No Australian weather site has recorded a daily max of 50° this century

I had Lance staying overnight and this subject came up – me opining after watching too much ABC TV news for years – that some site must have hit the 50° in the last several years. When Lance pointed out on BoM pages that the last 50° plus was in 1998 – I felt somewhat conned. We searched Google and sure enough we found this article “The proof Australia is getting hotter” – which includes this rather specific claim – Quote “While Western Australia had a cooler than average year in 2016, some parts of the giant state did hit 50 degrees, Australia’s observation of such heat a first in two decades.” Well if 50 was hit it was not noticed in official BoM daily data. Screen saved. What an amazing lie – “fake news” indeed. Part of my conning was BoM news early in 2013 of the extension of temperature scales up into the 50’s. Oddly this neat animated map from Feb 2016 does not extend to cool temperatures around -10 that are quite common this winter. What other plus 50’s (122F) are there that the BoM should recognize?

8 thoughts on “No Australian weather site has recorded a daily max of 50° this century”

  1. The Albany WA max temp is bogus. It was from the period when the thermometer was in the town before moving to the Airport. A quick look at the temps before and after the move show a obvious incorrect warm bias in the town site pre Airport move and this is confirmed by surrounding stations. I grew up in Albany and personally experienced 114F (46C) on Jan 6 1969. So it can get very hot there.

  2. Used wrong email so may comment twice sorry. Albany town temps had warm bias before airport move. I experienced 114F (46C) on 6 Jan 1969 which is still hottest I think. Gum trees lossed all there outer leaves in the searing North wind that day. So it can get very hot.

  3. pbweather. “Gum trees lossed all there outer leaves” Yes good to have another observation apart from the thermometeter. A raging bushfire can increase temperatures. “Bush fires at the back of the town were a contributing factor.” The West Australian Mon 13 Feb 1933. The paper only quotes 112.6 Degrees F (44.8 C).
    Chris Gillham (www.waclimate.net/#albany) has spent a lot of time researching W.A. temperatures and had a good laugh at 51.2 there. Perhaps homogenisation of bushfires will not go unpunished.

  4. Back before Australia had a standard measurement screen like the AWS, seemingly compatible Glaisher stand or the Stevenson (large double louvered Coolgardie safe) outlier, they used to give an “In the shade” and “In the sun” measurement. The difference is how much the sun did NOT effect the temperature. Sadly these did not record the absolute maximum just the temperatures at the time. EG: Dec 18 1860 “The thermometer stood yesterday, in the shade 128 deg ; in the sun 173.” The difference is 45. trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65567656

  5. Jennifer Marohasy may have identified why the BoM doesn't see a need to extend their annimated map scale for cool temperatures below -10.0 deg C:

    "Except, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has recently put in place strict limits on how cold a temperature can actually be recorded.  So, when the automatic weather station which now operates in the town of Goulburn (not far from Canberra), recorded a measurement of minus 10.4 degree Celsius, the ‘quality control’ system in place ‘corrected’ this to minus 10.0 degree Celsius.  None of this is denied.  When I protested, the Bureau emailed:

        "The correct minimum temperature for Goulburn on 2 July, 2017 is -10.4 recorded at 6.30am at Goulburn Airport AWS… The Bureau’s quality control system, designed to filter out spurious low or high values was set at -10 minimum for Goulburn which is why the record automatically adjusted.""

  6. More from Jennifer Marohasy concerning the apparent inability of the BoM's data storage systems to deal with negative temperature values below -10.0 deg C.

    and….

    Global warming ate my homework (CRU)

    "…Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."

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