Archives for August 2014

THE famous Australian poet Henry Lawson wrote, “If you know Bourke you know Australia.” For me Henry Lawson was alluding to the vastness of the landscape, the extremes of climate, and also the can-do attitude of its people.

But the technocrats would like to change some of this, and pretend that Australia’s climate was once benign.

So, as Graham Lloyd explains on page 5 of today’s Weekend Australian, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have discarded the first 40 years of the temperature record for Bourke. This includes the hottest ever temperature recorded in a Stevenson screen for, I think, anywhere in Australia. A rather hot 51.7 degree Celsius was recorded in a new Stevenson screen in the yard of the Bourke post office on 3rd January 1909.

Mr Lloyd writes:

THESE Bourke records have assumed a new significance in light of concerns about how historic data is being treated at many sites around the country. The records are also important in an ongoing row that frustrates Mr Cole. The Bourke cotton farmer may be managing director of the local radio station 2WEB but Mr Cole can only broadcast temperature records that date back to 2000 because the Bureau of Meteorology won’t supply historic records to service provider Weatherzone.

As a result “hottest day on record” doesn’t really mean what it seems. “We keep on being told about records that are not actually records and averages that are not quite right,” Mr Cole said.

Worse still there are concerns about what has happened to the precision of those handwritten records in the earlier years. Bourke now forms part of a network of weather stations used to make up the national record known as ACORN-SAT. The raw temperature records are “homogenised”, a method BOM says has been peer-reviewed as world’s best practice and is used by equivalent meteorological organisations across the world.

Independent research, the results of which have not been disputed by BOM, has shown that, after homogenisation, a 0.53C warming in the minimum temperature trend has been increased to a 1.64C warming trend. A 1.7C cooling trend in the maximum temperature series in the raw data for Bourke has been changed to a slight warming.

BOM has rejected any suggestion that it has tampered inappropriately with the numbers. It says the major adjustment to Bourke temperatures relate to “site moves in 1994, 1999 and 1938 as well as 1950s in homogeneities that were detected by neighbour comparison which, based on station photos before and after, may relate to changes in vegetation around the site”.

Queensland researcher Jennifer Marohasy, who has analysed the Bourke records, says BOM’s analysis is all very well but the largest adjustments, both to maximum temperature series, occurred in the period 1911 and 1915 with a step down of about 0.7C, followed by a step-up between 1951 and 1953 of about 0.45C. Of greater concern to Dr Marohasy is that historic high temperatures, such as the record 51.7C recorded on January 3, 1909, were removed from the record on the assumption it was a clerical error. In fact, all the data for Bourke for 40 years before 1910 has been discarded from the official record. If it were there, says Dr Marohasy, the record would show that temperatures were particularly hot during that period.

For Mr Cole it is a simple matter of trusting the care and attention of his father. “Why should you change manually created records?”

_____________________

From another great story in The Weekend Australian newspaper, buy the paper and turn to page 5, or get an online subscription.

If you would like to hear about how old weather records are changed at other sites, here’s a 7 minute podcast from Melbourne radio station 3AW. I’m being interviewed by Tom Elliott.

HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved.

Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.

Surely its time for heads to roll!

Some background: Near Rutherglen, a small town in a wine-growing region of NE Victoria, temperatures have been measured at a research station since November 1912. There are no documented site moves. An automatic weather station was installed on 29th January 1998.

Temperatures measured at the weather station form part of the ACORN-SAT network, so the information from this station is checked for discontinuities before inclusion into the official record that is used to calculate temperature trends for Victoria, Australia, and also the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The unhomogenized/raw mean annual minimum temperature trend for Rutherglen for the 100-year period from January 1913 through to December 2013 shows a slight cooling trend of 0.35 degree C per 100 years. After homogenization there is a warming trend of 1.73 degree C per 100 years. This warming trend is essentially achieved by progressively dropping down the temperatures from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year of 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.

There is absolutely no justification for doing this.

This cooling of past temperatures is a new trick* that the mainstream climate science community has endorsed over recent years to ensure next year is always hotter than last year – at least for Australia.

There is an extensive literature that provides reasons why homogenization is sometimes necessary, for example, to create continuous records when weather stations move locations within the same general area i.e. from a post office to an airport. But the way the method has been implemented at Rutherglen is not consistent with the original principle which is that changes should only be made to correct for non-climatic factors.

In the case of Rutherglen the Bureau has just let the algorithms keep jumping down the temperatures from 1973. To repeat the biggest change between the raw and the new values is in 1913 when the temperature has been jumped down a massive 1.8 degree C.

In doing this homogenization a warming trend is created when none previously existed.

The Bureau has tried to justify all of this to Graham Lloyd at The Australian newspaper by stating that there must have been a site move, its flagging the years 1966 and 1974. But the biggest adjustment was made in 1913! In fact as Bill Johnston explains in today’s newspaper, the site never has moved.

Surely someone should be sacked for this blatant corruption of what was a perfectly good temperature record.

———-

Climate records contradict Bureau of Meteorology by Graham Lloyd, 27th August
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-records-contradict-bureau-of-meteorology/story-e6frg6xf-1227037936046

The story is behind a paywall. But if you don’t already have a subscription perhaps its time… this could just be the biggest story of the year.

** There are a lot of tricks that climate science managers have implemented over the years to fix the temperature record; that is fix it so it shows global warming. “Trick” was the word Phil Jones, a leading United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientist, used to explain to his peers that, when constructing very long global temperature series using proxy data based on tree ring measurements that can extend back thousands of years, it was best to substitute thermometer data for this proxy data from about 1960 because the proxy data started to show cooling from about then. Indeed from about 1960 until 2002 the thermometer data mostly did show warming. But now even this instrumental record is starting to show cooling. Enter the relatively new trick of homogenization.

EARLIER this year Tim Flannery said “the pause” in global warming was a myth, leading medical scientists called for stronger action on climate change, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology declared 2013 the hottest year on record. All of this was reported without any discussion of the actual temperature data. It has been assumed that there is basically one temperature series and that it’s genuine.

But I’m hoping that after today, with both a feature (page 20) and a news piece (page 9) in The Weekend Australia things have changed forever.

I’m hoping that next time Professor Flannery is interviewed he will be asked by journalists which data series he is relying on: the actual recorded temperatures or the homogenized remodeled series. Because as many skeptics have known for a long time, and as Graham Lloyd reports today for News Ltd, for any one site across this wide-brown land Australia, while the raw data may show a pause, or even cooling, the truncated and homogenized data often shows dramatic warming.

When I first sent Graham Lloyd some examples of the remodeling of the temperature series I think he may have been somewhat skeptical. I know he on-forwarded this information to the Bureau for comment, including three charts showing the homogenization of the minimum temperature series for Amberley.

Mr Lloyd is the Environment Editor for The Australian newspaper and he may have been concerned I got the numbers wrong. He sought comment and clarification from the Bureau, not just for Amberley but also for my numbers pertaining to Rutherglen and Bourke.

I understand that by way of response to Mr Lloyd, the Bureau has not disputed these calculations.

This is significant. The Bureau now admits that it changes the temperature series and quite dramatically through the process of homogenisation.

I repeat the Bureau has not disputed the figures. The Bureau admits that the data is remodelled.

What the Bureau has done, however, is try and justify the changes. In particular, for Amberley the Bureau is claiming to Mr Lloyd that there is very little available documentation for Amberley before 1990 and that information before this time may be “classified”: as in top secret. That’s right, there is apparently a reason for jumping-up the minimum temperatures for Amberley but it just can’t provide Mr Lloyd with the supporting meta-data at this point in time.

*****
The two articles in The Australian are behind a pay wall here and here. If you don’t already have a subscription to The Australian take one out today, because the articles are important and Graham Lloyd’s work is worth paying for.