There are adjustments on top of adjustments. Homogenised records are being used to correct raw records. Some man-made adjustments can infect data for miles around…
Rutherglen is a long running station in central Victoria. There are no documented site moves, but the long raw trend of slow cooling was adjusted up to a warming trend. What was cooling of 0.35C per century became a 1.7C warming trend.
Jennifer Marohasy, and others, have spent months trying to get answers from the BOM explaining why these massive adjustments were made. Excuses flowed. In the latest round, the BOM claim the changes are necessary to make the Rutherglen record match the trends in the neighboring stations. What the BOM doesn’t say is that there was no warming in the neighbours either, not until after they were homogenized. The order in which stations are homogenized matters, which rather says something important about the arbitrary nature of the adjustments. Anomalous trends from far distant and poor locations can spread through waves of homogenization until better, longer stations succumb to political correctness and show the “correct” result. Small choices about which stations to to use first in the process can make a huge difference to the end result. Another reason the BOM needs auditing.
A poor Australian citizen might think after seeing this graph, below, from the BOM, that Rutherglen is out of step with its neighbours. Instead the taxpayer would need to go to Jennifer Marohasy’s site to get the full story. She has added the red notes to the chart to point out what the BOM don’t say: Wagga, Deniliquin and Kerang series were homogenized first. These trends were not what was recorded by thermometers. [UPDATE: Note that many raw records are patchy and not well documented. They often do need adjustment, but the reasons need to be transparent, exact, justified, and Australians need to know how influential these adjustments are.]
….
Marohasy also plotted the raw data from Deniliquin and Rutherglen, and explains that at the long running station in Wilkinson St Deniliquin there was a statistically significant cooling trend of 0.6C per century from 1910 to 2000 1913 – 2003. Actual raw data is available for Wilkinson St from February 1867 to June 2003, a remarkably long series.
…
She has written an open letter to the Chief Operating Officer, Vicki Middleton, pointing out the misleading nature of the Bureau of Meteorology graph, and asking that they correct their “Fact Sheet”.
This is not just about Rutherglen. If we look at historic records from 84 sites, two thirds of Australia’s warming trend comes from the adjustments.
What’s the answer? Replicate the BOM’s work
If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science. The Bureau of Meteorology admits its methods are secret. [UPDATE: See the link — the Bureau specifically admits no one outside the BoM can replicate their work because it would require detailed instructions, “operator training” and it’s too “onerous”.]
The BOM needs a full independent audit, staffed by people outside climate studies — we need physicists, statisticians, engineers, people with proven track records in areas of science or technology that work.
The only thing we know for sure about the BOM is that time and again, they’ve had the opportunity to explain their decisions and methods, and they choose not too. It’s an unscientific, “trust us” approach. If they were honest, and sincerely believed in their work, they would welcome the interest in the details of the historic Australian climate.
Would you buy shares in a company on the Australia Stock Exchange (ASX) that refused to allow audits of its finances? You couldn’t even if you wanted too — the ASX doesn’t allow them to list. Public companies welcome audits, to show everyone they are legit.
When the ABC misinforms Australians, the BOM don’t care. That says a lot about their priorities. Not serving the public, just serving “big-government”…
We need to get individual stations in order before we start blending bad data
The concept motivating homogenization is that errors in one station can be detected and corrected by comparing it to surrounding stations — if all the neighbors say one things and one station says something else, then the one station is probably wrong.
But how close need a neighbor be? Is a temperature record 500 km away to be relied upon to correct measurements taken at a site? Somehow the BOM has got itself in a real mess. Bad data, unrecorded site changes, and anomalous results abound, along with wacky square-wave monthly adjustments that defy explanation. Homogenisation should start with the best stations, but no one at the BOM has even figured out which stations are the best. There’s been no proper detailed historic analysis of each station. Someone needs to go back to photos, letters and newspapers. Lets start with data, dammit.
The only thing we know for sure is that we are not getting good answers
The history of the BOM’s explanations is that the adjustments to Rutherglen are major, and that explanations could be provided in days — but more than three years after ACORN was established there are still no good explanations, just a litany of weak excuses and the fog of evasion. The BOM ignored independent scientists until The Australian started writing up their questions. Only then did they bother to respond, and in the end, they admit they can’t explain something as simple as the reasons for their adjustments in something as scientifically banal as a single temperature sequence. This is not rocket science.
Nothing has changed from when I wrote this nearly a year ago:
Under pressure, Australian BOM puts up facade of “transparency” — too little, too late
Bottom line: The BOM has added a page listing “Adjustments”. It’s two years late, inadequate and incomplete. Skeptics shouldn’t have had to ask for it in the first place, and we still don’t have the algorithms and codes, or rational answers to most questions. No one can replicate the mystery black box homogenisation methods of the BOM — and without replication, it isn’t science. There is still no explanation of why an excellent station like Rutherglen should change from cooling to warming, except for vague “statistics”, or why any station should be adjusted without documentary evidence, based on thermometers that might be 300 km away*.
The adjustments page is just a glorified rehash of the same old excuses
Effectively the bureau is saying “we need large mysterious transformations of data to make Australian trends look like international trends”. What serious climate scientist thinks Australia is supposed to get hotter, colder, wetter, drier, or cloudier with the exact same timing and patterns to the rest of the world?
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation means that Australian trends are not going to be same as US trends. When it’s rainy here, it’s drier there. Dry soil heats up fast; wet soil keeps temperatures more stable (h/t to Bill for reminding us of the importance of rainfall).
The new gee-wizz data set called ACORN contains thousands of new mistakes that did not exist before, as discussed nearly a year ago. Nothing has changed.
Three years ago the independent audit team, with Senator Cory Bernardi, asked for an ANAO audit of the BOM’s “High Quality” HQ data set. The BOM was not enthused. They dumped the HQ set that they had previously lauded and set up a new one called “ACORN”. We listed some of the errors in June 2012. Two Three years on, nothing much appears to have changed. They still haven’t released the algorithms used in the homogenization process. They are still using stations more than 100km away, some 600 km away, to “adjust” temperatures. The mystery black box adjustments are still producing inexplicable nonsense, and the BOM still can’t explain why — on individual stations like Rutherglen and Bourke — anyone should find their adjustments necessary and scientifically justified.
The BOM’s active silence on the long hot records of the late 1880s and 1890s suggests they are more interested in promoting one message — “it’s warming” — rather than being custodians of the real and more complicated history of the Australian climate.
When will our elected representatives get the balls to do the right thing for the environment and demand the highest, most rigorous research on the Australian climate? For the sake of our farmers, national policy and land management, how can we predict the future climate if we don’t even know the history of how it has changed? (How Orwellian is that?) If the Greens cared about the climate, they would demand an independent review.
The bottom line on Rutherglen:
I don’t pretend to know what the end point answer should be. Rutherglen is not a perfect station, but we can’t even have a polite and rational conversation about it. The real dishonesty is in pretending that there is a meaningful trend to be found there or anywhere in the smoothed, blurred, and blended ACORN data. The BOM is not honest with the Australian public about the transformative but mysterious adjustments and the dismal state of our temperature records.
CONCLUSION: The egregious thing here is the way the trends, and the record events get reported as if they are unquestionable when so much manipulation is going on behind the scenes. That message is used as PR to sell policies, and is marketed as “science” when it is so flagrantly not.
Read the details at Jennifer Marohasy’s.
Hey Jo,
Great summary! And thanks for putting this all in the big picture context both in terms of explaining that this is not an isolated example, and explaining that part of the solution could be found in an audit.
Being a stickler for detail, just a minor correction is need. Where you write:
“Marohasy also plotted the raw data from Deniliquin and Rutherglen, and explains that at the long running station in Wilkinson St Deniliquin there was a statistically significant cooling trend of 0.6C per century from 1910 to 2000.”
In fact, I plotted all the available data from Wilkinson Street, Deniliquin,for the period of the available record for Rutherglen. So, from 1913 (when the Rutherglen record starts) to 2014 (when the Deniliquin record ends).
Cheers, Jen
PS. I encourage readers to fling Jo some donations. She has been working to expose this farce for a few years longer than me.
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That should be to 2003, when the Deniliquin record ends. The Rutherglen record ends in 2014.
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What is interesting about Deniliquin is that the “new” airport site opened in 1997, and ran in tandem with the original Wilkinson St site until 2003 when they ceased recording temperature at Wilkinson St, which incidentally is still open but only records rainfall.
So, at Deniliquin you have 7 years of temperature comparison 1997-2003…..Wilkinson st and its UHI effect and the pristine airport.
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It’s quite simple really. Golden rule: unless you have a legitimate reason to adjust observed data you are lying when you do so. The burden of proof is on BoM. Also, to adjust stations sequentially is a faux pas. That is like rounding a number one significant digit at a time. You can make 4.444444445 equal 5 if you do that enough times. That is also statistically and mathematically illegitimate.
It’s like these guys never did an introductory course in statistics.
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It’s like these guys never did an introductory course (full stop).
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I commend Jo and Jennifer Marohasy for the work they have done to preserve the original data and to open the BOM to the light of day on homogenization.
Is it too late to get a restraining order or a stop work order in a court of law? Or have they corrupted or discarded the original data so that it cannot be restored?
Official climatological data are almost always collected at taxpayers expense, therefore the data are public property.
I live in the foothills area of a city in Arizona. Because of features such as cold air drainage (which can lower temperatures at night a few degrees and makes sitting outside on summer nights quite pleasant), official temperature records withing a few km can also have mean temperatures that vary by a degree or more.
Conversely, if the temperature recorder is located on concrete, asphalt, or near an industrial air conditioner exhaust, then the daytime and night time temperatures can be a few to several degrees warmer than in the foothills.
The point of all this is that the temperature stations are all with distances from about 1 to 20 km. I do not think it would be appropriate to homogenize any of these data. Raw data measure what is there–it is the metadata (detailed site descriptions, changes on observers, etc.) which add knowledge to the local station data. If data are found to be inconsistent with surrounding data because of localized influences then fine. Use a subset of the data and thoroughly document the reasons for doing so.
But the raw data should be analyzed frequently to identify anomalies. If the station is improperly sited (in the exhaust of an air conditioner, etc.) then move it to a suitable site, note the inaccuracy of the original data, and document all your analyses and actions in the metadata file. However if the station is properly cited and no explanation for its differences from surrounding stations can be determined, then continue it and document all your analyses. The anomaly may be some of the most valuable data collected.
The point is, not one jot or tittle of the raw data should be changed without a detailed document containing all the analyses and metadata. Fifty years from now someone could go in and re-analyze the data and make exciting discoveries. Undocumented, unjustified, secret, or arbitrary changes destroy the data forever.
Homogenization of temperature data over several hundred kilometers distance is a crime and against all rational scientific thought and reasoning. It is an unbelievably gross and willful destruction of taxpayer owned data.
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That is very well put LL. I live in an area of Victoria where the temperatures can be markedly different over a very few kms. BOM forecasts are never correct for us as they relate to a different township by a large body of water.
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Wilkinson Street, Deniliquin, was always a dodgy site because, if I recall correctly from my last visit there, it was very near a red brick post office.
Someone at Melbourne University reported on the the UHI effect at Deniliquin back around year 2000 or maybe slightly earlier. Their paper or a summary thereof used to appear on a university web page but it seems to have disappeared.
Everything pointed to Deniliquin having a rising UHI effect and therefore a rising reported temperature, so it’s very interesting that raw temperatures there actually fell over time.
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JohnM, Please note I am reporting on minimum temperatures for Deni, as it is TMin that was disputed for Rutherglen. And TMin should be most affected by UHI. Future installments will report on TMax, and do note that at Rutherglen even though site moves were used as the excuse for homogenization (at least initially), they homogenized TMax and TMin in different years.
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Sorry JohnM…………..you are so wrong!!!!!
The post office is no where near Wilkinson st..Wilkinson st is a residential area, western end….gradually built up as the town developed
10
Thanks ‘redress’. I appreciate the correction. I was sure that other reports of Deniliquin’s temperature were based on data from the Post Office, so I assumed that was Wilkinson Street.
For example, the weather data at http://www.fwpa.com.au/images/marketaccess/ManualNo1-ClimateData.pdf refers to Deniliquin Post Office.
Also http://www.berriganshire.nsw.gov.au/Portals/0/documents/Central%20Murray%20Historical%20Climate%20and%20Climate%20Change%20Report_Final%20Draft.pdf says
00
Sorry. My mistake with a nasty cut and paste from the PDF document. Please omit the word ‘infall’.
00
JohnM…………..you are so wrong!!!!!
Wilkinson st is not near the post office, which is in the main street.
Wilkinson st is a residential area, western end of town which only developed during the 1950’s when public housing was created
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Jennifer,
Keep up the good work.
Speaking of flinging donations, when are you going to get a fling receiving capability?
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Jennifer I suggest you have a look at Beechworth, Beechworth/Woolshed . Both these sites don’t operate anymore. The BOM would still use the data “hence” colder climate for their past records.
Rainfall is still measured at Beechworth.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_082001.shtml
10
Bill Johnston
All sides in the Rutherglen debate need to do some research.
The first segment of the data were imported from somewhere else; probably the viticulture record (BoM site 82085).
The ACORN catalogue ignored that. The step-change around 1937 coincided with the end of the viticulture record, further indicating that so-called raw data were merged up to that time.
The most pertinent issue is that the compiled data (to 1924) were cooler on-average than data after 1924, which could have been from Rutherglen’s ‘real’ dataset but who would know (don’t ask BoM they have probably destroyed the original data.)
Data says there was a station move sometime between 1960 and 1965. Don’t ask BoM to look.
Data says there was another move around 1974. BoM have just discovered it; some former people from Rutherglen Research would remember that.
Max temps increased then and minimum temperature declined, consistent with a move to a more exposed lower-valley position. The current location is in such a position.
The final step-change in 1999 was due to the automatic weather station, which over-reports high temperatures. (This can be verified by looking at data from hundreds of AWS sites.)
The most important point is that within the various data segments, there are no trends.
Temperature changes were entirely due to location/instrument changes, not the climate.
The same is true almost everywhere.
The statistical design for analysing long-term trends has to be analysis of trends within statistically significant step-changes.
The Victorian Department of whatever they call themselves this week, would do Australians great service if they terminated their lease with the Bureau of Meteorology; or insisted the Bureau corrected the record and stopped using their station’s data for political purposes.
Simply stated, ACORN is CRAP.
Cheers,
Dr. Bill
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This matter waddles, quacks and seems to poop like a duck. I am 97% confident that it requires independent review and audit. Minister Hunt should insist on such an audit. Frankly it is worth an RC or at least some sort of review with judicial type oversight and the power to compel witnesses. A report date before Paris would be nice.
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The Federal govt knows what is going on but refuses to fix it,they are permitting a govt dept to deliberately lie to the Australian people.
It must suit the Federal govt for this to go on,the same could be said of the ABC,so it must be Federal govt policy to deliberately deceive us!
How many other Federal govt depts are deceiving us or are all of them at it?
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In the last year I’ve read a book and a couple online documentaries wherein Stalin and his work method was talk about in great detail. Stalin used war and the atrocities of war as a leverage tool. Those atrocities happened not only under his command, but also “by” his command.
I could easily accept that the government departments and science research is being directed by the government for a predetermined purpose. Case in point, we know the CSIRO management was replaced with Labor appointments for Labor purposes.
The EU and UN both fund research in order to find the science that is most adventitious to themselves. We also know WWF and GreenP___ (I can’t bear to write the name) create havoc, blockades, political swill, for the purpose of shit stirring and self-promotion and political power games.
I have no doubt whatsoever that some modern governments at most, or some individuals at least, do indeed create calamity for gain.
10
I trust and hope other people besides me have read the Australian segment of the Harry ReadMe text file from the 2009 Climategate emails/documents
Jennifer Marohasy and others are doing great work in trying to unravel the mysteries of the BOM database, but the Harry file Aus segment lists a goodly number of reasons that nobody, including the BOM, can sort out even the initial raw data satisfactorily [before that comment is thrown aside, the Harry file should be read, but sitting down]
Then we have the inexplicable and never-ending homogenisations visited upon a hopelessly managed raw database. With the best goodwill one can muster, I cannot see this ever being resolved satisfactorily
For those who do want to red the Harry file, just google Harry ReadMe.txt – there are now many preserved caches of the 2009 Climategate emails
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Thanks Ian!8888
Could you provide a link to that?
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Peter – my own search shows the primary text copies don’t seem to exist online anymore, but the “FOIA Search” page is still up:
http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-0.html
Click the “search tool” link to go to the search page, click the checkbox for “HARRY_READ_ME”, clear the checkboxes for “Original emails” and “2011 emails”, and search for “Australia”.
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Thanks Mike,
This comment seems quite pertinent here:
It is quite shocking that the expert review committee of the BOM found nothing wrong during their one day meeting, even after that were told by Jennifer Marohasy and other exactly where to look.
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If you’ll recall, they were to sit through a presentation of the BoM methods, and at the end of the day sign off on how good it was. They didn’t actually investigate anything.
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As an aside, as a software engineer of 20+ years experience, HARRY_READ_ME is still my go-to source whenever I need a good laugh and cry simultaneously. Some of the lines that do it for me every time:
“discovered that a sum-of-squared variable is becoming very, very negative!”
“How handy – naming two different files with exactly the same name and relying on their location
to differentiate! Aaarrgghh!!”
“But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names.”
“I tried using the ‘stn’ option of anomdtb.for. Not completely sure what it’s supposed to do, but no matter as it didn’t work:”
“I got MORE results when I used an elimination radius! Whaaaaaaaaat?!!!”
“So yes, in retrospect it was not a brilliant idea to try and kill two birds with one stone – I should have realised that one of the birds was actually a pterodactyl with a temper problem.”
(That last one I’ve shamelessly stolen for my own use)
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Yes, it’s astonishing, isn’t it 🙂 🙂
One of my favourites. I’ve actually had experience in a (BHP) geological database where exactly that happened. Until we understood it, and that took many months since it’s not something one immediately expects, the resultant model maps had a series of “bulls eyes” that defied the best geology minds
50
This is very disturbing.
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Indeed it is. The idea of homogenisation would be all right if you could actually explain what you are doing and qualify and quantify the biases you remove. Claiming the adjustments are needed but too difficult for laymen to understand, and keeping them secret just gives an impression of a conspiracy. I don’t like conspiracy thinking, but the fact BoM are not transparent leads to a conclusion that their methods are not necessarily reproducible or well-grounded.
It is time for BOM to publish their data and codebase.
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Hugh says, “…The idea of homogenisation would be all right if you could actually explain what you are doing and qualify and quantify the biases you remove….”
No Hugh the idea is NEVER all right. Why?
1. Because the earth is not a featureless uniform sphere.
2. The air and oceans are not uniform either. There is wind and rain and pressure differences.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/04/06/1500Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=41.81,92.82,482
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=105.04,-17.50,360
How many times have we seen it raining across the street or driven into or out of a rainstorm? How many times have we felt the sudden drop in temperature as a front or storm moves in? This is the reason you just can not adjust a data point at one station using the data point at another even if they are only 50 kilometers apart. I do not know about Australia but here in North Carolina we routinely get storms a few miles to fifty miles in diameter dotting the state all summer long. The weather maps look like they have a bad case of the measles. So how in heck can you tell if a data point is valid or not by comparing to a neighbor?
Homogenisation is based on the idea of Krigging, actually the global average temperature is and that is a false statistical technique. Krigging is the name for a family of techniques used in geology for mapping using limited sample data and the estimating values at the unsampled locations.
The Krigging Game
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I don’t see how one shonky operation (Bre-X) which must have “salted” cores somehow invalidates kriging as an approach for ore body estimation. At the end of the day, the type of mineralogy is going to determine the best estimation approach. There is no single approach for exactly that reason. This is not a random sample situation, it is a specific type of ore body with inherant characteristics and the estimation approach should reflect that.
There is a huge difference between say a BIF (Banded Iron Formation) and a typical nickel sulphide deposit. It makes no sense whatsoever to use the same approach and assumed ore body characteristics to evaluate both of them. I would have thought that is self-evident. Equally it is obvious that there is a spatial relationship in ore bodies which relates to how they were first formed and subsequnetly altered by geological forces.
Kriging is simply a method for dealing with unknowns (i.e. limited drilling samples) where there is an assumed spatial relationship, which is grounded in experience and knowledge of similar geological occurences.
BTW it is kriging (pronounced kreeging), not krigging, named after geologist Danie Krige.
30
Needs emphasis:
00
The assumption is based on experience, but clearly it is a bit of an art. It is very difficult to know what lies beneath the ground until you have mined it all out, and even then sampling errors could prevent you from knowing with a high degree of accuracy. The only thing you know with a high degree of certainty is how much of a metal/mineral you recovered after the whole exercise is complete, and today’s tailings may be tomorrow’s resource (e.g. the Kalgoorlie Tailings “Kaltails” retreatment operation, which is now finished). But yes, ore reserve estimation is an art as much as a science and it all starts with a guesstimate of the ore body shape and size based on limited information.
00
Have to agree with Bulldust here, Busang had nothing to do with kriging, at least not the proper use of the method as with any estimation method. In fact I have seen many more poor resource estimates made by misusing classical methods than those correctly using geostatistics.Also you didn’t need very advanced classical methods to show Busang was a salting exercise, just good old due diligence was how it was picked up.
Gai I think you need to do a little more reading and understanding of geostatistics than just the website of the disgruntled Mr Merks.
20
Hugh, There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy. If people took shortcuts, didn’t document reasons, or the job evolved in the usual multilayered committee based approach, it’s possible that no one can easily answer questions. This does not excuse the BOM. They need to be honest with the Australian people about how bad the data is and how uncertain the trends are.
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Hugh, it’s not just about “data” and “code”. This cannot be automated– it is so much more messy.
Here’s a quote from the post I did about the BoM admission that their dataset cannot be replicated:
“
Jo says: The process can’t be “automated” — which means it can’t be described by a set of rules other people, or other computers could follow. It’s a bit of a red herring: skeptics have never demanded “automation”. We just want explanations. The crux of science is replication, not automation. If ad hoc judgements were part of the process, they need to be recorded and their impact on the numbers included in the processing from raw data to final product.”
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Topography and prevailing winds play a far more significant factor in temperature than distance. Homogenising via a wire mesh distance calc is just stupid.
Granted, if two station are trending differently you might ask why, but to use one station to adjust another is blind trust.
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Greg Cavanagh,
Exactly!
It is the specifics at the macro-climate level within geographical regions that will show changes (if the geography dictates).
Homogenization smears these details across the continent of Australia, and the more they homogenize, over time, the less any change will be seen.
Like putting a casserole in a blender.
Start with distinct, identifiable juicy pieces of meat and vegetables, with definite flavors and aromas, all in a full-flavored, spicy stock.
Then blend, and keep blending until it’s an anonymous tasting, pale brown-gray, homogeneous mush.
Same ingredients, but, …er, well, just very different!
40
i live in the uk.the front of my house faces north, the rear south.if they used the process to determine the mean temp for a given year for my front garden based on physical readings taken from the back garden,they would be so wrong it would not even be funny.
00
That quote is appalling Jo (for BoM). Basically they are saying, we are the experts and therefore any change we make is justified by our experience. To say that this isn’t science is an understatement of enormous magnitude.
It’s one thing to take out outliers in a data set where there is obvious error, eg a missed decimal point or wrong units, but it is complete bastardry to adjust otherwise clean raw data based on “expert judgement.” I am surprised they even made such a statement. My mind boggles, partly at the lack of scientific rigor and partly at the audacity that they would state it so boldly.
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when a group of associated people work together to obscure information
which causes another group to make decisions involving billions of dollars
a decision the second group might not have made had they known all the facts
to the benefit of the first group
looks like a ‘conspiracy’ to me
folk go to jail for such
also sounds like the ‘climate change’ thing worldwide
let’s face it, it’s a duck
100
Indeed Jo.
No personal responsibility, not the slightest whiff. Not even a hapless railroad engineer to point the bone at. These pesky inconvenient truths just keep mounting don’t they? Little did El Gourdo realise how unwittingly prescient he was when he entitled his propaganda extravaganza, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
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Yesterday I was thinking there are probably less than handful of persons capable of understanding what has been do to produce the adjusted temperature trends.
However, maybe you are right and there is no-one left there. Odd corners of 25-year-old-disks contain obsolete compilers, obsolete code and obsolete data, which origin can’t be traced of. Nasty harry-read-me.txts tell what to do when someone requires an update, and old computations are stored as preprocessed series with no fn clue how to reproduce.
But surely everyone agrees we’re good chaps doing top science? Right!
30
Oh yes. We don’t need a conspiracy when confronted with ineptitude with pride.
20
The process can’t be automated.
The records to be adjusted can’t be identified, else it could be automated.
So what happens if the operator with this expert knowlage goes on holiday?
What “other” information is required?
The output is obvious junk, so what is really going on here?
00
I avoid framing religious manipulations as conspiracies. All that’s needed is a mindset and common vested interest. Everyone knows what they need to do for the sake of expediency.
10
The raw Australian temperature record was obtained by dedicated Australians who every dusk and sunrise dutifully went out and recorded the data. It’s a cherished part of Australian history. The role of the BoM is to hold that record, digitize it and present it to the Australian public in all it’s glory.
Now – if you want to play around with it, make changes to it, draw conclusions from it – fine. That’s investigative science. Present your research via the peer reviewed literature.
Otherwise, let it stand for what it is.
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It’s a disgraceful misuse of their ardent and responsible work. The daily task hundreds of our fellows did on our behalf has been warped into a misrepresented load of rubbish. It’s insulting. It’s abusive. It’s done for a nefarious purpose.
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Since I am not a professional climate scientist (or, indeed, any other sort of scientist) my first thought would have beeen to try to find out why Rutherglen was different from the surrounding sites, rather than fudge the data to make it the same.
Clearly I need a lot more training in climate science in order to stop having such thoughts.
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RoHa That thought may have lead you to find that Rutherglen was infested by scientists like Bill Johnston who were involved with recording many of the temperatures. Being an argumentative type I can asure you that when asked about his numbers he can quickly show that thought and care has gone into every method and calculation. with people like that around problems with the site would have been noticed. I can assure you that the last place you need to suspect of being in serious error is there if he is a reflection of the general culture at that place! So I would be looking at why other sites were different to there and different to Deniliquin first.
http://www.vicdofaghistory.org/documents/GregSmithRRIHistory.pdf
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So you are suggesting that Rutherglen isn’t different from the others, but the others are different from Rutherglen?
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Sort of ROHA. Just suggesting a different order and method.
As a Starting point that minor differences between sites be initially accepted as real data and major differences be checked in order of least competancy and quality of equipment at the site. Now how about doing that by a different method entirely. I would then check ALL sites that appear to have a problem against FULLY DIGITISED DAILY very very local data by digging around for missing official and private non official data.
Comparing to distant sites when local data is ignored is just wrong.
How many farmers around Albury for example kept their own records?
How many records are there that the BoM should have about older checks and investigations including data are missing?
Albury is very close to Rutherglen. Here is the story of an investigation into TWO old sites there. The BoM seem to have conveniently lost all trace of the data from both! So sad when the accuracy checks betweenn them could solve the Rutherglen puzzle.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/108903865?zoomLevel=5
Also do not forget Ken Stewart’s comparisons.
https://kenskingdom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/pairwise-diffs-rutherglen-acorn.jpg
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Looks like that “official Recording”s at the Albury post office continued into 1939.
Yet still a no show at the BoM. Another part of the AWOL data set!.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/160841325?zoomLevel=5
The original problem there could have been helped by a good coat of paint.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/108908007?zoomLevel=5
Records from that site go back to 1994 (before that from the telegraph station). Sadly Wodonga had only half a dozen good private records in 1906.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/108904254?zoomLevel=5
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Ooops “Records from that site go back to 1994” Should be 1894.
60
I believe there are training camp in the making to provide the psychological help non-scientists need to understand true CAGW.
Let’s ask Lew and Cookie if they can provide training for we the ignorant.
20
So I’m likely to end up in a political re-education camp? I always expected that would happen sooner or later. I won’t buy the nonsense the right-wingers peddle, and I won’t toe the line of the left-wingers. I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long.
30
BoM has stepped on to sticky paper from which there is no way back for its credibility.
The fable of briar rabbit comes to mind!
A scientific body that manipulates data to suit a popular or political narrative will be damned in history once science resumes its ascendancy by its verifiably factual basis.
371
I mis-read your last line. At first I thought you were saying when people put on their resume that they’d worked at BoM, it would count against them. Ah me.
40
Matters not, others are protecting their credibility for them, if they are anything like the gang we have here in NZ.
232
Ceetee, they are the same gang.
They all learn their “world’s best practice of homogenisation and adjustment UP” here.
If your not willing to learn it and practice it, you simply can not be part of the gang.
When you click on the link, go to members.
“Team New Zealand ” is in the gang.
As are all the usual “suspects”.
https://www.wmo.int/pages/about/index_en.html
80
It’s the last sentence that’s the kicker:
Give me strength!.
30
Lew paper ? (8>))
30
Thankfully we’ve had the satellite data since 1978. Ken Stewart has used that data to look at the pause in temp for a number of regions and countries around the globe.
Australia hasn’t warmed for 17 years and 8 months, the USA 18 years and 2 months and the south polar region over 35 years. Here’s the link. https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/pause-update/
231
Nice, but UAH wasn’t measuring the surface temperature? The troposphere temperature is of course in interesting conflict, but it is still a different thing.
31
I was reading Jo,s post to my wife who does not follow the climate debate. I got half way through the second paragraph and she said “I get it they make up the numbers to show its warming, I have heard enough”.
Aside from the far left eco zealots everyone would come to the same conclusion………if they knew the truth, the powers that be work very hard to keep it from them.
301
Is it that it is beyond the capacity of Mr. and Mrs. Average to understand that it isn’t getting any hotter without the need to homogenise the land based records and cool the past?
110
What I find most mystifying/disturbing is why the Australian government steadfastly refuses to have the BOM properly audited. Wouldn’t that help us find the truth, one way or the other.
This is disturbing in the light of all the statistical analysis that has been done on the BOM’s methods by people such as Jennifer Marohasy, Ken Stewart and Bill Johnston. These people are not fools. They are motivated by a high ideal – the search for truth. But they just get stonewalled by the BOM.
We need a deep and searching review, not just a white wash as happened with the most recent review. We need a proper audit with top rated, independent statisticians and mathematicians. Let’s find the truth.
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David, there are many people who would like to see scientific methodology followed and a honest answer, but politics has taken over the debate. A long time ago I suggested to PM Abbott that he set-up a commission to look objectively at the available evidence and get it away from the political arena, but it didn’t occur and all we seem to get is a series of failed prediction from the pundits: I suppose that eventually they will get one right due to chance alone. However, if a prediction is made and it is wrong then your hypothesis is flawed and it should be discarded, or modified, but in the field of climate science this doesn’t happen and the bandwagon rolls on.
100
It is to Abbott’s advantage to keep 97% Global Gullible Warming bubbling along.
It has helped him dispose of all his political opponents.
Electricity Bill is next.
61
Today the Conversation anticipates …
The Coalition government has revived its anti-carbon tax campaign in the wake of Labor’s commitment to bring back an emissions trading scheme and increase the contribution of renewable energy to 50% by 2030.
In the 2000s, first New South Wales and then ACT governments introduced carbon trading schemes. The sky did not fall.
. . .
Roflmao!
The extreme weather didn’t stop either!
Peak climate stupidity @thecon.
50
Does the original data, as collected, still exist or has that been destroyed?
90
It is likely to still exist. It is in the advantage of BOM to preserve it.
21
it probably (97% probability) exists…just that no one can find it.
I know that someone tried to “dispose” of the original gazettes that were an official record of all things government (including weather data)going back to the start of the state. Failing that there are digital copies of newspapers and some photo’s of actual observation sheets on the net.
20
This simply confirms that Australian science has gone to the dogs.
Another example is the Department of Environment Web site that states that the greenhouse effect is 33 degrees Celsius as described in the IPCC FAR 1990, Working Group 1. This is plain fiction as the base model used to calculate the greenhouse effect has very little resemblance to our actual Earth being of about the same diameter and the same distance from the Sun when averaged for perturbations of the orbit and little else. The same fictitious number is on the Web site for the Australian Academy of Science.
Apparently it is now okay to proselytise your new-found climate religion via the tax-payer funded Federal Government bureaucracies with no regard for empirical data.
Next thing we know the Australian Academy of Science will be appointing witch-doctors as Fellows.
152
I like the term “Witch Doctor”, pretty descriptive of some climate scientists and better than a High Priest of the Global warming religion.
71
Too late – Tim Flannery was appointed as a Fellow in 2012…
80
Off topic, but I see one of my former bosses from a long, long time ago, Mike McLaughlin, was elected as a Fellow this year.
Based on this, I haven’t lost all hope in the AAS just yet.
40
Speaking of Witch-Doctors…
By, Jove I think Sean Thomas is onto to something!
70
Why isn’t this headline news in every lamestream media outlet?
140
Because they are now merely stenographers directed by in house PC peer group pressure that developed from years of exposure to leftist ideals that destroyed any semblance of balanced reporting, combine this with orders given by green vested shareholder, business and political interests you end up with greed plus self entitlement on a great leap forward scale.
Frankly I’m amazed online MSM sites even deign to allow comments on stories, even heavily moderated the people commenting are…well just people.
70
Because the bureau chief is not Tony Abbott?
00
Novocastrians will be shocked to discover their city is cooling at 0.63 degrees Celsius per century.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Newcastle2.png
81
Shocking but not surprised at the extent of the tactics used. What next?
60
The late 1870s saw a heat spike around the world, that’s what I call global warming.
50
My work on Echuca, Wangaratta, and Benalla all show cooling of the minimums since around 1880. The maximums in general have neither increased nor decreased.
Melbourne however has increased enormously since 1958 by nearly 2oC, which is probably due to UHI, rather than CO2. However when plotted against CO2, there is some agreement. I wonder whether the BOM is using the Melbourne data in their adjustments, even though Melbourne is roughly 200k south of the sites I mentioned and Rutherglen as well.
171
“…I wonder whether the BOM is using the Melbourne data in their adjustments, even though Melbourne is roughly 200k south of the sites I mentioned and Rutherglen as well….”
Jo and Jennifer said
So it looks like that is exactly what happened. The Melbourne data was much more to the liking of the BOM ClimAstrologists that the other data sets.
Also if Australia was set-up like the USA, cities had ‘regular’ stations run by professionals and outlying smaller cities and towns had cooperative stations. This would add to the excuse for using urban areas instead of rural as the standard and then adjusting the rural stations to agree..
Meteorology: A Text-book on the Weather, the Causes of Its Changes, and Weather Forecasting By Willis Isbister Milham (1918)
On page 68 he says a thermometer in a Stevenson screen is correct to within a half degree. It is most in error on still days, hot or cold. “In both cases the indications of the sheltered thermometers are too conservative.”
on Page 70
“The Ventilated thermometer which is the best instrument for determining the real air temperature, was invented by Assman at Berlin in 1887…will determine the real air temperature correctly to a tenth of a degree.”
Willis Milham textbook (1918) also mentions the Six thermometer and says the accuracy was not good so the US weather service used two thermometers mentioned in Instructions To Voluntary Observers of the Weather Bureau (1892) One mercury for the high temperature and an alcohol thermometer for the minimum temperature.
I am sure these scientists from 100 years ago would be appalled at what is happening to their carefully collected data.
AThe care taken is evident in this paper in The American Meteorological Journal, Volume 8 from 1891. It mentions the Richard Freres thermograph which was used in the big cities for continuous recording of the temperature.
Willis Milham says in his textbook (1918)
60
gai – Thank you for that fascinating historical insight.
20
Ditto!
10
Siliggy, Dave,
Here is the link to the 1882 volunteer guide. The instructions are pretty exact which, given an error of 0.5F (~0.3C) makes all these adjustments questionable. Even NOAA says the new MMTS sensors used have an accuracy of “generally” +/-0.5°F so they are no better than the accuracy 100 years ago!
Then the is the recent article by Zeke Hausefeather over at Judith Curry’s Understanding Adjustments to Temperature Data
judithcurry(DOT)com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/
Zeke says
ERRR, well no…
First, for TOB, that 1882 instruction booklet says there were two thermometers, one max (mercury) and one min (alcohol).
For the maximum thermometer they state:
“…When a maximum thermometer is not read for several hours after the highest temperature has occurred and the air in the meantime has cooled down 15° or 20°, the highest temperature indicated by the top of the detached thread of mercury may be too low by half a degree from the contraction of the thread….”
That would indicate the max thermometer should be read just after the heat of the day and any adjustment for reading at the wrong time of day should RAISE the maximum temperature not lower it! This is also why the temperature at the time of reading is taking. Our ancestors were careful scientists.
Zeke is also saying “..MMTS sensors tend to read maximum daily temperatures about 0.5 C colder than LiG thermometers…”
On the face of it that makes zero sense. You have the massive bulky mercury thermometer and the inertia that causes vs a fine wire with rapid response.
Also that isn’t what independent verification shows.
80
“All stations are homogenized but some
stations are more homogenized than others.”
H/ BOM Farm.
332
Beth, Such truthfulness! Jen xo
142
Within the BOM
Tiljander rules
… and yet it cools.
Thx, Jen, and Best Regards.
90
“B.O.M.” – Farm
Bureau of Modifications? – Farm?
90
I’ve often noticed a similar effect. If I stand near someone a bit taller, my height increases a little due to an effect called ‘homogenisation’. Similarly, shrinkage occurs when someone more short walks past. Why is there need to question this? It’s a phenomena known as ‘scale empathy’, measured by ‘pathetic enscalers’, respected peers in sociological sciences.
161
At COP21 there will be a similar phenomena with the size of faux moral outrage being displayed.
Also known as ‘Paris Envy’…..
70
Indeed, if you homogenised other data groups you would end up with;
The homogenised height of all school students at a particular school is 4 foot 2 inches.
The homogenised age of everyone on earth is 27 years old.
The homogenised number of people who won a Nobel Peace Prize is 4,000,000.
Homogenising a number series is just creating a junk number not related to anything in particular within the series.
60
In the virtual B.O.M. world it’s hot,
But here in the real world it’s not,
So to show a warm trend,
Some graph lines must bend,
While appearing quite small,is a lot.
190
11 Aug: WaPo: Jason Samenow: Weather Service replaces ‘too high’ temperature sensor at Reagan National Airport
Responding to concerns that Reagan National Airport’s temperature sensor was reporting erroneously warm temperature readings, the National Weather Service (NWS) installed a new sensor on Monday.
“We have a new temperature sensor out there,” said Jim Lee, meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS forecast office in Sterling, Va., which serves the Washington and Baltimore metro regions. “We want to see if it helps anything.”
In recent weeks, a number of local constituents — including the Capital Weather Gang, former Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels, and WUSA9 meteorologist Howard Bernstein — had voiced concerns that the airport readings were too warm compared to neighboring weather stations. For example, Reagan National had registered more days at or above 90 degrees than any location in the region through early August…
Technicians arrived at Reagan National on Monday and discovered the temperature sensor within the airport’s Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) was reading 1.7 degrees warmer than a reference temperature sensor, known as a psychro-dyne (an instrument roughly the size of a small suitcase)…
After the new sensor was installed Monday, the new temperature reported at Reagan National dropped to 76.5 degrees compared to the 78.7 degrees reported prior – although Lee said some of that change was due to changing sky conditions and a later time, rather than solely the change in equipment…
For example, May 2015 was said to be the warmest on record at Reagan National, edging out May 1991 by just 0.2 degrees. Should a correction be applied and May 1991 reclaim its spot as warmest May ever recorded?
Lee said no — that corrections will not be applied to past data and that doing so would not be scientifically defensible…
Take records with a grain of salt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/08/11/weather-service-installs-new-temperature-sensor-at-reagan-national-airport/?wpisrc=nl_buzz
earlier:
5 Aug: WaPo: Is D.C.’s weather station reading way too hot?
By Jason Samenow and Ian Livingston
(Update, 10:30 a.m. Thursday: Pat Michaels, former Virginia state climatologist and now director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, has posted a very interesting and entertaining commentary on this matter: Too Hot in Washington: A Climate Mystery?)
But from January 2014 through July this year, Reagan National’s monthly temperature difference from normal or “anomaly” has averaged 2.2 degrees above Dulles’ – a fact pointed out to me by former Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels. That is a bit of a red flag signaling Reagan National’s temperature may be reading too warm…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/08/05/is-washington-d-c-s-official-temperature-station-reading-way-too-hot/
70
ROTFLMAO!!!!
70
I wonder how long it will be before they install temperature sensors that are actually calibrated to read the temperature they expect to see?
40
more fodder for ABC’s “Big (CAGW) Ideas”???
5-6 Sept 2015: Sydney Opera House: Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Naomi Klein – Capitalism and The Climate
Is Capitalism now at war with our planet?
Paul Krugman – Bad Ideas
Why don’t bad ideas go away? http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/program/capitalism-and-the-climate/
now, if only Krugman’s topic concerned CAGW!
20
Jo, MAJOR FIND!
We have always known the ClimAstrologists and other university types were coordinated world wide but could never prove it. I think I found the proof!
Sure looks like CAGW and Sustainability has been funded and coordinated, since 1991. It looks like it started as a Pilot Project of the much hated World Bank no less.
I was doing a bit of new digging on Raymond Clémençon, facultiy member of University of California. He was one of the negotiators on the Rio Declaration and the Agenda 21. That lead me to his bio
So what the heck is the Global Environment Facility?
Unfortunately my computer hung when I tried to access Global Environment Facility: In Depth
https://www.thegef.org/
So we get the short version:
WIKI says
160
gai,
Their website is at http://www.thegef.org/.
Also See http://iwlearn.net/publications/mne/mne-others/mne-nov2004/ME.C.24.Inf1-Biodiversity_Program_Study.pdf
Also use ‘thegef.org’ as the search term (at ‘google scholar’)to get plenty of reports about from this organization.
40
gai,
You may wish to read this word document about the GEG past and GEF future, and the financial distribution direction steering of GEF.
http://zunia.org/sites/default/files/media/node-files/ge/127914_GEG_and_GEF.doc
30
Thanks Tom,
Since we don’t use Microsoft, I am not sure I can open it. But I will take a look.
20
gai,
I don’t have M$Oriffice but LibreOffice/OpenOffice(For safety ensure macros are off) will open it, and I believe Google docs can open it in the correct rendition of the layout.
From other documents from the Google scholar search GEF is funded by the World Bank and others, missions are guided via UNFCCC to satisfy COP tasks.
See http://www.sei-international.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/the_global_environment_facility_funding_adaptation.pdf
30
Thanks Tom, My system must be just old and cranky. (I have been promised a new computer and updated software… The birthday comes soon…)
40
I think this PC is probably older, at 14 years old, with a Pentium3 (500Mhz) pushing hard on 564 Mb of memory.
20
David, thanks!
10
There is an online pdf reader here. Just paste the URL in to the box. That might solve your problem.
20
Soory, was distracted. Here it is. http://view.samurajdata.se
10
David Maddison,
Nice to know and I’ve bookmarked it.
I have a few PDF readers, PDF editors, and an ebook reader. LibreOffice (which is M$Office compatible) for all the office stuff and image editing.
Video and sound s/w are removed, mostly as I don’t see video well and the processor can’t keep up.
Some versions of Linux just runs so well on old kit, it puts M$ to shame.
Thanks for the link.
🙂
30
Looking in from the outside (I live in the USA), it seems to me that the current Australian government is somewhat less enthusiastic about promoting the AGW scam/alternative energy. Why hasn’t the government convened a commission to investigate the “homogenization” of Australia’s temperature record? Or am I incorrect about the present government’s inclinations in this area?
141
Chuck L:
The government is divided internally about the matter, so decisive action would cause public brawling and loss of office. Also they are too busy on minor matters like making sure they still get “expenses” that they rarely, if ever, think about it.
The voting public is split also, somewhere near 50:50 depending on how the poll is rigged. Thus the government fears it will lose “the swinging vote” if it stops sitting on the fence.
Personally I think that all those who believe in global warming a.k.a climate change etc. won’t vote for the government anyway, so they should have convened a commission, but now the election is too close to get an inquiry finished.
110
Thanks, hoping to visit your beautiful country in the next few years!
30
Make it soon, Australia’s heating up you know!
20
If any university science student mistreated data the way the BoM does they would be failed or worse. And look what’s happened to other scientists that have presented false data in the past. For some examples look at Wikipedia “scientific misconduct”.
110
Students are “taught” to fiddle experimantal data at Uni.. Because the “correctness” of the experimental results is based on the theory being taught.
It’s not new. Goes back to well before I did Chemistry 110 in 1977 and got an “imperfect” mark in a lab report because the experimental method and thus the errors were too large to give the “proper” result.
01
In my professional work I would end up in jail if I adjusted measurement results without having documented that a mismeasurement had occurred, and also documented the individual corrections in a scientific manner. If I suspected a mismeasurement, without being able to document an error, I would have to live with the original measurement.
141
About all you can do is footnote it and widen the error bars.
Interesting how the error is never ever mentioned to the public.
41
It’s adjustments all the way down.
51
What is interesting is looking at the dates surrounding the development of CAGW that BOM, NOAA and the MET are frantically adjusting weather data to support.
1972 — We know Maurice Strong was chair of the First Earth Summit in 1972 and at that time first raised ‘Global Warming’ however given the cold weather grain crisis starting in 1969 it sat on the floor for over a decade just lying there while the pilot balloon, the Montreal Protocol was flown.
1973 — A year after two chemists at the University of California, began studying the impacts of CFCs in the Earth’s atmosphere. Their paper was published in June 1974, and they testified at a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1974. As a result, significant funding was made available. (How in heck did they get the ear of Congress????) In 1976, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (the guys who control who gets federal grant funding in the USA.) released a report that confirmed the scientific credibility of the ozone depletion hypothesis. (See rest of history at WIKI)
1987 — The treaty was agreed to on 16 September 1987 and went into force 1 January 1989.
1988 —Tim Wirth organized the 1988 Senate hearing at which James Hansen addressed global warming. Wirth is responsible for the dirty tricks (Pick historic hottest day, open windows, shutting off A/C the night before) used to sway Congress. Wirth led the U.S. negotiating team at the Kyoto Summit. He is now President of the United Nations Foundation drumming up money for the UN.
1988 — It was at career diplomat and British ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Crispin Tickell, suggestion that Thatcher made her influential speech to the Royal Society on 27 September 1988.
1990 — At Margaret Thatcher’s personal instigation the UK Met Office set up its Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, which, she opened in 1990. The Hadley Centre, in turn, helped to produce the primary data set which was used by the newly founded IPCC. SEE: James Delingpole Article
1991 — The Global Environment Facility was established in October 1991 as a $1 billion pilot program in the World Bank to assist in the protection of the global environment and to promote environmental sustainable development [and Climate Change]
1992 — The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ratified by the USA on 21/03/94. The Clinton Administration committed the United States to a 7 percent reduction from 1990 levels and agreed that developing countries–including China, India, and Brazil–should be excluded from these targets. (It was signed by Clinton on 12/06/92)
1997 — Chris Horner as as Director of Federal Government Relations for Enron in the spring of 1997, was at the Enron meeting with George W. Bush. It was the last time BP was in the Presidential office until the Gulf oil crisis. (George W. Bush was the one who stepped in overruling the people at the State Department, and made sure Maurice Strong was Chair at Kyoto.) The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in late 1997 however Bush refused to sign. Bush supported ” a policy approach to the issue of global climate change that is based on sound science, and he has offered to work with America’s allies and through international processes to “develop technologies, market-based incentives, and other innovative approaches” that would address the factors involved more effectively.”
101
“Small choices about which stations to to[sic} use first in the process can make a huge difference to the end result.”
Is this an example of the “butterfly effect” of chaos theory? If so, it appears that the BOM is staffed by a bunch of butterflies.
61
I think many climate sceptics have done themselves a disservice by accepting that there has been global warming but not at a rate that is alarming. They also concede the science that some of this is man made. Besides the fact that if there has been any warming the amount is so minimal that a human who travelled back in time wouldn’t realise the difference the desire of global bureaus and governments to stick to the warming narrative has not only made them believe they can change the future they also think they can also change the past. What if everything about the global warming theory was wrong? My frustration is that the average joe in the public doesn’t know any of this and is totally influence by the propagander that is put out by the media. What is needed is for Jennifer Marohasy and a BOM representative be put in the same room with cameras on and explain to the Canberra Press gallery how the process of homogenisation works.
We need more vocal support in all the press not just the Australian where many of its readers would be sceptics anyway. I feel so exasperated that governments commit billions of dollars to perpetrate a fraud.
101
Two minor updates added just to clarify things.
“[UPDATE: Note that many raw records are patchy and not well documented. They often do need adjustment, but the reasons need to be transparent, exact, justified, and Australians need to know how influential these adjustments are.]”
“The Bureau of Meteorology admits its methods are secret. [UPDATE: See the link — the Bureau specifically admits no one outside the BoM can replicate their work because it would require detailed instructions, “operator training” and it’s too “onerous”.]”
The egregious thing here is the way the trends, and the record events get reported as if they are unquestionable when so much manipulation is going on behind the scenes. That message is used as PR to sell policies, and is marketed as “science” when it is so flagrantly not.
183
Joanne,
What seems to be missing from the critique of this trash called meteorology, is the current rush to prove something with the adjustments. Such adjustments are throwing out the baby with the bathwater! Who besides the WMO gives a rat’s x of some global temperature? It is always the rapid deviations from any average that hold the information in any measurement. The documented evidence that weather is extremely variable over very short times and distances that make such measurements valuable. Many many kudos to all those that dutifully recorded such measurements for all history.
20
“Small choices about which stations to to[sic} use first in the process can make a huge difference to the end result.”
It might also explain the ever changing past. When a station is homogenised it must be a gold standard, and can then be used to homognise the surrounding stations next time a compilation is done.
40
Jo and Jennifer ,i and everyone else can sense your anger and frustration with BOM in your words, you two and others such as Ken have put a lot of time and trouble into exposing the shenanigans (Check out the Google definition of that word on google voice search,it fits the BOM perfectly) and it must feel like your all banging your heads against a brick wall, but look i and many others would not know about this carry on if you people had not sacrificed the time and trouble to bring this information to us,so we owe you a dept of gratitude,so i for one will be taking Jennifers advice by sending you some chocolate. Now , its my simple basic understanding from visiting your blog over the years that what the BOM are trying to do in simple terms is to prove man made global warming by drawing a linear trend line in the temperature data that shows an up slope thats in lockstep with increases in CO2 in the atmosphere since the end of the little ice age (and the beginning of the industrial revolution) up to now. They’ve largely achieved this linear trend by cooling the past temperature records whilst warming the temperature records of the recent past, but many people are now talking about a period of cooling in the near future and if they’re right then BOM in order to keep showing a linear trend would have to start cooling temperatures in the near past that they’ve previously adjusted upwards !! thats when their gravy train will hit the buffers and the likes of Ken , Jennifer and you Jo can take the credit you so richly deserve .
181
Tony Heller (Steven Goddard) has been doing the same sort of checking on the US dataset.
Then he plotted the ADJUSTMENTS vs the ‘Official increase’ in CO2. He came up with an almost perfect correlation R^2 = 0.98667
SEE:CO2 Drives NCDC Data Tampering
I wonder if the BOM adjustments also have near perfect correlation with the Mauna Loa CO2 dataset?
(I do not have the computer expertise to check and put up the graph. Grumble..)
122
P S and please checkout the latest article on Andrews blog because maybe, if it is true, none of this fuss will matter in the near future http://bishophill.squarespace.com/
40
Also see notice at Bishophill about Steyn’s new book with Cartoons by Josh!
50
doubting dave @ # 34
Andrew Montfords [ the “Bishop Hill” blog ] references to small [ transportable ] nuclear reactors ie; Small Modular Reactors [ SMR’s ] is quoting some old news.
They have been under research and early development for a couple of decades now.
For a full run down on nuclear fission reactors of every conceivable type and conformation and you might be very surprised just how many types and configurations of fission type nuclear reactors there are plus how many types were actually built and operated experimentally in the 1950’s 60’s 70’s and into the 80’s.
Plus a bit on potential Fusion Reactor technology.
The information string is;
The Information Library of the World Nuclear Association
>> Nuclear fuel cycle
>>Nuclear Power Reactors
>> Small Nuclear Power Reactors >>
Down at the bottom of the listed reactor types and a number of types of Small Modular Reactors [ SMR’s ] and developers and potential manufacturers are listed in the Further Information notes.
30
I should have added that it is my very firm belief that we will be going Fusion for our entire planetary power needs and considering the number of large corporations now very quietly researching fusion reactor system, mankind will likely see a commercially developed fusion reactor or many such commercially developed Fusion reactors on line by the end at least of the 21st century .
—————-
Further information on nuclear SMR’s [ Small Modular Reactors ] that are generally transportable to the location of use can be found in an International Atomic Energy Agency [ IAEA ] publication.
Advances in Small Modular Reactor Technology Developments
30
Those small modular reactors could also be used on ships and on railroad locomotives.
Thorium-Fueled Automobile Engine Needs Refueling Once a Century
The Chinese scientists have been haunting Oak Ridge lab
blogs(DOT)knoxnews.com/munger/2012/01/whos-that-knocking-ornls-front.html
and also hacked their computer.
securitywatch(DOT)pcmag.com/google/283508-oak-ridge-national-laboratory-hacked
They want the patent.
……………….
We have the ideas, we have the brain power we have the engineers. Now if our blasted governments would just get out of the way we could make life a heck of a lot nicer for everyone.
I really dislike the Progressive Luddites who want to send us back to the 1700s.
60
Gai @ # 34.2.1.1
The Indians may even be ahead of the Chinese when it comes to Thorium reactors;
And the Indians are looking at using particle beam accelerators to apply the required nuclear fission process instead of using a plutonium fission trigger to get the thorium to fission and provide the heat for steam generation.
Interestingly Canada’s domestically designed and built and very well proven and very safe CANDU reactors can use thorium already as a fuel and apparently get a very high burn up of the fuel.
Unfortunately the CANDU’s are very capital expensive to build although the Chinese have a couple of CANDU’s operating as a part of their nuclear power generation technology assessment as to which types they should concentrate on.
India Turns to Thorium as Future Reactor Fuel
Sometimes I wonder if the western worlds apparent complete stupidity in its supposed abject horror and rejection of nuclear and now fossil fuels while the under-developed world powers ahead with western developed power generation technologies in steam and nuclear, won’t be a blessing in disguise.
If an outfit like Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works” or any of the other half dozen corporations working on small compact Fusion reactor designs achieve above break even power generation in their reactors by the end of the 2030’s then strictly from the angle that apart from the unmitigateable stupidity at any level of the so called and badly misnamed green luvvies renewable energies other than hydro, the western world will leap frog from fossil fueled steam to Fusion powered either steam or direct conversion power generation in one generation of power generators.
Mean while every other nation who went big time into nuclear and great masses of coal and oil fired generators will be stuck with their aging nuclear and coal fired plants until towards the end of the 21st century.
Then comes the problem of what to do with the high radiation waste products and highly radio active components of hundreds of old nuclear reactors.
There is actually a very simple and extremely safe disposal route for any radio active waste but it would require a complete turn over of the present international treaties on the seas.
Simply encase the radio active waste in the various “crete” type materials that have been developed to hold the waste in a permanent form for centuries.
Design the containers in a bomb shaped form.
Find a location in the Southern Ocean say between 90 West and 165 East and south of 40 South which is one hell of a long way from anywhere including shipping routes.
Locate a place on the ocean floor there where there are soft sediments some tens of hundreds of metres thick and drop those bomb shaped radio active material containing “crete” bombs or torpedoes into the sediments where they will penetrate tens of metres below the sea floor.
And thats the last anybody or even any fish or ocean species will ever see of them.
Of course something so simple will cause a huge uproar by all the green luvvies even if it actually rendered everybody’s lives a bit safer for centuries into the future as the radio active material that we will leave behind would no longer be the problem for future generations.
But as we know from the banning of DDT which was well on the way towards stopping malaria in its tracks in the 1960’s and 70’s and;
The ongoing and continuing attempts by the humanity hating green luvvy bigots to stop the release of the life saving Vitamin A containing Golden Ricethat will stop suffering and save lives for millions of rice eaters around the world, all because it is a supposed GMO, and ;
The attempts to prevent the building of Dams to provide power and water to impoverished peoples and so m,more examples from the Green Peaces, the WWF’s , the Friends of the Earth and all their innumerable front organisations that consist of a desk and a list of media telephone numbers, human lives don’t count at all with these evil and despicable western based green bigots in the misnamed environmental organisations unless it is their own lives.
All other lives are completely expendable in the name of their mythical God, that undefined and remote and mythical chimera that begins about a few tens of kilometres outside of the verges of the large cities they live in and which must be protected at all costs regardless, THE ENVIRONMENT.
60
Thanks, ROM
I was not aware of India’s work had progressed so far. I was aware the CANDU could use Thorium.
As far as the mankind hating Malthusian Econuts go, that is why I use the word Conservationist to describe myself.
I would suggest all of us who are concerned about the environment in a sane way use the term Conservationist to distinguish ourselves from the not so sane fringe groups.
40
“EPA and BoM – Agencies that need regulating”
It seems coincidental that Australians are having to deal with BoM’s mismanagement of data, whilst here in America we dealing with the “always consistently incompetent” EPA.
The EPA have just allowed the dumping of 3 million gallons of metallic poison into one river and which is now happily on its way to the very big Colorado river… this is after having been sued for incompetence in a previous case.
As was once said by a famous Republican….
131
Jo says
I agree that raw data often needs adjustment. Techniques are laid out in World Meteorological Organization paper GUIDELINES ON CLIMATE METADATA AND HOMOGENIZATION. The problem is that historically the data detailed metadata is not there. You have to try to identify and eliminate the measurement biases by homogenisation algorithms. Most commonly these are pair-wise comparisons, through a long series of iterations. The WMO assumes that over the homogenisation area the only differences in trend are due to measurement biases so homogenisation will cleanse the data. This is clearly not true. Real temperature trends markedly over quite small distances and sometimes data biases – especially UHI – may be consistent across a number of nearby stations. Although homogenisation will usually be an improvement, it will create anomalies. That means the output needs to be checked by other means, such as from the site metadata, or from independent measures of biases such as UHI.
However, there is another reason for homogenisation. As Jennifer Marohasy says in her letter to the BOM spokesperson
The trends are not the same for Rutherglen as surrounding stations. Leaving aside the issue of homogenizing raw Rutherglen data with homogenized data from other areas, it still leaves the issue of real differences when you are trying to create an Australian temperature anomaly, which is constructed through dividing the surface into a grid. Each data set needs to become a grid reference point, showing the estimated average for the grid, and providing smooth contours across the area. Real trends do not follow this pattern, so are deleted out. The scale of the adjustments will be greater
– the more aggressive the homogenization method(s)
– the sparser the data
– the greater the natural differences in trend
– the greater the differences in measurement biases between the stations.
I have laid this out in greater detail in my post Defining “Temperature Homogenisation”, with link to the WMO paper. A clear example where there is a significant difference in local trend is in Paraguay in the late 1960s. Both the GHCN and the BEST data sets homogenized out real trends.
90
Kevin, I agree. We should not even consider homogenzation until we have a full documentable, historic analysis of each site used. Even after we know which stations are good ones, it’s a silly idea to think that Hillston on the hot flat plains of NSW, would be useful in diagnosing problems in Rutherglen in colder, greener wine growing territory, near the Snowy Mountains.
120
Jo,
We cannot demand that only sites with full information are used. In particular the further back in time one goes, the less data there is and the more incomplete is the metadata. Even with complete metadata, it is only possible to estimate the impact of measurement biases (e.g. re-siting or urbanisation) on the data, and that is mostly from other local weather stations. Homogenisation is required. But, there will be instances where the real trend at a locality varies so homogenisation corrupts the data rather than makes it closer to the data free of biases. For instance, Rutherglen might be climatically different to most of Australia not because it is cooler but that mountainous areas are likely to have their own local climates with much more random variation than flattish plains. A way to identify these instances is to check the data post homogenisation. When I did this for Paraguay I found that both GHCN/GISS and Berkeley Earth had both cancelled a cooling in the data of one degree at the end of the 1960s common to at least eight temperature stations covering over 100000 km2. The key is to checking the size of the adjustments, along with comparing the results of different homogenisation algorithms.
I would also suggest a reason why climatologists get very prickly about checking their assumptions, which is from a particularly dogmatic UK-based blogger. He wrote on temperature homogenisation:-
Like so many in the climate community he believes the a priori truths of climate theory, so if the data varies from our beliefs about the world then it the data that is wrong.
Another reason is from the Wikipedia article on climatology, which begins
Average surface temperature is the key figure that measures global warming. By investigating the temperature data over the past few months I have come to realize that data is often discontinuous. People who believe in the mantra “the world is warming and the humans are a cause of it” might not be able to accept that climatology is based on pretty insecure foundations.
20
You’re all being too kind and BoM don’t deserve your generosity. They’re cheating the data, they’re cheating the people who recorded it all those years ago and they’re cheating the scientific process, but most of all they’re cheating your country of its national and scientific integrity, and what’s more they KNOW they’re cheating.
[SNIP we need to stay away from legal terms. -J]
100
Dilley has forty-two years of professional experience in the meteorology and climatology and many publications.
He was with NOAA for twenty years.
Not only is the government wrong with its claims of a coming warming, Dilley accuses the federal government of fiddling with global temperature data with the aim of producing a false picture of what is going on. (via notrickszone)
100
I always find problems with the way the BoM shade the maps in its summaries. For instance for district 40 in Qld (which takes in Brisbane) the actual max mean anomalies for individual sites show a below average range. But the map shows an above average range. The BoM does this quite regularly.
Thus if the mean temp for a state/Australia is worked out by using some algorithm based on the shading technique and not on the individual site temps, this would give a different result (similar to adjusting temps of on site based on nearby stations).
See here at:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/qld/summary.shtml
70
But raw temperature measurements don’t on their own convey just how brutal this winter has been.
Some locations in the central west of NSW have now seen five snowfalls in five weeks.
These are places that are lucky to see one snowfall a year.
. . .
Raw Data? Cold?
Release the BoM data converters …
111
Snow in unusual places is due to global warming (TM).
60
“What’s the answer?”
The answer is the same as for the ABC – what this government has failed to do: FIX the BOM.
61
Please correct me if I am wrong but it was the inability for warmists (I won’t call them scientists, they are not) to demonstrate warming with actual data that lead to them fabricating data and then pretending it was “homogenised” real data. It has no relation to real data but they pretend it does to give them credibility. The data sets they have fabricated are designed to demonstrate their hypothesis of global warming.
Can’t the whole CAGW therefore be simply demolished by demanding that the BoM, NOAA and all the other climate agencies demonstrate using rigorous scientific methods why the data needs to be “homogenised”. If they can’t, then the whole hypothesis is proved null. And they won’t be able to because as gai mentioned above, homogenisation is based on the invalid statistical technique of “Krigging”.
51
A further thought – haven’t the warmist scammers made things easier for us to demonstrate the truth? If the idea of “homogenisation” can be proven invalid then the whole warmist case falls apart.
– It has no logical basis
– It is based on an invalid statistical technique of Krigging.
– No one will disclose the methodology therefore the results aren’t reproducible – therefore not science.
– There is no experimental data to prove its validity.
70
There is historical and scientific evidence that the adjustments are not needed or are in the wrong direction or as in the case of UHI ignored or only partly adjusted to compensate.
Worse they do not bother to actually do the investigation into the historical records to see WHY there is a change in the weather. Instead they use techniques such as ‘Scalpelling’ one of the BEST’s slicing methodology.
In other words they are TOO DARN LAZY to do the actual scientific grunt work and instead write a computer program that masticates the data and spits out something they hope resembles science. They hope it has enough of a resemblance that with lots of dancing, they can dazzle the Useful Innocents, via the compliant MSM into believing it is ‘science’
We are going through a classic case of temperature that would be ‘Scalpelled’ The temperatures this summer have been running a min of ~70F (21C) and a max of 95F (35C) or above we had a polar air mass come down the east coast and we are on the edge of it. The temperatures suddenly dropped to ~85F (29C) the last few days and this morning was a chilly 58F (14C). This means towns east, south and west of us can still have the high temperature weather while towns north of us do not.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-105.79,19.50,360
So how does the temperature get ‘adjusted’ ?
20
It is interesting that the BOM uses stations over 500 Km away when homogenizing their station records. I live on a hill in Batemans Bay NSW open to the north easterly sea breezes while the town center is down low by the river and situated such that it does not benefit form those north easterlies. On a warm summers day the temperature at our place is usually around 5 deg C. cooler than the town center and that is only 5Km away.
It is pure nonsense contending that a station 500 Km away is going to exhibit the same temperature at a particular time and should be used to homoginise the temp records a place so remote.
John
121
JPM, they argue that the trends would be the same. But I doubt this too. If jet streams / highs / lows etc shift slightly north or south a whole lot of towns will change in trend, and they won’t be changing in the same direction.
Thus the homogenisation blurs out the data which may be giving us real information about natural climate change.
80
Around a dozen or more years ago I did a paddock scale experiment.
The paddock / field to some, is located 25 or so kilometres north of Horsham in Victorias west and is located on the Kalkee plains which are flat as in flat. Described by one Western Australian visitor as” If you tipped over a beer, it wouldn’t stop running for 40 kilometres”
There are no hills or ranges within 50 kilometres of this area.
It is flat.
Nor are there any stands of timber beyond the small wind break plantations around the farm houses.
There is only one farm house located near the field but still some hundreds of metres from the field.
The field is square at two kilometres on a side, four square kilometres or 400 hectares in area.
The field has been in the family’s possession since 1972 and I have always farmed it sowing cereal and pulse crops.
For a long time I had my suspicions that about one quarter of that 400 hectare field had a lower rainfall than the other three quarters so a dozen years ago I set up thirteen rain gauges in a pattern, spread evenly right across that 400 hectares.
The gauges were fairly crude as cost was a factor but were all identical to one another and calibrated against a master gauge.
They were set up in about April, the start of our critical winter and spring rainfall period.
Boots,[ that was his diet as a pup, ] my now departed old dog and I walked those thirteen rain gauges each week from April to September [ bloody hard going when it was wet and cold and a bit of mud as well ] across that 400 hectares in the planted and growing cereal crop and measured the weekly rainfall accumulated in each gauge and recorded it.
From my recordings of the rainfall in that flat totally open field with no trees, no houses, no more than a couple of metres difference in height and that in just one corner of the field, there was a very marked rainfall deficit of well over 25 mms in a total rainfall, from memory, of around 200 mms across the rest of the field .
This deficit in rainfall was across three or four gauges in one corner, about one fifth of the field and in the opposite corner to that where the small, lower terrain old swamp corner was located.
Alongside this lower rainfall area in the field there was a slightly higher rainfall measured in the next and adjoining corner of the same field but far from enough to even out the consistent rainfall deficit that every weekly measurement showed in that exact same section of that field every time.
I even switched gauges around from high recording parts of the field to the lower recording section with no difference in results.
As a power and glider pilot since 1960 plus being a farmer plus being interested in meteorology and in airflow around and across varying terrain and the the consequent weather and climate variations across that terrain all my life, I think I can safely say that I have a fairly good grasp on the on ground, localised factors that influence weather and rainfall in our local area and on my patch.
There was and is nothing at all anywhere in terrain, soil types, upwind features, trees , buildings or anything at all that I could put that rainfall variation down to.
Nor could any of the more expert weather people suggest any reasons for that variation in rainfall in that very localised area in that flat, completely open and unobstructed in any way, 400 hectare field.
A similar experiment was carried out in Western Australia on a very much smaller scale which was written up in an Ag journal I think, and they too found unexplainable differences in rainfall in only a few hundred metres.
I attempted to repeat the experiment next season with the gauges in the same position but it was a full scale drought year and I recorded very little rainfall and lost heart after a few weeks of futile walking all those kilometres across heavy going paddocks.
Another instance was from a friend who had a farm on the southern edge of the Victoria’s Big Desert.
He told me that there were places on his property where he could literally walk along a few metres outside of a totally invisible line and stay dry where the showers came out of the desert scrub lands a couple of hundred metres to that line and stopped right there.
I proposed to the well known farmer run experiment orientated Birchip Cropping Group in the Victoria’s southern Mallee region, that they set up a wide area grid of some dozens of rain gauges over some tens of square kilometres to try and get some idea on the rainfall and temperature and wind variations that exist across tens of square kilometres areas.
It was another of those project proposals that went through the wringer as to what they could accomplish with the resources they had and so it lost out.
The point here is that despite the appearances of a homogeneous [ bad choice of word but still in this case applicable usage ] locality and there fore the expectations of quite small local variations in weather factors, the variations can be very significant and of an unpredicted and unexpected variety and nature over quite short distances of a couple of hundred metres and do so for no visible or explainable or obvious reason.
So homogenising weather records between stations when a shift of a stations might incur very different conditions that are very localised even within the locality really doesn’t support even the concept let alone the implementation of a transfer of the claimed and supposed local conditions in one locality projected onto the another distant station’s records to supposedly create a common trend in the recorded climate.ie;homogenising.
Local conditions are far, far more variable in quite short distances and time frames than is realised or accepted by the likes of the monolithic BOM and its centralised city located, theory driven “scientist bureaucrats”.
Strangely it seems ok for the BOM to homogenise all sorts of data to ensure that a common climate trend is clear amongst a whole group of quite distant to each other stations but they haven’t yet got the cojones as yet to put out a weather forecasts that say that because Hillston is going to be 36 C today therefore Rutherglen will be 34 C and if you read something different on your thermometer you will be wrong because we at the BOM, are scientists and our weather homogenisation between stations a few hundred kilometres distant to each other is perfect therefore we are right and you don’t know what you are talking about if you think what you saw on your thermometer is completely different to our official temperature for your locality.
Then again maybe thats what they really do!
70
ROM
Inquisitiveness.
Curiosity.
Hard work to look for an answer.
That sound suspiciously like REAL SCIENCE!
KK
00
Former NOAA scientist warns of Arctic cooling and claims the US govt is fiddling with temp data.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/08/12/now-starting-to-see-a-dramatic-cooling-in-the-arctic-says-former-noaa-meteorologist-extremely-cold-from-2025-to-2050/#comments
80
The price of BOM’s dishonesty..
The cost to Australia’s reputation as a member of the international scientific community could be far reaching.
However, those in the commercial world who actually use this data for other than climate studies may well choose to “blacklist” the BOM and seek alternative sources especially if their Business rely on accurate temperature data. ( investors in agricultural enterprises)
The behavior of BOM is very similar to the British MET and the American EPA and all of these agencies (with their activists) will eventually have to submit to oversight in the future.
It is uncertain what the outcome is going to be , but the GOP is definitely targeting the EPA with a “heavy fist”, and there will be some serious cut backs in store for this particular agency.
Why Obama is promising money for climate change policy I still don’t know , hasn’t anyone told him he has no money to give. (see Senate and House )… he should be more concerned about China and it’s playing around with the currency markets which just wiped out 500 points.(see A rare “death cross” appeared Tuesday ).
I wonder how well Australia is posed to handle a financial crisis in the pacific economy as it divests itself of cheap energy.
121
The BoM corporate motto shold be “BoM – cooling the past and warming the future”.
141
Its a great line, I’ll put it on my list.
40
Thanks.
00
Do you think anyone at BoM reads this blog? And if they did, would they understand because there doesn’t seem to be any scientists or technical people there.
130
If anyone at the BOM read this blog they would be sacked.
All we need is one whistleblower, one public servant with the scientific integrity to step forward and tell the truth…..
70
One of the latest GetUp cult strategies when commenting on line against the continuing use of fossil fuels, as in coal fired power stations, is that they and coal mining are subsidised. This is usually claimed to counter discussion about taxpayer funded subsidies for wind turbines and solar systems. I have discovered that few if any leftists know anything about finance and economics, for them business tax deductions are subsidies. And infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports and coal loaders are taxpayer funded subsidies. They seem to believe that legal tax deductions are tax avoidance by “big business”, that legal tax minimisation is tax evasion. And that the cost of renewables is falling and will soon make coal too expensive. Where does this garbage come from?
140
Dennis,
It comes from the same place as the canard that us skeptics are in the pay of Big Oil, Al Gore’s Handbook.
(I really need those back checks from Big Oil they say are in the mail cause I need a new roof and heating system…)
00
Has anyone considered a Freedom from Information request to the BoM requiring information on their homogenisation methodology?
http://www.bom.gov.au/foi/?ref=ftr
50
Consider where you live. Is it too hot for you? If so, move south (tasmania or NZ) or north (Canada). If you like it, stay where you are. If people are moving south from Sydney to Tasmania or Christchurch and Dunedin, the data will show it. Likewise in the Nothern Hemisphere, migrations fom Denver to Calgary will show it.
60
How many people are moving from Dunedin to Antarctica? Lots of land out there. Or Chicago to Whitehorse, Yukon. Way lots of land out there.
80
Why would anyone move to Antarctica? There are heatwaves there, you know.
70
gai –
i posted a comment for you at jo’s previous “Australian target…” thread, in response to your Ged Davis/ShellScenarios Climategate email comment. hope you saw it.
re The World Bank – it is ironic that the politically ideological CAGW followers are never informed by the MSM about the primary role the Bank they so despise has played & continues to play in the CAGW scam. there must be so many World Bank execs, & other CAGW architects, laughing at their gullibility & thankful to the MSM for their complicity.
11 Aug: World Bank: Investors Welcome Newly Released World Bank Green Bond Impact Report
The first World Bank (IBRD) Green Bond Impact Report provides an overview of the environmental and social impacts expected from eligible projects that help World Bank client countries adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change…
The World Bank (IBRD) has issued 100 green bonds in 18 currencies, raising the equivalent of US$8.4 billion. As of June 30, 2015, these bonds have supported the funding of 77 green bond eligible projects with commitments totaling US$13.7 billion…
(LINK) The first World Bank Green Bond Impact Report (pdf)responds to investor interest for more clarity on the environmental and social benefits of their investments in this expanding market…
“As an investor, Zurich wants to better understand how investments translate into social and environmental outcomes. With green bonds in particular, it’s the impact that makes all the difference,” said Manuel Lewin, Head of Responsible Investment of Zurich Insurance Group. “The impact reporting pioneered by World Bank and others is setting a standard, and may just give ‘value creation’ a whole new meaning.”…
Collaborating with investors and other issuers…
(LINK) This report is also part of a broader effort by the World Bank to coordinate harmonization of impact measurement and reporting (pdf) in cooperation with other multilaterals, as follows a request made to the World Bank by green bond investors looking to compare reports…
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/08/11/investors-welcome-world-bank-green-bond-impact-report
the complicit Guardian. read all (Guardian doesn’t even give a bio of Kyte or her title):
10 Aug: Guardian: World Bank: clean energy is the solution to poverty, not coal
World Bank: clean energy is the solution to poverty, not coal
by Rachel Kyte (World Bank’s vice president and special envoy for climate change).
For the developing world, this moment represents an opportunity. The challenge is to build economies that are competitive without carbon. Let’s keep our eyes on ***the prize.
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/aug/07/world-bank-clean-energy-is-the-solution-to-poverty-not-coal
40
Pat,
Thanks, I just read it. Looks like someone else saw Shells’, doubletalk for what it was, killing the competition.
40
If the universe is slowly dying, running out of energy, the question must be asked, why conserve fossil fuels on Earth and waste time and money on so called renewables?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/the-universe-is-slowly-dying-galaxy-survey-confirms-1.3186936
30
Interesting exercise but is it really sufficiently advanced to be drawing such conclusions or is it just more wild, headline grabbing speculation ?
“However he admits that not enough is known about the strange properties of dark energy to cover all possibilities, nor was the energy contribution from gamma-rays, X-rays and radio waves included in the survey.”
Never mind the Universe. Our solar system has a lot less time left and it won’t be a lack of energy that does for us, unless the theGreens get their way & we all freeze to death waiting for useless renewables to deliver before the Sun goes SuperNovae then collapses into a ‘Black Hole’
40
The adjustment and homogenization is part of government culture, that is: brutal conformity, which in this case has an added political dimension because it suits a broader and external ideological agenda.
People within it can’t see this, partly because they are trained to conform from day one, and partly because they wouldn’t have a job if they don’t conform.
I would just say that nothing internal will change the government’s drive to conform the data, until some kind of external reason or social dynamic forces it to do so.
30
Indeed, but you have to wonder how such a broad church of ideologically diverse governments in the democratic world have managed to be so broadly aligned on an issue that is so palpably uncertain. And they know it. Why?.
00
as BoM & the Wivenhoe Dam engineers were connected to the following, would love if someone can access the Hedley Thomas article in The Australian today. i can’t even access the blog:
Floods ravage Grantham in the Lockyer Valley region of Queensland in 2011 …
The Australian – 11 hours ago
Dr Macintosh’s expert hydrology report is understood to conclude that in the most likely scenario, the presence of Mr Wagner’s quarry slightly delayed the flooding of Grantham, about 3km downstream, by between one and three minutes as the pit filled …
The Australian | Latest Australian National & Business News …
33 mins ago – A businessman’s quarry had zero adverse impact on a flood that killed 12, according to
The Australian (blog) – 11 hours ago
A brief exchange between the Mayor of Grantham and lawyers from a royal commission-style inquiry dropped some big hints a week ago as to the most likely man-made structure with a role in the town’s 2011 flood. … The inquiry would have been aware its …
the short version:
13 Aug: 9News: AAP: Quarry ‘not to blame’ for Qld flood deaths
A quarry owned by a prominent Queensland businessman didn’t worsen the deadly 2011 Grantham floods, a new confidential study reportedly reveals.
Residents blame an embankment wall at Dennis Wagner’s quarry for causing a devastating wall of water to engulf the small southeast Queensland town in January 2011, resulting in 12 deaths.
But The Australian reports a computer-simulated study, which is yet to be made public after being conducted for the Grantham Floods Commission of Inquiry, shows the quarry had no adverse impacts and actually slightly delayed flooding by one to three minutes.
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/08/13/09/29/quarry-not-to-blame-for-qld-flood-deaths
20
I trust that independent committee appointed by the government is reading this and will examine the data closely.
20
A brief exchange between the Mayor of Grantham and lawyers from a royal commission-style inquiry dropped some big hints a week ago as to the most likely man-made structure with a role in the town’s 2011 flood.
Mayor Steve Jones was being quizzed by inquiry head Walter Sofronoff QC and the counsel assisting, Michael Hodge, about the town’s elevated railway embankment, built in the 1800s.
Jones was told he had “not taken enough credit” for having suggested the railway’s 2m-high embankment be scrutinised for its possible part in the flood.
The inquiry would have been aware its expert hydrologist had finally determined, in an exhaustive and still-confidential new study, that this very obvious railway structure — and definitely not Denis Wagner’s quarry — had a lot to do with the channelling of a peak flow of floodwater that killed 12 people on January 10, 2011.
There will be some reluctant to accept the quarry’s exoneration. Fairfax broadcaster Alan Jones has repeatedly campaigned about the wealthy Wagner family and its quarry, alleging they were responsible for much of the flood, deaths and destruction — and a criminal cover-up afterwards.
Jones’s friend and former journalist Heather Brown believed Sofronoff’s inquiry would result in the “guilty” being led away in handcuffs for their supposed roles in this supposed cover-up.
My colleague and friend Nick Cater, 60 Minutes reporter Michael Usher and freelance journalist Amanda Gearing have invested a lot of time and effort, pored over evidence, listened to the community and been convinced the quarry was the culprit.
The Australian commissioned an expert review by a highly respected hydraulic engineer, now an adviser to the Sofronoff inquiry, who found defects in the original flood study that were of sufficient concern to prompt a new probe.
When the truth is delivered in the findings by Sofronoff, the community of Grantham will have been properly heard and the Wagner family will have an unequivocal finding in their favour.
They did not contribute to this terrible flood. They do not deserve to be unfairly associated with the tragedy for one hour more
50
Ah yes, those rich, evil miners … couldn’t possibly have been a 19th century railway embankment, not when the devil miners are obviously to blame
Extraordinary (except I’ve seen it all before)
30
Of course the constant upward adjustment of present day temperatures and downward adjustment of the past will lead to problems unless homogenisation is done in an ongoing dynamic fashion. Temperatures which are “the worst evah” today will cause a problem as they slip into the past and start interfering with the nice hockey stick shape as temperatures refuse to keep rising. To keep the CAGW narrative alive, homogenised temperature needs to function something like a mexican wave, with peak catastrophy always in our near future, the present pretty awful and the ideal forever behind us.
60
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
George Orwell
50
And also el gordo,
OR
50
janama – many thanx for the grantham text.
***”brief” it may have been, but it will live on in the MSM forever:
12 Aug: BucksHerald UK: Weather Watch: A month of contrasts sees record cold nights
by Nicholas Lee, forecaster at MetDesk in Wendover
Generally speaking, the UK had a rather cool month, with average temperatures 0.7C below the norm…
The start of the month saw a ***brief but intense heatwave.
Heathrow airport recorded the highest ever July temperature in the UK, at a scorching 36.7C, the warmest temperature seen since August 2003…
This heat became a distant memory as, towards the end of the month, we saw some record cold night-time temperatures.
South Newington in Oxfordshire saw the mercury drop to just 1C on July 31, whilst Chesham and also Exeter Airport saw minimum temperatures of 2C.
The Scottish mountains even saw some falling snow across the peaks…
http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/more-news/weather-watch-a-month-of-contrasts-sees-record-cold-nights-1-6899022
50
Need to publish all the raw data from local stations as far back as they go.. Raw data is real data…
110
Hear Hear
We need to start with William Dawes and the First Fleet.
50
Argumentum the Missing-Stevenson-Screen
smoke-screen.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=604
40
Gosh, thanks for that walk down memory lane. My old sparing partner comrade Luke completely lost it.
If Stevenson Screens had been operating in 1878-79 it would be a different world.
40
Yes add that to the USA history I dug up for 1890 or thereabouts and all the adjustments start looking dicier and dicier.
This in one of the comments to the Warwickhuges essay. It is in reference to a Stevenson Screen at Springsure in Queensland in a Rockhampton newspaper 1895.:
So trials of the old against the new were done. Not that this surprises me. I would expect any curious person to run the old and the new together for a while to see what the changes were.
20
13 Aug: news.com.au: Anthony Sharwood: It’s snowing in Canberra, as this miserable winter just keeps getting miserabler. Um, is that even a word?
IT’S been an absolutely brutal winter in much of eastern Australia.
From the cities to the bush, this has been one of the coldest, snowiest, miserablest winters anyone can remember…
…here’s a rundown of some of the key stats:
– Melbourne’s average maximum temperature was just 13.1 in July. This was only 0.2 below the July average, but in an age of warming climate, it is many years since a southern Australian capital was below average for a whole month.
– Brisbane’s average monthly maximum in July was 18.1, considerably cooler than the usual 18.9.
– Adelaide’s July average maximum was also well down. It was 14.7 compared to the usual 15.3…ETC
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/its-snowing-in-canberra-as-this-miserable-winter-just-keeps-getting-miserabler-um-is-that-even-a-word/story-e6frflp0-1227480335028
10 Aug: NZ Northern Advocate: Jessica Roden: Feel cold? Here’s why
Northlanders who thought July was a bit nippier than usual were bang on, with some areas recording their coldest day in more than 40 years.
On July 10, Kaitaia recorded a high of 9.6C, while Cape Reinga was only slightly warmer at 10.8C – both the coldest since records started in 1971…
NIWA: “A very cold southerly airflow preceding the high pressure system contributed to numerous locations observing record or near-record low daily maximum and minimum temperatures for July.”…
The first day of the high pressure system saw Dargaville record a high of 9.4C, the second coldest since 1951.
Fast forward three days and Kerikeri recorded a low of -0.7C, the coldest ever recorded since records started in 1981.
The same day, Kaitaia reached a low of 0.4C, the second coldest in 67 years…
The latest information from Niwa shows the period August-September is likely to bring near or below average temperatures…
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503450&objectid=11494651
20
no doubting 2015 will be declared the hottest year ever!
5 Aug: UTV Ireland: Ireland goes through coldest summer in decades
Some of Ireland’s weather stations have recorded this summer to be the coldest in 50 years.
While the majority of stations in the country reported July to be at least -1.0°C below the long term average, Claremorris recorded its coldest summer month since 1965.
Other stations at Cork Airport, Johnstown Castle, Mullingar and Shannon Airport all reported their coldest July since 1988…
***Dublin Airport’s lowest of 3.9°C on 15 July made it the lowest July temperature on record since the station opened in 1942…
http://utv.ie/News/2015/08/05/Ireland-goes-through-coldest-summer-in-decades-42478
Scotland’s weather: Coldest summer ‘for 43 years’
Scotsman-6 Aug 2015
SCOTLAND is on the verge of experiencing its coldest summer for 43 years and faces more rain, more gales and colder temperatures – as …
Coldest Summer in Decades
IcelandReview-23 Jul 2015
The first 13 weeks of summer have not been colder in Reykjavík for around 20 years, and for around 30 years in Akureyri.
16 July: Finland: Historically cold summer in the works
Next, the country’s leading daily Helsingin Sanomat reports that the summer of 2015 may just go down as the second-coldest summer on record, as Finland has only had four days where the temperature has reached more than 25 degrees Celsius so far…
Many locations in Finland haven’t even made it past the 25 degree mark yet this summer. Even Oulu, which is known for its high summer temps, has only seen a high of 23…
http://yle.fi/uutiset/thursdays_papers_metro_delays_pori_panel_2nd_coldest_summer_and_6th_place_reputation/8159914
40
The Solar induced (X Factor?) Orbital ‘Dry Cycles’ documented by Alex S. Gaddes in his work,’Tomorrow’s Weather'(1990), are indeed linked to the rest of the planet, as they move with the Solar Orbit of the Earth’s Magnetic Field. The United States is affected around 7 months before Australia, (depending on the Longitude.) The ‘start point’ appears to be circa 110 degrees longitude East of Prime, (Beijing.) Australia is one of the last countries affected in the orbit of these cycles.
The so called Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a figment of the 40 year ENSO Fantasy and certainly not responsible. There are no decadal factors in these cycles, (and why should there be?)Ten Year intervals are a product of computer model base ten maths, that have no relevance to empirical data.
At present Australia,(and the rest of the planet,) is experiencing a hierarchy of ‘Dry Cycles’ that last occurred in 1996-7 – and before that, 1978-9.This will mean a Five Year Dry Period, to 2019-20, when a Two Year Wet/Normal Period should ensue.
An updated version of the above work,(including ‘Dry Cycle’ forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from [email protected]
40
5 pages from Reuters – it’s because the Church is conservative!
12 Aug: Reuters: Richard Valdmanis: Insight – Pope’s climate push at odds with U.S. Catholic oil investments
But some of the largest American Catholic organizations have millions of dollars invested in energy companies, from hydraulic fracturing firms to oil sands producers, according to their own disclosures, through many portfolios intended to fund church operations and pay clergy salaries…
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN0QH0ED20150812
30
attempt to divide & conquer pre-Paris:
12 Aug: CarbonPulse: Govt advisor urges full revamp of India’s UN climate talks strategy -media
In a note to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Arvind Subramanian – the government’s chief economic advisor – said India should change its climate change negotiation tactics, according to the paper (Business Standard India).
Subramanian recommended that India should:
• End its focus on getting international funding for climate change adaptation, as economically struggling developed countries are unlikely to pay up;
• Put more emphasis on emission reductions, as India is vulnerable to climate change and worse placed to deal with it than richer nations;
• ***Work closer with coal-rich nations such as China, Australia, Poland and even the United States, and less with groups such as BASIC, the G77 and the African Group;…
It is unclear if the Cabinet would approve of Subramanian’s proposals…
http://carbon-pulse.com/govt-advisor-urges-full-revamp-of-indias-un-climate-talks-strategy-media/
from Wikipedia: Arvind Subramanian
He served as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, both located in Washington DC. Formerly an economist at the International Monetary Fund…
He has also been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including the Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and New York Review of Books. He contributes frequently to the Financial Times and is a columnist in India’s leading financial daily, Business Standard.
some context!
13 Aug: FinancialExpressIndia: Climate Change: Govt must pay heed to some of the recommendations of the CEA on recalibrating climate strategy
The government will do well to pay heed to chief economic adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian’s advice …
The CEA also advises that India align with coal-bearing nations like the US, Australia, instead of poor and developing nations who have been allies so far in negotiations with advanced countries. This would be a sound move because India is likely to remain largely dependent on coal-based power rather than turning to renewable power…
Though solar power costs have fallen drastically, with the lowest price discovered still at R5.05/unit, it is still costlier than coal-fired power…
Given coal production has been freed up in the country, the outlook on coal availability and prices are encouraging for thermal generation, too.
This means it would be difficult for India to commit to emission cuts, one of Subramanian’s key recommendations…
http://www.financialexpress.com/article/fe-columnist/climate-change/118494/
business as usual from Javadekar:
12 Aug: MicroFinanceMonitor: India Keen on Balanced Climate Change Pact: Prakash Javadekar
He added that India has been collaborating with nations belonging in G-77 and BASIC – Brazil, India, China and South Africa besides those nations from the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) to safeguard the formation of a fair, balanced and far-reaching contract in Paris…
He further said according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), in per capita emissions in the top ten lists, India occupied the last spot with average emissions of nearly 1.92 tons of carbon dioxide compared to Canada’s 24.6 tons and U.S’s 19.6 tons…
http://www.microfinancemonitor.com/india-keen-on-balanced-climate-change-pact-prakash-javadekar/37227
20
Apparently demonstrating the wisdom of the old saying that “power corrupts”, is ok if one is lying one’s head off to “save the planet”.
80
Thanks for the reminder Jennifer.
20
I just got home and there was an overseas package in the mail
My pre-ordered copy of the new Mark Steyn book “A Disgrace to the Profession” (the World’s Scientists -in their own words- on Michael Mann, His Hockey Stick, and their damage to Science. With a personal message and signed by the author himself.
And it is not a short book 302 pages plus an index of scientists. And this is Volume 1 (more to follow)
Excerpt ” I think you were very sloppy and unethical”. “It has never been replicated because you can’t replicate it without access to original data and algorithms. So it is Junk”. -Michael Liebrich- visiting professor to Imperial College, London
Those same comments could be applied to the BOM and temperature record homogenisation.
Now I wonder if Professor Scott Mandia will put on his superman outfit again and pose for the Hockey Stick team?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/04/climate-craziness-of-the-week-300-gets-you-a-hockey-stick-signed-by-mike-mann/
51
Great post Jo. If anyone wants to write a book in Australia, the following title is still available:
“BOM – A Disgrace to their Profession”
Mark Steyn is doing an excellent job on Gore.
101
Don’t you mean on Mann ?
Gore is doing well enough on himself.
60
How can we trust any published data from BoM given that they fiddle the data? What I would like to know is how accurate the daily published temperatures are? And as someone mentioned above, to continue to demonstrate supposed global warming, today’s temperature will have to be adjusted downward, sooner or later.
51
Is anyone familiar with “Earth Endogenous Theory”? I just happened to see this. What do you think?
https://youtu.be/Zi-V1EzI_TU
50
Notice the ridge around Antarctica appears to be a prime mover of climate change on the planet.
http://worldnpa.org/climate-oscillations-mjo-enso-pdo-considered-with-validation-of-earth-endogenous-energy-theory/
51
Hi Dave,
I watched the first few minutes of the video, then had to quit. While interesting (yes, I’m a Geologist, currently teaching Math [as is half of our Math Department]), but the video was ruined by the constant return of the four-part slide during the speaker’s presentation, so the viewer missed what was being presented. I spent a lot of time learning Gravity & Magnetics in school, but the presentation of the gravity data was completely blanked out by that one slide.
Is there any way to get a better copy of this? I’d like to look at that gravity presentation, but it is M.I.A.
Regards,
Mark
20
Hi Mark,
You can search YouTube under the author’s name or look at the link posted by el gordo above. I am not saying I endorse this theory and have not studied it, I just reported it as something I accidentally came across.
Regards,
David
30
Greetings, good sir:
Thanks; I’m not sufficiently well-versed either, which is why I’d like to look at the presentation, w/o that one slide perpetually popping-up. I’ll see if I can find something very soon; if this has any validity, it would be great to be up to speed on it. If it is bunch of horse-hockey, like a particular topic our lovely hostess lets us comment upon, that will be equally valuable.
Best regards to you and yours,
Mark
10
So let me get this straight
BOM can turn this into Global Warming by Homogenizing
Politics can turn this Global Warming into TAX
The more you look the WORSE it gets.
But everywhere you look – it’s getting cooler or paused?
The public don’t know about this stuff, the MSM have never published it enough to make people actually ask questions.
It’s almost criminal the way BOM especially refuse to explain how thermometer data has to be changed?
Answer: MONEY & POWER
100
” Anomalous trends from far distant and poor locations can spread through waves of homogenization until better, longer stations succumb to political correctness and show the “correct” result. Small choices about which stations to to use first in the process can make a huge difference to the end result. Another reason the BOM needs auditing.”
in one sense having an automated algorithm do the whole thing has its benefits
1. Which stations to use. Use all of them
2. Order: simultaneous.
samples
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/3816
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/3739
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/3886
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/168884
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/3616
Now this approach is blind to human motive.
All stations are considered and some are moved up and others are moved down
and the goal of the algorithm is to minimize the error of prediction.
There are corner cases where this approach may not give an optimal result.
If there is one good station and 30 bad stations and IFF the bias in the bad stations is all ALIGNED IN TIME AND DIRECTION then the algorithm would correct the good using the bad. But the biases of the bad stations all have to be aligned for this corner case.
The ONLY way to fix this and be more sure is the following
“Homogenisation should start with the best stations, but no one at the BOM has even figured out which stations are the best.”
1. There is no objective definition of “best station” many people have wrongly concluded that Long = good. It doesnt.
2. There is no comprehensive survey or site histories, AND no way to verify site histories if they do exist.
This leads to a different kind of fudging and that is when people with self interest look though sites and declare “This is good” “That is bad” Unless and Until someone comes up with a Field tested methodology for objectively determining “best station”
this question will remain uncertain. And even in that case your criteria has to be historically available and you have to trust the metadata.
Without a standard you are left with just using all stations. And that approach has an assumption that at any given time slice the good outweigh the bad.
personally I think that assumption is weak, but lacking any objective alternative it is the best one can do
“Homogenisation should start with the best stations, but no one at the BOM has even figured out which stations are the best.
42
Steven Mosher,
Youe assumption that science should be blind to human motive is misleading. It implies that human motive is always a bad thing. It’s not.
Human motive can be directed in whatver direction one wishes. If that motive is to arrive at the best possible data set, then automation does not necessarily provide that result.
In fact, the WMO Handbook goes to great lengths discussing this issue. If I had the time right now, I’d gladly put up the quotes. If you or others are interested in those quotes, I can put them up at a later time.
One last thought. Science is based on observations. An algorithm in a computer, even if it’s coded by a scientist, is still and only an algorithm. It’s not an observation. Computer programs can be used as tools to analyze data. They should never be used to produce data. That should be left to the scientist.
Abe
30
Steven Mosher,
Like I said, your assumption that only people with self interest will be involved in the selection of which stations to use as a basis for comparison is misleading. This is the reason for the OP at the top of this page and many more like it. We want the data and the procedures used on that data to become publicly available so that enough eyes get a clear picture of what’s really going on.
There are several other assumptions in your comment that don’t align with reality and not even with the pretend reality of the WMO.
So much to do. So little time.
Abe
31
Stephen Mosher
Thankyou for pointing out that our BoM is an outlier because it fails at this important first hurdle.
Note my coments above at 6.1.1.1
And watch this https://youtu.be/r-1MOyO3YBM
These are just some of the many many example of old records that are missing.
How much information can you find from the BoM website about the extremely important record due to data sparseness, from the site at Charlotte waters?
Why is it anyone can find data on original observer sheets for multiple sites on the national archives website that does not appear at the BoM?
For the sites that you can find on the boM website, how can a daily data set be made up out of data that has only monthly digitisation.
You are wrong! Now you know you are wrong what will you do about it?
51
Steve Mosher,
1. I see from the Deniliquin link you provide that you homogenize the mean (average of max and min) back before 1860. If you look at the raw maximum and minimum data for Deniliquin (and many other locations in south eastern Australia) they often trend in different directions (i.e. during periods of drought days are hotter, nights colder). Is there any scrutiny of the max and min series independently, or are they just combined by BEST, and then homogenized?
2. Regarding the homogenization of Deniliquin, could you provide the list of stations used to simultaneously homogenize this station and/or the URL where this information exists?
3. It would appear Rutherglen Research (RGLN 95837 – World Meteorological Organization Number), is not part of BEST, is there any particular reason? You show homogenization of the older and shorter record from the Rutherglen PO in one of the above links.
Cheers, Jen
80
All nonsense of course.
The FUNDAMENTAL question is:
Does Australia have any data at all anywhere that are fit for estimating warming or cooling?
The Bureau’s methods are guaranteed to find warming.
At some stage or another (in the 1950 and 60’s in particular) most stations have been inspected and most were up-graded.
Up-grades invariably resulted in improving the exposure of station equipment, so their data better-reflected the ambient climate, instead of the immediate surroundings. Stations were moved because trees were growing too near; to get them away from swimming pools; out of passing shadows; away from cluttered post-office yards, away from new structures.
Rutherglen was moved several times, the data say’s so even if the metadata does not.
In the 1950’s many former-RAAF sites at airports, such as Alice Springs, Richmond RAAF, Broome, Wagga Wagga, Amberley, Laverton (to name a few), moved away from operational areas to new sites. These moves, which are largely UNDOCUMENTED, turn-up in data as a shift (most often) from a more sheltered to less sheltered site.
Shifts are statistically detectable in serial data.
Some lighthouse sites were upgraded in the 1960’s (Otway and Moruya Pilot Station were moved; in Moruyas’s case a “few feet south”). These moves and upgrades have left detectable step-changes in data.
Homogenisation smudges these effects around, creating steps and trends that don’t exist in the raw data (given that you trust it to be raw).
Australian meteorological data was originally collected to describe the climate, and it does that well. It was never collected to monitor trends, so it does that poorly.
I believe we have been grossly mislead by the Bureau. Data are largely inaccurate.
Given all the changes that permeate individual datasets, they are not up to the task of monitoring trends. Also, the Bureau’s automatic weather stations are biased high. At high temperatures they are prone to over-shoot their quadratic calibrations, causing false high-range temperatures and extremes. This shows up as skewed data. There is also evidence that they pick-up fleeting extremes.
How can it possibly be that Australia’s temperature has remained pretty-well flat since AWS became primary instruments in 1998, but extremes have allegedly increased?
I wonder if it could be due to hyper-ventilating professors believing in hyper-active instruments?
Answers are needed.
Cheers,
Dr. Bill
81
Many former RAAF airports …. From a more sheltered to a less sheltered site (sorry).
Cheers,
Bill
20
Excellent post, Bill.
20
Here is the latest subsidy farm. A big one by subsidy farm standards.
http://aglsolar.com.au/nyngan-in-numbers/
20
Jo, I just compared Rutherglen Acorn with Deniliquin, Wagga Wagga, and Kerang Acorn- the nearest Acorn sites. Rutherglen is still warming FASTER than these three by +0.45C/100 years. Rutherglen is the outlier.
30
Good to see Mosher here. He says without a trace of irony about Berkeley:
Berkeley’s approach is certainly blind to UHI which it thinks does not exist. As for the BOM it is blind to many things, 2 of which are the fact that on 954 days it shows a minimum greater than maximum temperature and BOM’s definition of a heatwave means Antarctic has more heatwaves than Marble Bar.
51
I find this staggeringly crazy. The adjustments are made and claimed to be correct by a sophisticated homogenization process. Essentially what they are saying is that modern thermometers can’t measure temperature correctly. If a site is of good high quality explain to me why the raw data needs corrections. If a site needs to be constantly corrected, make the site high quality by whatever means necessary.
30
Hi Mo0sh,
Your words –
“1. Which stations to use. Use all of them
2. Order: simultaneous”
Some of us have worked through the best official records available to CSIR by the 1930s and then through Commonwealth Year Books of the 1940s-50s. These were the gold plated standards for their time and they include much data that does not get into Acorn.
When we subtract these figures from a later date, sat 2000-2014, we find that Australian warming is about 0.4 deg C/century starting from 1860 in dribs and drabs.
The BOM with Acorn does not include these figures before 1910, so far as we can tell, and might not use them 1910-end of record which varies with each official compendium. They derive warming of about 1 deg C/century.
We continue to wonder about the importance of your statement ” … a different kind of fudging and that is when people with self interest look though sites and declare “This is good” “That is bad”
What would you think of a suggestion to add …. declare “Leave this set out.”
00
Jo et al,
It would seem that each developed country should develop a ‘national temperature data set’ using an handful of ‘pristine’ sites. Sites so good, that they meet all the WHO requirements and more, have full metadata and have no known problems. This may mean only one or two sites. We produce an average temperature and anomaly then compare this anomaly with the BOM anomaly. The difference should indicate how ‘bad’ the BOM manipulation has been.
does anyone have any candidates for sensor sites that are a) long in use, b) away from habitation c) match all other criteria for a usable site?
00