The BOM’s bad luck never seems to end. Of all the 695 stations in Australia, 693 worked perfectly, but Jen Marohasy and Lance Pidgeon happened to live near, or have a personal random connection to the only two stations that didn’t — Thredbo and Goulburn. Apparently these stations had been flawed (not fit for purpose) for 10 years and 14 years, but the BOM world-class experts hadn’t noticed. I expect they were just about to discover the flaws when (how inconsiderately) Lance and Jen announced the errors to the world and the BOM were forced to do this pointless 77 page report to stop people asking questions they couldn’t answer.
The nub of this fracas is that something called an MSI1 hardware card was installed in cold locations even though it would never report a temperature below minus 10.4C. Awkwardly this doesn’t explain why the 10.4C appeared in the live feed, then was automatically changed to -10C in the long term data sets which are used for climate analysis. Does the BOM think the dumb public don’t know the difference between -10 and -10.4? Implicitly — the BOM installed the wrong type of card, and also accidentally had an error flagging system on top of that, that compounded the error by ruling out even the already-flawed -10.4, which may have been even colder. A double flaw, and both non-randomly warming the minima. What are the odds?
And John Frydenberg, Minister of Critters, Plants and Green-stuff believes this? Seriously?
As Jennifer Marohasy says, without actually saying so the BOM admits the skeptics were right.
The BOM wants to stop this sort of error being discovered
For me the absolute red-flag, radioactive recommendation is this one where the Panel recommends changing their website in a way that would hide the exact inconsistencies that make this public error detection possible. They want a less complicated BOM reporting system — saying that currently it is possible for different temperatures for the same site/time to be on the Internet in public:
“The Review Panel found that: … the current data flow architecture creates situations where data can be delivered to, and displayed on, the Bureau’s website via multiple pathways and this can be potentially inconsistent and confusing for end users;
Recommendation 6: Future investment in supporting IT systems should, as part of their design and system architecture, streamline and improve efficiency and consistency in data flows.” — page 12 of the PDF.
The review panel didn’t thank the citizen scientists who helped them find an error the experts had missed for years by noticing the inconsistencies in the live and long term data streams. Instead the BOM’s priority is to not get caught again, by rejigging the system to get “consistency”. What matters more: accuracy, error detection, or “consistency”? It depends on whether you are a scientific unit or a PR unit.
The BOM review tries to palm off the citizen scientists who were right, and more careful than them, as “confused”. In this in-house review the million-dollars-a-day BOM proves beyond a doubt that their highest priority is to protect their own jobs, not to collect accurate information about the Australian climate.
Thredbo
Thanks to Bob Fernley-Jones for graphing the data from Thredbo. The maxima in red are at the top. The minima in blue below. In green the data recorded on the new electronic thermometer which was faulty for seven years (which is not even the same faults we are discussing in the review.) Between 1997-2004 the electronic thermometers were rounding temperatures to whole degrees. So much for the 0.2C accuracy. On the minima side, it is obvious to the eye that since electronic thermometers were installed there have been no temperatures below minus 11 (I thought we weren’t supposed to even get below minus 10.4?).
Perhaps this was a climate shift that occurred around the same time the electronic equipment was brought in? Perhaps it wasn’t. Where is the raw side-by-side data of the two year overlap between old and new equipment? There have been a lot of -10.4Cs since the flawed MS1 hardware card was installed in 2007.
Thredbo, maxima, minima, 1966 – 2017. Click to enlarge. | Graph: Bob Fernley-Jones.
I’m not suggesting that a few truncated minima, if that’s all it was, necessarily affect our long term trends. (Though it may affect press releases about cold records). Nor am I suggesting it was deliberate. The bigger issue for me, the reason this matters, is yet again we see what kind of scientific standards and attitude are behind the work the BOM do. Accidents happen, but lack of interest in error detection and correction and the cover-up’s are not unwitting. Do the details of the Australian climate matter to the BOM?
Trust us? Are you kidding?
If we could trust the Bureau of Meteorology, the latest report would still be stretching things. But trust is something the BOM burned at the stake years ago. The list is too long. For starters, what trustworthy group avoids any and every independent audit? In 2012 they threw out their supposedly High Quality data set (it was actually called that) as soon as a serious audit was called. This is an organisation that retrospectively adjusts data in the past with a pattern of a non-random cooling bias, and is strangely uninterested in hot historic high temperatures recorded in Stevenson Screens before 1910. It’s a supposedly scientific group that hides their methods from the public. The same BOM admits it uses one-second random noise for high side records, while “not noticing” for years that faulty equipment was accidentally deleting low side records and auto-replacing them with warmer numbers.
Here’s a few choice picks of BOM fails — the highest temperature ever recorded in their Hallowed ACORN data set occurred in Albany far south WA, but only after adjustments. This basic error quality control error is a flag for who knows how many other unexplained changes, but even this radioactive “hottest day ever recorded in Australia” hasn’t been corrected. (Three years and still counting.) Who cares about good data when it’s only the planet at stake?
The BOM homogenize stations a thousand kilometers apart, they use city stations, bad stations, to adjust the good ones by a mysterious unpublishable process. Their methods generated a thousand days where mimima were absurdly higher than maxima. They adjust temperatures up-down-up on a calendar month with major corrections whipping up and down 2 degrees overnight that defies any kind of meteorological explanation. They introduced a new electronic thermometer system right across Australia in the 1990s which coincides with a jump up in temperatures. They say they carefully calibrate the two systems, but they’ve deleted all the side by side raw data, so who knows? Who will ever know?
The Australian climate data set is possibly beyond recovery — damaged beyond repair. We’re at the point where if Frydenberg and Turnbull won’t do something to serve Australian citizens and the Australian environment we need to set up our own independent stations. Someone needs to collect data that the Australian people can trust. We need thermometers outside the control of the BOM.
The current review is full of “confidence-building” but totally unjustified language:
This includes taking a highly precautionary approach and ensuring any location that has recorded below -5 degrees Celsius in the past has equipment capable of recording down to -25 degrees Celsius.
The previous approach was sloppy, lazy, inept and for years, and would not have been discovered without volunteers. Now they discover the highly precautionary approach?
What kind of “rigorous” control includes not publishing the full methods or data?
Page 12 “The controls around ACORN-SAT are particularly rigorous, requiring a minimum two-year overlap between sites or systems when observing equipment is changed or relocated, or techniques are changed. System changes, and any other events that might have an impact on data records, are documented in the Bureau’s station metadata repository SitesDB, in accordance with WMO requirements.”
Question 1: Is the SITESDB open to the public?
Question 2: Does it contain raw data from the overlap period?
There is so much more to say about this, and the many PR terms in what is supposed to be a scientific reply, but for the moment, why trust the BOM?
Bureau has a budget of $365 million a year.
BACKGROUND — Scandal after scandal
- Another BOM scandal: Australian climate data is being destroyed as routine practice
- BOM scandal: “smart cards” filter out coldest temperatures. Full audit needed ASAP!
- BOM scandal heats up: Kininmonth, Watts, Nova quoted in The Australian “We audit banks, why not BOM?”
- Scandal: Australian Bureau of Meteorology caught erasing cold temperatures
- On Sunday, Goulburn got colder than the BOM thought was possible (and a raw data record was “adjusted”).
- Two-thirds of Australias warming due to “adjustments” — according to 84 historic stations
- The mysterious BOM disinterest in hot historic Australian Stevenson screen temperatures
- The lost climate knowledge of Deacon 1952: hot dry summers from 1880-1910
- 1953 Headline: Melbourne’s weather is changing! Summers getting colder and wetter
- The mysterious lost hot Sunday in Bourke, did it really happen?
- Wow, look at those BOM adjustments – trends up by two degrees C!
- Australian BOM “neutral” adjustments increase minima trends up 50%
- Was the Hottest Day Ever in Australia not in a desert, but in far south Albany?!
- Hottest summer record in Australia? Not so, says UAH satellite data
- Mystery black-box method used to make *all new* Australian “hottest” ever records
- BOMs new data set, ACORN, so bad it should be withdrawn (954 min temps larger than the max!)
- Threat of ANAO Audit means Australia’s BOM throws out temperature set, starts again, gets same results
- Australian Temperatures in cities adjusted up by 70%!?
This information and other oddities of Australian temperature records was discussed in my chapter “Mysterious Revisions to Australia’s Long Hot History” in the new book Climate Change: The Facts 2017. Co-authors include Clive James, Matt Ridley, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, and Anthony Watts. Pre-order your copy now, the first edition, released last week, has sold out. Also available as Ebook on Amazon.
Jo,
I agree we need a new network of weather stations – independent of the BOM. I have been pondering how to get one going in my local community. The nearest BOM weather station is at Tewantin (Qld) with data back to 1895 – most collected with standard liquid-in-glass thermometers, and then recently an AWS was installed. I would like to set-up something in the same RSL park which included an AWS (recording and storing data independently of the BOM’s setup) and also with old style manually read thermometers.
The community here already does so much on a volunteer-basis from information centers for tourists, to surf life saving… I reckon we could cope with a weather station, old-style.
451
Jennifer and Jo,
I’m in the ‘wrong’ country (UK) but I have thought for some time we need a coordinated volunteer recording system to double check the output of the Met Office which, like BOM, uses recording timespans outside of the WMO best practice and appears to make adjustmens for UHI which are far less than the actual UHI effect. MO is known for Record 2 minute temperatures at Heathrow where the temps 2 mins either side were ~1 deg C lower, and of course the recent ‘Hottest Late August Bank Holiday Ever’ which was achieved after some unexplained ‘adjustment’ down of the previous record set in 1984 (they ignored the long standing August 28th record set in 1930 that was a few degrees hotter).
It seemed to me it would make sense to try and use a standardised electronic sensor alongside a glass thermometer and record genuine maxima and minima. Crowd funding might be a way to raise funds for the equipment and it would be interesting to site them in close proximity to official stations and perhaps (if possible) within some of the areas that currently have none but are ‘allocated’ temperatures by a mysterious form of extrapolation.
I wonder if Antony Watts might have any suggestions as to most cost effective equipment and best-priced sources.
Good luck – it needs to be done.
I have also wondered if you might be able to get funding for a Judicial Review of BOM – perhaps in relation to the 1 second recording and their responses to that and the low-temperature limiting cards , also to force publication of any data they hold on the changeover periods from glass to electronic.
Best wishes
321
Could do it well and get the automatic parts linked into here below and FORCE it to get the highest quality rating except…”We are currently experiencing bulk observation upload and observation correction issues. We are investigating the problems and apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
http://bom-wow.metoffice.gov.uk/
So it would need to have an alternative web record display.
71
Thanks to you, Jo and all of the other tireless workers and volunteers exposing the truth about this issue.
The problem with the idea of a parallel recording system, especially if in the vicinity of official sites, is that they will be vandalised to stop the records being collected.
We see how far the activists will go to shut down free speech on SSM, and rewrite Australian history by destroying statues and desecrating war graves. Volunteer-run weather stations won’t stand a chance in our brave new world of “tolerance and diversity”.
231
Gazman, of course, but there are 695 possible sites spread across 7million km2, and we don’t have to announce which ones… If it happens, the bad behaviour becomes a news story in itself.
How does destroying thermometers help the environment?
191
Gazman
“Thanks to you”
No worries. Enjoy the task but sends you broke.
20
Depending on how accurate you want it, it can be quite cheap to do an AWS.
For instance, with just this:
Raspberry Pi starter kit from Element14: $93 (inc GST)
DHT22/AM2302 Digital Temperature And Humidity Sensor Module on ebay: $4.38 (free freight). 5-95% RH, -40C – +80C, accuracy +-0.5C, better than 0.1C precision.
EasyAcc 6000mAh Ultra-Slim External Battery – on Amazon, $US19
Total: less than $A200 allowing for freight and misc. extra hardware (tape, screws etc).
This is one-off retail price – would be cheaper if many were purchased at the same time and/or you had company/govt department “trade” discount.
You could record at least a weeks worth of temp and RH data (probably more like a month or more – power limited, se below), and it would only require the space of a paperback novel, no external power required.
(data is small – even assuming a text based log with each line being “12.34C,56.0%RH” = 16 bytes/line = at 1 second interval, 1k data per minute (close enough). Call it 1.5MB/day = 45 MB/month = 540MB/year. At least 8GB of free space on flash card = >14 years of data if you never delete it from the device)
Once a week (month? you’d need to test to find out), just connect your laptop via network cable and dump the raw data across, and swap the battery for a charged one while you are there.
Sure, not the greatest accuracy-wise, but as good as LIG readings and probably not much more expensive than a similar quality min/max mercury LIG jobbie anyway.
So $200 for AWS + $200 for LIG min/max + $200 for screen box + $400 labor to install = $1k/site.
Plus say, $2k up front (10 hours @ $200/hr) to get fairly simple code for data collection on the Pi – you just download a file via Windows network share that is a CSV of the data, you can then do what you want from a spreadsheet or upload to a database.
Add $400 up front and $10/month per site for 3G/4G remote access and/or automated reporting. With this option and power available on site, you never need to go to site unless you want to or there is a problem you can’t fix remotely.
It ain’t rocket surgery…
[Email coming to you Kneel. – Jo]
101
Actually, it is possible to use a pi, with camera to read a mercury thermometer. I once wrote software to read fluorescent 4 state barcodes which is much harder than reading a thermometer where you know exactly where the mercury column is in the frame buffer, so we could do an electronic mercury thermometer.
20
With no electronics inside the box to produce heat how would the lens work?
10
How about sneaking an optical fibre into an existing box and aiming it right at the probe tip(with permission). https://www.lumasenseinc.com/EN/products/temperature-measurement/luxtron-fiber-optic-temperature-sensors/oemfiber-optic-temperature/luxtron-m800-series-oem-module.html
00
As a former weather observer and contributor to Jo’s site on various topics (and a former research scientist); let me say it’s not as easy as it sounds to gather and compare daily weather observations. For example no two Stevenson screens are precisely the same in all respects. (The same could be said of thermometers; and certainly instruments – electronic vs. manual thermometers.) Differences will mostly show-up at the margins – hot and cold extremes. Without a controlled experiment (that is with errors being ‘controlled’), which requires replication at multiple sites, two-screen comparisons can’t possibly answer the question of which different number is the correct one for the day. Two Stevenson screens on the same met-lawn can give slightly different numbers on the same day; so in the end much money can be spent without there being a concrete answer to the dilemma.
Depending on the precise question, a proper experiment may involve two screen sizes and two thermometer sites, replicated at least twice – 4-screens minimum with two sets of instruments in each screen. If it is expected that differences may depend on location (say tropics vs. temperate); a similar layout is needed at those locations. You can see than it becomes quite a large and costly enterprise; then to eliminate bias, there is training of observers, cross calibration of instruments; standards like maintaining screens so they are the same.
Because differences will be small they will be affected by micro-scale issues.
It is truly something the Bureau should have done/do. They have squandered resources and now disbanded most of their previously well-maintained sites; which is disgraceful and unacceptable.
Instead of carefully maintaining gear, which requires people on-site, screens and equipment beside dusty-tracks or in isolated places are visited one or twice a year (sometimes less frequently). Build-up of salt-spray affects performance of screens and instruments at isolated lighthouses; grass is un-cut for months; screens beside dusty tracks and at airports are not washed down like the Bureau’s standards call for; thermometers are not checked – evidence of neglect is everywhere (at a screen near you) and it shows-up in the quality of the data. It is these “big’ effects that make a difference to trends.
Also multiple changes have happened at the same time across the network: at Launceston, the site transitioned to an electronic instrument in a small screen beside a wind-profiler array on the same day. Wind-profilers at Ceduna, Canberra, Tennant Creek, Adelaide airports (and elsewhere) are too close to where temperate is measured. Compound changes are everywhere.
The two most important network-wide changes are the changeover to electronic instruments (from the 1 November 1996) and from large to small screens at about the same time. There is a long list of sites where this also involved relocating of the screen, which changed its exposure.
Cheers,
Bill
40
Bill, you miss the point.
Yes, you are correct that all the things you list and more affect readings – with careful work, it may even be possible to correct for some of these things.
The issue with the BoM is that they can’t/won’t provide:
1) actual “raw” data – what was read prior to any corrections;
2) a list of what is corrected for;
3) a study justifying each correction;
4) detailed information on the spatio-temporal consequences of the sum total of corrections they make – how does it affect the readings, how does it affect the trends, how does this vary at different sites.
Remember that BoM is NOT a research institute – it is not their job to understand global or even national climate, but merely to report the weather that has happened accurately and to provide daily and seasonal predictions of weather as best they can and to improve such predictions where they can. Weather data, not climate data; weather predictions, not climate predictions. Their forays into climate do not seem to have improved their ability to give us accurate forecasts, nor improved long-term outlooks – indeed, many who rely on the long term outlooks would say their fixation on climate has worsened their long term outlooks!
50
Thanks Kneel,
Yes the Bureau has a small research team; they also have a research and testing facility at Broadmeadows, a suburb of Melbourne; and they occasionally produce research bulletins and contribute to scientific publications and such.
A deliberate policy was introduced that after automatic weather stations became primary instruments (1 November 1996); parallel thermometer data were not databased – it was still measured for some sites up to last year, but the data was not saved and if they existed, paper records were also destroyed.
There is also a list of ACORN-SAT adjustments available as a pdf, which for some adjustments is annotated.
The Bureau is not an homogeneous organisation, but has divisions that look after various functions; collecting data is one of those functions; and yes, it is their job to understand Australia’s climate and do forecasting and provide aviation weather services and specialist services for agriculture (Water and the Land) for instance. So as an organisation they have a broad mandate; they also look after surface water resources, tide gauges and predictions; and it is they that produce a range of ‘state of the environment’ and NRM reports (these days blandly called “products”). On their website they also have a whole section on ‘climate change’ so they do that too; and also there is ENSO data; solar data etc … all available.
Despite their being little parallel comparative data, it is still possible to analyse for changes in data, and having done so, work out the nature of the change. Its possible to isolate the effect of screen-size differences for instance, and broadly how AWS probes behave. Its also possible to closely look at every weather station in Australia using Google Earth and for most, use time-lapse imagery to cross-reference changes in data, without leaving home.
Check out Bourke airport for instance; or Cunderdin; or say Badgerys creek; Port Hedland; Ceduna; Halls Creek is a winner; and Cobar MO; Cranbourne Botanic Gardens in Melbourne; Mount Joyce (near Mt Victoria); or Giles. I know it’s a bit of work because I’ve cross-referenced data changes with site changes for hundreds of Bureau weather stations right across Australia and worked-out that recent “record”-hot temperatures are bunkum. (They are due to cultivation; urban encroachment; poor siting; playgrounds; moves to beside car-parks; wind profiler arrays; sports centres and shopping centres; road widening …. all to be seen in glorious living colour!
All the best,
Bill
10
Thanks Bill.
“A deliberate policy was introduced that after automatic weather stations became primary instruments (1 November 1996); parallel thermometer data were not databased – it was still measured for some sites up to last year, but the data was not saved and if they existed, paper records were also destroyed.”
This is unforgivable. I worked for CSIRO in the early 1990’s, and our one small lab of 15-20 people had a file server with what at the time was a rather large 4GB of space. 5 years after that (1991 -> 1996), I would expect that 20GB would be reasonable for such a small group, so the data storage for a national service that is collecting data said to be vital for our future SHOULD have had no problem keeping even 1TB of data or more. Even full NASA data dumps of global temperature data for many decades only comes to <3TB. Australian data would be considerably less.
Putting it all in a database makes sense at so many levels –
1) BoM researchers can pull historical data at any time;
2) BoM forecasters can pull data at any time;
3) requests for data from outside BoM (international research requests, FoI requests etc) can be fulfilled easily and quickly at minimal cost.
4) databases like this are easy to set up for replication – meaning data can be stored and sourced from many geographically distributed sites which are kept in synch automatically.
5) such database software is available as free & open source (eg MySQL) – true, it took until the early 2000's before such software was free & open-sourced and reliable and scalable etc, but failing to keep data – in fact, actively working to destroy data – is completely unforgivable for a Govt department in this day and age, and has been since the 1990's.
THE ONLY REASON TO WILLFULLY DESTROY DATA IS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM ANY SORT OF AUDIT.
Unacceptable for a Govt department whose advise based on that data informs and guides Govt policy costing tax-payers billions of dollars annually. ALL such advise and the data it is based on should be archived permanently – not so we can second-guess them now or later, but so that any politician or citizen can obtain it at any time, and learn from the successes and failures of both the department itself and Govt policy. Obviously some data (defense forces, intelligence services etc) need to be restricted access for some time, but weather data does NOT fall into this category!
10
I think we should recognise that 1.) we do not have the resources to roll out a complete set of alternative stations, therefore we 2.) should try to identify a minimum set of stations across the country that will give us at least a means of keeping the BOM people honest, and then 3.) see if we can get “manpower” and maybe funding to make this small set of stations a reality. Baby steps, and then we can ramp up as we go?
00
I think a single researcher could – using the set-up I described, but with multiple sensors instead of one – shed light on the likely variation one could expect from such things as:
1) physical positioning of sensor inside the screen;
2) physical positioning of screen inside an area;
3) ground cover variations (grass vs dirt vs concrete);
4) local screening (buildings, trees) – size, distance and direction;
etc
You would need before and after cross-calibration and many other constraints to show beyond reasonable doubt that you had a controlled environment and testing set-up, but it’s do-able on the budget available to a dedicated individual, IMO.
I have no idea even if all of the above have a measurable effect, although I suspect that they all do (with varying degrees of confidence). Being able to put some numbers on these would allow us to question the validity of some adjustments – eg, “why adjust for TOBs, when the variation due to tree screening at this site is unmeasured and potentially 10 times larger”
00
Also, our book Climate Change: The Facts 2017 is now available via Amazons:
https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Facts-Jennifer-Marohasy/dp/0909536031/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504851111&sr=8-1&keywords=Climate+Change+The+Facts+2017
251
Thanks Jen bought the ebook.
40
Thanks, just bought the Kindle version.
00
Warwick Hughes finds BoM is weirding in the west.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=5303
71
Yes el gorgo AMAZING. Looks like the QA system as documented in that report could not find this type of “Ground Hog Day)error.
So how many more site are pumping out numbers that look viable but are not.
For 10 days now the maximum has not shifted from being between 31 and 33 degrees. It is stuck between those two points.
Carnegie WA site number 13015 looks to be a manual site. If the effect is real it could only be very local thus smashing the homogenisation theories.
Also Warwicks National night time hot spot. Look near the W.A / N.T. border Click link to watch.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri14/nnths.gif
Lance Pidgeon
71
Some 17 years ago I did two statistics courses as part of a BSc in neuroscience.
Had I used the data collection and processing techniques outlined in the recent post here, I would have been failed.
No doubt.
How can BOM claim legitimacy when it fails to use basic methods known and accepted by all reputable scientists?
That an Australian government organisation can get away with such poor levels of science is scandalous.
KK
291
Are you a plumber now?
410
Plumbum is a Latin word for Lead.
That’s all the Latin I know.
As to the use of the word describing people who work with lead in the context here ?
KK
p.s. I passed both stats courses which is more than can be said about statistical capabilities of the Bureau of Mythology.
150
There was a joke going around amongstthe medical practitioners in the late 1980s. The scene: a house holder had just received a bill from their neuro surgeon in the mail. The home owner opened the letter and was amazed how much the neuro surgeon had charged. The plumber was there doing some plumbing repairs. The plumber asked to see the bill. The plumber remarked that the bill was about right. The homeowner asked the Plumber how would he know? The Plumber answered “I used to be a neuro surgeon before I became a Plumber”.
When you tell this joke to a Plumber, you may need to explain the joke. That is, plumbers make more money than neuro surgeons. 🙂
100
Len
Both my father and grandfather were plumbers. My degree was done as an exploration of the hows and whys of human behavior primarily but also as a discipline. I don’t work in the field of neuroscience but have written here about one of the interesting aspects of that study; the role of CO2 as an essential neuroregulator.
Without CO2 in our bloodstream we die and the most dangerous gas in the air we breathe is oxygen, if taken in excess.
It can leach CO2 from the bloodstream to dangerously low levels and close down our breathing.
CO2 ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
KK
171
Yep, KK
Freedivers know this empirically, and exploit it to often dodgy levels.
30
Hi Level
Now you’ve got me intrigued.
I’ve written before about the difference between the breathing patterns used in singing and the reverse that is used at the end of life but would be interested to know about free divers.
KK
00
A lad at my school picked up the nickname “Plum Bum” in the first year during Latin lessons, now more than half a century ago. His name, unsurprisingly, was Pete Lead.
101
I thought I was hallucinating, Albany hottest evah , ever been to Albany it doesn’t get that hot .
BOM will always palm off their misdeeds , cue the trolls .
71
I see the “Red Thumb Bandit” has been VERY busy…….
Without bothering to say why they disagree with the statement….
123
just another truth-hating watermelon – who fears that Facts interfere with little red minds …….
181
I suspect the red thumbers are disillusioned Public Serpents.
The species has a population of approximately 4 million.
92
SMH, 1954:
Australian summers, Mr.Deacon says, are becoming wetter and somewhat cooler, and the winters drier than they were around about the turn of the century.
His guiding idea was that such change would probably most strongly affect the summer climate and that, more particularly, it would be reflected in the mean daily
maximum temperatures of inland towns.
He studied the mean daily maximum temperatures, in summertime, of 14 inland towns which had sufficiently complete temperature records extending
back to 1881.
Summer maximum temperature falls experienced by the towns included in the survey ranged from 0.5 degrees at Goulburn to 2.3 degrees at Alice
Springs and 4.7 degrees at Cooma.
http://www.waclimate.net/climate-history.html
130
Mark M
SMH translated
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/smh
Seems about right
50
A quick read of the various articles suggested that most credited changes in the sun as the reason behind the changes in temperature. It is sad that so much knowledge has been lost in climate science *cough* circles since the middle of last century!
11
Slightly of topic but similar,…Massive Solar flare! http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/
Knocked out some GPS, Massive 8.1 Earthquake in Mexico, 3 hurricanes in the Caribbean..All adds up to massive geomagnetic event.
I guess theyll blame it on klimate change.
Sack the BOM! I do agree somewhat, alternative weather stations that arent “adjusted” may help with real data.
Problem is they BOM believe you can average time series as in temperatures..the temperature IS the temperature you cant adjust it!!!
60
Driest year for more Australian places: 1902. Most severe drought for more places: Federation. Driest decade for more places: 1930s. Driest year for Sydney: 1888. Driest winter for Sydney: 1895. Driest summer for Sydney: 1939-40. Driest autumn for Sydney: 1859. Driest spring for Sydney: 1968.
Yet we built the (since rain-damaged) Kurnell desal to avert permanent future rainfall deficit, and it’s costing a half-million a day. The only good news is that the useless desals of (since flooded) Brissie and Melbourne (built despite rain delays) cost even more. Couldn’t say how much coal and power has been wasted in this green exercise, but I’m betting a lot. (Waging a war on coal takes a lot of coal power.)
If only the BoM was costing us just $365 million a year. If only.
140
The waste of money and coal power for a largely unused and already busted up Kurnell (not to mention a wind farm which came with the deal) might have been justified if there had been riots against water recycling or if it could have been shown that low catchment inflows in and around the Millennial Drought were without precedent.
While it’s harder to determine historic rainfall away from Sydney in its catchment we know that the WW2 Drought caused very scarce rain there, especially in 1944 and a bit before and after that record dry year for the region west of the city. The Fed Drought was not so hard on the region as the years following, which were bad indeed.
The thing is, rain has always returned. Those who live in the bush know that drought never feels like it can end, but it does end; and even from the short history we have we know that conditions early in this century were well and truly with precedent. And when the rains came after construction of the desal and all those predictions of permanent deficit from the likes of Jones and Flannery…oh, how those rains came!
We need a BoM which works with the facts in front of it, not with our emotions, on this continent where climate is never “right” for long enough. Maybe if we made it obligatory to pin a copy of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem to every notice board? Make ’em recite the relevant lines every morning?
We deserve some fun with these very expensive people.
70
A question for anyone living right at Warragamba.
While the BoM specifies that these rainfall readings for Warragamba are not quality controlled, nonetheless the totals for 2009 and 2010 are a staggeringly low 299 and 225 respectively. That’s a lot lower than the very low readings at various sites in 1944, and the 2010 reading is now a “record” statistic for the area, one which has smashed 2009’s “record”.
Yet nearby Wallacia and Badgery’s (this latter not qual contr) got over 800 mm (above the annual mean of each). Glenbrook got a whole 1150 in 2010. It was quite a wet year generally, was it not? For some reason there are numerous missing readings for sites west of Sydney in the last fifteen years or more, so it’s a bit hard to be sure of much at all about rain in the catchment, but I’m pretty sure there was a good drop around everywhere in 2010.
Is Warragamba in some kind of super rain-shadow? Is it hard to maintain a rain gauge out there?
After the 149 mm flood which occurred only inside the gauge at Kempsey airport and absolutely nowhere else on July 13 this year I’m starting to get spooked. I’m not saying Russians have been seen loitering about Australia’s rain gauges, but…
60
Yes, BOM records for rainfall are nearly as bad as for temperature. Further they have closed a huge number of ststions. The Tawantin station mentioned by Jennifer M is one of the few long term stations remaining in South East Qld. BOM seems to be narroeing down to airports sich as Maroochydore, Caloundra, cabolture, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Towoomba, Amberly etc all with short records and lots of bitumen and concrete to give false temperatures snd rain. I measure rain daily and record more than the five airports within 100 km radius.
41
Morning mosomoso,
I’ve looked at, but not studied the Warragamba catchment. The “town” by that name is at the dam itself, so the rainfall measured there is vitually meaningless as a measure of the input. The divide between the Nepean and Grose valleys basically follows the railway line all the way to Lithgow. Rainfall at Glenbrook is below the dam.
On the other side the highway M31 crosses the Nepean several times just between Campbelltown and Mittagong. And I think the catchment reaches Goulbourn.
Rainfall at Katoomba feeds both the Nepean and the Grose.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Dave B
20
I like that last line.
We do deserve some fun, but beyond that those of us paying taxes deserve far better leadership.
Leadership is on holidays and can’t or won’t find it’s way home.
KK
10
mosomoso.
I do not think the BOM is reparable. I think the entire agency should be eliminated and its employees fired after a new agency is created and gains control of BOM & data.
70
Scorched earth…..I like….
I hear you, bro …
40
All government agencies should be mandate to provide ALL their raw data then their manipulations then then formulas and their software code. All on downloadable electronic formats. They can provide all the editorializing they wish but separate from of the data.
Anything else just gives them a license for corruption.
111
This is interesting. I believe “faulty” might not be provable. But I do think assumptions behind adjustments can be biased.
60
Any assumption used for setting adjustments in an algorithm for temperature homogenisation should Publicly be:
a. Set out in detail, and
b. Fully explained and justified as to how this was arrived at; and
c. The algorithm code should be available for independent inspection.
There is no element of commercial confidentiality or proprietary IP Rights that can be raised with regard to those 3 points by a publicly funded service and so no reasonable grounds for not providing the relevant information to answer them.
If BOM will not provide answers to those points then, to any reasonable and fair-minded person, it must appear prima facie that BOM believe they have something they must hide.
Errors and mistakes are human, they can, should and must be admitted by a publicly funded body without shame. Deliberate manipulation of data by a publicly funded body is another matter entirely and any reasonable person could understand why such a body might prefer to keep that grubby secret hidden.
needs to
81
Roger
Even if the BOM condescends to provide its “secret womens’ business” data, they are often off-putting by asking for considerable money for the goodsn- goods that we taxpayers have already paid for once.
Then if you complain while paying for the data, they play games by providing it in user unfriendly formats or in incomplete form after they play with the words you used to specify the data you sought.
These people have shown overt antagonism to concerned people whose inquiries they seem to take as insults to their personal proficiency. Customary politeness of transactions between contented parties are thrown out of the window, a window that would better be the launch platform for distasteful public servants who no longer know how to serve. Geoff
111
It all only points one way – and that is towards hiding grubby secrets – I find it hard to see that this behaviour does not encompass breaches of some sort or another and I would not exclude criminal law from that.
91
Can an elected politician not be persuaded to require those answers ? They couldn’t be charged for it being produced for them.
60
I have never liked this statement and still don’t –
” Who cares about good data when it’s only the planet at stake? ”
The planet isn’t now nor has ever been at stake, good data or bad. Only warmist alarmists can “see” the planet at stake. Climate will do what it wants to do, whether we try to play “god” or not.
91
Tom, facetious.
Shine a light on their intentions.
They say the planet is at stake — yet skeptics care more about the data than believers do.
191
They are government. They made a mistake. Their budgets and staffing will have to be increased so they can make the same mistakes again but NOT be discovered. Which, when discovered, will be a mistake that will cause their budgets and staffing to be increased again, again, and again.
Government is like fire, it is beneficial when well controlled and limited to a few very specific purposes. When it is out of control, it grows to consume all until there is nothing left to consume.
All we have to do is say NO and mean it as if our lives are at stake. In fact, it is our lives that will actually be the ultimate price we will pay if we don’t.
When are we going to stop feeding ourselves to them?
130
BoM is a joke, and so is the UK Met Office.
was posting stuff on jo’s blog about all the low August temps, when suddenly there were headlines by all the UK MSM predicting –
UK HEATWAVE: Britain set for SCORCHING INDIAN SUMMER as …
Express.co.uk-23 Aug. 2017
UK Sun is contuing on this theme, but read this one carefully:
3 Sept: UK Sun: HOT HOT HOT!Temperatures set to soar into the 30s with September predicted to be warmer than August for only the second time in 60 years
By Alistair Grant and Brittany Vonow
BRITAIN is hoping for a last gasp of Summer, with September predicted to be hotter than August in a “freak” phenomenon…
Forecasters said summer weather has been “shifted” from August to September this year, with decent dry periods and hot bursts due from next week – after soggy low pressure spoiled August.
The Weather Outlook forecaster Brian Gaze said: “It would be a freak occurrence – but September could well have a hotter UK average temperature than August this year, with forecast models showing much warmer-than-average temperatures for the UK for September.
“And highs up to 32C would not be a surprise this month. Europe’s warmth is likely to reach Britain.
“Summer is being shifted from August to September this year.”
Britain could see 32C highs this month, having a promising start of 22C of sunshine this weekend.
***The August just finished averaged 14.6C, 0.3C below normal…
Weathermen said the warm autumn will be due to hot air from Europe, high pressure in September and balmy air from the Atlantic later in the season.
The Met Office long-range forecast is being briefed to the Cabinet Office, councils, transport bosses and businesses.
***But Met Office operational meteorologist Martin Bowles said September looked to be close to average temperatures, and might not hit the hoped for summer-like temperatures.
He said: “There isn’t going to be a significant increase in temperatures in September.
“It will be quite wet and windy at times…
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4381989/will-britain-bake-in-a-record-breaking-three-month-indian-summer-temperatures-set-to-soar-into-the-30s-to-blast-away-our-august-blues/
meanwhile, it’s freezing (& raining) at Lords for the England/West Indies final test, everyone in sweaters and, according to the commentators, doing warm-up exercises, even in the field, rubbing hands together, etc.
8 Sept: ManchesterEveningNews: So much for an Indian summer – thunderstorms and even HAIL heading for Greater Manchester this weekend
By Alexandra Rucki
Katie Greening, of The Weather Channel , said the bleak conditions will begin Friday, as a series of low pressure systems from the North Atlantic will result in a period of unsettled weather for Britain.
She said: “Low pressure will move into the north, bringing wet, cool and windy conditions Friday, with blustery showers following Saturday…
“The next deep low will arrive Sunday, with further rain and some very windy conditions with gales possible, followed by blustery showers on Monday.”…
The forecaster added: “Conditions will remain very unstable on Saturday with a risk of some thundery downpours across central and eastern regions.
“Feeling rather cool in a straight Arctic northerly breeze.”
Nicola Maxey, spokesman for The Met Office, said: “It will feel a bit chilly, particularly under the cloud and the showers giving a definite Autumnal feel.”…
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-weather-weekend-thunderstorms-hail-13589869
8 Sept: Reuters: Nina Chestney: Prices rise on higher demand, undersupply
British wholesale gas prices rose on Wednesday as colder weather boosted demand for heating and the system became undersupplied…
Traders said prices were higher due to increased demand and as newly reported outages moved Britain’s gas system from being oversupplied in the morning to undersupplied…
The weather in Britain has also turned colder since the weekend, with temperatures ranging between -3 and 10 degrees Celsius in Britain, according to the Met Office…
Weather forecasts for January point towards slightly colder temperatures and consumption towards the end of the next 15 days will be higher, up to 260 mcm, said Dean Hunt, gas analyst at Thomson Reuters…
In the European Union’s carbon market, the benchmark Dec-17 carbon contract CFI2Zc1 was 0.04 euro lower at 6.30 euros a tonne…
finally, as Roger wrote in comment #1.1, there was the tricky Hottest Bank Holiday Ever rubbish that Christopher Booker mocked this week, as it was only achieved by cancelling out an earlier record temp.
we have the independent media (thanks to Jo and many others); we need independent pollsters and independent weather-watchers.
90
a final bit of fun. goodnite.
8 Sept: BirminghamMail: James Rodger: Three month Indian summer to make autumn hotter than summer
The Met Office is predicting the next three months will flip after a below-par August
Summer is not over yet, forecasters have warned, with predictions of an Indian Summer for September.
This month is set to bring good amounts of sunshine and pleasant warm days to Birmingham and the West Midlands, experts say…
The Met Office is predicting the next three months will flip after a below-par August.
Experts at the agency are forecasting an “increased chance of warmer-than-average temperatures”…
It has emerged September will likely be hotter than August, which has largely disappointed across the country, including Coventry.
The three-month September to November forecast period is expected to be hot – and that could mean missing out on any dreams of a white Christmas.
The summer weather has reportedly shifted one month back in 2017, with warm air sweeping in and sparking a dry period through the ninth month of the year.
Those forecasts come just one month after a soggy August spoiled hopes of a decent summer for many…
2006 was the only time in the past six decades that September had a warmer average temperature than August in the UK.
Last year saw the mercury reach an average temperature of 14.6C in the country.
And the August just gone saw temperatures reach the same levels…
***A Met Office forecaster said: “From September 7-16, temperatures will perhaps become warm at times…
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/three-month-indian-summer-make-13568918
20
I remember the MO’s forecasts from a decade ago of “mild winters” and the ensuing satellite pictures of Britain covered in snow from Lands End to John O Groats, the great “Barbecue Summer” following the first of those snow-ins when kayaks became a piece of compulsory equipment for campers. Over the last decade, the MO’s forecasts which are more than seven days ahead, have been models of [sarc] of great accuracy [/sarc].
Based on that accuracy, I will believe the prediction after the fact should it be proven correct. In the meantime. a different source hints at September’s weather as wild. We will see, won’t we?
40
…include New Zealand in your above list Pat, NIWA
It’s also a requirement of Globocult membership.
50
Numbers are strange things! They can be recorded, manipulated, inflated and homogenized beyond recognition before misuse by the government which makes them uncountable and are themselves unaccountable. Science without skepticism is doomed to become religion, awash with zealots and lies.
131
Not “is doomed to” but “has”.
31
When you have something relatively simple to accomplish, yet it becomes very hard to do so, it is clear that politics is making that happen.
Delivering cheap reliable non-polluting energy? Easy
Delivering cheap reliable clean energy? Impossible, unless you redefine “cheap” of course.
Measuring temperature? easy
Measuring temperature and having it show warming? Hard.
70
Have just been to Fiji where they have the Australian ABC on local FM radio.
Amazed at the continual hum of Climate Change rhetoric. Island nations are chipping away at evil Oz for not banning coal and polluting the world with ‘carbon’.
The ABC sounds like an arm of that wonder of State broadcasting emanating from Pyongyang.
170
Yeah but when you used to see gangs if kids, whatever the ring leafer said, became an infallible “truth”, and was heavily enforced by the rank and file…..
You can see in offices those down the pile fawning over whatever the CEO said, namely because like all powerless reprobates, they have to be seen to be “on song”, lest they be fed to the wolves themselves.
The ultimate version of thus us I was only fillowing orders….” and dint think for a moment weak minded induviduals wont throw you to the wolves to protect their own cowardly hides….
00
And i am going to use a stylus to type my comments in future, as small keyboards mixed with my fat fingers and fingers that move way slower than my mind, makes for annoyance….
10
So sad that depts like BoM are apparently more interested in patch protection than doing their job.
Instead of being transparent and accountable they make up excuses for themselves.
There has to be a fundamental flaw in the way these supposedly ‘independant’ authorities are set up.
They are granted a type of ‘legislative monopoly’ that far too often results in the management managing the system for the benefit of the management.
They are also given the right and authority to ‘mark their own homework’.
Seriously….what is the probability of Jennifer and others amazingly and coincidentally stumbling across the the ONLY (!) 2 stations that have issues??.
Yeah right!
151
Hackneyed as it may be, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it is reasonable to suppose it is a cat.
On the one hand, an independent and verifiable citizen run dataset could be a useful standard bearer. On the other, the BOM could simply spare themselves the trouble and give-up on the charade. Shut down public access until the point the data has been ‘processed’ by the Ministry of Truth. The post hoc data would be unimpeachable.
81
Excellent article Jo. Perfectly describes the bias/deceit of the climate officialdom.
Another issue with regard to BOM records is the regular failure of tipping rain gauges. One example from Manjimup is an outage of 22 days in winter 2016. No rain recorded by BOM for Manjimup during that period, while DPAW measured 60.7mm about 50 metres from the weather station for that same period.
131
They have also been adjusting flood warning heights and I don’t believe for a second that it’s only in my area they have done it .
81
See I got a red thumb for stating what I can prove is a fact.
One of our resident trolls.
52
The scientific paradigm is simple. Have a great idea then think, research and check your numbers until you realise it was a brainfart. Repeat until you can’t find a fault with your idea.
There is enough here to suspect that they only check if they get an undesirable result.
30
Wave that thermometer in the breeze,
only record what you please.
Choose the stations that you need,
to give the trend that’s decreed,
then homogenise, homogenise.
70
Tom Lehrer fan. Geoff
20
Not making raw data available to the public is incompatible with the scientific method.
I no longer trust any data from the BoM because it is not produced in a scientific manner in the first place and after it is produced it is additionally altered and has little relation to the original measurement.
131
This morning on Channel Nine, a headline strip at the bottom of the screen said this winter was “the hottest on record”, and the news item was from a journo reporting from Thredbo where they are having a bumper season. Irony?
I despair for the integrity of our society when we have fallen so far from truth in science and in reporting.
120
They wonder why we don’t believe a word they say , hottest driest winter eveahhh , not sure who is more deceptive out of BOM , MSM and the government.
81
RR
But if they say it louder and more often then we’ll get the message?
30
Graham Ross (Better Homes & Gardens) does a gardening show on radio on the weekends.
this morning, in response to a caller who mentions Queensland’s dry winter, he said, paraphrasing:
there’s climate change, can’t understand anyone who doesn’t believe it, it’s 100%. he’s been closely watching the climate for the past five years and it’s flipped. dry in northern Australia, wet in the south. ends with an exclamatory, final proof – the temperature was 8C in Tasmania yesterday.
i don’t know how to look up previous day’s temps, however:
BoM: Tasmania
Western District Forecast
Forecast for the rest of Saturday
Cloudy. High (80%) chance of showers, most likely from late this morning. Snow falling above 700 metres. Winds west to southwesterly 15 to 25 km/h. Daytime maximum temperatures between 6 and 11.
North West Coast Forecast
Forecast for the rest of Saturday
Partly cloudy. Areas of morning frost in the east. Medium (50%) chance of showers. Snow possible above 900 metres. Winds southwesterly 15 to 25 km/h. Daytime maximum temperatures between 9 and 13.
PICS, lots of info, but NOT a single mention of temperatures:
8 Sept: ABC: Fresh spring dump of snow closes roads and schools across Tasmania
By Harriet Aird
The weather bureau said the snow came after a front crossing the state brought very cold south-westerly air behind it.
On Friday morning, snow was falling as low as 200 metres, adding to already significant levels of settled snow in parts of the west, Central Plateau and far south.
The Education Department closed government schools in Collinsvale, Franklin, Geeveston and Huonville
Forecaster Debbie Tabor told ABC Radio Hobart the snow was expected to continue throughout the day.
“We’ve got snow to around 200 metres, it’s only very slowly retreating to around 500 metres this evening,” she said…
The recent spring snowfalls have taken their toll on sheep farmers as they arrived during the six-week lambing season…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-08/cold-front-brings-fresh-layer-of-snow-across-tasmania/8884730
not a single mention of temperatures in the following pieces:
8 Sept: Hobart Mercury: Hobart walkers brave the cold to shine light on suicide awareness
8 Sept: Sky News: Heavy snow sweeps across Tasmania
100
Pat, I also heard this on ABC radio this morning. Thought then that it sounded ‘fishy’. Graham Ross doing his bit for the ABC global warming mantra. Better if he stuck to his area of expertise I would suggest.
GeoffW
50
Geoffrey Williams –
thanx for confirming what I heard.
btwit was 4BC in Brisbane, not ABC.
20
according to Wikipedia Demonsino is also Sky News weather man.
NOT a single mention of temperatures:
8 Sept: FarmOnlineWeather: Deep snow covering Australia’s alps
by Ben Domensino, Weatherzone
Australia’s 2017 ski season has reached new heights this week.
A pool of very cold air surging north from Antarctica brought repetitive rounds of snow to Australia’s southeast during the last six days.
Snow cover is so deep in some areas that ski resorts have had to dig chair lifts out of snow drifts to keep them operating. Having snow this dry on top of a natural base this deep is rare in Australia.
According to Snowy Hydro, the natural snow depth at Spencer’s Creek in NSW was a whopping 233cm on Wednesday. This is a new peak for the current season and the highest level measured at the site in 17 years.
Off the back of the latest falls, a number of resorts have extended their season to give skiers and boarders extra time to enjoy the snow covered slopes.
Away from the alps, snow has also fallen to low levels in Australia’s southeastern states this week.
In Tasmania, a number of schools and roads were closed on Friday due to the recent snow. The state’s Mount Mawson Ski Group even published an advisory to warn visitors about the potential for avalanches outside patrolled ski areas…
http://www.farmonlineweather.com.au/news/deep-snow-covering-australias-alps/526829
40
Check out Dr Curry’s blog. Pics from her company CFAN show Irma forming in
relatively cool waters in the Atlantic where SST were about 26.5 degrees.
Not high SST, but a dynamical situation of weak wind shear and a favorable
circulation field led to Irma’s genesis.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/09/08/hurricane-irma-eyes-florida/
Judith Curry notes, however,’Ever since Hurricane Harvey, the global warming
hurricane hysteria has ratcheted up levels I haven’t seen since 2006.’
90
The behaviour of some organizations now resemble that of full blown cults.
Im sure we can think of a few…
40
How so? Which ones?
00
Where is the plan to fully automate the BOM? Fully automatic recording, collation plus satellites. Who needs all the people? Banks have few tellers. McDonalds do not have waiters. $1 million a day? For what?
Also the 350 Climate Scientists at the CSIRO. Another $100,000 a day.
After all, we get all our science from Al Gore and Climate Chief Flannery. Why employ meteorologists?
According to real climate scientists, mere meteorologists know nothing about climate anyway.
92
Sell the ABC/SBS too. They all live in Sydney and get their news and programming from overseas. Except for current affairs where you are given the opinions of ABC.
Sell the lot. $2Billion a year for second hand news and dodgy facts. Contract the whole thing out. Plus the CSIRO. What do they do anyway? Save $10 million a day.
90
The opinions of the ABC comes from overseas too.
Any organization which has a specific role should should be subject to aggressive review, to see that we the people who pay for all this are getting value for money. I just read that Australia’s perpetually poor universities where no one ever has enough cash have spent $1.5Billion last year on advertising for students? Who pays for that? How about spending that money on improving standards or world class research or scholarships for the gifted? How can the ABC outbid commercial organizations for imported entertainment? When did the ABC/SBS become an entertainment channel?
It is not enough to put public service groups like Universities on a private footing where many Vice Chancellors earn up to $1Million per year. The point is accountability, especially with the ABC/SBS/CSIRO/BOM and the rest, especially the endless Clean Energy groups who exist to perpetuate the myth that the world is warming and the rare gas Carbon Dioxide, the basis of all life on earth is somehow dirty pollution.
50
If the BoM must exist at all they should be responsible for maintaining a network of weather stations that have been assessed for accuracy and proper location by genuine independent scientists and engineers and JoNovans and then pump out the raw data free onto the Internet for any voluntary or commercial body to interpret as they see fit. The software that the BoM operates would have to, by law, have its source code published to be scrutinised by anybody to make sure they are not altering raw data and that the software can’t physically do that. The hardware should also be open to scrutiny to make sure it and its firmware can’t alter data. Its firmware should also be published and hardware components checked to make sure the BoM hasn’t altered them. The whole system needs to be tamper proof. The instruments would need to be calibrated by independent agencies at appropriate intervals and the calibration procedures observed by a number of qualified and honest people.
71
If a government run broadcaster is only giving a one sided narrative if the majority of main stream media follows that narrative , if the government gives platitudes to citizen concerns of government departments are we still living in a democratic society or a dictatorship.
When politicians flout the law , defend discrepancies , make policy decisions according to ideology your no longer living in a democracy.
20
No longer living in a democracy? Maybe the problem is the reverse: too much democracy, too many abysmally ignorant people allowed to vote. Maybe the franchise needs to be substantially narrowed if we are ever to get better government–and not only in Oz. Unfortunately, most voters probably regard voting rights as a moral issue, when it should be seen more as an engineering problem.
00
Heh, BoM people. I bet some of you are reading this in secret.
If any of you had any morals, intelligence or decency you would blow the lid on the utter unscientific methods of your organisation.
I’m sick of paying high taxes to pay public serpents to propagate lies!
Wikileaks is waiting for your uploads. Do it.
131
Come on guys, you haven’t done it yet. Is there not one among you with a belief in the scientific method (do you even know what it is?) or any morals or decency?
Not one?
81
I agree, blow that whistle. Defend science, and the scientific method!
20
why hasn’t a single scientific body, academic institution, media outlet, or sceptic organisation (GWPF?) run a campaign to demand alarmists stop calling CAGW “climate change”?
after all, it is distorting centuries of climate science and understanding of climate change.
worse, it is attempting to brain-wash present and future generations into believing there was no such thing as “climate change” prior to CAGW.
if anyone wants to talk/write/pontificate about CAGW, let them call it –
MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY INDUSTRIAL EMISSIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE, WHICH SOME PEOPLE CLAIM IS ENDANGERING THE PLANET.
8 Sept: RealClimateScience: Tony Heller: September Temperatures Have Plummeted At All East Coast And Gulf Coast Stations
After the quietest decade for US hurricanes on record, we get a couple of hurricanes and the press immediately blames global warming and declares it to be the new normal…
It took me exactly 45 seconds to determine that September temperatures have plummeted at all of the US East Coast and Gulf Coast states, since their peak in the 1920’s…
CHARTS
All of the claims from leading climate scientists being quoted in the press are nothing but superstition, lies and utter nonsense…
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/september-temperatures-have-plummeted-at-all-east-coast-and-gulf-coast-stations/
31
Chiefio on temperature measurements
https://www.beefcentral.com/uncategorized/2017-rising-champion-finalists-announced/
and following comments
00
Oops!
Correct link
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/wood2/#comment-86361
00
Question:
Would Global Warming possible without the computerisation of Date.
20
Jo, do you realise how fortunate ∆en and Lance were to find the only two stations in Australia that are faulty.
482,330:1 chance to that happening.
Of course if another were found that would blow the odds out to 334,254,690:1
if four are found, 231,304,245,480:1 hardly bears thinking about.
21
old44;
By a strange coincidence 482,330:1 are the odds to my predicting the winner of the Melbourne Cup, while 334,254,690:1 are the odds to the Federal Government doing anything about the incompetence and bias at the BoM.
10
You should use a word other than “radioactive”- it is not defined as significant problem anywhere.
00
It is shocking to read the report:
On page 23 they state the Almos AWS was procured then tested afterwards!!!!! and found to fail below a temperature of -10………….
Surely they procured against a requirement or specification?
Perhaps Australian public money is so cheap and plentiful that buying the ‘right stuff’ that ‘just works’ does not matter?
On page 24 they state that the Telmet 320 AWS frequently locked up!
Did they not buy professional data capture kit with a watchdog timer that reboots after a lockup?
It is atrocious.
I can’t complain, here in the UK we have a history of poor Government spending as well……
PS: the Raspberry Pi is a bit of a power hog and you may need to consider a lower power (and therefore harder to program) unit. also it is not qualified to the industrial temperature range of -40C to +85C. (which is a problem for BOM as well!!!)
00
News from the BOM report… It gets worse!
“The quality management system in ADAM contains several quality control tests, as well as algorithms that flag potential quality issues (see also Section 4.6). Within the quality management system, all AWS stations have a unique minimum temperature threshold, which varies from month-to-month based on the likely temperatures in each location. “
I wonder why the BOM has no maximum temperature threshold that “varies from month-to-month based on the likely temperatures in each location just like the minimum threshold above?
They have really gone to town on preventing low temperatures leaking through to the global dataset.
I wonder why?
00
Utter bulldust from the BOM – the -10.4C was returned by the weather station and then later rounded hotter to -10.0C by BOM “quality control.” The BOM review produces more questions than answers. And Frydenberg just says it’s all good, trust BOM. Useless waste of space.
00
I don’t live in Australia, but do you folks not have an immense trove of historical temperature records in the weather sections of daily newspaper archives, and maybe electronic media archives as well? Why can not some researcher ferret out all this data to correct the “official” data?
00