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BOM scandal: “smart cards” filter out coldest temperatures. Full audit needed ASAP!

The story changes: first it was quality control, then equipment failure, now a smart card?

Jennifer Marohasy reports that the thermometers are working fine, but a smart card has been added to some to filter out “spurious cold” readings:

In particular, the Minister [Josh Frydenberg] was told that while the Goulburn weather station accurately measured the local temperature as minus 10.4 at 6.30 am on Sunday 2 July, a smart card reader prevented this value from being recorded as the daily minimum on the Daily Weather Observations page.

Apparently, the smart cards don’t filter out the spurious hot readings — on the hot side, all noise is good? I want the BOM to confirm or correct this. Despite knowing of this extraordinary, uncertain, situation, the Minister still has “full confidence” in the Bureau of Meteorology. A month ago, the BOM said the temperature clipping was a deliberate “quality control measure”, but then changed that to “equipment failure”. This week, Bill Kininmonth pointed out that the same equipment worked in Antarctica (where it gets to minus 50C). And I can add that David Stockwell  spotted the data sheet for an Automatic Weather Station thermometer installed at Nerriga. It claims that particular resistance thermometer has a range from -200 to +600 °C.  (You might think they can handle minus ten?)

Jen Marohasy claims that the BOM have made a fuss about replacing the faulty equipment, but all they had to do was take off the smart cards and leave the equipment alone:

All-the-while, the Minister has known that the problem is limited to the smart card readers.

To be clear, the problem is not with the equipment; all that needs to be done is for the smart card readers to be removed.  So, after the automatic weather stations measure the correct temperature, this temperature can be brought forward firstly into the Daily Weather Observation sheet and subsequently into the CDO dataset.

Graham Lloyd has picked this up and adds more in The Australian in “Temperatures Plunge after BOM orders fix”. Jen Marohasy saw a -10.6C temperature disappear from the Thredbo recording last month, but now, after the BOM’s rushed fix, Thredbo has already reached -10.6C this week in the official record. The Bureau’s CEO, Andrew Johnson said they had replaced equipment that was “not fit for purpose”. Which begs the question that if thermometers were not fit to record cold temperatures, what purpose were they fit for? Politically correct thermometers? Thermometers to justify Renewable Energy Subsidies and ARC Grants?

Want to avoid answering basic questions — call a review!

Graham Lloyd asked the BOM about the smart cards, but got no answer:

The BoM declined to comment ahead of the internal review.

“The findings of a review into this matter will be made available after completion,” a BoM repre­sentative said. “We do not intend to publish detail prior to that.

Since when did a review become a reason not to explain a supposedly scientific process? Either there are smart cards there, or not. There are limits set (or not). And there is hopefully a record of the real raw temperatures recorded somewhere…

A Minister more concerned about public confidence, rather than accurate data?

The Minister has things back to front:

Josh Frydenberg: “I’m treating this seriously and am determined to get to the bottom­ of what has happened. I look forward to receiving recommendations as to how we can ensure that the public’s confidence in climate data is maintained.”

We, the paying, voting, public are more concerned that the BOM is worthy of public confidence in the first place. The way to maintain the BOM reputation is to fix the institution, not bury the flaws and political biases. Time for a real independent audit now. What are they afraid of? _________________________________

POST NOTE: Want to be a citizen scientist?

To watch BOM data come in (before the smart cards edit it), go to the BOM home page, look for “City Observations” (mid right hand side) or click on the state maps listed below.

Click right through til you see half hourly data for each site. (So most days this is not exciting, but if your pipes freeze, you might get a thrill. 🙂  ) Don’t forget to capture the screen shots.

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