Category Archives: BoM Australia

Weather Bureau for Australia

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Canberra Airport – rejected by Jones et al 1986 – pardoned in the 1990’s – now corrected (again) by UKMO

2 Comments

While experimenting with BoM raw Canberra Airport data I was surprised to find the UKMO have corrected the data here and there. It is noteworthy that Jones et al 1986 rejected Canberra (WMO 949260) with an 80 code which translates as “Non-homogenous and uncorrectable” – after comparing it with Sydney.

Canberra was “pardoned” and included in Jones 1994 station data – but oddly it never made the cut for the 1226 station 1996 update, which is confined to stations still reporting.
Canberra T trends

For larger graphic.

In the newly discovered Jones 1999 station data CANBERRA-AIRP 949260 is included again, with different “corrections” – all undocumented now of course and secret until ClimateGate.

Then the UKMO version just released under pressure of ClimateGate has a different set of “corrections” again and of course their reasons for the corrections are so far – secret.

The trends in degrees C per decade vary as follows: UKMO09 0.1, BoM 0.13, Jones94 1951-80 0.1, Jones99 0.057

BoM Australia

BoM hottest decade claim #2 – complete failure in Darwin too

6 Comments

Blind Freddie can see that Darwin Airport is comprehensively warmer in the decade 1990-1999 compared to 2000-2009.
Darwin 10 year av T trend
Just for a moment think on this gutless claim from the BoM that they restrict their claim to data post 1910. What a stunning example of utter contempt for voters and taxpayers. Do they think we are stupid ? Do they think we are all conned by this pathetic bleating attempt to censor out several decades of warm Australian climate history. It is surely a measure of the complete dominance that BoM/IPCC science has over the main-stream media (MSM) that the BoM get their strangelovian science uncritically parroted in our green-left MSM.

BoM Australia

BoM hottest decade claim shot down in Alice Springs

12 Comments

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and their political echos have been all over the media today with the claim that the years 2000 to 2009 have been the hottest decade in Australia.

Lacking the resources to quickly check the entirety of the BoM claim, I checked Alice Springs data – being at the core of our hot land.

The tenuous BoM claim comes crashing to earth so quickly – in the 1990-1999 decade. The average mean annual temperature in the Alice for the decade 2000 to 2009 is 21.441 degrees C. Then the average for the next decade – 1990 to 1999 is 21.645.

And yes their claim also fails in the 1880’s.
Alice Springs temperature history 1879-2009

My graphic shows the 21.645 peak at 1999 (= ten year average for years 1990-1999)

Poor old BoM – a gaping hole shot so quickly in their beautiful construction – I wonder how many tax payers hard earned dollars the BoM wastes on these sorts of politically correct but unproductive exercises – at a time they find it too hard to gather complete rainfall data at many sites.

I will run more checks as global datasets are updated to the end of 2009.

A few words about what I think would be balanced statements to make about 2000-2009 climate in Australia. Of course it has been a hot decade but I doubt it is significantly warmer in a statistical sense to earlier times, including the late 19th Century – which the BoM cunningly try to exclude. IMHO 2000-2009 could be said to be “well within the normal range for Australian decadal natural temperature variations”.

Get monthly mean max and mean min data from this link

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record, Urban Heat Islands

Some rare balance on the taxpayer funded ABC for a change

7 Comments

Article by Alan Moran pointing out that the behaviour of pro IPCC scientists as revealed in the Climategate emails, is nothing new. There is much to tell about the BoM of the early 1990’s.

The Balling, Idso and Hughes. 1992 paper “Long-Term and Recent Anomalous Temperature Changes in Australia.” – referred to in the ABC article is now scanned online.

Timeline of AGW research from two decades ago

  • 1986 – Jones et al papers compiling hemispheric temperature trends, truly the birth of IPCC global warming. Note each journal paper was backed by the non peer reviewed “phone book” sized TR022 and TR027 station documentation and description of project methodology books published by the US Dept of Energy (now out of print).

I am working at getting both books online – probably too big a job for me – but the smaller southern hemisphere book TR027 should be done within a week – will be a world first.

If anybody could assist with scanning circa 250 A4 pages, we could get the giant northern hemisphere TR022 online – which would greatly assist a scheme to review data from the old USSR, the core of GW. Back to the timeline.

  • 1988 – Dr Fred Wood published in the Elsevier journal his critique of Jones et al 1986 – online with the tetchy Wigley & Jones team reply. Reading Wood and the team reply is a great way to build your understanding of the poor science prevailing around the birth of GW.
  • 1990 – The Australian BoM assembled their paper “Trends in Australian Temperature Records”, scanned online scroll a third way down page. This page found chapter and verse evidence of UHI bias in Australian city temperature records yet the BoM failed to Comment on Jones et al 1986 in the journals.
  • 1991 – I started researching Australian temperature data at the Tasman Institute in Melbourne. By the end of 1991 I had three draft papers that were all circulated to the BoM and others for comments.
  1. The Australian Record on “Global Warming” (TARGW), a 20 odd A4 page review of the Australian component of Jones et al 1986. I am progressively getting this online – some capital city figures have not survived in the word doc and I am reconstructing those. This blog article was on a section of TARGW.
  2. The Introduction of the Stevenson Screen and the phasing out of Open Thermometer Stands, in Australian Meteorology. This was eventually published in 1995 in the International Journal of Climatology.
  3. Heat Islands in Country Towns – South Eastern Australia. I have the text but graphics have not survived – would be a big job to reconstruct. (If anybody knows of a copy, please let me know).
  • 1992 – The Balling, Idso and Hughes paper, “Long-Term and Recent Anomalous Temperature Changes in Australia.” published in Geophysical Research Letters – referred to in the ABC article is now scanned online. This was attacked by the BoM who ended up failing to get their Comment into GRL – the story of this is far too long for now and can wait till 2010.

It highlighted warming bias in the Australian component of the key IPCC paper – Jones et al 1990 letter to Nature Jones PD, Groisman PYa, Coughlan M, Plummer N, Wang WC, Karl TR (1990) Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperatures over land. Nature 347:169-172

No wonder Hughes and Balling (~1995) was killed in review. The pro IPCC processes revealed in the Climategate emails are not new.

In 1991 I was lucky to obtain 2 diskettes of rural South African data from a source in the Weerburo. The above paper spells out the urban warming bias in Jones et al southern African grid point data.

BoM Australia, IPCC, News and Views

Chatter about six months of heat downunder but no official BoM Media Release

3 Comments

Those of us in the wide brown land get accustomed to the media blitz about hottest ever this or that period. I see our Minister Wong while away in Copenhagen even joins in. Look for her third segment.

“We know that we’re at the end of what looks like the hottest decade that the world has seen or recorded. Australia’s had its third hottest year in history since measurement began.”

We are accustomed for over a decade now to these IPCC type pontifications on hottest year before the year has ended. We will do some checking in 2010.

During November I heard much media talk that Australia was headed for the hottest six months = hottest winter and spring since records began.

Now that chatter has gone deathly silent.

I see a great big NOTHING at the BoM media release pages re a post Nov announcement specifying heat records for winter plus spring (June-Nov incl).

There is an old saying, “put up or shut up”. Is it the position that November cooled of towards the end and spoiled the party ?

Can any readers record here URL’s to media claims in last month or so of heat records at specific sites that look checkable?

BoM Australia, IPCC, Jones et al, Surface Record

Jones et al 1986 methodical insertion of warming bias

30 Comments

Jones et al 1986 looked at 86 Australian stations and rejected 46 (25 Short term – 21 long term). Of the 40 they used 27 were short term and 13 long term. Of the long term there were 5 large cities.
The 27 short term stations were mostly only quoted from 1951 onward – regardless of what data was available. It just so happens that the years just post WWII were not prominently warm in Australia so an “automatic” warming trend was reinforced into the CRU Australian component.
Here are 11 examples where Jones et al systematically truncated pre-1951 data or ignored more rural data around many small town Australian stations. These graphics and text have been extracted from a 1992 vintage Word doc that somehow survived the decades and how many HDD’s. Note 27 Nov 09 to clear up any ambiguity – check my comment (WSH) 17 below.
Continue reading Jones et al 1986 methodical insertion of warming bias →

BoM Australia, News and Views

BoM forgets Darwin history

23 Comments

I have just seen this BoM media release trumpeting “Warmest month on record in Darwin”. Darwin has just experienced its warmest month on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Darwin Airport mean monthly max for October 09 was 34.8.
Perhaps the BoM is too obsessed with making weather news fit in with media puff re the IPCC global warming hysteria. Too busy to have time to check their own historic data. – Darwin Post Office 14016 had a rash of hotter daytime Octobers in the 19th Century.
1882 35.3
1883 34.9
1886 35.2
1888 35.3
Driving is important to viagra professional teenagers since it gives them freedom and independence. If you want generic viagra for woman to buy generic drugs, you can get them. Ordering medication buy online viagra has become easy and convenient as one can easily buy kamagra from his place and get the medication at his doorstep. Happiness had become habitual.” Food for thought The vigorous generic viagra professional climb up Mt. 1889 35.7
1891 35.2
1892 35.5
1893 35.3
1901 34.9
Many BoM utterances need “checking with a fine tooth comb.”

BoM Australia

The BoM is a national disgrace

5 Comments

In Canberra we are on pretty strict water restrictions, water bills are sky-high yet the BoM can not with reasonable accuracy record rainfall data at a station in our catchments.

Below are extracts from many emails over months sent from a concerned citizen to the BoM (with BoM replies) re faulty recording of rain data at Mount Ginini, on the border of the ACT ~40km SW of Canberra as the Crow flies. I could drive there easily within a coupla hours in an old car with ground clearance.
I mention this because on 27 Oct the BoM pleads “remoteness of the site” as an issue. Truly pathetic.
Just remember this series of emails address data problems at ONE site and a site fairly close to a city, in a city water catchment. It makes me wonder about data quality from the thousands of more remote sites.
If you go to this BoM page, then run your mouse down the middle part of the western ACT border, the station name should pop up. You can see daily rain data for stations all over Australia on maps in this series.
First emails at the bottom of the page – so best start down there. I have tried to take out names.
Continue reading The BoM is a national disgrace →

BoM Australia, IPCC, News and Views, Sea levels

How reliable are Australian Govt claims about rising sea levels ?

5 Comments

We have all seen the news lately about the threat to coastal properties by “climate change” induced sea level rise.
Here is a graphic of monthly sea level anomalies 1990-through June 2009 – from the latest report from the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project
On page 34 of 41 in the latest report the BoM claims increases in sea levels from 1.5 to 8.6 mm/year out of these data, allowing for air pressure and instrument datum height corrections.
Can anybody really say they are alarmed at the trends seen in these data ?
What is the Govt smoking.
Dr Vincent Gray has an interesting report “South Pacific Sea Level: a Reassessment” – on South Pacific sea levels collected by the BoM. He is also amazed at the rising sea level trends claimed.
20 Years of Australian tide gauge data

Continue reading How reliable are Australian Govt claims about rising sea levels ? →