When measurements don’t matter… a YouTube by Calem Smith explaining how the Bureau of Meteorology grossly misrepresented the strength of Tropical Cyclone Marcia.
Information
Missing Observational Data for Middle Percy Island
IT is valid for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to estimate the intensity of a cyclone using computer models when it is far out to sea. But once that same cyclone passes over a weather recording station the modelling data must be updated with real world observational data.
In the case of Marcia even after this cyclone passed over Middle Percy Island recording a minimum central pressure of only 972 hPa, maximum wind gust of 208 km/h and maximum wind speed of 156 km/h, the Bureau continued to report only on the basis of output from a computer model. The cyclone was clearly a category 3 system, yet the Bureau called it as a 5.
The Bureau has since removed the observational data that was once available on their website, I printed it off at the time and had it digitized this morning. That information is here:
It would be travesty if Marcia was recorded as a category 5 cyclone at landfall based on output from a dysfunctional computer model, rather than as a category 3 as clearly indicated by the observational data.
How do we know that Cyclone Marcia was a Category 5 at landfall?
THE Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued a media release last night (19thFebruary) with the headline “Tropical Cyclone Marcia to reach Category 5 system at landfall”. This morning there was extensive media reporting of Marcia having reached landfall as a Category 5.
But where is the evidence? And who is asking for it? Like the Bureau, the Australian media seem intent on hyping the event, rather than providing any critical or dispassionate assessment.
The first technical bulletin for Marcia, issued at 4pm today states that, “surface observations have not captured the highest winds,” and acknowledges that the minimum pressure so far recorded has been 975 hPa inside the eye wall at 1.30 pm at Rockhampton.
In fact, this central pressure only qualifies Marcia as a Category 2. As one would expect of a category 2, both Rockhampton and Yeppoon have sustained relatively minor house damage and significant damage to trees.
Just before the cyclone made landfall it passed over Middle Percy Island, to the north of Rockhampton, and the lowest central pressure recorded for the system then was 971.6 hPa at 3.39 am this morning. A wind gust of 208 km/hr was recorded at 4.30 am, which suggests Marcia was almost a Category 3 at this time, even though its central pressure was never recorded as below 970 hPa. The central pressure of a cyclone needs to be somewhere in the 970 to 955 hPa range to be a Category 3.
This would suggest that even as Marcia approached the Queensland coastline it was never more than a Category 2.
Indeed the raw observational data available at the Bureau’s website would suggest that Cyclone Marcia made landfall just south of Middle Percy Island as a Category 2 approaching a Category 3, but had already weakened to a very ordinary Category 2 approaching Category 1 by the time it reached the city of Rockhampton.
This evidence, however, contradicts the track map at the Bureau’s website, and also the extensive media suggesting that Cyclone Marcia made landfall as a Category 5, and was still a Category 3 system when it reached Rockhampton.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been hyping the possibility of a devastating cyclone hitting the Queensland coastline all year. It forecast that Marcia would hit as a Category 5 cyclone, but where is the evidence?
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Thanks to everyone who has emailed me today with best wishes, assuming I was in Yeppoon when Marcia hit. Our house there is still standing, with some trees down in the front yard. I was in Brisbane last night, and am now in Noosa.
Patrick Moore has Nothing New to Offer
HIS greatest claim to fame is that he co-founded Greenpeace. Not something I would be proud of. Of course, I’m referring to Patrick Moore. He is touring Australia at the moment and every other day I get a request from someone asking I promote the tour here, at this web blog.
Steve Kates heard Moore speak last night and wrote at Catallaxyfiles.com today that it was very “rewarding”. Kates also wrote that you may have heard it all before.
People generally have favourite stories that they like to hear repeated. These tend to be stories that give comfort, provide an escape – even make us feel smug.
I suspect that’s why people on our side of the global warming divide like to hear Moore: he cleverly articulates their prejudices even if he doesn’t actually say anything particularly new, or provide any real solutions.
If this was the extent of the experience I may have been inclined to provide some free advertising here, but Moore actually optimises everything that I find increasingly frustrating about being a sceptic who is trying to achieve something positive.
In my opinion very little progress has been made towards a new theory of climate, an alternative to anthropogenic global warming, because most sceptics, and also the institutions that support scepticism of anthropogenic global warming, won’t invest in the same. They prefer to claim we are dealing with an essentially chaotic system, rather than consider what a new theory of climate might actually include. Indeed at the recent Heartland Institute climate change conference, Moore went as far as to suggest that it was impossible to forecast rainfall and always would be. The inference is that there is no scientific answer to the big questions in climate science. I disagree.
Of course John Abbot and I have spent much of the last three years showing that it is possible to make skilful monthly rainfall forecasts, and we are beginning to document how and why in the peer-reviewed literature. But there is no interest in this research by those who are promoting Moore’s tour of Australia – perhaps because it’s about science, while their interest is essentially in the politics.
What is missed in all of this, and was missed by Moore in his answer to one of Steve Kates’ question last night, is that there is a way to defeat “green policies” that are not scientifically-based, including policies derived from the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The answer is in promoting and supporting alternatives, because, as I wrote in the IPA Review last year, history shows that failed scientific paradigms are only ever replaced, they are never disproven until there is a replacement theory. [last six words added Sunday morning, following a comment from Pat Frank]
Open Thread
Lots of stories in the Weekend Australian about climate change and related issues… the editorial includes commentary about Graham Lloyd’s reporting on ‘the pause’. 
Also comment by John Ferguson, Victorian Political Editor, that:
“THE consumer bill for the nation’s largest desalination plant is set to rise to more than $2 billion, as heavy rain and soaring dam levels make redundant tremendously expensive facilities across the eastern seaboard.
New figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show the Victorian desalination plant, southeast of Melbourne, will have cost water users $1.2bn by the November 29 state election, rising to $2bn by the end of the next financial year.
The cost has soared, despite no water having been drawn from the facility since its opening in 2012 and dams being more than 80 per cent full.”
Of course another prolonged drought could hit Victoria shortly.
The Secret is To Keep Thinking
ACCORDING to a Marxist, and good friend of mine, ‘the left’ has lost its way because too many adopt the ‘correct line’ on issues without any need to investigate first. In essence, they have stopped thinking. 
All this is explained in his first post at ‘C21st Left’ with the slogan/subheading, ‘Sous les paves, la plage!’ (beneath the paving stones, the beach).
But it’s not just the left that has stopped thinking.
After I returned from the Heartland Climate Conference in Las Vegas I penned ‘Three facts most sceptics don’t seem to understand’, as I despaired the absence of critical thinking, and
enlightenment values, in the most popular keynote addresses. I suggested that scepticism should be of entrenched dogmas, while supporting ideas and research that can potentially contribute to human progress.
My favourite Marxist touches on similar themes in his first blog post:
Support Progress. I use a capital ‘P’ in order to stress that there is such a thing. It happens through human imagination, ingenuity and engineering. As Engels pointed out long ago, humans are distinguished from all other animals in that we can create what we can imagine.
Harmony with Nature – Sustainability – have never been part of the left’s lexicon. Marxists believe in unleashing the productive forces through the further mastery of Nature and through freeing research and production from the social relations imposed by capital. This is the opposite of the ‘green’ world outlook.
Here the Marxist is directly attacking the romantic vision that is now very much a part of correct thinking in Australia.
While this blog is normally focused on issues concerning the natural environment, I’m opening the following thread to thoughtful comments on the more general topic of ‘correct thinking’ with the addition of the following comment from ‘C21st Left’:
Internationalism: ‘they’ are ‘us’. Be ‘they’ oppressed people resisting a fascist regime in Syria or asylum seekers reaching our shores in unauthorised boats. Or ‘foreign workers’ arriving lawfully on special visas. In a globalising world, humanity is one, as never before.
The circles one mixes in too often dictate responses to such issues as sustainability and immigration, when what is perhaps needed is more critical thinking.
A problem, to quote C.G. Jung, is that, “Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the effective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies.”
Empty slogans and wish-fantasies can be found everywhere and on all sides. The secret is, perhaps, to check whether or not we are ‘thinking’, rather than just adopting ‘a correct line’ dictated by someone who stopped thinking long ago.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.