT methodology.’

    Lloyd / Oz

    ————

    ‘Care for some more rounds with the old Ender?’

    Are you talking to me sunshine?

  51. egg says

    ‘The average maximum temperatures [of SE Australia] during the last 35 years were between two and four degrees (F) lower than the average for the previous 35 years.’

    — CSIRO 1953 (via jonova)

  52. Neville says

    Egg I think it’s best to leave Ender to his little fantasies down at the bottom of the garden playing with his fairies. He lost a grip on reality many years ago and doesn’t understand simple maths or logic and reason. But ya gotta laugh.

  56. egg says

    ‘But ya gotta laugh.’

    It would be fun to have him back for a bit of biff, but the Mod probably won’t allow it. Methinks its either Tim or Luke.

  57. Larry Fields says

    THE F-WORD

    Some weeks ago, I used the word, “fraud.” Shortly after that, Moderator Ray expressed his displeasure with this particular F-word. I did not completely understand where he was coming from. It may have been the chivalrous “innocent until proven guilty” meme.

    Or it could be that you Aussies do not have real freedom of speech, because of draconian libel laws. On the other hand, we Americans are fortunate to have the public figure doctrine. If the plaintiff is a public figure, the burden of proof is on him to show utter disregard for the truth AND actual malice. At least, that’s my layman’s understanding.

    The public figure doctrine may prove to be helpful to Mark Steyn, in his fight against Mikey’s SLAPP suit against him.

    Since then, I have seen the F-word used more than once in this blog. Has there been a major flip-flop in editorial policy recently? Or was Ray simply having a bad hair day?

  58. egg says

    Ray is fairly strict and may not understand where the Sceptics and Denialati are coming from. There is little doubt that AGW is a monstrous fraud, but there is no organised conspiracy involving the Klimatariat, MSM and politicians of the left.

    Its just one of those things.

  59. Moderator Ray says

    THE F-WORD – Larry, I have tried to edit comments where “fraud” is used, but usually let it pass if the allegation is general rather than against a particular individual or organisation. As you suggest, maybe I was having a bad day.

  60. Larry Fields says

    Ender September 10, 2014 at 9:34 pm #
    “Care for some more rounds with the old Ender? Do I really have to revive the old persona?”

    Whadayaknow? I have an old persona too. In a past life, I was Vlad the Impaler. Let’s party!

  61. Larry Fields says

    Jennifer,
    Before this Open Thread rides off into the sunset, I must say that you look like a movie star in that photo.

    My late mother thought that Gone With The Wind was the greatest movie ever made. Many years later, I saw an edited version on TV, and thought that it was too schmaltzy.

    If they ever do a remake, I nominate you for the role of Scarlett O’Hara. It would be more interesting if the leading lady had an Aussie accent!

  63. Avatar photojennifer says

    Two important posts at Jo Nova’s blog…

    I’ve previously mentioned the Deacon 1952 paper. Remember with the charts showing max temps coming down from 1880s at Bourke, Alice Springs, Narrabri and Hay. Jo has more on it here… http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-lost-climate-knowledge-of-deacon-1952-australian-summers-were-hotter-from-1880-1910/#more-38238

    And the first of the series by Jo on how much hotter it was between 1880 and 1910 is about old CSIRO records… http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/1953-headline-melbournes-weather-is-changing-summers-getting-colder-and-wetter/

    Enjoy.

    I’ll be writing about the announcement that the BOM has released some methodology, but not immediately… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/bureau-of-meteorology-warms-to-transparency-over-adjusted-records/story-e6frg6xf-1227054494820

  64. egg says

    Fantastic news, the truth is out there.

    ‘In a study published in The Journal of Geology, an international group of scientists analyzing existing and new evidence have determined a cosmic impact event, such as a comet or meteorite, to be the only plausible hypothesis to explain all the unusual occurrences at the onset of the Younger Dryas period.’

    WUWT

  68. egg says

    Natural Variables Cause Hiatus ** chuckle **

    ‘JRC scientists analysed surface temperature data records – which began in 1850 – to separate natural variations from secular (i.e., long-term) trends. They identified three hiatus periods (1878-1907, 1945-1969 and 2001 to date), during which global warming slowed down.

    ‘These hiatus periods coincide with natural cooling phases – the multidecadal variability (MDV), most likely caused by natural oceanic oscillations. The scientists therefore conclude that the MDV is the main cause of these hiatus periods during which global warming decelerated.’

    WUWT

  76. Neville says

    Here is a talk by Murry Salby to the UK house of Commons in Nov 2013. And you can see the co2 emissions map from the Japanese satellite at 29min 20 secs.

    Needless to say the highest co2 emissions come from the Amazon basin , Equatorial Africa and parts of SE Asia. OZ and other first world countries have lower emissions.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpSlhGiHEQ Unfortunately the sound quality is poor.

  78. egg says

    ‘The impact climate change will have on the world’s future is a subject of hot debate – some experts believe the effects will be minimal while others have predicted scenes of devastation.

    ‘Now artists have imagined how London’s landmarks may change in a hundred years or more, including soldiers riding on camels at Horse Guard’s parade, futuristic flying cars above the City, a giant lily pond at Piccadilly Circus, and the Houses of Parliament marooned in water.’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2752312/Piccadilly-Pond-paddy-fields-outside-Parliament-Artist-imagines-London-2100-climate-change-taken-toll.html#ixzz3DAd00Loz
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  81. Neville says

    Blogger Bill Illis had this to say about the very hot year 1878. So 1877 to 1878 was a super el nino, like 1997-98. More evidence that all this is just more weather and there is zero chance of changing it, no matter how many trillions $ we throw at it.

    Bill Illis says:

    April 5, 2014 at 2:06 pm

    1877-78 was the biggest Super-El Nino in history.

    There is a pattern of areas which are most affected by the ENSO and one can see that in Minnesota’s climate in the winter of 1877-78. As more stations were added to Hadcrut, more of the areas impacted by the El Nino got into the record.

    http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/wint77_78.html

  83. egg says

    And the last par in that link.

    ‘I also note that the date of this warm winter just happens to be slightly earlier than the 1880 cut off of GIStemp. Whlie Hadley likes to use 1850. I’d often wondered about that. I guess now we know… GISS wouldn’t want to start a trend line on an uptick, would they…’

  84. Neville says

    More from Bill Illis on super el ninos like 1878, 1915, 1941, 1983 and 1998. Bill mentions that these super el ninos sometimes occur when the AMO peaks.

    Bill Illis

    April 5, 2009 at 10:50 am

    To explain the 1998 temperature spike, you need more than the 1997-98 El Nino.

    Although it was big one, it wasn’t especially out of the ordinary as there was other big El Ninos such as in 1982-83 and other years which didn’t produce nearly the impact.

    If you add in the super spike that the AMO had as well in 1998, you can get closer to the impact.

    There are other super temperature spikes in the record – 1878, 1915, 1941, 1973 among others. These seem to occur (more often anyway) when both the ENSO and the AMO spike at the same time.

    In terms of the rogue wave idea, there is something called atmospheric angular momentum which could be the driver. During El Ninos, the earth’s rotation literally speeds up (a few tenths of a millisecond) which happens when the winds slow down and potentially causes warmer Pacific ocean waters to backup into the El Nino region. There is a strong correlation actually but there are times when it seems to be off quite a bit.

  85. egg says

    ‘Around the year 1878, a dramatic shift in the climate occurred coincident with and perhaps triggered by an impulsive spike in temperature. As a result, the climate moved from a cooling phase of about -.7 °C/century to a warming phase of about +.5°C/century, which has remained constant to the present. We see that this period of time was coincident with a large spike in solar activity.’

    Jeffery S Patterson

  86. Avatar photojennifer says

    Hey Egg.

    I tend to think that there was warming to 1878. Cooling kicked in some time after 1909 until about 1960. Then warming from 1960 until about 2002.

  87. egg says

    Emerging out of the Dalton that sounds reasonable, I’ll have a closer look. In the 20th century the cooling seemed to settle in around the late 1940s thru to 1976, when there was a climate shift which took the warming to the end of the century.

    I mentioned earlier that William Dawes’ meteorological journal 1788-91 (Robert McAfee) is a valuable resource and from my rough calculations appears to be around a degree C above average at Observatory Hill. This was prior to the Dalton slide and I’m unfazed by the knowledge that Dawes had no Stevenson Screen.

    If anyone out there can confirm my findings, then we might have a strong argument that the sun is the primary driver of our earthly climate.

  88. Neville says

    The AGW theory says that co2 causes more water vapour and is therefore a positive feedback. But a new paper finds that water vapour in the troposphere is not controlled by our increased co2 emissions but by other natural processes.

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/new-paper-finds-water-vapor-in.html

    The 2014 Zahn et al study also finds that water vapour acts as a negative feedback and cooling , not a positive feedback and more warming. As I’ve said before time will tell.

  91. egg says

    From the Gergis et al link.

    ‘The ranges of daily extremes in temperature and MSLP from the Dawes data compare well with those from the modern observations for all seasons, except for Tmax in summer, when Dawes’s data are likely to slightly overestimate the highest maximum temperatures due to inadequate thermometer exposure.

    ‘These results suggest that the record is useful for examining relative (rather than absolute) climate variations experienced during the first years of European settlement in Australia.’

    ——

    I would like to see a second opinion on that so called ‘overestimate’.

  95. Avatar photojennifer says

    Egg, which post is that chart from Warwick Hughes from? I mean I would like to see the chart you have just linked to in some context. Jen