Warming bias in media releases from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)

“Record hot start to December 2007”, trumpets the BoM Darwin Office on Monday 3 December 2007.

When you check to see daily max and mins for a range of Northern NT stations,
(scroll down past the green rainfall data to the pink and blue max and min temperature data). You find that this heat wave was pretty much a one day wonder in many places, a couple of days in some.
Further down the page I note how the BoM show bias towards reporting warming events by not putting out a media release about the stunning cold record day 20 June 2007 etc as recorded at Tennant Creek and many other places on 19th, 20th and 21st June 2007 across the continent from Halls creek to SW Qld, to NW NSW.
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To put this few warm days in early December into perspective, lets look at November daily data,
Not much variation there, no wonder the BoM staffers grab their pens and dash off a Media Release at what they hoped was the onset of a hot spell. You can check each month back to Dec 2006.
Now if you click on the Tennant Creek region then choose June 2007 you will see a cold record for Tennant Creek that DWARFS this pathetic little hot record the BoM are puffing about on the 3rd December. The 8 deg daily max at Tennant Creek on 20 June 2007 was a monster 4.8 deg below the previous coldest ever Tennant Creek daily max.
To be fair to the BoM, evidence of this widespread cold event was noted by the NSW office of the BoM who mentioned the record low daily max for the 19th June 2007 at Cobar and Ivanhoe in NW NSW.

If you want to check any region in Australia for daily data for any of the last 12 months, click on the map.
Get the idea. Once you are at the daily data page for the current month, you can click on the monthly links at the pagetop and see any months data. Handy site.

Another way of viewing the data is by the BoM maps of Daily maximum temperature anomaly for Australia at.
make sure you set the page on Maximum anomaly, then you can click back for each day in December, see how warm or cool the daytime max temperature has been for various parts of Australia have been in relation to historic data.
I think this link will take you direct to a map for a day in early December and you can click forward a day at a time.

You can click through each day to a recent date, see the true persective on this warm NT event of 2-3 December. You will find plenty of days with extensive cool anomalies across much of Australia.

Upshot of all this is;
the BoM is biased towards reporting warm events,
the BoM often ignores cold events.
This is no doubt due to pressure in the BoM to do nothing to upset the dogma that we are in the grip of anthropogenic global warming AGW as promoted by the IPCC. Under the new Australian ALP Federal Govt, this condition of national hysteria will worsen.

4 thoughts on “Warming bias in media releases from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)”

  1. There have been large cool anomalies in December across much of the West and far into the interior because we have had very unusual amounts of cloud and rain, which is forecast to continue. This December will be abnormally cool.

    Simple observation tells you that cloud cover drives temperatures in Australia. Jonathan Lowe at a Gust of Hot Air tells me has some very interesting data on cloud cover and temperatures, which he will post soon.

    BTW, Warwick the AustralianWeatherNews is a very useful site. I checked about a dozen sites on the west coast and in the interior. Every single one had both min and max below average, some like Wongan Hills by as much as 4 degrees.

  2. The embrace by the Aust Labor Party of global warming hysteria may prove to be a poisoned chalice. Of course when the public finally become aware of the lies they have been told and the cost, the Labor Party, and their AGW supporters, will attempt to weasel out by claiming they acted on the best scientific advice available at the time. The predictable result of a nation handing science over to a bunch of lawyers?

    John

  3. Off topic – anyone know what the problem is with Climate Audit’s site / server? Can’t connect, cannot see content there.

  4. This is the coldest December in a while I think. I remember one hot day so far this month. Usually it’s rather hot this time of year.

    Steve, I was wondering that myself, that’s what brought me here. Andrew Watt’s blog is down too, so I think their whole server farm must be slashdotted/DOS’d/etc.

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