This was Sydney before “Climate Change” hit — fifty degrees:
Penrith may have recorded 47.3C for at least one-second this week, but Windsor is only 23 km north-east of Penrith, and on January 13th, 1939, it recorded 122F or 50.5C with an old fashioned liquid thermometer, not a modern noisy electronic one.
Apparently, climate change makes our extreme heat less extreme.
Furthermore, this was not measured on a beer crate in someones back-yard, but on the historic Windsor Observatory which was built in 1863 by John Tebbutt F.R.A.S who had discovered The 1861 comet, and published many scientific reports in Astronomical Journals. His meteorological observations are published at Harvard in 1899 (among others). Tebbutt died in 1916, so it’s not clear what instrument the 122 F was recorded on in 1939, but a Stevenson Screen had been installed around 40 years earlier, and the measurement was made by Mr Keith Tebbutt, presumably his son.
Tebbutt’s portrait graced the back of our 100 dollar note from 1984 -1996.
See, Many Collapse in the Heat: Thursday Jan, 12, 1939, The Northern Star
Windsor Observatory | Photo: Winston M. Yang Wyp
All part of Greater Metropolitan Sydney
In 1939, I doubt either town was considered part of Sydney. But now both are on the metro network. Penrith is 54km from the CBD, Windsor, 56km. Notably, Windsor is a few train stops closer than Richmond, which the BOM acknowledges recorded 47.8C in 1939 on January 14, three days after the high of 122F recorded at Windsor.
Apparently Penrith that particular day, January 11th, was 110F, while Richmond was 115F or 46.1C. Neither Penrith nor Windsor appear to be recognised in BOM climate records.
Extreme heat of long ago — 48.2C (118F) at Windsor in 1896:
Thanks to Warwick Hughes, who has been looking at Windsor historic records too:
The Windsor and Richmond Gazette for Sat 18 Jan 1896 Page 6 Hawkesbury Heat – On Monday 13 Jan 1896 John Tebbutt’s Observatory recorded 118.8°F or 48.2°C – also well clear of the 47.3 at Penrith last Sunday.
So in 1896, as recorded in an old liquid in glass instrument, temperatures were very similar to 2017, as recorded with an electronic sensor. The old thermometer was probably reading a bit high in a Greenwich Screen, but the new thermometer is reading a bit high due to electronic noise.
It follows then if the BOM was interested in our climate history, they could build side-by-side models and figure out how to compare these historic records. That they don’t — when climate is the Biggest Threat To Human Civilization — tells us all we need to know about how interested the BOM is in the climate history of Australia.
Imagine if Tebbutt’s 40 years of records from the late 1800s showed a cooler climate? Hands up, who thinks studying them would have been a hot topic for Australian PhD students…
Note the Stevenson Screen and Greenwich Screen side by side at Windsor Observatory in 1906. h/t Daily Telegraph.
More extreme heat — 117.1 F was recorded in 1878
Yesterday (Sunday) the shade temperature at this Observatory reached 116.8 degrees, or the same as that attained on the 6th instant. To-day, however, the maximum recorded was 118.8degs, the highest experienced here since 1862. The next highest was recorded in 1878 when the thermometer registered 117.1 degrees. During the 33 years of my experience I have never till today recorded as high as 100 degrees at 9 o’clocka.m. At that hour this morning the reading was 102.8 degrees, and at 6 o’clock this evening the temperature had not sunk below 105 degrees.
From what I have stated it will be seen that the heat of to-day is quite phenomenal.
— JOHN TEBBUTT. The Observatory, Windsor, January 13, 1896.
Old Windsor Observatory — more scientific than the modern BOM?
Here’s a bit of curious history. At Windsor Observatory there was a Greenwich Stand from 1862 til at least 1897, then a Stevenson screen was added:
At Windsor the old Greenwich stand was employed ever since 1862, while at the College the thermometers are enclosed in a Stevenson’s stand. I suggested that a Greenwich stand should be placed beside the Stevenson’s stand and a series of comparisons be made with both modes of exposure in order to get an equation
Tebbutt made comparisons between Greenwich stand and the Stevenson, and published them, putting him ahead of the current $365 million a year Australian Bureau of Meteorology which has not published side-by-side comparisons of the two main thermometer types currently in use:
In accordance with the suggestion recorded on page 17 of the last Annual Report, I have had constructed a Stevenson’s themo- meter screen exactly similar to that employed at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College. It has been placed beside the old Greenwich stand employed at this Observatory during the past thirty-eight years, and a series of themometer comparisons is now being conducted in order to get an equation between the results derived from the two methods of exposure. I trust to be able to give, in my Report for 1901, a table embodying the results of these comparisons. The readings in the Greenwich stand are, as anticipated, considerably higher than those in the Stevenson’s screen.
It’s hard to tell, but as best as I can make out from an unformatted text page, at very high temperatures — over 100F, the Greenwich screen recorded temperatures about 2-5 F higher. (I’d like to see the original, can anyone help find it?)
For what it’s worth, the old Observatory has been renovated and was on the market this year “for the first time in 170 years” for $5 m.
Apparently in Cambelltown the flying foxes were cooking and the kind of heart were trying to revive them. WHY? Stinking, noisy, tree stripping, Hendra virus carrying pests.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5292125/thousands-of-flying-foxes-fall-from-sky-after-being-boiled-alive-in-sweltering-australia-heatwave/
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Richmond had 115F in the print image.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173385845
60
And on that page is a reference to a fire at Windsor explaining the difference, possibly.
60
Well spotted. Post changed. Richmond was 115F, or “only” 46.1C. A great photo added with the 1906 historic shot too.
The bushfire was at the southern end of Windsor. I wonder what the wind direction was?
144
In light of the Windsor story, it’s interesting to note that Melbourne had its hottest day on 7th Feb, 2009 (46.4C). This is the same day the bush fires were happening just north of Melbourne (and of course hot N winds, fuelled by the fire, blew across Melbourne that day).
In 1851, the temp in Melbourne reached 47.!C but this was later adjusted down due to some fancy mathematical footwork called ‘regression analysis’.
Mmmm!
https://ams.confex.com/ams/90annual/techprogram/paper_158830.htm
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Thinking more about it, I doubt the bushfire had any influence on the temperature.
Usually that kind of baking heat comes off the desert with the North West wind, not a southerly, and the bushfire was to the south. Furthermore the article said the town itself was not threatened just a few more distant houses. That also suggests the wind and heat from the fire were not blowing into Windsor. The old Observatory is in the centre of the town.
144
I think you’d be right Jo. Heat from the flame goes upward with the smoke. There is radiant heat you can feel from the flames, but it’s line of sight and depending on the size of the fire, probably not much distance involved.
Hot fires are fuelled by hot dry desert winds.
51
Our daughter, who was here at the time in 2009, says that the grass was actually crackling to walk over, it was so dry. She said it was obviously ready to burn and the winds did come from the NW. It was when the change came that the relatively narrow firefront become an immensely wide one. Our place escaped (just) but I found embers lying in the paddocks when I visited her less than 4 weeks after that dreadful day. She was evacuated for 12 days and produced the food for about 20 people where she was staying. The fire front was very close.
50
Jo, In the interest of accuracy I would highlight that the the Google Maps location for the Tebbutt Observatory is not correct. I grew up in Windsor and even went to school in Tebbutt St so I knew that the Observatory was not there. You can see that the observatory was well outside town then(and still is now) at the end of Palmer St, I have added the correct co-ordinates here: https://goo.gl/maps/ZWdruKZAoNk
It was a great catch spotting the lack of accuracy of the BOM records anyway 🙂
40
Thank you! Good to hear from someone who knows. That makes more sense. I was not happy that the street view didn’t gel. I googled for the address and it had that wrong too.
The Observatory is in the North East sector, so even less likely that a southern bushfire could influence temps there that day.
I am a bit amazed that I did not know of Tebbutt until Sunday. Sadly, when he was a recognised scientist, even on 100 dollar bills, and I had not heard of him.
33
Notes not bills, Jo. 🙂
Yes, I also had no knowledge about John Tebbutt and his portrait being on the $100 note. An interesting man Australians should know about. We learn something every day.
10
There is another story on the page of how wide spread the heat wave was. It mentions a few deaths in Mildura. According to Bom, it had 9 days of 40+ and 6 of 45+ with Stevenson screen being used since 1907.
Adelaide broke a record that still stands, sort of. Melbourne also broke a record. Still hottest January day. Tibooburra had 40+ for 22 days (some days missing).
Syd observatory wasn’t hot except for one day (and one day missing). No other data around Sydney for the period even though Richmond was open and obviously the Bom have the data. Same with the Syd AP.
80
“I may state here that the highest shade temperature attained at Windsor since 1802 was in January, 1878, and the reading was then 117. 1, while the highest reading of the thermometer at Sydney for the same month was 86.9, giving a difference of as much as 30 degrees. The lowest temperature attained at Windsor during the same period was 21.5, on August 3, 1872, while the minimum temperature on the same day at Sydney was onlv 36. 8, and those results obtain at places seperated by a distance of only twenty-eight miles.”
JOHN TEBBUTT.
Windsor, February 16. 1882
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13505460
30
From the photo it is not hard to see the shadows on the ground from the tree that is too close to the screens that are too close to each other and the buildings. Worst is the sloping roof of the round building behind the screens. This would reflect a hot spot from the sun down toward the screens. While i would like it to have been a good recording it is flawed. Not hard to see why the 30 degree difference.
Following JMarkW’s link the google view confirms the sun direction for a bad reflection and shows the tree still there and so big it covers the edge of the round building.
10
15 C difference between Western Sydney and The Ob is nothing unusual.
20
Yes RB you are correct it is a different place altogether to the main Sydney one. However 47.3 – 30.5 = 16.8 I suggest that a big part of the 1.8 needs explaining. Since making these comments have read Jo’s words again “so it’s not clear what instrument the 122 F was recorded on in 1939,” Perhaps I am wrong. We need old photos. None the less things like the 119 below are not likely to be alone but require effort to find.
11
RB See the great comments from Bill Johnston below. Like him my research would give a fail to the modern small Stevenson screen and contents also. For somewhat different reasons I might add. So if we are both correct they have terrible problems. Here is another hot Sydney one also mentioned in our 2012 look at the 1896 heatwave.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/76619532
The 1896 heatwave.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback-on-special-trains-as-hundreds-die/
10
Apologies for the lateness. If you look at Jan 13 2017 Richmond RAAF and Syd Ob you see 44.5 and 30.5
10
Jo emailed me with a diagram of the roof reflection angles and the sun angle at noon in January. The roof reflection cannot directly hit the screen. Killing off my main objection theory. Perhaps it was high because it was a small Stevenson screen.
00
This could be a suitable replacement from before the dip of the Dalton minimum. 1803
48.3 Degrees C.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/625917
Lance Pidgeon
10
1878 was shocker, how could a strong El Nino cause a global warming spike?
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014
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1896 in NSW, 1908 in SA and Vic, 1880 in WA, 1939 in many places…the Januaries from hell. All gone down the memory hole as the temple priests line up for the lobster sandwiches at their next COP.
240
Lobster sandwiches? Tsk! Haven’t there been a number(plethora)
of papers in the cli-sci litera-chure that find that lobsters
are becoming rarer,( smaller, dumber … etceterah?)
180
Rare for serfs. Only proper.
140
Was not 1939 also a very hot year in the USA?
40
1939 was the year of the famous winter heatwave in the US. Some connection with events in the other hemisphere? One day we’ll have climate scientists and we’ll know more.
40
How much of the $365 million a year is spent on the re modelling (removing old temperature records) .
Tebbutt would be rolling in his grave with the way the BOM and the media report the temperatures these days, with total disregard for the past.
150
The glaring factor is how the old observatory scientists were prepared to compare the two screens with their data not being adjusted to suit an agenda, think of them being paid more by the Stevenson screen maker if they show the Greenwich stand maker wasn’t as accurate.
40
That is so the past can’t be used against them.
60
To clarify:
Changing or altering the past, or attempting to do so, is a clear signal that what is being taught, preached, broadcast, published, claimed and uttered in the present is propaganda, purely propaganda and nothing but propaganda. If it were true and factual, then it would be supported by what transpired in the past, and there would be no need to recast history because there would be no conflict.
It’s not just the BOM who feel the need to be dishonest. Apparently a plaque at the American Museum of Natural History is now so out of step with the Gobal Warmistas that it is allegedly misinforming young minds. The plaque seems simple, straightforward and honest to me.
91
Those that disregard history are fools of the highest order, the lessons that can be gleaned from our past are invaluable. The idiots that obliterate or change it for a political gain are traitors to the whole of mankind.
It is not just the manipulation of temperature records that bugs me, but the deliberate obscucation of the entire history of mankind that is disgraceful. Even archaeologists seem to have a cut off in their thinking that is forbidden to transgress. So the global thing is just another barrier to proper research or someone will get upset and the poor dear will loose their job. Rant over.
220
OT, the Josh touch on the US freeze 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/josh-an-inconvenient-freeze.jpg
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Jo,
Melbourne had a Stevenson screen in 1869 (article about moving its position). Adelaide had 2 by 1880 as Clarence Wragge sent a paper to London comparing the one in the West Parklands with the one on Mt. Lofty.
Sir Charles Todd initiated a comparison of the Greenwich and Stevenson screens on the West Paklands site in Adelaide which ran for many years. There were differences esp. on hot days. Where that information is now I am sorry to say I don’t know, but I do know that when the BoM returned to (approx.) the West Parklands site they didn’t do any overlap studies.
110
All this does is reinforce the fact that NOBODY can trust any thing originating from ANY government department or any organisation associated with either of the major political parties” .
Every day every single utterance will have to be scrutinised & investigated to see if there is one iota of truth emanating from their devious, immoral, lying mouths.
The worst of the lying appears to originate with government more nesters. How have been reduced to this parlous state?? The whole government machine needs dismantling sanitising & reassembling from the ground up. There needs to be accountability & penalties for the total dishonesty which has become he foundation of our Commonwealth. Never ever trust the utterances of a politician until the clean out has been well & truly completed.
This needs to be followed up by a clean up of the media as well.
190
I would start with the media because they no longer report the truth. So they continue to support the major parties. Once the MSM are cleaned up, the government and its drones can be tackled next.
90
Socialism’s evergreen truism “The future is certain, it is only the past that needs to be managed” is ringing truer than ever.
90
I think it’s important that wherever possible interested parties keep paper records of how things were before they’re altered, discarded or whatever. I’ve kept updated copies of the UK’s Central England Temperature record for a few years.
A file of historic newspaper cuttings is a good idea too, as are books written by meteorologists of days gone by before all the dangerous man-made global warming b******t
appeared.
150
The B.O.M. claims an all time high,
In temps., which the skeptics deny,
As past records are clear,
That for more than one year,
Their readings the present belie.
190
Penrith only opened as a weather station in 1995. hardly relevant in any statistical sense, but great for catastrophists
111
Many of the weather stations quoted date from about that time.
The BOM mounted a quite legitimate campaign to modernize it’s recording services, including new technology and new siting.
But it is dishonest to report readings from these new stations as the highest or lowest on record without mentioning that the records might go back less than thirty years.
40
This book tells of birds dying in mid flight around Sydney in 1791.
https://archive.org/stream/climatenewsouth02russgoog#page/n70/mode/2up
70
My father, who lived all his life on the Mid North Coast of NSW….often spoke of his experiences,when 7yrs old.The year was 1931, and some days were so hot, that “birds dropped dead from the sky”…
Chickens along with young calves also died from the heat….
20
human beings have nothing to do with the earth’s climate or weather. it is possible for humans to affect local areas through pollution but not the global weather. it is amazing to me that so many people who otherwise would be considered intelligent are so stupid when it comes to this subject. the earth’s climate is controlled by the sun not people.
180
Trouble is, Bob, the Globul Warming rantings fit in exactly with Leftist Humanities Graduates pre-conceived prejudices. Reinforcement of their take on the world, etc, etc.
10
not of interest to the western media, but Xinhua, Indian & other Asian media have it:
9 Jan: StraitsTimes: Normally balmy Bangladesh shivers in record low temperatures
DHAKA (AFP) – Temperatures in subtropical Bangladesh hit a 70-year-low Monday (Jan 8) as authorities handed out tens of thousands of blankets to help the poor fight a record cold spell, officials said.
The mercury plunged to a frigid 2.6 degrees Celsius in some parts of Bangladesh, well below average in the low-lying riverine nation whose 160 million citizens are used to milder winters.
“It is the lowest temperature since authorities started keeping records in 1948,” Shamsuddin Ahmed, head of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The previous low of 2.8 degrees was recorded in 1968, he added…
Ahmed said Bangladesh was in the “grip of a severe cold wave”, with temperatures dipping across all northern districts over the past few days.
The coldest temperatures were recorded in the border town of Tetulia, about 400km north of the capital Dhaka.
One local broadcaster reported that at least nine people had died from exposure, including six in one of the coldest locations in the northern district of Kurigram…
Authorities have distributed at least 70,000 blankets to poorer Bangladeshis shivering in the coldest areas of Panchagarh and Nilphamari, government administrators in those two districts said…
At the other end of the scale, Australia’s largest city Sydney on Sunday recorded its hottest day since 1939, as the mercury soared to 47.3 degree C.
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/normally-balmy-bangladesh-shivers-in-record-low-temperatures
8 Jan: Dhaka Tribune: Bangladesh experiences record-breaking low temperature; improvement unlikely before 3 days
It is the northern areas which have so far borne the brunt of the brutal cold, with at least 12 people, including six children, dying of cold-related ailments in Rajshahi, Kurigram and Thakurgaon districts over the past four days.
Many children and elderly people have been suffering badly during the inclement weather, crowding hospitals and clinics, while the economically poor day labourers and rickshaw-pullers have been left shivering in the extreme cold…
Those living in slums have also become the worst suffers for lack of adequate warm clothes…
In other parts of the country, the cold wave has been sweeping over Bogra, Chuadanga, Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Panchagarh, Rangpur, Barisal and Sreemangal, according to reports sent by the correspondents of the Dhaka Tribune.
Bangladesh Met office recorded 2.9°C in Saidpur upazila and 3°C in Dimla upazila of Nilphamari district, 3.1°C in Rajarhat upazila of Kurigram, 3.2°C in Dinajpur, 4°C in Badalgachhi upazila of Naogaon district, 4.9°C in Rangpur, 5.3°C in Rajshahi, 5.4°C in Chuadanga, 5.5°C in Ishwardi upazila of Pabna, and 5.6°C in Jessore…
http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/nation/2018/01/08/severe-cold-wave-country/
90
It’s only weather in Bangladesh; climate is made in Sydney.
90
Extraordinary. Cold in Bangladesh?
Not the specific day nonsense like Jan 8th but since records began in 1948?
More than frozen sharks this is real news. Government handing out blankets?
When has that happened before?
110
Bangladesh is partly in the tropics! Certainly Kolkatta. In Kolkatta! 9C. Coldest day in 100 years! The press are silent. When the people in the tropics are freezing there is a problem.
150
It’s only weather in Bangladesh; climate is made in Sydney. SHOULD READ It’s only weather in Bangladesh; climate is fabricated in Sydney.
90
A major problem with comparing historic data with the present is that conditions under which temperature is measured have not stayed the same. I have a 1910 and 1913 photograph of the screen at Hawkesbury Ag. It had a circular black-painted or zinc metal roof, not a white roof, thus it would heat-up on warm days and cause maximum temperature to be over-range relative to the weather. The screen was possibly a standard of the day, for instance its probably similar to those used at lighthouses and other agricultural research farms and colleges such as Rutherglen and Bathurst.
Its immaterial to a point anyway, if temperature is over 110 degF – its simply extreme by any measure and if consistently high will cause fatalities. Furthermore, high temperature in that range is invariably associated with drought – the drier it is the hotter it gets. So it’s important to think about and chase-up additional data (contributing factors) that explains why it was so hot, including such things as features of the screen; the surrounds; the weather in general.
For example, is the screen too close to tarmac; is it an unmanned dust-collector out at the back of Woop-Woop like at Tibooburra airport or Wanaaring (Delta); was a building recently built nearby, like at Brewarrina Hospital; did the screen size change recently like everywhere else; did they build a vertical wind profiler array too close like at Launceston, Adelaide, Ceduna, Tennant Creek and Coffs Harbour airports (and others like Sydney, Canberra and Mildura); did the site recently move or were there other changes like at Laverton, Cobar and Halls Creek.
It is absolutely clear that the Bureau are data-plucking ‘records’ out of thin air; and also that many historical and more recent changes that affect observations are undocumented and ignored in their haste to stir alarm and justify their ridiculous claims that the climate has warmed when it hasn’t.
Cheers,
Dr. Bill
152
Another old book describing extreme heat 52degc in the outback.”Outbreaks of disease were particularly prevalent during the periods of intense heat that came during the drought when, in the absence of air conditioning, sunscreens and other modern measures of relief and protection, people were exposed to debilitating heat, “sunstroke” and other tribulations. Two extreme heatwaves occurred in January 1896 and
in the heatwave summer of 1897-98. During the 1896 heatwave, furnace-like winds from central Australia pushed temperatures well into the forties Celsius across much of the eastern half of the continent, setting new
records and causing great suffering from heat and diseases, and numerous deaths. Conditions were particularly bad in outback New South Wales where there were reports of heat up to 52ºC. The town of Bourke had an
average over three weeks of 44°C, including four consecutive days of 48°C. Those who could had fled Bourke by train, but some 160 people died of heat and disease. The summer of 1897-98 was even hotter and windier in parts of eastern Australia. Many towns ran short of water and there were more deaths from heat and outbreaks of typhoid. In New South Wales the death rate increased by more than 20 per cent over these weeks,and was particularly high among infants. Perhaps the only positive aspect was that large numbers of rabbits died of heat and starvation.
http://climatehistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Garden_Book_Chapter_2010.pdf
100
Fred I believe temperature extremes in mid latitudes are caused by a strong meridional jet stream, which impacts the subtropical ridge creating blocking highs and heatwaves.
Theoretically we should be able to join the dots and point to a quiet sun as the cause.
“The Centennial Gleissberg Cycle and its Association with Extended Minima”, to be soon published in JGR/Space, Feynman and Ruzmaikin discuss how the recent extended minimum of solar and geomagnetic variability (XSM) mirrors the XSMs in the 19th and 20th centuries: 1810–1830 and 1900–1910″.
WUWT 2014
50
Here is an abstract.
https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl
20
ooops …
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JA019478/abstract
10
Trying to search the BOM ‘Climate data Online’ brings up “This service is currently unavailable. Please try again later”.
I’ve search that site many times in the past and have never encountered that message.
60
O/T Jo and Tony in Oz
Re German electricity
“German utility company Tennet TSO spent almost a billion euros last year on emergency interventions to stabilize the grid.”
More at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2018/01/we-dont-need-no-672.html
And link
40
I’m impressed Australia used to use Fahrenheit degrees at one time.
Obviously changed by those pesky liberals?
When?
In the 1960s?
10
Fahrenheit is far superior when trying to sensationalize temperatures.
80
It was the Whitlam Labor government that gave Oz the metric system (including Celsius) in early 1975 – one of the 2 good things that government did in 3 years of power, the other being to get us the hell out of Vietnam. We had already dumped pounds, shillings and pence in favour of dollars and cents at the start of 1966 at the behest of a conservative government, the rest was bound to follow.
I don’t care whether we use C or F, but any system of measurement that is based on the area a pair of oxen can plow in a day or on the length of a dead king’s thumb, is no system I want anything to do with. Fahrenheit employed an arbitrary scale that was OK in its own way, but didn’t match the rest of our metric system.
I’m of the transitional generation and I can assure you that going metric was the greatest boon to the country. The untold hours we wasted in school in the 1960s memorising the essentially useless information of the imperial system was entirely avoidable if someone in power had stepped up and bitten the bullet sooner. I’m assuming you are from the US of A and it amazes me that the US has not dragged itself at least into the 20th century where measurement is concerned.
Calculations are so much simpler working constantly in base 10 and there is almost no memorising of units required. I speak interchangeably in feet, inches, mm and metres, whatever, but I calculate in metric only. I convert back to feet if I want a better idea of what 7568mm is in terms my old brain can comprehend. The only thing I don’t like about metric is the French spelling of units. If someone could invent a metric foot I’d be jumping for joy.
It is interesting to note that young surfers here in Oz (12 – 14yo) still talk in wave heights of feet and some of them use inches at times to describe sizes of other things, despite the fact they were born 30 years after metrification.
30
Sadly aviation and marine activity are still stuck with irrational mediaeval systems of measurement.
You *really* want to make sure your aircrew have not gotten their kg mixed up with their lb, as happened not so long ago in Canada. Why the US persists with the infinitely inferior non-metric systems is a mystery. Richard’s ludicrous “changed by those pesky liberals” is probably a clue though.
11
They ran out of fuel and had to land at an airforce base that one of the pilots was familiar with, sort of. It had been closed for a few years and was now a drag strip. They glided to it just as a meet ended and the pilot had to use a glider technique that he had only read about to wash off speed without gaining altitude. Landed safely over the drag racing guard rail with not serious injury or even damage. A few days of repairs and they took off again.
10
Unbelievably lucky they had that particular pilot that day.
“The Gimli Glider” wasn’t it?
01
I would place the value of the old records infinitely above the trash now published by the BOM. Those scientists of old took pride in their profession, and placed the highest priority on accuracy and objectivity in their work. They did everything by hand and their mathematical skills and commitment to the scientific method were beyond reproach.
Just as the explorers, navigators and cartographers like Matthew Flinders were able to perform feats considerdd unimaginal now without computers and satellites, our weathermen of old were truly remarkable.
We should take more time to honour their work and the records that can inform us today.
130
What “old records”?
Clippings from old newspapers?
That’s not very scpetical of you…
12
It was surely hot in the Sydney Basin, but anything but where I was camped on Tuesday morning. I’ve been camped there at the same time of the year for 50 years (SW WA). And I reckon it must have been 6 to 7C at 5am, coldest I’ve experienced and mid summer.
Roy Spencer has an excellent and as usual informative post on it here http://www.drroyspencer.com/
To see atmospheric physics working at the micro level where we were camped you can look here. https://www.facebook.com/ted.middleton.39/videos/10210768966245638/
31
It has occurred to me that the only thing that they cannot “disappear” is the old weather reports in the newspapers. we need to launch a project to collate newspaper temperature records of old and compare them to the “archived” historical data kept by the BOM. There is no way that any difference between the raw data and the data reported at the time could be explained away by using algorithms and black box excuses. Unless of course the old newspaper archives are starting to disappear already….
30
In 1998 I happened to pick the two hottest days in a long time to have air conditioning installed. Both the electrician and the heating and air installer had to go up into my attic where I can only guess what the temperature must have been while the patio thermometer was up at 100 °F and the sun was beating down on the roof. I wouldn’t have gone up there for anything in heat like that. I had visions of having to dial 911 (emergency number in U.S. and Canada) to have them rescued, chopping a hole in my roof in the process.
They survived it and when it was all over I asked the heating and air guy how he could manage to work in that heat. His answer was, “All in a days work.” He had to be up there for long enough to run new ductwork to every register in the house an hour or more. The electrician had it easier. He had everything ready so all he had to do was take the flexible conduit up there and connect it at both ends and he was through in 10 minutes. Wire could be pulled through from on the ground.
I mention this because high temperatures needn’t be so bad if you stay hydrated and don’t exert yourself beyond a certain level. When I was still in 6th grade I used to jog all the way home from school, about 3/4 mile in the september heat (90 – 100 F) of the San Fernando Valley and was never even out of breath when I got home.
As I got to be my age the discomfort factor becomes more than I’m willing to endure, hence the A/C.
Even in 1998 no one blamed climate change for hot weather. It was a given around Southern California. Now suddenly it’s a national disaster. And it’s still just a given, a fact of life when living in what would be a desert if not for importing water from hundreds of miles away.
30
Thank you Jo, for another dose of sanity and serenity.
10
manalive : Trying to search the BOM ‘Climate data Online’ brings up “This service is currently unavailable. Please try again later”.
I’ve search that site many times in the past and have never encountered that message.
Same here, I couldn’t access the data as well.
The BOM just released their annual climate statement stating that 2017 was the third warmest year on record: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/annual-climate-statement-2017-third-hottest-year-on-record/9314364
Either the website was overwhelmed by queries for the data after the release or some other technical difficulty arose
10
“It follows then if the BOM was interested in our climate history, they could build side-by-side models and figure out how to compare these historic records.”
Who said they didn’t.
They may well have found the electronic thermometers read higher.
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Great podcast with Dellingpole and Tony Heller. iTunes. Satellite photos of the North Pole go back to the early 70s, not 1979. I didn’t know that and neither did James. They start at 1979 because it was an arctic sea ice max.
00
This is also interesting.
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/australia-ten-degrees-cooler-than-1896/
00
I was interested to read
However, being a sceptical kind of person, (and the assertion being so inherently unlikely to be true), I thought I would check it.
My search immediately threw up a list of such publications, starting with this one:
https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/WebPortal-AWS/Tests/ITR649.pdf
You’ll be fascinated to read that,…
So, in summary,
Tebbutt made a comparison between 2 installations – the BoM compared 10.
Tebbutt took a few hand-made observations of temperature – the Bom took years of them, including barometric pressure, wind direction, and a host of other information.
So I’m just left wondering which planet you have to come from in order to assert that Tebbutt’s infinitely inferior experiment could be “…putting him ahead of the current $365 million a year Australian Bureau of Meteorology …”?
Just imagine if a public servant got caught out saying something as unreliable as that – they’d be toast.
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And look at the conclusion in the document that you linked to. All of that money spent, all of that modern technology and expertise and they still couldn’t determine which screen was the best and most accurate.
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In other words the experiment succeeded in demonstrating that all 10 installation methods could produce reliable data.
01
In fact young Craig, if you did your homework you would discover that small Stevenson screens were not specified as standard until 1973; electronic probes became ‘primary instruments’ on 1 September 1996.
Cheers,
Bill
30
Being a skeptical kind of person I checked the link (I like people who check and I like to check people who check) and found an interesting published article about a comparison between various screen options.
The article gives a peculiar reason for the testing, one based on the new pop theology and green soothsaying. (“Current day concerns about enhanced greenhouse warming and the impact of changes in climate, has given rise to question about the accuracy of data used to identify to the expected rises in temperature.”) We should be used to the constant repetition of green liturgy by now. However, one would think curiosity and a desire to improve would be more suitable motives…but that’s all so last millennium. A more practical reason is given also: “In recent years the cost of Stevenson Screens and issues related the maintenance of them in remote locations has cause the Bureau of Meteorology to look more closely at alternate designs.” Fair enough.
Well, at least they’re doing it, and the author probably likes to eat, so we’ll say well done.
But what of the comparison between Stevenson screens and the Greenwich (Glaisher) screens they replaced? Is it possible that Jo was right here and that the Broadmeadows experiment has absolutely nothing to do with her point or with Tebbutt’s experiment? To a skeptical kind of person this would appear to be the case.
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The BoM would obviously we wasting money if it was setting up experiments to test equipment that was superseded a century ago, given that the work has already been done and no useful data could be gathered.
The fact is that like Tebbutt, current employees at the BoM conduct research between different installation methods.
01
This still does not explain your detailed refutation of a claim Jo clearly never made.
As to whether it would be a waste of money to try and gain more insight into old climate records by further testing of the methods, those who hate history and love the memory hole will agree with you, no doubt.
We know the strategy. Anything can be unprecedented when the precedents are obscured, denied or ignored; anything can be new when comparatives are allowed but the points of comparison are not.
The New Man at Year Zero don’t need no steenkin’ precedents and points of comparison.
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G’day Craig, and I thought you must have gone to sleep or melted in the Bureau’s ‘record’ heat!!
There are not numerous reports of screen comparisons; the one you refer to was reported twice, once by BoM and then verbatim by WMO. So indeed you are right there is more than one. (By the way it is not a peer-reviewed study.)
If you dug a tad-bit deeper into the report you’d see they compared screens using just one instrument (PRT probe) at just one site (Broadmeadows, which is not even an official weather station) and they only used one screen of each of 10 types.
This means there was no between-screen error control; no comparison involving multiple sites and no comparison possible between thermometers, which were the standard instrument before September 1996 and the PRT probe. Its unlikely that the small screen would behave the same at Broadmeadows as at Marble Bar or Low Head or Townsville for example, so to resolve the issue a replicated multi-site comparison would be needed.
A problem with the PRT probe in a small screen is that it measures every passing whiff of heat from the nearest tarmac or truck going past with great accuracy. Temperature then depends on how data are filtered for noise that is unrelated to the climate.
Cheers,
Dr. Bill
50
I have been reading a lot of mention of this temperature “noise”, as you refer to it, lately.
I am very scpetical of assertions of “noise” for two reasons:
1/ I have not seen any evidence-based analysis of any “noise”, only what appears to be a drive-by criticism.
2/ The reason this “noise” has been “identified” (some would say “invented”) is to create a parallel reason for the climbing trend of maximum temperatures. So rather than being based on any observation or evidence, it is clearly a *rationalisation* – the sort of thing that made the likes of Freud and Kinsey publish completely fraudulent research.
3/ The “noise” narrative appears to be completely at odds with the observed trend in the data for *minimum* temperatures.
In summary, Dr Bill, it appears you may not be quite as sceptical as you thought you were.
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You haven’t seen analysis, because you don’t want to.
22
Craig, I’ve been trying to work out if data-spikes are due to the smaller screen (0.06 vs. 0.23 m^3), replacing thermometers with rapid-sampling AWS PRT probes or both, by comparing sites with different screens or doing distributional comparisons using equi-length data slices each side of statistically detected changepoints. I did a drive-by of Broadmeadows and took some photos with a zoom-lens, but the problem is there is no continuous dataset that could be used to background the WMO study reported by Anne Warne.
Warne (and Ian Dollary) reported another study here (https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/publications/IOM-125_TECO_2016/Session_1/O1(4)_pres_Warne_Qual%20&%20Pur%201.pdf) “Real-world performance of temperature measurements at Automatic Weather Stations” which highlighted the problem of data-spikes (see the graph on page 9) but they didn’t make much of a fuss about it. The graph shows that individual AWS can be over-range by 0.5 degC to up to 3 degC (and under-range as well) on specific days when they are inspected. As individual sites are only inspected once or twice per year, this also means they could be over or under for extended periods between inspections.
A question for you Craig (thinking-cap on):
When the Bureau’s computer hunts around the network each day, deliberately data-plucking records and ‘scorchers’; are they detecting spikes or data that reflects the real climate?
Think Craig (but I don’t expect a meaningful answer).
The graph on page 17 is interesting too. It shows that manned sites are less variable than their AWS sites.
A network-wide uncertainty of 0.3 degC (page 24) doesn’t apply to a particular weather station’s over/under-ranging data. Also as errors are additive it also means that for two values to be different (say two ‘records’); they need to be different by more than 0.6 degC.
Cheers,
Dr. Bill
10
Good work Bill.
While the electronic sampling selection of just the hottest or coolest second instead of an average over a minute or five as specified by the WMO is most certainly a problem, my money is on the screen changes. Not just the sise. Quiet a few other changes. Also some surprising other outside effects that should have been predicted or at least allowed for. More soon.
10
“If you dug a tad-bit deeper into the report…. “
I wonder how CT will cope now that Twitter has doubled its number of letters to 280. ! 😉
01
An interesting read for those capable of over 280 letters.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/01/13/weather-instrumentation-debacle-analysis-shows-0-9c-of-germanys-warming-may-be-due-to-transition-to-electronic-measurement/#sthash.6qhVFI8G.dpbs
01