Bureau of Met reads tea leaves and finds warming at Horn Island that no thermometer can see

Ken Stewart has been looking at the mysterious pattern of temperatures on Horn Island –– right at the top of Cape York Australia. It’s almost as far north as things get in Australia. There was no thermometer there before 1995, so the Bureau of Meteorology has rattled the nearest tea-leaves to find out how warm it was.

The towns listed on the map are its nearest neighbours. “Near”, in the Australian sense, meaning loosely within  500 kilometers.

Bureau of Meoteorology, Australia, horn Island.

Horn Island and it’s nearest neighbours

This, below,  is the way 70 years of temperature dregs roll at all those sites.

Horn Island, Tmin absolute.Graph.

This is what the Bureau of Meteorology sees (note the scale has changed on the temp axis). That’s two degrees of warming in far north Queensland.

Horn Island, Tmin absolute.Graph.

So the average minimum temperature now looks half a degree cooler in 1960 than what your lying eyeballs suggest.

Ken goes into much more detail and deserves our thanks for bothering to try to unpack the mysterious merging of thermometer records in at the BoM department of Tasseomancy.

Visit his site:  Garbage In, Garbage Out- Horn Island

 

10 out of 10 based on 59 ratings

57 comments to Bureau of Met reads tea leaves and finds warming at Horn Island that no thermometer can see

  • #

    This will be met simply with silence from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology BOM. There will probably not even be a denial. There will be no public attempt at explanation, only mutterings of ‘world’s best practice’ … ‘expert analysis’ … ‘credibility of highly regarded Government agency’ and so on. The Bureau really does owe us some explanation. Or is there no credible explanation? Better for the BOM to stay quiet and wait for it all to go away.

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    • #
      Graham Richards

      When will we see an independent inquiry into the BOM and it’s MO regarding data collection & data “ homogenisation “ or fraud depending on the motivation behind it!

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  • #
    Pauly

    A comparison with rainfall patterns at these same locations would be interesting. Increased warming is usually associated with increased drying. But if the rainfall patterns are unchanging, or show increased rainfall over the same period, you know that this warming is physically impossible.

    Willis provides a very useful insight into tropical weather effects here:
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/23/watts-available/

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  • #
    ivan

    Jo, I think the comment between the two graphs should read (NOTE the scale has changed on the temp axis) not (not the scale has changed on the temp axis). Sorry, can’t see any other way to send corrections. Mods please delete if this is wrong.

    [Email coming your way. Thanks Ivan, you are right. – Jo]

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  • #
    David Maddison

    This is scandalous. They are literally making up data as they go. It’s not science, it’s politics pretending to be science.

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    • #
      GlenM

      For sure. Ask a new age BoM meteorologist the difference between wet adiabatic and dry – or even orographic they would be clueless.Terms such as those are useless when combined with your head in a computer monitor all day. Malfeasance once again from the bureau.

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    • #
      sophocles

      They are literally making up data as they go. It’s not science, it’s politics pretending to be science.

      Oops.

      Another one bites
      Another one bites
      Another one bites the dust

      [Queen]

      Funny stuff here too: Trump assures the Califonians that “it will be cooling soon” with a marvellously straight face.

      It will start getting cooler’ | President Trump responds to combating climate change in fires | RAW – Youtube.com

      “I think science knows, actually.” -love that line …

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      • #
        • #
          sophocles

          I’ve had You Tube stuff me around by serving up different/unexpected videos, so I now give
          the video’s text title, which is considerably more reliable (and safer!). But you’re right: that URI will deliver the correct video for a few weeks or even a few months.

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          • #
            David Maddison

            sophocles, I have also found that searching YouTube with the exact text title doesn’t always work either, especially when the subject matter doesn’t suit the Leftist political narrative.

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      • #
        IainC

        Oddly enough, Pres. Trump was on the right track. Average US temperatures (according to statistica.com) have dropped from 54.94F in 2016 to 52.68F in 2019, a full 2.3F or 1.3C.

        20

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      No no…is glorious new data in BOMistan….is true….Ministry of Truth says ….

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  • #
    Peter C

    I wonder if the RAAF has any temperature records from Horn Is Advanced Operational Base from WW2? It was used as a staging point form bombing raids on Rabaul.
    https://www.ww2places.qld.gov.au/place?id=770

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    • #
      R.B.

      They might have been a bit busy. (& yes, temperature measurements would have been handy, not sure about the records).

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  • #
    David Maddison

    In Melbourne, probably like the rest of Australia, you can’t rely on BoM weather predictions any more. I am doing home renovations and have lost time when BoM says it’s going to rain and it doesn’t etc.. I now look out the window and make my own predictions, it’s more accurate. Perhaps BoM could look out the window themselves, some time.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Perhaps they do look out the windows but they have big TV screens outside displaying fake weather.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      I’m pretty sure that before the BoM had supercomputers modelling the weather, their predictions were more accurate.

      Sadly, very few “modellers” seem to even know the term “Garbage In, Garbage Out: (GIGO), a concept that even Charles Babbage was known to have been familiar with.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” … I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

        — Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

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    • #
      Gary Simpson

      Come on, you must know that public servants are not allowed to look out of the window in the morning, because then they would have nothing to do in the afternoon.

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    • #
      Salome

      If you’d ignored the forecast and proceeded with the works, it would have rained.

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    The BoM doesn’t read tea leaves.
    It smokes them.

    Witness the BoM 2020 cyclone season prediction … I see dead cyclones …

    La Nina bringing worse-than-average cyclone season set to hit Queensland

    “The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says there is a 94 per cent chance of La Nina conditions in 2020-21, bringing the risk of a worse-than-average cyclone season.
    “In Australia, the average is normally nine to 11 tropical cyclones.

    “In a La Nina year, we’d expect to see close to average or above.”

    “Think back to the La Nina year in 2011, we had (cyclone) Yasi.

    “While we’re not expecting the La Nina to be as strong as what we had back then, there’s always the potential for that to happen.”

    https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/la-nina-bringing-worse-than-average-cyclone-season-set-to-hit-queensland-c-1343967

    97% BoM ‘science’:

    “In the Climate Council’s Cranking up the Intensity: Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events report released earlier this year, the independent body predicted that in coming years, due to rising temperatures, cyclones would get less frequent but those that formed would be higher in intensity.

    But he said “basic physics” governed that climate change would increase the intensity of cyclones in the future.

    It does not, however, explain this season’s anomaly.”

    https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/cyclone-blanche-is-latest-to-cross-land-in-second-consecutive-quiet-season-in-australian-history/news-story/220bd07cbd24d1db32cfd2175d3ec2ac

    Wait. Update:

    1-6-18:
    New CAS paper on global tropical cyclones:
    Since 1997 “there have been 14 below avg years & only 6 above avg years… Evidence that these warmer temperatures, along with warmer oceans, have increased the frequency & intensity of TCs remains to be seen.”

    https://www.casact.org/pubs/forum/18spforumv2/05_Collins.pdf

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    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      Hurricane and Tropical Cyclones
      Current activity:

      Atlantic Ocean
      There is no tropical storm activity for this region.

      Eastern Pacific
      1 Active Storm in this Region

      Western Pacific
      1 Active Storm in this Region

      Central Pacific
      There is no tropical storm activity for this region.

      Southern Hemisphere
      There is no tropical storm activity for this region.

      Indian Ocean
      There is no tropical storm activity for this region.

      https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane

      If carbon (sic) simultaneously causes little to no tropical storm activity and doomsday global warming tropical storms, how do you know when it’s fixed?

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    • #
      sophocles

      The BoM doesn’t read tea leaves.
      It smokes them.

      That must be why they make such idiotic statements as
      The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says there is a 94 per cent chance of La Nina conditions in 2020-21, bringing the risk of a worse-than-average cyclone season.

      The Sun is responsible. It’s the Solar Wind which winds those storms up. The Sun neither knows nor cares about the state of ENSO which makes the BoM statement that of an idiot.

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    • #
      Ken Stewart

      “Worse than average” ???
      Cyclones drag the monsoon trough further south, bringing rain for grass and crops to grow and filling dams. How will that be “worse” if we have a better chance of getting rain this wet season? The tropical coast of Australia is very sparsely populated and most cyclones miss towns by hundreds of kilometres. We only have disasters on the rare occasions when they come close to a populated area. No doubt if one hits SE Qld or northern NSW as they used to decades ago, (see my 2018 post, https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/tropical-cyclones-and-global-warming-a-reality-check/ )it will be disastrous and due to climate change of course.

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      • #
        R.B.

        it will be disastrous and due to climate change of course.

        Have you seen what climate change has done to the Archibald prize?

        20

  • #
    PeterS

    Fake science has become too popular and becoming even more so. It’s unfortunate we don’t have leaders in our community, government and private who expose the truth about climate energy, energy policies and emission reductions vigorously and consistently. It’s even more unfortunate we don’t have the scientific community doing the same thing. Instead we have the vast majority of them supporting the various myths about climate changes purely based on fake science and ideologies, and acting on them by way of emissions reduction policies. That includes the LNP. Yet we have most here sticking their heads in the sand and pretending the LNP at the leadership levels, state and federal are on our side. Go figure.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Go figure.’

      That would be me, sir.

      We must be realistic, there is no value in waving our hands about. The political and bureaucratic structures, along with the three tiers of government, are meant to protect our interests in a mixed economy.

      Poverty was eliminated in Australia for a brief few months during the pandemic, Morrison is doing fine.

      06

      • #
        PeterS

        Yes that’s for sure. It appears you are like so many who are asleep and can’t bother to use our democratic system of voting to make a protest vote and force one of the major parties to comply with the demands of one of the minor parties that makes the most sense. That’s OK, you can go back to sleep and wait for one of the major parties to wake up and do the right thing eventually. The trouble is that might very well be too late – far too late. Yes,ignorance can be bliss.

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      • #
        Analitik

        Poverty was eliminated in Australia for a brief few months during the pandemic

        If you are referring to the Job Keeper/Seeker programs, then it was done at the cost of national debt which is like all those recipients taking out a loan and then ignoring the debt. You may as well add your unused balance of credit card limits to your bank balance – strangely (for you), loan assessors treat credit card limits as deductions against assets (assumed debt).

        The only difference is that by being taken by the government, the debt has been socialized. But then that seems ok to you as well.

        30

  • #

    I have recently looked at all the Australia and New Zealand monthly mean temperature data and calculated the actual temperature trends for each state since about 1850. You can see the results on my blog at

    https://climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/07/26-temperature-trend-in-australia-since.html

    I then compared the results with those published by Berkeley Earth – I even reconstructed the Berkeley Earth regional averages by averaging their own adjusted data in order to demonstrate that any difference could not be due to my averaging procedure. I found similar discrepancies to those shown above for Horn Island. Generally I found that temperatures after 1950 were adjusted up and those before 1950, particularly those from the 19th century, were adjusted down. These discrepancies all seemed to be the result of homogenization and breakpoint adjustment processes.

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  • #
    Graeme4

    I’m wondering how many of these new warmer measuring sites find their way into Australia’s average temp records, either directly or indirectly via homogenisation.

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  • #
    Dennis

    NSW Mid North Coast this morning early 6 deg C, another wood heater burning night and another tonight according to the forecast.

    A couple of weeks ago I decided not to buy more firewood this year.

    50

  • #
    Mal

    The bom is on the horns of a dilemma!,

    40

  • #
    David Maddison

    Let’s give BoM a challenge.

    Pick any random location on the map and ask them to create an historical dataset for it.

    I would suggest the year range 1828 to 2020. I chose 1828 because that was a time of record temperature in Australia:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/charles-sturts-time-so-hot-that-thermometers-exploded-was-australias-hottest-day-in-1828-53-9c/

    Then, after they have generated the data, they can delete all data before 1910, as is their custom, and homogenise the rest making sure that the data fits the required political narrative.

    Rinse and repeat.

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    • #
      el gordo

      William Dawes was Australia’s first meteorologist, so out of respect for his effort I nominate 1788 to 2020.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Note to the BoM employees reading this.

    Don’t you feel ashamed of yourselves?

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    • #
      Dennis

      Did BoM ever apologise for their mapping of drought areas that councils complained about saying that their council districts were not suffering drought conditions, and therefore Federal Government funding sent to them was not applicable?

      90

  • #
    Jonesy

    I particularly enjoy finding these types from within the BoM. Andrew Charles is an avowed Marxist who also doubles as a climate modeler.

    Behind the headlines screaming “hottest summer on record” is a ton of work, from technicians maintaining observation equipment to climatologists curating a climate record that reveals the alarming temperature statistics.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Curate has the right overtones for the clergy at the BoM. It gives me the image of some cloaked dude polishing the turd that Australia’s climate record has been mangled into through their Worlds Best Practice homegenisation process.

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      • #
        el gordo

        They are the high priests of weather and occasionally get it right. We should expect an increase in cyclone activity this summer.

        ‘During La Niña, there are typically more tropical cyclones in the Australia region, with twice as many making landfall than during El Niño years on average. This means an increased likelihood of major damage and flooding related to strong winds, high seas and heavy rains from tropical cyclones.’

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      • #
        Peter C

        I guess Dr Blair Trewin must be one of those. I suspect that there are a fairly small group of people that constitute the BOM Priesthood.

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  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    Many people accept that around 1975, there was an event that is named variously, something like the “Great Pacific Climate Shift”
    The BOM are aware that this happened. They use it as a reson to compete with an observed change in temperatures at the time of goiong from degrees F to degrees C in late 1972. See http://www.waclimate.net/round/# for references.

    There was an overall warming of some 0.1 deg C coincident with this change. there was also a change in weather rainfall patterns in many locations. But the BOM says that we could have got a flase 0.1 degree warming from metrecation, but we shall not include it in our calculations because it could have been caused by a natural shift.

    When you look at the graphs of raw data that Ken has compiled, if you eyeball from 1975 onwards, you see cooling rather than warming. How to generate warming with the numbers is simple – make it up and call it ACORN. Geoff S

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  • #
    neil

    And tonight on ABC 730 we get dottery old David Attenborough telling us “the end is nigh” and he used one of my favorite global warming “facts”, “for the first time ever you can sail across the Arctic” using the North-West channel. If it is the first time ever, how do we know about the North-West channel? Why did the Vikings write about something that wouldn’t appear for another 1400 years? How did they move to and from Canada if the channel never existed?

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    • #
      Peter C

      I thought it was known as the North West Passage.

      For centuries, European explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia. An ice-bound northern route was discovered in 1850 by the Irish explorer Robert McClure; it was through a more southerly opening in an area explored by the Scotsman John Rae in 1854 that Norwegian Roald Amundsen made the first complete passage in 1903–1906.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        And there was a Canadian (rather small wooden) ship the St. Roch.
        St. Roch was constructed in 1928 at the Burrard Dry Dock Shipyards in North Vancouver. Between 1929–1939 she supplied and patrolled Canada’s Arctic.

        In 1940–1942 she became first vessel to complete a voyage through the Northwest Passage in a west to east direction, and in 1944 became first vessel to make a return trip through the Northwest Passage, through the more northerly route considered the true Northwest Passage, and was also the first to navigate the passage in a single season.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Roch_(ship)

        00