Was the automating of Australian lighthouses in the 1990’s a policy stupidity ?

Just thinking back to the de-personning of our lighthouses – what net money was saved? – Wondering how useful it would be to have human surveillance at those site now with all the emphasis on border protection, not to mention preventing smuggling and the odd search and rescue event etc.
There has been a negative effect on temperature data – just look at the Cape Otway 90015 record and see the gaps and data degradation after the introduction of AWS in 1994.
And this a world heritage science observing site from the late 1800’s.

2 thoughts on “Was the automating of Australian lighthouses in the 1990’s a policy stupidity ?”

  1. Yes Warwick, pretty poor. I randomly selected some years for maximum temperature. 23 missing in 2006 (many on the first of the month) and 17 missing in 1998. A lighthouse keeper would have had some backup to fix missing data. Yes, Cape Otway has a long record and should be an important weather station which has no UHI effect.

  2. This year I understand that Canberra is marking 100 years of Commonwealth management of the nation’s light houses.

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