Not everybody agrees with the Bureau of Meteorology claim that Australia has just had its “hottest summer on record”
March 15th, 2013 by Warwick HughesScientists at NOAA/NWS/NCEP Climate Prediction Center & RS Information System, Inc. McLean, Virginia have developed a “…station observation based global land monthly mean surface air temperature dataset at 0.5° x 0.5° latitude-longitude resolution for the period from 1948 to the present…”
The gridded data – 1948-now: CPC GHCN/CAMS t2m analysis (land) – is available at KNMI Climate Explorer Monthly Observations page and a 515KB pdf paper can be downloaded.
Choosing CPC GHCN/CAMS t2m data from 45°South to 10°South and 110°East to 155°East and comparing with the data constructing the BoM “Time series graphs” for Mean Temperature for Australia for Summer – then downloading the “Raw data set”.
Here is the comparison graphed.
It is obvious that the CPC GHCN/CAMS t2m analysis produces a very different ranking of Australian historic summer heat. While 2013 was the hottest summer in the BoM heavily adjusted ACORN SAT data – the CPC GHCN/CAMS t2m analysis finds that 1983 was a clear winner for the hottest summer and 1973 missed out by only 0.00135°C.
Here are the rankings of the top ten hot summers for each data set.
Posted in BoM Australia, Surface Record | 4 Comments »
March 16th, 2013 at 5:46 am
The BOM and Climate Commission claims are just that – claims. There was nothing exceptional about the 2012/13 summer. Using ABSLP (13 stations from Cape Ferguson right round to Darwin) station data for sea and air temps, I can’t find one record set during the summer just ended. I posted hourly temps for January 2013 recently and will post DJF averages from 1991/2/3 for those stations soon. More than half show a distinct cooling trend – only 3 show a warming trend.
Several websites reported a BOM claim of a summer average for Hobart of 23.3°C. That looks like total nonsense to me. Nearby stations averaged around 7 degrees lower. Even average peak temps couldn’t have been that high, unless Hobart has massive UHI.
March 17th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
They didn’t convince the tomatoes.
Here in the Adelaide Hills backyard growers, like me, have been complaining about their tomato plants behaviour this year. Poor yields, slow ripening etc. all signs of lower temperatures. (Or of excessive temperatures, but not so, as my best yield came from Beam’s Yellow Pear in a hot house.)
This morning at a Diggers Club talk, there were complaints also from people on the coast, even to ripping out their plants in early February.
March 18th, 2013 at 10:16 am
[...] More: Not everybody agrees with the Bureau of Meteorology claim that Australia has just had its “hottest… [...]
March 18th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
I downloaded the sorted raw dataset of the timeseries for mean temperature for summer for
Australia and got the top 3 years to be
2011 (1.11 C),
1997 (0.98 C),
1972 & 1982 tied at (0.88 C).
Now, I dont see any global warming except maybe for 1982. The other 3 years are noise ie weather. For instance 1997 had one of the most powerful El Ninos in the last century. As far as 2012 is concerned the weather people claim it as one of theirs :”Bureau of Meteorology weather services assistant director Alasdair Hainsworth said the late onset of the monsoon season had allowed hot air to build up in northern Australia.”
Interestingly, in 1972 the monsoon was late as well!!!
Sorry, I just see “noisy” weather.