Missing from the news stories about recent ‘unprecedented’ rainfall along the East Coast of Australia is any assessment of the actual rainfall data. The impression is that the volume of rain falling over any one 24-hour period has been increasing, along with the number of extremely wet days. But these claims are disproven when the data is actually analysed.
My friend Chris Gillham (waclimate.net) downloaded data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and charted it for locations in northern New South Wales to see if the number of extremely wet days or their frequency was increasing. I incorporated this information into a recent blog post focused on Lismore.
Then Sam McClelland visited Noosa and filmed me talking about the information in that blog post, and especially its charts, including me hypothesising that the high – but not unprecedented – rainfall totals could be a consequence of the eruption of the Tongan volcanoe – Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. The YouTube link is here: https://youtu.be/20ruHz4buMw
I explain how volcanic aerosols can supercharge the atmosphere, acting as condensation nuclei.
There is a wonderful chapter in ‘Climate Change: The Facts 2020’ entitled ‘Cosmoclimatology’ that explains the link between an atmosphere high in aerosols and wetter climates over the millennia.
In the video that Sam made, I talk about the year 1816 that is known as the year without a summer because of incessant rain in England from the explosion of Mount Tambura in Indonesia the previous April.
Since Sam visited, Chris Gillham has sent me some more charts, including charts showing the frequency of extremely wet days in Brisbane and the how wet they were on a year-by-year basis beginning in 1887.
And because I haven’t already, I’ll drop the text from an article I had published in The Spectator, that also got me the cover for the magazine that week. In it I also mention the possible volcano connection to extremely wet year.
The recent torrential rains in South East Queensland are not unprecedented. The Australian 24-hour rainfall record of 907mm is still Crohamhurst in the Brisbane catchment recorded on 3 February, 1893. We don’t know how much rain fell at Crohamhurst in February 2022 because that weather station (#040062) was closed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in March 2003.
The Bureau has a habit of closing inconvenient stations. It closed the Charlotte Pass weather station which holds the record of −23.0 °C for the lowest daily minimum temperature in Australia, set on 29 June 1994. That weather station was closed in March 2015. Meanwhile, in June 2017, the Bureau opened several new stations in very hot western New South Wales. One of these stations, Borrona Downs, had a hardware fault and in August 2017 was spuriously recording temperatures as low as –62.5 °C. At the same time, in the cold Australian alps a limit of –10.4 °C had been set on how cold temperatures could be recorded.
The idea of such a limit on cold days does sound conspiratorial and it was reluctantly acknowledged in an official report from the Bureau – but only after I alerted Josh Frydenberg, then the minister responsible for the Bureau, to the problem at the Thredbo and Goulburn stations in July 2017. I could go on. The Bureau deleted what was long regarded as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia – Bourke’s 51.7°C on the 3 January, 1909 recorded at an official recording station in a near-new Stevenson screen with a mercury thermometer. It was scratched from the record in 1997 and replaced with the lower 50.7 °C recorded at Oodnadatta, South Australia, on 2 January, 1960.
These stunning examples of unacceptable behaviour pale into insignificance when compared with the industrial-scale remodelling of the historical record over the last 20 years that has stripped away the natural climate cycles, so even cool years now add warming to the official trend. In denying the very nature of Australia’s climate, which is dominated by wet and dry cycles, the experts are now unable to anticipate extremely wet weather because they have lost all sense of history. February 2022 was extremely wet in South East Queensland. The city of Brisbane flooded again. There were tens of thousands of homes inundated. It is a tragedy. This is the second time in eleven years.
The flooding in 2011 was caused by the emergency release of water from Wivenhoe Dam, a dam built for flood mitigation following devastating flooding in 1974. The 2011 flooding was the subject of a class action with the Queensland government, SunWater and SEQ Water (the dam operators) recently found negligent.
During the worst of the flooding this year the dam operator again kept releasing water as the city flooded. Though the torrential rains had stopped, water kept being released because the Bureau forecast that more – even worse – rain was imminent. Rain that never eventuated. As usual, the Bureau’s skill at forecasting proved dismal with devastating consequences. I benchmarked the skill of the Bureau’s simulation modelling for seasonal rainfall forecasting in a series of papers with John Abbot published in international peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and book chapters from 2012 to 2017. Our conclusion was that the Bureau’s simulation model POAMA, developed over a period of twenty years in collaboration with other IPCC-aligned scientists, had very limited skill at rainfall forecasting despite being run on an expensive supercomputer.
Back in late 2010, it was evident from the very high Southern Oscillation Index that we were likely to experience a very wet summer. But there was no preparation – Wivenhoe Dam was kept full of water until it was too late. This last summer it was not as obvious that we were going to experience torrential flooding rains. It could be that the relatively mild La Nina conditions this year across the South Pacific were made worse by an atmosphere exceptionally high in volcanic aerosols from the explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai a month earlier.
Very high rainfall totals in Hong Kong in 1982 correlate with the arrival of stratospheric aerosol plumes from the eruption of El Chichon, which spewed 20 million tonnes of aerosol.
Atmospheres high in aerosols can contribute to exceptionally high rainfall, but this is ignored by mainstream climate scientists who continue to run simulation models mistakenly emphasising the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.
The most accurate seasonal weather prediction systems rely on statistical models using artificial intelligence software to elucidate patterns in historical data. So, the integrity of Australia’s temperature and rainfall record is paramount. Yet both temperature and rainfall records are being constantly eroded by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Important weather stations are being closed and the available temperature data remodelled, stripping away evidence of past cycles of warming and cooling that correspond with periods of drought and floods.
Back in 2014 an investigation of these issues was proposed by then prime minister Tony Abbot but prevented because of intervention by his environment minister Greg Hunt. He argued in Cabinet that the credibility of the Bureau was paramount so the public would heed weather warnings. No consideration was given to the accuracy, or otherwise, of these warnings.
I was in Brisbane just after the recent flooding (3 March) helping with the clean-up. Tools were downed at 2pm because of the Bureau’s weather warning that described our situation as ‘dangerous’ and ‘potentially life threatening’. All the while the sun kept shining. Not a drop of rain fell from the sky. As I drove out of Brisbane that evening, on my way home, the flash flooding forecast for that same afternoon was cancelled by the Bureau. Next, on the radio there was discussion about the ‘Rain Bombs’ of five days earlier. How they had been ‘unprecedented’. More than one metre of rain had fallen at some locations in just a few days. There was no mention of the more than two metres of rain that fell at Crohamhurst in early February 1893 or the 24-hour record of 907mm that still stands as the highest 24-hour total for anywhere in Australia.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The UK Met. office has just completed digitisation of the old hand written rainfall records using hundreds of citizen volunteers reading and transcribing rainfall readings going back to the 1600’s. Surprise, surprise when rainfall/drought records which have been seen as unprecedented due to climate change were all broken when readings from the 18th and 19th centuries were finally digitised and the truth emerged. The so-called unprecedented rainfall spikes and droughts of the 20th century were merely average ouliers and not extreme outliers.
The rainfall graphs given Jennifer Marohasy go back to 1887 so we cannot know whether the extreme outliers are really the extreme limits or whether prior to 1887 there were some even more extreme rainfall/drought events.
>”The rainfall graphs given Jennifer Marohasy go back to 1887 so we cannot know whether the extreme outliers are really the extreme limits …” [Richard Bennett, above]
Agreed, but these graphs do show the 2012-21 period as middle-of-the-road. Most annoying for climate activists.
As Jennifer points out, the deliberate record tampering by the BoM has the effect of smoothing down historical ENSO/Indian Dipole oscillations in order to exaggerate current measurements. So “anthropogenic climate change” becomes just climate change, all caused by human greed.
Hey, presto … magic happened, 1984 style.
It’s stupidity gone mad, the media hype, even supposedly intelligent people who speak as if climate change is totally proven while ignoring the facts that don’t suit their agenda, the selective wording in referring to the worst floods in 100 years, all good sounding scare mongering, yet if they had gone back just a few more years the facts don’t suit their rhetoric.
And then there is this bunch of teenagers (obviously being directed and splashed with cash) to take their climate crisis fear to the high court. The future generation will be brain washed well before they can think for themselves and make judgement based on reality and facts.
We are currently in the Wet/Normal Period between two Minor Dry Cycles, as defined by Alex S. Gaddes in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990).
The next Minor Dry Cycle in what is a Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycle Hierarchy, will begin over New Zealand,(170 degrees East) in early May 2022, reaching Australia in early June 2022 – and lasting over Australia until mid-February 2023.
After this, the Wet/Normal period will return, until a Regional Dry Cycle takes over – lasting over Australia from January 2026, to mid-May 2026.
These Wet/Normal Periods may be exacerbated by volcanic activity,(eg. the recent Tongan eruption), as the Dry Cycles may be alleviated by the effects of volcanic activity.
ENSO/La Nina and the accompanying ‘decadal oscillations’ was a fabrication launched from the University of East Anglia in the mid-1970’s, and the accompanying ‘unexplained idiosyncrasies’ perpetuated as Anthropogenic Global Warming ever since.
There are no valid temperature or precipitation averages. The temperature rises or falls as the Orbital Dry Cycles pass over the planet and are replaced by the Wet/Normal ‘default’ Period. The Dry Cycle Hierarchy has an 81 Year repeat frequency – and the addition of Volcanic activity means there can be no valid temperature or precipitation averages anywhere on the planet.
The Wet/Normal Period between Dry Cycles is the default ‘normal’ evaporation/precipitation regime of a planet covered by more than 70 percent water.
The Dry Cycles affect both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres simultaneously.
The Earth’s Axial Spin determines the path of volcanic effects and overall weather direction in each hemisphere(East to West and towards the Poles.)
There is nothing ‘decadal’ about it. The Dry Cycle Hierarchy is determined by Base 12 calculations and the Earth/Solar Orbital Calendar.
I invite those interested to observe and document the upcoming Minor Dry Cycle.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m9nAU4JDj_uKTUbWjNjQu08CSLuIySmO/view?usp=sharing
We shouldn’t have ever listened to Greg Hunt, let alone associated with the World Economic Forum! They are our issue, not climate!
Hi Jen (and all very smart contributors!)
If I had a bucket of money I would draw a line in the sand and say, “Let US start afresh!” Simply hire you to create a team to get the job done right from that moment forward. Reinstate proper records. Buy whatever equipment you desire. Put them wherever you deem relevant. Forget about this maniacal BOM mob of morons (did my tongue twister make you laugh?) Forget the politicians. Draw the spotlight to proper forecasting based on realities as a business entity. You would be held in the highest esteem by millions for taking a pragmatic systematic approach to consistency.
How much would this cost to set up and run? Seriously… could you put a ballpark figure on it??? Heck, I’d prefer paying a subscription for accurate data in place of the current nonsense.
Instead of glancing up from their computer screens to occasionally observe the sky, maybe the “experts” could also look at the ground
All over South-East Queensland and Northern NSW, there is ample evidence o a long succession of major floods. the rivers have changed their courses many times as they Brisbane and Lockyer Valleys. Obvious flood-plains at every bend in the river; Jindalee, Kurilpa point (South Brisbane), etc. When the early construction crews started bashing concrete piles in to form a sound footing along South Bank, they were “double-stacking” because the sediment along that stretch of the river is so deep before bedrock. EVERYONE involved in the entire “cultural precinct” should go away and read up on the phenomenon of soil liquefaction.
Then, there are the really big signs of geological activity; earthquakes. I remember a strange “bump” as a small child living in Annerley.
More recently ( few years ago) I was woken by another loud “thump’ that I thought may have been a very close vehicle accident near my house. When I staggered downstairs , the street was full of people in their night attire looking for the source of the same noise.
Apparently, it was a “minor” fault movement, deep below the suburb. (Mitchelton).
There has been a slight increase in the occurrence of minor tremors in the vicinity of the Wivenhoe Dam. Is this a sign that the mass of water behind that wall is causing water to be driven deep underground, possibly “lubricating” sundry faults in the bedrock. Could the design engineers have actually looked back at any records of seismic activity in the region and thus insisted on the clay-cored, rubble wall that became the dam structure we see today? A thick rock and clay wall will flex. A concrete wall till “flex” until it cracks.
Interesting times, indeed.
Take a close look at the Kangaroo point cliffs. Note their height, both on the Point itself, but across the Storey Bridge. The rock is Tuff, igneous in origin; essentially welded volcanic ash. If it were from one eruption, it must have been a ripper. Assorted Tuff formations are found all over south East Queensland, testament to a much more geologically lively past. The wide range of colours, from white to brown, indicating varying mineral content of the “ash” ejected by volcanic activity.
The Brisbane Rive meanders all over the place on its way from the headwaters “up the road” from Linville. Then, there is a massive “kink” at kangaroo point”. The steepness of the cliffs would indicate that the erosion down through over forty metres of rock happened relatively quickly. As in the “Coulees” in North America, rock cut by water has much steeper sides than rock gouged out by ice.
My two bob’s worth, (less inflation0 is that there is a deep fault in that Tuff formation in the Kangaroo Point area. In view of the “cross-river rail” project now underway, has anybody done a REAL study of the deeper strata?
Volcanoes changing the weather; sometimes for years? If folk reckon Tambora 1815 and Krakatau 1883 were “exciting”, consider the effect of Toba, MUCH longer ago. Lake Toba is the crater lake filling what is left of that caldera. Check it out on your favourite, “non-intrusive’ browser. VERY impressive. Then consider that the entire Northern Rivers District of NSW is contained within the “filled-in” caldera of an ancient volcano.