BOM Scandal: One second records in Australia — how “noise” creates history and a warming trend

 Instrument errors, noise, may account for a quarter to one half of our national warming trend in the last century.

When the newspapers run a headline with Sydney hits, say, 44.4 degrees and that number gets engraved in history, who realizes that the extreme heat may have only lasted one second? You might think the maximum temperatures were above 44 for at least ten minutes, but the BOM will write it into the record books even if that heat lasts one second, and if the temperature a minute before was more than a whole degree cooler. We’re writing puffs of jet emissions, car exhaust, or random packets of hot (or cold) air into history books, and comparing these new records with old ones done in slow reacting liquid in glass thermometers. No wonder we are setting records!

In the last twenty years, electronic sensors have replaced most of the old fashioned thermometers. It’s for exactly this reason that we need the side-by-side comparison data that Bill Johnston asked for and which the BOM can’t supply because it is deleting the data – as a matter of routine practice.

Back in 1910, or even 1990, thermometers were not able to record a spike of heat (or cold) that lasted for such a short time. Liquid-in-glass thermometers just can’t react that fast (who remembers waiting with a thermometer under their tongue as a child?)

This is not just about headline grabbing records, but about temperatures recorded every day and used to calculate long term trends. The effect of bringing in newer more sensitive thermometers in the mid nineties could cause a “step up” in maximum temperatures.

The BOM needs an audit. A full independent audit.

Any politician who cares about the climate would order one immediately.

Meteorologists debate whether it should be 5 minute or 7 minute averaging, not 1 second

A paper by Lin & Hubbard in 2008, argued that, even 5 minute averaging was not long enough to avoid some warming bias in maximums (and cooling biases in minima).  We don’t have to ask what they would think of one-second “averaging” or sampling rates:

“Commonly-used 5 min average was not sufficient for the fast-response thermometers in surface climate networks while the WMO standard thermometer (20 s time constant) should have a 7-min running average for reporting daily maximum and minimum temperatures. The surface temperature sensors with smaller time constant than the standard LIG [Liquid in glass] thermometers must implement a follow-up running average algorithm.”

The story of strange temperature mismatches appearing

A few months ago, Ken Stewart and others in the independent BOM Audit team (like Lance, Phill, Ian, Chris, Bill, Geoff, Bob and Tony) were watching the various BOM data channels when they noticed strange mismatches. The live update BOM observations page records temperatures every 30 minutes at hundreds of sites across Australia. Sometimes though, the daily maximum temperature would lie far above any of the 30-minute observations. Stewart wrote to the BOM to find out why, and was shocked to hear that the 30 minute data was not the average of the last 10 minutes, or even the last single minute. It was just a random sample of the data the second before.

So Ken asked for the detailed data (and paid for it) so he could graph and see how long the temperature spikes were lasting. But what he found was that readings would sometimes erratically rise and fall, chopping up, down and up, and the spikes — were often outliers, far beyond normal variation. And there was no apparent mechanism to remove these noisy errors either (at least, not on the high side). And normally noise is not so important – it cancels out when numbers are averaged — but when only the highest moment (or the lowest) is recorded, there is no averaging among the Maxes, and nor the Mins — though the cooler extremes are less affected by the spikes and rapid changes that are going on in the hottest part of the day.

Sometimes a temperature two whole degrees above the rest of the readings was being recorded for posterity as the the daily max, which may theoretically be also recorded as the hottest day ever… See these graphs below and be prepared to change the way you think about “record temperatures”.

To find out how often these spikes occur, Ken graphed how fast temperatures changed within one minute of the daily maximum temperature being reached — and fully 44% of all the readings he looked at, the temperature fell more than 0.3C within one minute. In theory these electronic thermometers are supposed accurate to 0.2C, so swings this fast could be due to pockets of warm air coming and going (like a jet turbine) or they could be errors (or both). In 200 cases Ken found five situations where the one minute drop after the peak temperature was reached was 0.6C – 1.5C!

More importantly — the entire 20th century warming trend — as Ken points out — is only 0.9C. If these thermometers are picking up noise spikes as big as two degrees, it’s no wonder the BOM doesn’t put error bars on the century long trends.

There have been no studies published of automatic electronic thermometer probes and the old fashioned liquid in glass thermometers side by side.

 How Temperature Is “Measured” in Australia: Part 1 by Ken Stewart

Record temperatures, maximum and minimum temperatures, and monthly, seasonal, and annual analyses are based not on daily values but on ONE SECOND VALUES.

The Bureau reports daily maximum and minimum temperatures at Climate Data Online,   but also gives a daily summary for each site in more detail on the State summary observations page , and a continuous 72 hour record of 30 minute observations (examples below), issued every 30 minutes, with the page automatically refreshed every 10 minutes, also handily graphed.

 In Maryborough on the fifteenth of February this year the daily maximum was recorded as 1.5C above the highest 30 minute data point.

mboro-15th-graph

At Harvey Bay, the temperature was 2.1 C below the reading at 6am.

I sent a query to the Bureau about Hervey Bay, and the explanation from the Bureau’s officer was enlightening:

Firstly, we receive AWS data every minute. There are 3 temperature values:
1. Most recent one second measurement
2. Highest one second measurement (for the previous 60 secs)
3. Lowest one second measurement (for the previous 60 secs)

In Stewart’s words:

The temperature reported each half hour on the station Latest Observations page is the instantaneous temperature at that exact second, in this case 06:00:00, and the High Temp or Low Temp for the day is the highest or lowest one second temperature out of every minute for the whole day so far.  There is no filtering or averaging.

The BOM tries to explain why:

The explanation for the large discrepancy was that “Sometimes the initial heating from the sun causes cooler air closer to the ground to mix up to the temperature probe (1.2m above ground).”

However… it can be seen that the wind was south east at 17 km/hr, gusting to 26 km/hr, and had been like that all night, over flat ground at the airport, so an unmixed cooler surface layer mixing up to the probe seems very unlikely.

You will also note that the temperatures in the final second of every half hour period from 12.30 to 6.30 ranged from 25C to 25.5C, yet in some second in the final minute before 6.00 a.m. it was at 23.2C.

How to spot natural versus unnatural temperature changes

In Part 2, How Temperature is “Measured” in Australia  Stewart describes what the differences are between natural and unnatural temperature fluctuations, and looks at the noise levels on minima compared to noise levels on maxima.

Not all quick changes are unnatural.

Temperatures can change quite rapidly in a natural setting — for example, as the sun rises over an inland spot (like Urandangi) temperature rise 5.1C in 24 minutes. So that’s a sustained rapid rise of 0.2C a minute. Fast! But we wouldn’t expect to find rises that are faster than that in coastal situations, or ones that happen during the middle of the day. We also wouldn’t expect to find cool changes that come and go in a minute – flip flopping from warm to cold to warm. We know that cold fronts and other changes can come through and drop temperatures rapidly (as Ken describes, like a 1.2C fall over 1 minute in Rockhampton) — but these are step up or step down changes that are sustained after the shift.

What’s not natural are spikes like this in Maryborough where temperatures rise 3 degrees in ten minutes then fall 1.5 degrees in just one minute straight afterwards.

Mboro 15 Feb

” …rogue outliers are being captured as maxima and minima.”

Doesn’t noise just cancel out and won’t this make minima cooler too?

The errors don’t cancel out — high spikes are recorded as the max of the day. The noise that trends downwards (and is cooler) during the hot part of the day is not recorded in the long term climate records. (As is hot noise during the coolest part of the day). As Stewart points out during the warm part of the day “only the highest upwards spike, with or without positive error, is reported.  Negative error can never balance any positive error.”

Stewart analyzed both the hot and cold parts of the day and found that there is a lot more variation during the hot part of the day.  As well, the Bureau was caught clipping low side “noise” (and even low side real measurements) at Goulburn and Thredbo a couple of months ago. They have not answered questions about when this clipping started, and which stations it applies to. They are doing an inhouse review instead.

Ironically, because there will be a smaller cooling effect, as well as the larger warming one, it will mean the DTR (Diurnal Temperature Range) will be increased. This is not what the CO2 modelers are looking for. They expect CO2 to shrink that diurnal range by keeping the heat in at night and bringing up the minima.

Instrument errors may account for a quarter to one half of our national warming trend in the last century:

There is some ambiguity about the error margins of the electronic AWS sensors, is it +/- 0.2  or +/- 0.5? In 2011, the BOM mentioned that 10% of electronic thermometers are functioning outside the +/- 0.2  range that is more than 50 probes in the network.

Stewart concludes that because these one-minute differences are so common he thinks it’s likely nearly half of the high temperatures recorded may be 0.2C too high, saying that “Instrument error may account for between 22% and 55% of the national trend for maxima.”

Stewart has a wish list of things that need fixing which include replacing automatic electronic sensors at at least 50 sites. Obviously the Australian BOM should not be using one-second samples but something more like ten minute averaging.  He wants the BOM to show error bars on all it’s long term trend calculations. He wants the BOM to redo their filters so they can identify their spurious spikes.

Jen Marohasy has just posted on this also, in her words, it shows twenty years of measurements are “not fit for purpose”.

I naively thought that the ‘raw data’ was mostly good data. But now I am even sceptical of this.

As someone who values data above most else – this is a stomach-churning revelation.

Indeed, it could be that the last 20-years of temperature recordings by the Bureau will be found not fit for purpose, and will eventually need to be discarded.

Just yesterday I wrote a rather long letter to Craig Kelly MP detailing these and other concerns. That letter can be downloaded here: TMinIssues-JenMarohasy-20170831

To repeat: The BOM admits temperature adjustments are secret and thus completely unscientific. If we had a team to audit the dataset, as we requested in 2011, or to replicate the data as I requested in Sept 2014, this erasure of cold temperatures would have been fixed by now.

Read all of Ken Stewart’s work and see all the graphs:

 BACKGROUND

Thanks especially to Geoff S, Phil, Lance as well as Ken Stewart and Jennifer Marohasy.

 REFERENCES

 Lin & Hubbard (2008) What are daily maximum and minimum temperatures in observed climatology?  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol. 28: 283–294

 

 

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107 comments to BOM Scandal: One second records in Australia — how “noise” creates history and a warming trend

  • #

    “Great Warming of the Thermometers” by the Bureau Of Mendacity.

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      This is why every Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring is lately ‘the hottest on record’. Nothing coming out of the BOM can be trusted.

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        James Murphy

        I agree, but only up to a point. Forecasting done specifically for offshore oil-and-gas facilities (my only experience with BOM work outside of their usual efforts) is accurate enough, often enough to be considered reliable, dare I say, trustworthy.

        Whether this is because it’s a paid service, and could presumably be held (to some degree) financially and legally accountable in the event of erroneous or misleading information, I do not know.

        I am thoroughly sick of seeing ‘hottest evaaah’ rubbish, particularly when it always lacks error margins, and indeed, almost never mentions the actual difference in temperature between the previous ‘hottest evaaah’ value, and the alleged new value.

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          Winter was supposedly the ‘hottest evah’, yet we were freezing our nuts off all Winter and all the locals were saying this is one of the coldest Winters yet. The wood suppliers were doing a roaring trade. But according to the BOM, we were sweltering in a heat wave all Winter. Now if global cooling were to somehow become a money spinner for the trough feeders, I’ll bet every season would be the ‘coldest evah’.

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            el gordo

            The August winds have come in September, I consider this anomaly significant. BoM now calls them ‘spring winds’.

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            • #

              I was out this morning, before the rain came, collecting more wood to keep warm, as were many others. I’d love for the BOM to bring some of this warm weather they speak of our way. Everyone I speak to is thoroughly sick and tired of this cold weather. And we had some of that wind as well.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Sorry…but has to be done….

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8IKyaFjWUE

        From Fast Forward….he he

        Gold!

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      UNCERTAINTY IN THE GLOBAL AVERAGE SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE INDEX: A REPRESENTATIVE LOWER LIMIT
      Patrick Frank, Palo Alto, CA 94301-2436, USA, Energy and Environment, Volume 21, Number 8 / December 2010

      “The ±0.46 C lower limit of uncertainty shows that between 1880 and 2000, the trend in averaged global surface air temperature anomalies is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C at the 1σ level. One cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since 1880”.

      And that is before we have the errors showing up in the instrumental records.

      You can access Pat Frank’s paper and other interesting observations via
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/surface-temperature-uncertainty-quantified/

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  • #
    Mark M

    21 Jan, 2015:
    BoM calls Hottest Day Ever Record Temperature in Alice Springs 4.5°C Above Reality.

    “Even now at 4pm AEST this BoM page shows 46 – and the AWN page with feed from deep in the BoM shows 42 – why 42 – where did that come from if their spokesfolk are telling the ABC 41.5.”
    ~ . ~
    “The details are still under investigation,” climatologist Joel Lisonbee told the ABC.

    “It looks like we had an instrument fault with with our automatic weather station at the Alice Springs Airport.

    “We do have other thermometers on site.

    “We have some mercury and glass thermometers that did not show that spike to 46C.
    . . .
    Perhaps someone knows where to find the results of that investigation?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Douglas Adams, in “The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”, pointed out that the meaning of Life, the Universe, and everything, is “42”.

      That is where the “42” comes from.

      In many applications, where a measurement is required, but missing, “42” is substituted as a code for, “It beats me – I have no clue what the value should be.”

      It is certainly used by the British Military – The RAF in particular.

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        Environment Skeptic

        The reading of 42C is because the BOM are accidentally running a stock market ‘High frequency Trading’ algorithm in their temperature data software….…in the Hithchikers guide,…. such numbers are powered by improbability drive technology.

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        • #
          Environment Skeptic

          The People at BOM know
          To give high frequency trading software a go
          Spikes in data become the new strata
          So temperatures can trade higher and higher.
          And higher..

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    • #

      Here is a link to one of the screenshots I took that caused Graham Lloyd to ask the BoM questions about Goulburn. In it you can see the two values for the same minute noise effect and my text explaining it. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=235642493619360&set=p.235642493619360&type=1&theater

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    pat

    2 Sept: RealClimateScience: Tony Heller: The Global Temperature Record Is A Complete Fake
    NASA publishes maps and graphs like these ones, purporting to show very detailed trends in global temperature back to 1880, with very small error bars. Their maps are based on NOAA GHCN data…READ ALL
    https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/the-global-temperature-record-is-a-complete-fake/

    wish Tony Heller would have his latest thread at the top of his homepage, as I’m sure many people go to his website and think he hasn’t posted anything for days or even weeks, and would miss seeing new threads further down the page, such as the one above.

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  • #

    A quick glance at this old newspaper story from 1939 makes it obvious that there were plenty of chances to catch a fleeting hotter moment. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/how-the-herald-reported-sydneys-hottest-day-20130108-2ce3a.html

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  • #
    Gazman

    My goodness. As a science teacher, I would be sacked if I taught my students the scientific method used by BOM.

    Every student studying science learns that the best way to improve reliability, accuracy or validity of an experiment is to repeat data measurements several times and average the results. This training begins in Year 7.

    Yet the BOM routinely abandon every principle of the scientific method to push an ideology that irrevocably corrupts the climate records of this nation. I am gobsmacked.

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  • #
    ROM

    Just to keep you up to date on global temperature trends on a daily basis;

    (Unofficial) Record-breaking temperature across the Globe
    .
    Unofficially, there are currently 0 stations that have broken their daily high record, 2 that are tying it, and 9 that are near it.
    Unofficially, there is currently 1 station that has broken their daily low record, 4 that are tying it, and 21 that are near it.

    .
    These temperatures as shown in the tables here on Ryan Maue’s site are for the same recording site, same day from the years past.
    The temperatures shown in the tables do change through the day as the data from across the world comes in.

    However it does now seem that the trend is for more low temperture records or close to low temp trecords than was the case a year or so ago.
    We can possibly thank the demise of the El Nino for that trending lower global recorded temperatures.

    Or maybe trending lower global temperatures is the climate reality as we see it in any case.
    .

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    pat

    this also reminds me of –

    26 Aug: RealClimateScience: Tony Heller: New York Times Fishing For Hurricane Blame
    FROM COMMENTS –
    RAH says:
    August 26, 2017 at 2:24 pm
    I have yet to see any data from a surface station or near shore buoy that shows Harvey had 1 minute sustained wind speed of 130 mph or more. Yet everyone is saying it was a Cat IV at landfall.

    They picked up in the Hurricane Hunters statement but those measurements are taken at the altitude the aircraft is flying and then the estimated sustained wind speeds at lower altitudes are calculated. The sensors they drop can’t give sustained (1 minute) wind speeds at any altitude because they descend too quickly.

    Based on what I’m seeing it looks like Harvey was actually a strong Cat III at landfall and not a Cat IV. Not that it makes much practical difference for those in it’s path. But this (is) science after all and I see temperatures and sea level measurements defined to 10th and 100ths or even 1,000ths all the time so I want to know. Exactly what was the sustained maximum wind speed taken by direct measurement for Harvey at land fall.

    FOLLOWED BY:
    Latitude says:
    August 26, 2017 at 4:20 pm
    I’m following that same thing RAH….haven’t seen anyone post that they found more than 90mph yet…and that was a gust, not sustained.

    Andy DC says:
    August 26, 2017 at 6:24 pm
    They claim that Port Aransas had 111 mph sustained with gusts to 131. That would barely qualify as a major hurricane. But that reading is fishy because I could not find anyone else with a sustained wind over 75 mph and gusts slightly over 100.
    https://realclimatescience.com/2017/08/new-york-times-fishing-for-hurricane-blame/

    25 Aug: RealClimateScience: Tony Heller: Why President Trump Needs Communications People
    FROM COMMENTS –
    Nomoregore says:
    August 26, 2017 at 12:58 am
    So, they’re now hyping Harvey as a CAT 4. They revealed on the weather channel this is because an aircraft measured some wind speed at 147…. and after much CALCULATION, they determined this WOULD BE 130 at ground level…..except that it isn’t. Notice, CAT3 ends at 129….. imagine that!
    SUSTAINED winds (reported on the weather channel so far) are NOT exceeding CAT1 yet. The highest GUST reported was 103, with 80 or so sustained.
    This is looking to be RABIDLY overhyped once again.

    RAH says:
    August 26, 2017 at 10:29 am
    Yea, NOAA NHC has been getting bad about over hyping. Two of the storms this year got names that wouldn’t have a few years ago. And they called Hermine a hurricane with sustained winds of 80 mph when it came ashore in Florida in Sept 2016 but I never saw a single land station in the path of the storm record 1 minute of 75 mph winds in real time as it happened.
    https://realclimatescience.com/2017/08/why-president-trump-needs-communications-people/

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    Bob Fernley-Jones

    I’m reminded of the record hottest day scandal of two years ago at UK’s Heathrow Airport, that was timed to the minute;

    Do we know how they smooth those naughty peaks in the UK?

    Here follows Christopher Booker’s account:

    Met Office caught out over its ‘hottest July day ever’ claim

    Was the recent ‘record’ merely caused by a blast of hot air from a passing airliner at Heathrow?
    By Christopher Booker 6:10PM BST 11 Jul 2015

    Since my story last week headed “Mystery grows over Met Office’s ‘hottest day’”, there have been further developments. How could the Met Office justify its widely publicised claim that July 1 was the hottest July day recorded in Britain, based solely on a reading of 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit) made at Heathrow airport?

    When the blogger Paul Homewood (on Notalotofpeopleknowthat) tracked down four weather stations around Heathrow, none showed readings on July 1 above 35.1. He wondered how far the Met Office figure might have been influenced by the siting of its Heathrow temperature gauge, shown by aerial photographs to be surrounded by heat-radiating Tarmac and near a runway.
    He therefore asked the Met Office for further details about how its figure was arrived at. Its reply was that this information could only be supplied for £75 plus VAT. But it then, in light of all the interest this was arousing, issued a long press release. Despite claiming that its Heathrow weather station met all the requirements of the World Meteorological Organisation, it failed to answer any of the relevant questions. What it did include, however, was a graph revealing that the wholly untypical 36.7 figure had only been fleetingly reached in a marked 1.7 degree temperature spike at 2.15pm. Was this merely caused by a blast of hot air from a passing airliner? No answer on this from the Met Office.

    But this was the only evidence for its claim, blazoned unquestioningly across the media, that July 1 2015 was the hottest July day ever recorded (still significantly less than the highest temperatures recorded in August). We have long known that the Met Office will do almost anything to promote its fond belief that the world is growing ever hotter. But do we pay it £220 million a year (and its chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, a salary with pension rights worth £240,000) for genuine science? Or just for propaganda? If the latter, we are not getting much of a deal.

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      Roger

      The same happened around a year ago, in March or April (forget which), when a ~ 1C spike lasting for a few seconds resulted in a Met Office statement of Hottest Ever ….. only to have to subsequently admit it as a 1C spike which was way above temperatures 2 minutes either side.

      Someone checked the airport records and found the temperature spike coincided precisely with a Boeing Dreamliner turning on the taxiway which is adjacent to the weather station – wind direction was from the taxiway towards the weather station.

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    el gordo

    ‘As Stewart points out during the warm part of the day “only the highest upwards spike, with or without positive error, is reported. Negative error can never balance any positive error.”

    Good effort Ken, you may be called upon to give evidence at a future Royal Commission.

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    TdeF

    So the climate can changes every second of the day. That’s climate change.

    The other well known problem was the transition from human read thermometers to electronic devices like thermistors and the increase in resolution will produce a discontinuity of the order of the difference in resolution. Much care must be taken to avoid this. However as widely reported in Germany in the late 1980s despite observing a difference of +0.5C in devices run in parallel for a few years, nothing was done. This alone is enough to explain most of the Global Warming in terrestial data.

    Now we have the lack of averaging so skittish devices are allowed to contribute the daily maxima. It would be a scandal if the entire environment lobby was not anxious to find a problem.

    As for the Arctic sea ice, as the average is 0C, of course a tiny change in temperature can produce a massive change in sea ice coverage but none in the Antarctic.

    If the BOM moves to entirely electronic temperatures measurement and reporting, why do we need the BOM? As most of Australia’s news is bought from overseas like the TV shows and opinions, why do we need an ABC? Sell them both. Unfortunately they are probably both worthless like the CSIRO. Total savings? $2.5Billion a year.

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    John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia

    Jo, I Posted this at Tony Heller’s blog site under his recent post: The Global Temperature Record Is A Complete Fake.
    “The BoM of Australia has released their 2017 winter data and report, and they say:
    ‘Overall, winter national mean temperature very much above average; fifth-warmest on record for winter.’
    BUT, if you look at the maps closely at SE Australia (Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney & Brisbane) and the SW corner (Perth), where most of the people live in Australia, it has been a cold winter. Nowhere do they recognize this fact.”

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    David Maddison

    Here is a note on the time constant of glass thermometers.

    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.947.629&rep=rep1&type=pdf

    I wonder what the time constant of an electronic thermometer is compared to a glass one?

    An appropriate experiment would be to run a series of tests with thermometers of both types with different time constants.

    Also, perhaps an electronic method could be devised to read a mercury thermometer?

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    Robber

    Back on Aug 1 the CEO and Director of Meteorology Dr Andrew Johnson announced that he had established a review to understand why in Goulburn and on six days at Thredbo low readings were discarded. The hardware was replaced as a matter of urgency, and investigations will ensure that the Bureau’s systems are designed to flag unusually high or low temperatures so they can be checked for veracity before being confirmed. The panel for this review will include expertise from outside the Bureau (but no statement about who the experts are).
    It is expected that the the review will be completed in a matter of weeks.
    It will be 5 weeks on Tuesday since Aug 1, but now perhaps Doctor Johnson will be forced to extend the review?
    We can hope that Minister Frydenberg sends him another urgent please explain request, and we get a truly independent review.

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    ian George

    This is what happened when Sydney had its record of 45.8C on 18th Jan, 2013. The temp was 44.9C at 2:49pm, jumped to 44.8C at 2:53pm and then dropped to 44.8C by 2:59pm. Even the weather zone graph did not show the spike.

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      Graeme No.3

      Did you mean that the temperature jumped to 45℃ at 2:59? Also, from memory the temperature only a few hundred metres away was several degrees lower.

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        ian George

        Sorry – jumped to 45.8C at 2:53pm and then back to 44.8C 6 mins later. Too many sherbets on Father’s Day.

        10

  • #
    RobK

    Thanks for highlighting this overdue issue. Much of this instrumentation dilemma has been dealt with in the field of digitized sensing. Try using a digital volt meter unstabilised compared to an old analogue meter. More digits doesn’t necessarily mean greater accuracy.

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      Graeme No.3

      RobK:

      Except in the eyes of the gullible. Just because a figure comes up at, say 35.6℃ doesn’t mean that it is accurate to ±0.1 ℃ , but you would be surprised by how many people think so.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        I don’t see your point, Graeme.

        If my clock shows the time as 18:36, I assume that is accurate to half a minute. If the clock displays the seconds, I assume that it is accurate to half a second. If somebody quotes a temperature of 35.6℃, I assume that the figure is accurate to 0.05℃.

        Have I missed something?

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          ROM

          Ye! Theres a clock kicking around here somewhere that shows the correct time right down to the second, twice a day.

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            ROM

            The BOM could stop getting beaten up over their high and extreme temperature recording debacles by simply telling the average low grade media wallah along with the average punter out there that they are getting temperature “bounce” in their newest electronic temp sensors.

            That would negate all of the angst about the real and actual temperatures being discussed here and the average punter and average green climate catastrophist would swallow it wholesale.

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          RobK

          Rereke,
          “Have I missed something?”
          Yes and no. The procession of time is, in practical terms as measured by your digital clock, pretty constantly linear and you are only querying the resolution. Your maths of significant figures is fine.
          The question of measuring diurnal temperature variations in order to establish that there is a nett energy retention caused by an increase in CO2 is a different matter altogether. There are many problems with this. A small one is that there needs to be a standard protocol to determine a temperature reading in a manner that is repeatable and meaningful in all locations over time. That said, trying to equate some estimated surface temperature to energy gained due to CO2 is in my book a bridge too far anyway.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Thanks Rob

            I now see the point that Graeme was making. It wasn’t about calibration and accuracy from an engineering perspective so much, as the interpretation of what the numbers really signify, or imply, from a scientific point of view.

            Difference!

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  • #

    A month of cloudy nights registers a high average minimum one year in one place. The next year, the sky is clear and the same month registers a low minimum in that place. According to the statistic, the second year had cooler nights in that month. According to a thinking human (who cross checks with precip records, witnesses, news clippings etc) one year had cloudy nights in that month and the other didn’t. Which explains some of the anomaly and possibly all of it.

    A temp is achieved briefly and it is supposed to represent a much broader time period without any regard to its speed of rising and falling, its spatial extent, its locality, its persistence or its causes. Only a thinking human can make sense of such things. The number on its own is a mockery.

    There isn’t one statistic which isn’t born thick. A thinking human can make it less thick and more useful. But a human who can’t or won’t think turns a statistic into an extreme intellectual hazard.

    And we’re seeing a lot of intellectual hazards lately. The people who were meant to tame statistics into something useful are now letting them run the streets unvaccinated, untrained…and possibly rabid.

    As I’ve informed before, my region had a phantom flood on the 13th of July of this year. No rain fell but nearly six inches of rain are in the book because of error or tampering. There was no postmaster or lighthouse keeper to correct error, so the reading of 149mm will stand forever in our climate records.

    Don’t get bitten by a rabid statistic.

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      Geoff Sherrington

      Moso,
      Many say the high rainfall on Houston was because the hurricane just sat there and did not move far at its peak wind speeds.
      Your Tmin comment and clouds is logically very similar. We get a record low Tmin at a place because cloudless night sky just sits there and never moves far.
      What does this means for CO2 warming hypotheses? I do not know. Geoff

      10

  • #
    pat

    o/t but want to post this today. besides, it involves some very dodgy figures, e.g. what period would cash payments cover?

    2 Sept: SMH: Energy policy: power companies could remotely turn down your appliances in exchange for cash
    by Nicole Hasham
    Power companies would remotely turn down home airconditioners and swimming pool pumps to cut power use on hot summer days in exchange for cash rewards for consumers, under a plan by Australia’s energy watchdog.
    The Australian Energy Regulator wants power utilities to increase electricity supply by helping consumers use less, rather than building expensive new poles, wires and other infrastructure and passing the cost on to customers.

    Amid soaring power bills, rising greenhouse gas emissions and the risk of blackouts, the regulator this week released a draft plan to give incentives to electricity distributors who manage the power use of consumers.
    As well as saving customers money, experts say so-called “demand management” could deliver far more capacity than the Turnbull government’s proposed $2 billion Snowy Hydro expansion.

    Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s review of the national electricity market said “more attention should be paid” to how consumers were rewarded for managing their power demand.
    Regulator board member Jim Cox said the plan encouraged power utilities and consumers to “try new and different things”…

    Specially enabled appliances that communicate with power companies would be required.
    Power companies already exploring such interventions include Queensland’s Energex, which offers cash rewards of up to $400 to homes and businesses that allow remote control of their airconditioners…

    Research commissioned by the Australian Energy Market Commission in 2012 found peak demand reduction could save up to $11.8 billion in national electricity market costs over a decade, potentially cutting up to $500 off an annual household power bill…
    “We’re seeing rising electricity charges, a shift away from coal-fired electricity to renewables, which means we need flexible resources, plus concern about climate change,” (UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures research director Chris Dunstan) said…
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/energy-policy-power-companies-could-remotely-turn-down-your-appliances-in-exchange-for-cash-20170831-gy8huu.html

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      “We’re seeing rising electricity charges, a shift away from coal-fired electricity to renewables, which means we need flexible resources, plus concern about climate change,”
      Alternately we might worry about the climate gettig cooler in which case we will need more reliable electricity. Which won’t come from renewables and fantasies about batteries.

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      • #
        Dave

        Yes!

        The businesses will slowly close
        The punters will lose their jobs
        Fuel poverty will set in
        Then the fury against the idiots in Canberra and State Capital cities will increase!

        It will get very ugly very quickly

        South Australia 1st then Victoria and then the rest!

        Coming to a Capital city near you! And it won’t be the Greenies protesting!

        It’ll be US!

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    • #
      DaveR

      Rather than individual appliances being able to be remotely controlled, the original concept around the forced introduction of European-style elctricity smart meters was load shedding to the whole house. It weas always part of the smart meter concept. Get ready for power companies rationing daily power allocations to households, along the line of the European deep-green manifestos. It is not free market capitalism in any shape or form.

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    pat

    behind paywall:

    2 Sept: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Hurricane Harvey has devastated Texas, but is climate change really to blame?
    Merely farcical was last Sunday’s forecast on the UK Met Office website that we could look forward to the hottest August bank holiday Monday ever, beating a record of 82.9F (28.3C), which had stood since 1990.

    Sure enough, by Monday evening, they were trumpeting that the record had indeed been broken, in Holbeach, Lincolnshire.
    ***But it turned out that they could only justify this by having overnight quite shamelessly downgraded the old record by over a full degree, thus allowing Holbeach’s 82.8F (28.2C) to become the new record.

    More serious, though equally shameless, was the way that, on Tuesday, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 devoted no fewer than three items to showing that the Texas storm…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/02/hurricane-harvey-has-devastated-texas-climate-change-really/

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      Roger

      No, this year wasn’t a record even after the Met Office were caught out adjusting the previous Holbeach record temps down!

      August Bank Holiday Monday this year fell on 28th August – in 1930 the Record Temperature for August 28th was set in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire at 33.9 deg C (93 deg F).

      You can see UK historical records here : http://torro.org.uk/hightempsyear.php (these are ones that the Met Office and CRU have not ‘adjusted’)

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  • #
    Paul Aubrin

    The same problem of different high frequency content explains why instrumental data and proxy data cannot be directly compared. It is explains also why the practice of grafting instrumental data at the end of a proxy curve is akin to [snip… “malpractice”].

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  • #
    Leonard Lane

    Oh dear. This just gets worse and worse each time some BOM chicanery is reported. Now we may never know what the real temperatures were when they pick the hottest 1 second measurement during the day. Incompetence, mendacity, or perfidy?

    50

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I would bet dollars to doughnuts, that the BOM are keeping two (or more) sets of books.

      Those guys know, and appreciate, the value of accurate long-term trends in measuring natural phenomena.

      You should never assume stupidity to be a cause, if cunning and deviousness could also fit the bill. They may find themselves to be between a rock and a hard-place, politically. But at the end of the day they would prefer to be heroes than martyrs.

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    David Maddison

    I would think a puff of hot air, such as from a passing vehicle, or air blown over hot ground, is much more common than any puffs of cold air (I can’t think of a source) so by counting these one second temperature excursions there will be a warming trend.

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    • #

      That certainly happens here in Broome, when the SE to E winds blow across the airport tarmac and apron when aircraft movements happen. Spikes of around 1C are regular occurrences for very short periods. Now that about 15 large helicopters operate close to BoMs instruments, alongside 4 new hangars, this has become more common. Night-times are cooler than average this winter, but day-times show maximums above average when aircraft are up and about!

      30

    • #
      Stan

      Yes, exactly right David. The one second thing definitely introduces a very significant warming bias for the reason you mention (see also above the example of the jet aeroplane turning at the airfield) as well as this factor mentioned in the article:
      “As Stewart points out during the warm part of the day “only the highest upwards spike, with or without positive error, is reported. Negative error can never balance any positive error.””

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    pat

    when these headlines appeared, England cricketers were wearing sweaters in the final test against the West Indies:

    29 Aug: UK Telegraph: Bank Holiday Monday was the hottest on record – but the warm weather won’t last
    By Telegraph Reporters
    There was some confusion over the record because of a “suspect” reading in Cambridgeshire in 1990 – where a temperature of 28.3C (82.9F) was noted. But that number did not tally with other readings from the area, invalidating the result…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/28/bank-holiday-monday-hottest-record-warm-weather-wont-last/

    behind paywall:

    29 Aug: UK Times: Tom Whipple: Bank holiday was the hottest yet (but it took a recount)
    Britain enjoyed its warmest August bank holiday yet yesterday, as temperatures in Lincolnshire hit 28.2C.
    The Met Office’s Holbeach weather station took the record after a decision to disallow a “suspect” 1990 high of 28.3C.

    That meant that yesterday was comfortably the hottest day in the 50 years of the late August bank holiday…
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/august-bank-holiday-was-the-hottest-yet-but-it-took-a-recount-8qh5w79x0

    UK swelters on hottest August bank holiday Monday on record
    The Guardian-28 Aug. 2017
    UK swelters on hottest August bank holiday Monday on record … temperatures and the mercury peaking at 28.2C at Holbeach in Lincolnshire

    It’s officially the hottest late August bank holiday for 50 years
    Metro· Aug 29, 2017

    East Anglia tops temperature league on hottest Bank Holiday
    ITV News· Aug 29, 2017

    What a scorcher! Britain swelters in 28C ‘hottest August bank holiday’ on record
    Yahoo News UK· Aug 29, 2017

    Temperatures set to HALVE after sweltering bank holiday with some parts of UK to be met with FROST before the end …
    The Sun· Aug 30, 2017

    UK braced for DOUBLE DIGIT temperature plunge as rain sweeps country
    Birmingham Mail· Aug 31, 2017

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    New Chum

    I thought there was some sort of Archive Act in Australia where all this information is required by law to be archived.

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    • #
      DaveR

      There are also requirements under the Meteorology Act and the Public Service Act that prohibit the destruction of data.

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    pat

    2 Sept: NY Daily News: Linda Stasi: After a devastating hurricane, Trump still picks a climate change denier to head NASA
    You, sir, could be the President that saves the planet.
    There is no denying that our weather is getting more severe, that the oceans are rising, the Arctic ice is melting and hurricanes are wreaking ever-more havoc each time one pummels another part of the country…

    Yet in the face of all this, you, Mr. President, have chosen to nominate a climate change-denying partisan politician, Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine, to head NASA. How can you even think of such a man to head the most important nonpartisan science, space and aeronautical research and development agency in the country? No, make that the world.

    As this planet heats up, we have to look to space. That won’t be done if the man heading NASA denies the science and looks down on the truth of what’s happening in our atmosphere. Scientists are in agreement that while climate change might not have caused Harvey, Katrina, Sandy, and other natural disasters, warmer air does hold more moisture and thus has a much greater capacity to make weather events much worse…

    This is a guy who demanded that President Obama apologize for funding climate change research! He doesn’t believe in climatic research yet he wants to head the agency that sent humans to the moon and will one day send us to Mars due to advances in technological and atmospheric research?

    This is a guy who has repeatedly said there is no credible evidence — in the face of credible evidence — that greenhouse gasses contribute to climate change and so opposes regulating emissions.

    This is a guy that Florida senators on both sides of the aisle oppose…

    Help us to help ourselves by denying the climate change-denier his place in space.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/stasi-hurricane-trump-taps-climate-change-denier-nasa-article-1.3464200

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “You, sir, could be the President that saves the planet.”

      That is EXACTLY what he is trying to do.

      To save the planet from the grip of the far-left AGW scam. !!

      To stop the incredible waste of money on a NON-PROBLEM

      To shore up USA energy supply and social fabric against overseas money-grabbing con-artists.

      GO TRUMP !! You have a big job in front of you.

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    • #
      Ross

      Well said Pat. We are, for the moment, stuck with the man/child President. Let’s hope the Amarican voters have had enough of him, and vote accordingly before he does any more damage.

      05

      • #
        Stan

        Ross, I am sure that Pat posted that article as a sarcastic dig at the anti-Trump fascists of the insane Left.

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  • #
    pat

    2 Sept: Nature: Trump finally nominates new leader for NASA
    James Bridenstine, a member of Congress, has long pushed for the United States to return to the Moon.
    by Alexandra Witze
    Updated: This piece has been updated with comments from John Logsdon and Heidi Hammel.
    If confirmed by the Senate, he will take the reins of an agency that is building a new heavy-lift rocket to fly astronauts to an unknown destination. Bridenstine has repeatedly argued that the United States should return to the Moon — among other things, to mine water ice to fuel a fleet of satellites with lunar hydrogen and oxygen…

    “Representative Bridenstine is certainly a “different” choice for NASA Administrator, but to me the difference is mainly positive,” says John Logsdon, a space-policy expert at George Washington University in Washington DC. “He has been refining his ideas with diverse audiences over the past months, and would bring to the NASA position a clearer and better defined strategy for moving ahead than did most of his predecessors as they began their tenure.”…

    Bridenstine has expressed scepticism about climate change. In a June 2013 speech on the House floor, he disparaged the role of humans in global warming and criticized President Barack Obama for spending more money on climate research than on weather forecasting. Bridenstine has argued to exclude greenhouse gases from federal regulation, and to expand oil and gas exploration on federal lands and offshore…

    “We hope the new Administrator embraces NASA’s strong commitment to science and public engagement,” says Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) in Washington DC. “AURA looks forward to working with the new NASA Administrator to ensure that the Agency maintains a robust science portfolio.”…
    http://www.nature.com/news/trump-finally-nominates-new-leader-for-nasa-1.22551

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  • #

    It don’t mean a thing
    if it ain’t got that shwing,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gtYvN_mH64

    Makes no difference if that rhythm’s really hot,
    give that rhythm everything you’ve got …

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    RB

    Very grateful to Ken Stewart for putting the hard yards. Noticed that the data was suspect a few years ago while checking to see how the mean of half hour readings compared to the mean of the max and min readings. The highest half hour was usually quite a bit lower than the official while the min was never different (only looked at several examples for two sites). What was stranger was how the mean of the official min and max was very close to the mean of half hour readings despite a recent Chinese study finding the two means differed a lot. There is more to it than noise.

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    pat

    only 3 comments, all by “Jennifer”. Marohasy? read them:

    31 Aug: Australian: Graham Lloyd: Weather station bungle puts mercury at -62C
    A hardware fault in one of the ­Bureau of Meteorology’s newest automatic weather stations has been blamed for temperature ­recordings plunging to minus 62.5C.
    Technicians were investigating why the Borrona Downs station in remote western NSW had been generating “spurious values” of subarctic temperatures, a bureau spokesman said.

    A minimum temperature of minus 37.5C was recorded on ­August 19. The minimum temperature recording was subsequently corrected to 4.6C on the bureau’s record.
    The following day, temperature recordings plunged to minus 62.5C. And a week later, on ­August 27 and 28, temperatures were recorded at Borrona Downs below minus 45C.

    Reports of faulty temperature recordings at Borrona Downs come amid an investigation into the bureau’s automatic weather station network and quality ­assurance programs.
    The investigation was called after temperature records were either deleted or changed at several cold weather stations…

    Human error has been blamed for other temperature anomalies and record changes identified by members of the public.
    The bureau said the Borrona Downs station had been installed in June and funded by the NSW government’s Rural Assistance Authority to provide additional observations in western NSW.
    The remote station is near a region where some of the hottest temperatures in the nation have been recorded…

    The bureau has confirmed the run of extremely low recordings at the station.
    “There is a hardware fault within the AWS which is generating spurious values,” a bureau the spokesman said. “The bureau’s technicians are investigating but a site visit will be required.”
    The minimum temperature for August 19 was adjusted to 4.6C after “manual quality checking” confirmed the spike on August 19 did not occur near the minimum temperature for that day.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/more-dodgy-readings-from-boms-new-automatic-weather-stations/news-story/4adb77a1e2a9c8e667ff70f2661f20e7

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    pat

    2 Sept: TheAdvocate: Launceston sets record low temperatures in winter
    by Stefan Boscia
    Weather records tumbled this winter around Tasmania, with many cold nights and very little rainfall recorded over the three-month period…

    Launceston, like several other areas in the state, had its lowest winter average daily minimum temperature on record.
    Ross, Fingal and Lake Leake also recorded their lowest winter average daily minimum temperature ever.
    The average high for Launceston throughout the season was 13.2 degrees, which is exactly the same as the historical mean for the area.
    However, the average low recorded was 1.5 degrees – a 1.5 degree reduction in the average winter minimum…

    Statewide, maximum temperatures were 0.11 degrees below the mean and minimum temperatures were 0.59 degrees below the mean.
    August was a particularly frosty month.
    Many places dipped below zero on several August mornings, with Liawenee falling to minus 9.4 degrees on August 3…
    http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/4896205/record-low-temperatures/

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    An outstanding post Jo.

    The first few paragraphs said it all: Science has been put to one side by those responsible for measuring temperatures, recording them, maintaining records with accurate descriptions of the recording techniques used and holding those records safe.

    The fact that all of these basic scientific issues are deemed irrelevant by the BOM is a scientific scandal that is highlighted by the fact that nobody, absolutely nobody in the system has seen a problem.

    Who hired these “scientists”?

    Amazing stuff you would not have thought possible in a government scientific institution.

    KK

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  • #
    peter

    Disturbing report on BOM temp. error from Jo. But the story gets worse!

    When the BOM reports ‘hottest winter ever’, were they taking an average of daily maximums or an average of maximum + minimum averages? Either way, the analysis is grossly scientifically incorrect. I’ve worked in an environmental science field for many years. I test for environmental levels of different agents frequently. For many decades, we have known that you HAVE TO calculate a time-weighted-average (TWA) value as a value to represent overall exposure. If you don’t, all you will be reporting are peaks and troughs that may have very limited meaning and significance. Yet all we ever see from weather reports are maxima, minima. And even those values are now under serious question. Maximums on winter days may be over very short times while the maximum on summer days may last for hours – a VERY BIG difference in daily heat-load. With electronic measurement of temperature they could IMMEDIATELY record TWA temperature values everywhere and analyse the TWA data to determine long-term temperature trend, NOT MAXIMA. I would suggest, that if you did that, the temperature trend (hottest winter ever stuff) may look very, very different to that claimed.

    It’s probably too late for weather departments to change now (it would dramatically conflict with 100 years of thermometer data) but this puts all of their temperature data as being just about scientifically totally useless as a measure of climate change.

    But there is more! How is the geographical distribution of temperature calculated? If you just average a whole lot of temperature station data across the state or nation, that result will be heavily skewed towards highly populated regions that have more stations. And how many of those stations (particularly inland regional stations that tend to be hotter) have not been operating since 1910 but only since 1970 or even, in some cases, since 1990? It’s well accepted in scientific research that you can’t use different starting points for your data without a very good, strong, justifying explanation as to why. What’s BOM’s answer to that one?

    This whole climate temperature measurement business looks worse the more you look at it. Can anyone explain what credibility temperature measurement, if any, has in relation to climate study?

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    • #
      TedM

      Excellent analysis Peter.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Can anyone explain what credibility temperature measurement, if any, has in relation to climate study?’

      Nothing much, the BoM should be modelling climate cycles to get a better handle on reality.

      21

  • #
    PeterS

    For a scam to survive this long there has to be a lot of exaggerations and falsehoods being told. I stand by my earlier comment that the fault does not sit with the politicians but the scientific community as a whole who are supporting the scam with their silence.

    70

    • #
      Roger

      I think ‘complicity’ should replace ‘silence’ in your observation.

      10

    • #
      Robert Rosicka

      Maybe so but if your the boss and someone told you an employee was cooking the books and you do nothing about it no matter how many times it comes to your attention surely your part of the problem .

      20

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      That’s not how I see it PeterS. The problem is rooted with politicians of a certain bent. The problem scientists are in their employ.

      In December 1986 the Hawke government hijacked the management of the CSIRO, appointing a new, partisan board of management, with Neville Wran, national president of the ALP as chairman. He, a lawyer politician, was the first non scientist to hold that position.

      I didn’t notice if they did anything similar with the BOM, but logic says they would have also corrupted that organization to their own design.

      30 years on it is likely that few of the scientists currently employed would know that this was done.

      11

  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    This is BOMshell stuff and eventually it has to explode in the face of ‘the Bureau’. To collect and manipulate the raw data in the way that it has been done by the Bureau for 20 years is not only a disgrace upon Australian science, but is tantamount to corruption. An independent (parliamentary?) enquiry is justified to clean up this mess! Well done Joe and full marks to Jennifer Maharossey and Ken Stewart and & his team.
    Regards GeoffW

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    Hat Rack

    Wow. Well done to Ken Stewart and those in the unofficial “BOM Audit team”.

    Question: Is the highest One Second Reading the temperature used when homogenising temperatures at surrounding stations?

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    • #

      Hat Rack. Only the BoM could tell you what secret herbs and spices are in the recipe. It seems that the highest second of the day for the maximums and the lowest second of the day for the minimums would be used for nearly everything. Thus incorporating all twists, perversions, non-linearities and random events into unrelated site records with their own set of problems.

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    • #
      Ken Stewart

      Yes. For any adjustments since the early 1990s, it appears the 1 second high is the maximum for the day, and is used to compare and homogenise daily data at Acorn sites (which also are recording 1 second highs as maxima).

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    pat

    novel length, full of contradictions:

    3 Sept: EconomicTimesIndia: Is climate change the culprit behind floods and farming woes?
    By Rahul Sachitanand
    In his own research, (meteorologist and assistant professor at IITGandhinagar Vimal) Mishra along with his colleagues was investigating the correlation between extreme meteorological events and climate change. Four years ago, he found that the maximum rainfall was not showing an increase over the last century except in four of 57 towns and cities.
    In his later work, he showed that extremes are expected to increase over the current century. Specifically, he found that one-to-five-day extreme rains, at levels found once in about 500 years, can increase by about 20-30% over the next century if global warming goes unchecked…

    The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change specifies that global effects cannot be measured for areas less than 1 million sq km. What happens over Bengaluru or Mumbai, or Delhi cannot be attributed to increases in carbon dioxide…

    (FINALE) “Cities are not just concrete,” says Dev Niyogi, professor of agronomy at Purdue University. “They also have transport and air conditioning and other things.” They store heat during the day and release it at night, creating an urban heat island and making cities hotter by about 3-5 degree Celsius than surrounding areas.
    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/is-climate-change-the-culprit-behind-floods-and-farming-woes/articleshow/60342865.cms

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  • #
    pat

    3 Sept: 9News: Spring snow on the horizon for Aussie Alps
    By Rob Sharpe, Weatherzone
    Australia’s Alps are set to receive even more snow in the opening week of spring.
    Eight of the last nine weeks have seen an overall snow gain in the alps, which is an impressive feat for Australia.
    This achievement reflects the cool and dry weather the nation’s alps experienced during July and August…

    Entering spring with this much snow on the slopes will ensure that there is plenty of cover at New South Wales and Victoria’s main ski resorts during the opening weeks of the season. Some resorts have even announced they will be extending their ski season in early October.
    If this isn’t enough to get Australian snow-lovers excited about spring skiing, there’s more good news on the horizon.
    A pulse of cold air will bring another decent round of fresh snow early next week, likely bringing more than half a metre to most resorts.
    It’s almost certain that this coming Thursday’s snow reading at Spencer’s Creek will be above two metres for the first time since 2012…

    Between Thursday and the end of the week, another weaker system should influence the Alps and provide an extra top up, meaning that some places could see a total of a metre of spring snow in just one week
    http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/09/03/10/45/spring-snow-on-the-way-for-aussie-alps

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    pat

    1 Sept: CBC: Say it ain’t snow!
    Snow in parts of Lab West into Friday, but weekend looks more true-to-season
    Oh summer, where have you gone?
    Parts of Labrador received a blast of winter weather Thursday evening into Friday morning.
    The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary joked about the so-called “special treat,” but urged drivers to slow down on the roads, including Route 500.
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/lab-west-snow-summer-1.4271530

    1 Sept: TorontoSun: Say it ain’t snow! Quebec-Labrador border gets August snowfall
    by THE CANADIAN PRESS
    LABRADOR CITY, N.L. — The final day of August felt more like winter along the Quebec-Labrador border — it snowed…
    The photographs inspired a mix of shock and resignation on social media, including one Newfoundland woman who insisted they must be “fake news.”

    The rain and snow mixture was to end at about lunchtime Friday, but temperatures in Labrador West were forecast to remain unseasonably cool — only about 5 degrees…
    http://www.torontosun.com/2017/09/01/say-it-aint-snow-quebec-labrador-border-gets-august-snowfall

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    pat

    1 Sept: CTV: Snow much for summer: Quebec-Labrador border gets blast of wintry weather
    by Jackie Dunham
    As many Canadians in the eastern parts of the country bemoan the dropping temperatures and not-so-summery weather leading up to the Labour Day long weekend, residents living along the Quebec-Labrador border are dealing with a horse of a different colour.
    And that colour is white. Snowy white.

    Rather than bothering with autumn, Mother Nature seems to have skipped ahead to winter and delivered an unexpected and chilly “treat” to those living in parts of Labrador and Quebec…
    The reactions to the RNC’s announcement were, for the most part, less-than-enthused. There were a few sad, disgusted and disappointed yellow-faced emojis along with comments ranging from disbelief to sheer horror…
    TWEET: Corey Kendall: Replying to @RNC_PoliceNL @BigLandFM @weathernetwo: OMG! What is all that mysterious-looking white substance on the ground???

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    pat

    “We’re in excess of ***20 degrees colder than normal”:

    1 Sept: Boston Globe: It’s Sept. 1 and it’s snowing on Mt. Washington
    By Ben Thompson
    While Boston looks forward to a warm Labor Day weekend, with temperatures in the low to mid-70s, Mount Washington is experiencing “full-blown winter conditions” Friday, according to a statement from Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist Tom Padham.
    The mountain summit saw freezing temperatures and its first snowfall of the season early Friday, a “trace” amount totaling less than one-tenth of an inch on the ground, Mount Washington Observatory director of education Brian Fitzgerald said.

    Mount Washington, known for its unseasonal and intense weather conditions, also nearly broke its record low Sept. 1 temperature Friday. That low of 24 degrees, set in 1970, was nearly matched when temperatures at the summit dipped to 25 degrees in the morning.
    “We just missed tying it,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re in excess of ***20 degrees colder than normal.”
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/09/01/winter-september-little-snow-falls-mount-washington-summit/z7S5OJDKfsQ0XXCpvZNyHO/story.html

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  • #

    If the daily maximum temperature looks in danger of being too low at the BOM, they have an emergency hair-drier that they can break out and deploy to ensure that the CAGW expectation for the year is fulfilled.

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    DaveR

    This seems to be a problem of resolution, where high frequency, precise data, full of noise, is being recorded and compared to older more averaged data.

    It reminds me of the similar discussion for CO2 where accurate measurements from Mauna Loa are being compared to older, low resolution proxy data, such as trapped air in ice cores.

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    dlb

    Just glancing at that second graph it looks like Maryborough had a cloudy day, at least from 11.00am to 3.00pm with the spike indicating that the sun came out briefly around 1.00pm. So I believe it could be natural.

    Having said that, I think maximum and minimums should be averaged over at least 10 minutes to give a more representative indication of conditions.

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    Sonny

    Is this the final nail In the coffin

    Is it not abundantly clear that Government departments CANNOT DO SCIENCE*!

    *they do political science pretty well though – that’s when you get paid a fat salary to play the tune The financiers want to hear.

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    Sonny

    Jo,

    These posts are brilliant but technical. You and your team of truth seekers and unnoficial BOM and CSIRO auditors have accumulated a wealth of damning evidence that spans the full spectrum between gross [snip to worse snip — innocent until proven etc…].

    May i suggest that you make a new handbook entitled?

    The BOM’s guide to “Climate Science”?

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    Fromdownunder

    Someone should let the Guniess (book of) world records know, pretty sure this will invalidate a few Australian records set in the last 10 years. In a recent drone top speed record, the top speed was averaged out over the whole journey not it’s fastest speed for 1 second.

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    Ted O'Brien.

    You write of “random packets of hot or cold air”.

    As a farmer I have spent a lot of my life outdoors exposed to the elements. On a hot, windy day, say around 40 degrees, you often get hit by a gust that seems noticeably hotter on the bare skin.
    It always seemed to me that in the turbulence of a gale it would hardly be likely that there was in fact such a variation in the temperature of the “packet of air”. And certainly no exhausts.
    So a more likely explanation would be that the extra velocity of the air overloaded the cooling system in the skin, giving an actual rise in skin temperature.
    However in light breezes there can be real variations in air temp over short distances.

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    Shauno

    One thing that annoys me is how the BOM shutdown the Charlotte Pass AWS a couple of years back. CP has consistently recorded Australias coldest temps down to -23c. And this year they had -15c and -17c a few times as recorded by the resorts own weather station. But BOM puts a notice out the other day saying coldest temp in Australia during winter this year was -12.2c in Perisher. So what they have done and conveniently so for the global warming enthusiasts is ensured that never again will they ever record a colder temperature than -23c. So they can say the coldest days are for every behind us. Do you think they would have shutdown an AWS from a station that records the hottest temperatures?

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    TdeF

    It’s 10C in Melbourne on a lovely spring day with rain, fog, snow and bitterly cold. Where is that Global Warming we were promised? Or has shutting Hazelwood frozen the place? So we cannot afford to heat our frozen places because we are trying to cool the planet to save the other people? I suppose most of Australia is warm enough that this is not a problem, which is how people survived here without clothes or houses or grain and as a country we should fear terrifying end of humanity global warming more than most, but at present we are freezing. Thanks to our wonderful politicians who could not care less on magnificent salaries, pensions, free travel and wonderful fact finding holidays.

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    Steve Vertelli

    WHAT did you just try to CLAIM?

    In case you havent been to school, there’s no such thing as light blocking insulation you can mix in a bath

    That stops 20% of otherwise available warming firelight from the sun from reaching a light-warmed rock

    Making sensors on the rock detect and depict more light arriving and warming the rock

    the insulation makes less and less light reach and warm.

    You are so ill educated you think insulation can be put between a rock and a fire

    and when 20% of the warming light from the fire doesn’t reach the rock,

    thermometers will show more and more light arriving and warming it?

    Where the heck did you drop out of school?

    The principle of a fireman’s heavy canvas coat is that the refractive fibers of ghe coat stop light of the fire from reaching the sensors on the fireman’s shirt

    You’re right about the blanket it’s why you’re told wrap one around yourself if you are in a fire.

    Are you that ill educated?

    SHOW ONE INSTANCE IN ALL PHYSICS WHEN A BLANKET BETWEEN A SENSOR AND FIRE

    REDUCING FIRELIGHT TO SENSORS by 20%

    MADE THEM DEPICT EVER MORE LIGHT REACHING AND WARMING THE SENSOR

    EACH TIME THE INSULATION MAKES LESS ARRIVE.

    You obviously can’t correctly answer the question

    “What happens to the temperature of light-warmed rocks 20% less light warms?

    Wherever you went to school they told you if magic gas makes the light not arrive,

    The rock gets warmer every time the magic gassiness makes less arrive!

    You’re a scientifically illiterate person if you can’t properly answer that as insulation makes less light reach a rock

    The rock’s temperature goes down.

    You’re obviously a seriously deluded woman if you think insulating blankets stopping 20% of energy to an object make it’s temperature rise.

    How many percent less light has to warm a light-warmed thermometer to make it’s temperature rise 1%?

    How much more light leaves a rock, a blanket of insulation makes 5% less energy reach and warm?

    When the magic insulation makes 25% less light reach and warm a rock,

    how many more percent light never arriving, leave it in your hick church?

    You belong to a church that teaches you that

    20% less light reaching a sensor

    makes it detect more light arriving and warming it –

    because WHY??…

    You
    are very very confused about what happens when less light reaches a light-warmed object.

    LOL HERE’S A HINT-

    WHEN INSULATION mixed into a bath conduction chilling a rock makes less light reach and warm it

    SENSORS DEPICT LESS LIGHT REACHING AND WARMING IT!!

    LoooooooL

    How many percent more light leaks out of a rock that has 10% less light reach and warm it ??

    It’s YOUR VIOLATION of Conservation of Energy,

    YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF, so kids don’t laugh in your obviously

    VERY CONFUSED FACE, you dumb HICK!!

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    Steve Vertelli

    Joanne can you name the law of thermodynamics governing atmospheric and gas temperatures?

    Can you tell me why there actually is a law for gases, instead of just using the law for say, some water or sand on a beach the air you can’t name the law of physics governing?

    Isay you’re so stupid you don’t know why you can’t.

    Tell me about your church’s teachings regarding insulation that makes less light reach a rock and makes more light leave it everytime the magic gassiness makes less arrive and warm it.

    WHO TOLD YOU INSULATION stopping FIRELIGHT

    from EVER REACHING A SENSOR

    MAKES THE SENSOR DEPICT MORE REACHING IT

    WITH EACH PERCENT LESS REACHING IT?

    When Magical Insulation in your church

    Makes 1% then 5%, then 15%, then 20% less available warming firelight reach a rock, or sensor,

    How many more percent come out of it?

    Because in real physics, each percent less light reaching and warminG a rock

    makes sensors depict – surprise,
    An a percent less energy reaching and warming and leaving it.

    Obviously you never learned that reduced energy in equals reduced energy out so you believe

    Less light warming something
    makes sensors depict not less light warming it

    but more.

    Show me a single instance of your church’s K00K teaching happening in all physical sciences.

    Rock
    Fire

    Rock in cold bath conduction chilling it

    insulation mixed into bath
    makes less light reach rock.

    In your church, as less light warms rocks,

    Sensors detect MORE LIGHT WARMING THEM
    than when more light was reaching them to WARM them.

    Show an instance of less light reaching a rock
    being the cause of sensors detecting and depicting
    MORE reaching and warming it.

    When you can’t do that
    That’s called – YOU GOT CAUGHT CLAIMING MAGIC MAKES SENSORS SHOW MORE LIGHT REACHING THEM

    EACH TIME INSULATION MAKES LESS REACH THEM.

    YOU -obviously – are no physicist. LOL!

    Show me why less light in
    Equals more light out
    in your fake church of fake claims.

    WHO TOLD YOU INSULATION
    stopping light from reaching rocks
    can make sensors show
    MORE
    leaving them?

    If I put an insulating blanket between myself and a fire
    the insulation
    making less light reach me
    Cools me.

    If I have beer in a cold bath
    and sunlight is warming the beer,
    and I mix light refractive insulation into the bath
    so less and less light reaches my beer,

    In your church of fakes,
    less light reaching and warming my beer in the cold turbulent bath
    makes sensors attacbhed to the beer

    detect and depict more light reaching and warming it.

    This ludicrous teaching
    is why people mock you magic gassers to your faces

    And laugh at you behind your back.

    GO GET YOUR INDICATORS
    LESS LIGHT WARMING A THERMOMETER
    will make it show more light warming it.

    Remember – YOUR CLAIMING SENSORS SHOWING MORE LIGHT ARRIVING

    DOESN’T VIOLATE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

    is YOURS TO SHOW WHY since it’s OBVIOUSLY NOT ARRIVING.

    So you ought to have a proper explanation for your,

    and your church’s claim.

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    Dave

    WOW!

    A real live nutjob present!

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    Shauno

    For any one that can remember there was time cube guy on the interwebs I think he just paid a visit.

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    PeterPetrum

    This explains something that my wife and I have often commented on. Up here in the Blue Mountains the BoM seldom gets the weather forecast correct from the point of view of cloud cover or temperature. We look at the temperature forecast in the morning and murmer “in your dreams”. As the day goes by our personal forecasts seem well justified by what our iPad based weather program (recording actual BoM temperatures at the time from the local weather station at Mt Boyce) says it is. And then, lo and behold, at about 3:00pm we note that the max temperature recorded is just about what the BoM said it would be,despite the fact that it was never any more than 2 or 3 degrees below it all day. Now I understand. Perhaps a warm puff of air belching up from the Megalong Valley below, or an overheated exhaust from a semi pulling into the vehicle checking station right below the weather station. Who would have thought it. Thanks Jo.

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    Harry Twinotter

    So people who are unhappy with the way temperature measurements are collected want them changed? If they were changed, would they then be accepted by climate change deniers – I doubt it.

    I recall what happened with the BEST project.

    Bottom line: climate change deniers are not interested in making science more accurate or getting a better result (a good thing), they are only interesting in changing results that do not fit their ideological narrative. Or just ignoring the results, same thing.

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    Ron Cook

    It seems to me that the BOM should be forced to be accredited to, say, ISO 17025.

    I am the Chief Chemist in a laboratory that is accredited by NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia). The laboratory is audited regulary (approx every 2 years). The Thrust of ISO 17025 is to have:-

    a) a Quality Manual.
    b) to provide traceability to primary standards
    c) to take part in profficency testing and ‘Round Robins’
    d) to provide details and calculations of Uncertainity of Measurements

    plus a whole lot more.

    R-COO- K+

    01