THE hubris of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is on full display with its most recent remodelling of the historic temperature record for Darwin. The Bureau has further dramatically increased the rate of global warming at Darwin by further artificially lowering historic temperatures.
This begins by shortening the historical temperature record so that it begins just after the very hot years of the Federation drought. Then by changing the daily values: that is changing the observed measured temperatures to something else.
For example, on 1st January 1910 the maximum temperature recorded at the Darwin post office was 34.2 degrees Celsius.
A few years ago, the Bureau changed this to 33.8 degrees Celsius, cooling the recorded temperature by 0.4 degrees. In its most recent re-revision of Darwin’s climate history the temperature on this day has been further reduced, and is now just 32.8.
Environmental reporter for the Australian newspaper, Graham Lloyd, asked the Bureau why it had made such changes earlier in the week. A spokesperson is quoted in The Weekend Australian as follows:
“For the case of Darwin, a downward adjustment to older records is applied to account for differences between the older sites and the current site, and difference¬s between older thermometers and the current automated sensor.
“In other words, the adjustments estimate what historical temperatures would look like if they were recorded with today’s equipment at the current site.”
Yet this is a version of exactly the same reason given by the Bureau just six years ago for reducing the temperature on 1 January 1910 by ‘only’ 0.4 degrees.
Neither the equipment, nor the site has changed since ACORN-SAT Version 1 was published in 2012.
Yet another 1 degree has been shaven from the historical temperature record!
To be clear, the weather station has been at the airport since February 1941, and an automatic weather station was installed on 1 October 1990. A Stevenson screen was first installed at the post office site in 1894, and has always been used at the airport site.
So, why was the temperature dropped down by a further one degree for 1 January 1910 in the most recent revision – undertaken just a few months ago? There is no logical or reasonable explanation.
Apparently, at the Bureau, the future is certain and the past can be continually changed – history can be continually revised.
When the daily values are added-up, and compared between versions as annual mean maximum temperatures we see the magnitude of the change – and its effect on temperature trends.
The warming trend of 1.3 degrees C per 100 years in ACORN V1 has been changed to 1.8 degrees C per 100 years in Version 2. The annual average maximum temperature for 1942, as one example, has been reduced by 0.5 degrees.
In the maximum temperature record as actually measured at Darwin from 1895 to the present — and taking into consideration the move from the airport to the post office –- there is no warming trend in the Darwin temperature record. This is consistent with other locations in northern Australia with long high-quality records, for example Richmond in north western Queensland.
What the Bureau has done to the historical temperature record for Darwin is indefensible. The Bureau has artificially shortened and cooled Darwin’s climate history to make it consistent with the theory of human-caused global warming.
Ends.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
There are liars, damned liars, at the BOM.
How much you want to bet they just ignore this and never give an explanation?
So what changed in the mid 1970s that Acorn version 1 did not take account of? How did the bureau get it so wrong just a few years ago that it has to be fixed again? The whole business is unbelievable.
I’m more convinced than ever that there is something very fishy happening at the BOM. Just more religious dogma posing as science.
Acorn 1 was supposed to be”world’s best practice” in 2012 but now this has changed in just a few years? Welcome to the ADJUSTOCENE and that means that it will never end.
IOW it’s a never ending story and OZ wastes endless billions $ for a guaranteed ZERO return while China, India etc laugh all the way to their banks. Unbelievable but true.
The BOM are totally without shame: always double down, never apologize.
Can you please put together a nice animated graph like we get from Steve Goddard? It would be good to have something really bleeding obvious to link to.
Thank you Jennifer for breaking BOM’s control of the PRESENT.
George orwell in 1984″he who controls the present controls the past”.
Stalin would award a “hero of the soviet union” to BOM.
We need an inquiry into the BOM management of temperature data.
This is certainly an outrageous attack on historical recordings under the guise of scientific rigour but still the general practice of beating the drum of doom continues apace.
The point(s) I would make is that most mainstream Australians, (humans in general);
1. Cannot understand the processes involved in climate science because it is just not their bag – they have their own lives to live with their own skills and professions to the forefront of their everyday consciousness.
2. Trust that all encompassing title that suggests infallibility – Bureau of Meteorology.
3. Even if they do have the ability to use a computer search engine and investigate these matters, many just don’t have the time to do so with our frenetic modern life style curtailing critical analysis of published material that nearly always contains apocalyptic suggestion.
So thank you Jennifer, but how do we get your clear eyed, plainly spoken analyses out into the public gaze in a more comprehensive and widespread manner ?
How on earth can they justify this scientifically? Numbers and values of “measurements” are often adjusted in a set of scientific measurements but ONLY when the experiment to which they refer has been carried out using what are accepted as better equipment, better measurements and so forth – even then there is often significant argument over the difference in results obtained. The BOM makes these ad hoc adjustments and expects the real scientific community to accept them as being accurate.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO justification for making corrections to any measurements which cannot be repeated. It is quite difficult actually to repeat the measurements made anywhere of atmospheric temperatures in 1910!!! Surely any respectable meteorologist should know that.
Between 1894 and 1990 I have little doubt reading from the Stevenson screen at Darwin would have been taken by a myriad of people ranging from from a responsible scientist to the tea boy. Mostly the tea boy.
I am also yet to be convinced the a mercury (or equivalent) thermometer can be reliably read by individuals of different heights, during inclement conditions, to within a degree centigrade without the use of a specific and narrowly focussed observation device. To the best of my knowledge, Stevenson screens are not routinely (if ever) fitted with such a device.
As far as I’m aware, Stevenson screens were originally intended as local weather stations and little attention was afforded them as a global network. Impractical anyway as letters with recorded data would have taken months to reach a central destination by boat for processing by which time any global weather implication would have passed.
And with the best will in the world to tea boys around the world, most of them would have taken the opportunity of checking Stevenson screens as an excuse for a sly ciggie before taking a quick gander at the thermometer, judging it is no hotter or cooler than the day before and scrawling a temperature reading a tenth of a degree more or less that yesterday just to look convincing. Assuming they actually bothered to approach the Stevenson screen at all, rather than noting their ‘observations’ whilst sitting down puffing their ciggy.
I’m also interested to understand how equipment was calibrated accurately across the planet, between said Stevenson screens, by said letter, prior to wholesale electronic communications like telephones became available. If it was considered necessary at all.
To adjust temperature measurements from this unreliable data, one way or another, seems to me highly suspect.
Nor are these suspicions specific to Darwin, in my opinion they happened all around the globe.
If they change recorded historical temperature records to increase modern apparent warming, it changes nothing in the, long term, natural climate cycles. Climate change is natural, normal, necessary and unstoppable.
Dr Curry wrote on Climate Etc:
“Attribution studies estimate that about a half (40–54%) of the global warming from 1901 to 1950 was forced by a combination of increasing greenhouse gases and natural forcing, offset to some extent by aerosols. Natural variability also made a large contribution. The exact contribution of each factor to large-scale warming remains uncertain.”
The Roman and Medieval warm periods were warmed into from out of colder periods without man-made CO2. If you are uncertain why that happened, how can you know that cause suddenly stopped and was replaced by man’s influence. You identified “Three modes of interannual to multi-decadal variability”. A change from several hundred warm years into several hundred cold years and then to several hundred warm years to several hundred cold years is multi-century variability. The warm periods are the times that sequestered ice in cold places builds up due to more evaporation of Polar Oceans and more snowfall until the ice advances and causes cold periods. The cold periods are the times that there is a lack of evaporation of frozen Polar Oceans and lack of snowfall and a depletion of the sequestered ice until it retreats and causes another warm period. This is recorded in the ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic. More ice extent causes more cooling from reflecting and thawing. Less ice extent causes less cooling from reflecting and thawing. The ice extent change is cause of temperature change and not result.
This buildup of sequestered ice is happening now. The volume and weight are countering the ice extent retreat out of the little ice age. Everyone talks about the ice retreat due to warming. Data is available to show that Piles of ice expand when there is more volume and weight and piles of ice retreat when there is less volume and weight.
People who do long range forecasts do understand that warmer oceans with more open Arctic in September do promote early snowfall on the Northern Hemisphere Continents that do influence the Jet Stream and cause the Polar Vortexes to promote more cold and snowfall on land in America and Europe and Asia and even reaches Africa some years.
Warm periods are natural, normal and necessary in the natural cycles of climate change. The major point is not that changing climate phases do not cause different weather results, because it really does. Warm periods have different weather events and conditions than cold periods. Man-made CO2 did not cause the differences, the different cycles of climate happened forever in history and we did not suddenly take over. Warm oceans do promote open Arctic and does promote more evaporation and more snowfall and does influence polar vortexes and weather events. To say what is happening with snowfall this years is not different, may even have some truth, but none that will help you. Daily disaster news rules. Stick to the fact that everything is inside the bounds of past history and we did not cause it. CO2 has not caused this warm period to be warmer than the Medieval or Roman Warm period, but all warm periods have some weather events that are different than events in cold periods.
The weather events have changed, some better some worse, but they have changed due to changing phases of the natural climate cycles. If you cannot prove everything is not worse, do not say and write it.
It is easy to prove natural climate has cycled in the past and everything is inside the bounds of past changes, we have data and history to support that. The data supports that there has been changes over the most recent century of “official recorded data” but there is no data to support that any of it has not happened before, other than CO2 which is much better, thanks for more to eat because of that.
Climate changes in natural cycles and Man has not suddenly taken over. The changes are natural, normal, necessary and unstoppable.
Open Arctic due to warm thawed oceans and warmer oceans around the Arctic does cause more evaporation and snowfall in the northern hemisphere, data and history prove this. Please quit saying it is not true. You lose every time there is a major storm across the country.
Ice sequestered on land increases when it is warmer and when oceans are thawed and there is more evaporation and snowfall.
Ice sequestered on land depletes when it is colder and when oceans are frozen and there is less evaporation and snowfall
This causes natural, normal and necessary warm and cold cycles that will never stop. The amount of ice and water that has taken part in each cycle has changed and that is why cycles now are different than cycles in the past.
More evaporation and forming of water and ice in clouds and more IR out does cool the Earth. It does not cool the earth all then, it creates ice that does more cooling later.
When oceans are warmer, Polar Oceans are thawed, and this process is used to create and sequester ice. Power in and energy dissipation is at a max but Earth is still warmest then.
When oceans are colder, Polar Oceans are frozen and this process is turned down and ice is allowed to dissipate. IR out is least then so lack of IR out fails to warm the earth. Earth is coldest then because sequestered ice has advanced and is doing the most cooling by reflecting and thawing.
This process is toggled up and down based the temperature that sea ice forms and thaws. This is the thermostat set point for the Polar Ice Cycles to increase or decrease Ice Sequestering in cold places. Tropical Climate also has more evaporation and precipitation when oceans are warmer and less when cooler, but the ice cycles do not play a part. Temperate Climates are influenced by both the Tropical Climate and Polar Ice Cycles. The ice cycles in the North and ice cycles in the South both influence temperature and sea level and they are sometimes in phase and sometimes out of phase, they run at their own internal natural frequencies that depend on the volume of water and ice that are part of each cycle.
Major Ice Ages shared a common ocean so the major cycles were coordinated by more snowfall when oceans were deep and warmer and by less snowfall when oceans were shallow and colder. Major Ice Ages were North Hemisphere Events. Antarctic went along because of the shared oceans. Ice ages are a time with more ice, earth and oceans are cold and oceans are low and cold and there is not much snowfall in cold times. Warm times are a time with less ice, earth and oceans are warm and oceans are high and warm and thawed. This is the time that more evaporation and IR out can produce ice and sequester it on land.
Little Ice Ages and Warm Periods are now multi-century cycles. Major Ice Ages and Warm Periods were multi-thousand-year cycles. No such change has happened with external forcing cycles, the difference is internal with the amount of ice and water that take part in the cycles.
There are internal natural cycles with their own natural frequencies. External forcing cycles resonate with these internal cycles differently at different times. Most people only look at correlations between temperature and external cycles. Models are built using those correlations. Theory and models remove ice when oceans are warmer and thawed. Data increases ice accumulation when oceans are warmer and thawed.
Bottom LINE! If they change recorded historical temperature records to increase modern apparent warming, it changes nothing in the long term natural climate cycles. Climate change is natural, normal, necessary and unstoppable.
AI forgot to ask in my recent comment, for how long does the Met run the pair of recorders simultaneously – the old thermometer in its old original position and the new equipment in its new position with all the you-beaut automatic recordings?
I have never seen a comment by the bureau or anyone else as to how long this occurs – 1 year, 2 years….? Surely this process would have been absolutely basic in making any sensible change – but of course who said the BOM was sensible!
Mercury and glass thermometers require several minutes to equilibrate to a change in temperature. In hot weather there are often brief eddies of warmer air. Modern electronic sensors respond very quickly and these are recorded and thus produce a higher maximum reading. To equilibrate the two records would require either lowering the older records or, more accurately, only using the average over several minutes for the modern record.
Correction, that should have been the older records would need to be raised. Maybe I should apply for a job with BoM.
This is but one example of a trend by certain government institutions to add support to the readily disproven anthropogenic climate change dogma promoted by the IPCC.
Temperature falsification implimented by the methodology they euphemistically call ‘homogenization’ is also carried out by their New Zeland equivalent NIWA, the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, and the US NOAA, amongst others.
NOAA some years ago actually illustrated how they did it but I am unfortunately unable to post the graph on this site for some reason. It is most illuminating.
In the world of science, tampering with the data in an attempt to support a pre-determined outcome, or for any other reason, is obviously not permitted and cannot be tollerated.
This latest attempt by the BoM appart from anything else, highlights the desperation they must feel obliged to resort to. It can only indicate that there is a deficit of actual evidence or they would use that.
Such manipulation will, in the long run, result in their personal shame and the degradation of the organisation they work for, to everyones disadvantage.
Thank you Jennifer and also Ken Stewart for the fine work you do in upholding the principle of truth in science.
This is not just confined to BoM. The Met Office in the UK, and the NASA and NOAA are all at it. So much so that data tampering may well account for half of the recorded warming. The only reliable temperature record is from satellites and only began in 1979. In the period from 1979 to 2000 the satellite and ground station data were in approximate agreement. However, since then data has been adjusted several times at NOAA and NASA, again cooling the past just like BoM. Since 2000 the satellite data shows a slight cooling, yet the ground station adjusted data shows 0.2°C of warming.
Thanks for this analysis Jennifer.
A general bull sh*t alert has been issued for the Bureau of Misinformation ( BOM ) following on from it’s attempts to revise PAST temperatures downwards in it’s new ACORN 2 climate
Hot Scot the practice in the past here in Australia ( from 1910 when BOM was established ) was to have thermometers at the local Australian government post offices.
Selected staff at the post offices were trained to make observations on the maximum & minimum temperatures each day at 9.00 am local time. That information was then sent by telegram to the BOM’s state HQ in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin etc.
It was not done by the tea boys – who were mostly tea ladies anyway. More usually it was the responsibility of the post office manager or his assistant.
This system persisted until the 1960’s when gradually telegrams were replaced by telephones.
In the 1990’s mercury thermometers were replaced by electronic thermometers and the data was transmitted electronically as well.
Thanks, Jen, for your observations and comments.
Contrary to this BoM fakery that only goes in one direction I would like to advise that the current spate of king tides are showing that, as compared with my observations based on AHDatum going back over 70 years, they are still lower than they were then.
So Australian oceans refuse to kowtow to the all powerful BoM.
But your request for an audit of the BoM is becoming more obviously necessary by the day.
These adjustments have nothing to do with any of the excuses BOM give for making them, they are purely political and deliberate.
BOM currently use a trend changing algorithm to make these adjustments. They are totally unscientific. NOAA are now using climate models to work out their adjustments. These are the same models that can’t predict the last 40 years of hindsight.
And that is the political reason for the adjustments. They are coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation WMO, who are a 50% partner in the UN’s IPCC, to make the temperature data fit the failed politicised climate models.
Climate change is the main attack weapon now for the communist movement. Their agenda is to dismantle capitalism and de-industrialise the world. Paris is the communist wealth redistribution scheme. By conning the industrialised west to give away all their money they hope to send these countries broke. And it is easy to kill of industry if you give them expensive, unreliable and intermittent power.
SSM and gender insanity is all tied in and has been part of the communist agenda since the 1950s. The purpose of that is to destroy morale and create confusion and chaos. Chaos is an essential ingredient for a communist revolution to be successful.
We have just flipped into a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. We are into and up to 40 years of turbulent weather.
The Australian covered this several years ago and indentified coastline that could be seriously affected. Northern Beaches of Sydney and the Gold Coast of Brisbane
Bill in Oz
Who was trained to make the observations? Specifically please.
I only ask that because I was ‘trained’ in school to record readings from the Stevenson screen located in our school grounds, adjacent to a wall of glass windows, in the 1970’s. It was part of the official Met Office recording network.
Our science teacher sent a group of kids out every day, at the same time (good policy as every class had a go at the job) but didn’t bother to go with them as he was supposed to.
The process as far as we were concerned was to send the spottiest, smelliest, thickest, most unpopular kid to record the data while we went round to the bike sheds with the girls. When the spotty oik returned with readings of 156 degrees C with wind speeds of 100 MPH we simply moved the decimal point to where we thought it made most sense and got on with snogging.
Please don’t try to convince me people in Aus are any different to us in the UK. I did similar things whilst an adult as a police officer just to shut the bosses up and they never questioned data me or my colleagues handed them because they didn’t care.
It’s just a process. Other than the global cooling scare, that no one believed at the time anyway, there was no reason to be bothered much about accuracy down to one tenth of a degree. The nearest degree was sufficient, assuming we didn’t just judge the temperature compared to yesterday and, as I said, recorded a tenth of a degree higher or lower for the sake of credibility.
Been there, done that, got the ‘T’ shirt.
Well done Jennifer, this type of article is exactly the issue the BOM must defend.
The BOM have previously stated that the the AWS electronic thermometers were designed to “match” or “replicate” the measurement characteristics of the older mercury thermometer system. Why then do the BOM claim that a further adjustment is needed in ACORN-V2 to address “differences between older thermometers and the current automated sensor”?
BOM CEO Dr Andrew Johnson says the BOM’s independent assurance processes concerning measurements and adjustments are “freely available to the public”. Where?
The only answer to this mess is an external, independent audit in which the BOM should be pleased to participate, as according to them, it should validate their “excellent processes and procedures”.
The much more-reasonably homogenised Darwin maximum data set just barely shows the extreme Federation Drought event. It also shows the cold 1950s.
Richmond, with its more continental climate, generally shows the Federation Drought and the 1930s USA Dustbowl events in moving averages, and also the cold 1950s.
I presume the Richmond site was continuous at the time of the Darwin move (ca. 1942) and used to correct the Darwin record.
Interestingly, the maximum temperature plunges in 1941-42 and jump in 1943 are present in both data sets. It would be interesting to see the average annual minima and average annual temperature for these two sites on a “minimally homogenised” basis as well.
Is the long-lived Richmond station record emerging as a key data set in exposing the false science of the BOM? Quickly, somebody save the raw data before it is adjusted.
Thanks Jennifer for your diligent work. WHERE IS THE CHIEF SCIENTIST IN ALL THIS? And what is the process for getting an inquiry into BoM initiated?
They’re all at it.
GISS NASA temp record for Darwin pre-2011 (version 1/2).
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=501941200004&dt=1&ds=1
GISS NASA now (version 5).
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=501941200000&ds=5&dt=1
Jennifer I would love to be a fly on the wall if you and Warwick Hughes ever get together and compare notes on Darwin. The “artificially shortened” part may be even worse than you suspect. I notice the top of your chart of mean annual temperature is 34 degrees. If this picture Warwick found shows that data should go back to 1890 then the chart would need to go up to 34.2 degrees for 1892.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/darwin1890.jpg
Lance Pidgeon
Jennifer that 1890 photo above clearly shows the type of bushes that could be blown away by a cyclone that i have seen you mention elsewhere as causing a change in 1937. Obviously they are too close to the screen and shelter it from the wind. I think that photo proves your point.
Here is a picture of the BoM Stevenson in 1940 in the same place as far as I can tell but with its own personal tree.
http://hdl.handle.net/10070/39379
Here it is in the same place in 1930 but with the tree a lot further away.
http://hdl.handle.net/10070/6065
Thanks, Jennifer.
I put up a comment on WUWT re the PO.
The salient points were due to the temperature being tied to adjacent sea temp so close to the coast Darwin cannot have the increases in temp seen in inland centres with any global warming.
Also the sites were quite different in elevation PO 20 meters to Airport 2 meters with the former very close to the sea and elevation induced sea breezes and temperature drop.
Po destroyed by bombing in Feb 1942, was BOM correct in the year of change of the Stevenson screen?
Didn’t NOAA and NASA do the same? Made the past warm period cooler?
Thanks for your exposure of the Bureau, Jennifer. This is intolerable deception from a public utility, exactly like our own NIWA have done. I’ve reposted it at the Climate Conversation Group.
Readers may be interested that the de Freitas paper of 2014 soundly refutes NIWA’s claim of 0.91 °C over 100 years, saying it was really only 0.28 °C. NIWA’s claim was in a 2010 review crudely “peer-reviewed” by the Bureau.
I hope these html links are rendered neatly.
BoM “cools” Bourke’s Max by 6.3 degC
Last time I looked at BoM’s maximum temperature record for Bourke Post Office was more than a month ago. That record only went back to 1999.
Now the record extends from 1996 all the way back to 1871.
So missing from that record are the highest temperatures ever recorded in Australia as reported by Dr Marohasy elsewhere.
52.8 deg C and 51.7 degC (the latter with a Stevenson screen installed).
In January 1877 and January 1909 respectively.
Yet in BoM’s revised record
the highest temperature for January 1877 is not shown and
the highest temperature shown for January 1909 is 45.3 degC, not 51.7 degC.
“Homogenisation” is not the term that I would accept for 6.3 degC cooling of the raw data!
Correction.
In my previous comment, the sentence beginning
“So missing from that record…”
should appear immediately after
“That record only went back to 1999.”
And of course the “cooling” is 6.4 degC not 6.3 degC.
Sorry, I’m new here!
Argh. Ooops sorry.
Here i am thinking i found something with those photos then read this in one of Jennifer’s papers from way back.
“In particular, the trees behind the Stevenson screen along the front of the post office building are tallest in the first photograph taken in 1890. In the later 1930 photograph, the trees immediately in front of the post office appear to have been removed, Figure 1. In the 1940 photograph, the trees have apparently regrown in front of the post office and there appears to be some shrubbery where the modified Greenwich thermometer stand was positioned in 1890, Figure 1.”
Also from that it seems the older stand was used in 1890 even though there was a Stevenson screen there.
Graham
The BoM has Bourke’s highest temp at the PO as 49.7C on 4th Jan, 1903.
That site closed around 1996.
Bourke’s highest temp at the AWS (airport site) is recorded as 48.3C on 12th Jan, 2013.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_048013_All.shtml
However, ACORN 1/2 only record from 1910 so all those records have conveniently ‘disappeared’.
Ian
Thanks for that.
Still wondering what happened to the 51.7 degC Jan 1909. It was good enough to have appeared in BoM’s year book apparently. Yet now it gets “cooled” by 6.4 degC!
Graham,
‘Still wondering what happened to the 51.7 degC Jan 1909.’
Problem solved.
The Western Herald has 3rd Jan, 1909 at 125F (51.6C).
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/142024324?searchTerm=bourke%201909%20temperature%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=
However the BoM has not added it to its AWAP temps.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_nccObsCode=122&p_stn_num=048013&p_c=-461048476&p_startYear=1909
Notice the high temps around the 3rd Jan.
So the BoM has ‘disappeared’ it?!?!
oh such a tangled web they weave
Oh Jenny, here you go yet again – sweating the small stuff, devoting so much energy and intellect on ‘proving’ how the BOM has hoodwinked and lied to us all. If only you could devote even 10% of this energy towards some real stuff – like helping to rid the planet of plastic pollutants, reverse the disruption to Earth’s fragile biodiversity and extinction of species, making the air over Beijing breathable again. Gawd, I could go on and on. This crusade is pointless and sucking up to idiots like Craig Kelly won’t help your cause either.
I’m just filing this here, a snippet from my Sunday night interview with Chris Kenny …
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1187746904740255
And here is more on the ‘scratched’ Bourke record hot day …
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2017/02/australias-hottest-day-record-ever-deleted/
On 22 February on Watts up with That , I wrote:
“What is odd about the Bureau’s claim regarding equipment is that the modified temperatures always go down. Why not up? After all, the greater sensitivity of today’s technology makes for higher temperatures; mercury simply did not, for it could not, react to a hot puff of air. It is all very confusing and leaves one with a nasty taste. And all this atop the strange dependence upon average temperatures; why not median?”
Setting median aside, it is perhaps noteworthy that this afternoon the observations for Mount Gambier (the airport) have two readings for three pm. The one labelled “high temp” says 35.5 °C. The other, the page devoted to Mount Gambier, has the same time at 35 °C. Must things become ever more confusing and leave one with an ever nastier taste?
The treatment of the historical record is transparently self serving to the interests of the alarmist community.
The story of this vandalism of our history is vital and I greatly appreciate that you are playing a vital part in this.
Rational ethical behavior is precious and we desperately need more of it.
Keep up the good work.
The sensitivity of today’s thermometers should be investigated. Apparently the BoM did some comparative testing but results have not been made public,
I have seen a 1C degree change within the same minute.
The classic example was Sydney’s record temp of 45.8C in Jan 2013.
Just before it was 44.9C, just after it was 44.8C. Even the screen temp graph does not show the temp going above 45.0C.
So if the BoM claim the SS back then were showing a higher temp then they believe, it would be no higher than the new thermometers. Therefore, those temps should not be changed.
BTW, all readings of manual sites were done at 3:00pm. Did the earlier mercury/liquid thermometers have something in the tube to mark a temp increase after 3:00pm?
Jennifer, thanks for your effort in bringing this folly to light, and I wish to note:
1. Changes in vegetation at Darwin post office up to 1940, Darwin had very intense cyclones in 1897 and 1937
2. In the 1960 the US were bombing Vietnam from Darwin (there were 2000 tons of bombs stored within view of the city) and Defence carried out major upgrades to the airport infrastructure (a Defence facility):
(a) the main runway was lengthed by some 50% and the width of the runway increased from the wingspan of a WWII bomber to that of a B52. The afternoon sea breeze traverses a proportion of this radiating surface ( if not most of its length my recollection about 4km) on its way to the BOM site
(b) a Bomber replenishment area some 100m x 50m x0.6 m thick concrete, and a smaller Fighter area some 0.4 m thickness were placed upwind of the BOM site, and would be heat sinks re radiating large quantities of heat for long periods
To minimise statements crying” Global warming”, drain the cash trough. It worked with the hole in the ozone layer, dry trough, the problem went away and it is no longer a problem
Dr. Andrew Johnson’s letter in The Australian on 20/2/19 claimed that the new version of Australia’s historical temperature record (ACORN V2) does not constitute a “rewriting the climate record”. How would we know? At the moment, the BOM’s adjustment “machine” seems more like a Black Box… all we get to see is the input and the output. We have very little idea of what goes on inside the Box.
If I, as a Software Designer of Accounting Systems, were in charge of the Software Design section of the BOM, I would rigorously enforce the creation of a comprehensive Audit Trail of all homogenization adjustments performed during the creation of a new version of ACORN.
Such an Audit Trail would show the original-as-read temperature; each adjustment made; the date and time of the adjustment; the ACORN version number, the reason for the adjustment (e.g. site move, time of observation, UHI etc); and all the variable data that went into the calculation of the adjustment. If there were multiple reasons to adjust a particular temperature reading, then each reason and the resulting adjustment would be recorded separately in the Audit Trail. You can think of it in Accounting terms as being the Opening Balance (original temp) + or – All Transactions (individual V1 and V2 Adjustments), giving the Closing Balance (V2 temp).
Then, in the interests of transparency and peer-review, I would publish on-line, with suitable search and analysis tools, the complete Audit Trail for the adjustments done in creating each Version of the ACORN dataset. This Audit Trail would also be a boon to the Testing and Peer Review Teams who presumably have to sign-off on the adjustments. The analysis tools would provide endless slicing-and-dicing possibilities that would readily highlight any anomalous adjustments.
How about it, Dr. Johnson? This isn’t Rocket Science, and yet he seems to be obfuscating for some reason. Taxpayers have paid for the BOM’s temperature data, and taxpayers pay his salary. We deserve so much more than a Black Box, especially in this critical area.
Jen: I really think that pushing for a detailed Audit Trail of each individual adjustment might be the best way of achieving an audit of the BOM, than pushing for an actual audit of the organisation, or chasing up anomalies at one or two stations. The detailed Audit Trail would open up the Black Box to more scrutiny.