In June 2011 I began drawing attention to what I termed the “National Night-time Hotspot” (NNTHS) – I told the BoM about this and I thought I noticed an improvement in their maps. However I have noticed the NNTHS is still writ large in BoM minimum temperature anomaly maps for all the years 2002-2007 see my animation – NNTHS makes a cameo appearance again in 2011.
Am I seeing a “son of NNTHS” in the Jervois district south east Northern Territory in the years 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 ?
These examples are just the standout most obvious outlier errors.
Their data does have a lot to be desired. A great pity, because it’s a useful website … unlike snwa: pindanpost.com/2014/02/08/pssst-want-to-buy-a-climate-change-refuge/
Ignoring the comment above – I think you have a reasonable point in regards to Jervois and the minimum temperature anomaly.
Unfortunately, Warwick, you have sprayed so much bulls**t around over past years the reasonable bits you do find get ignored.
I suggest you write a polite letter/email to the Climate Data people at the Bureau and ask if they can research the matter. If you like I’ll even try and find an email address and help you write the contents.
That could lead to a good science outcome and help give you some relevancy in discussions.
George
Climategate, from Harryreadme:
“[…]Now looking at the dates.. something bad has happened, hasn’t it. COBAR AIRPORT AWS cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993! Looking at the data – the COBAR station 1962-2004 seems to be an exact copy of the COBAR AIRPORT AWS station 1962-2004. And wouldn’t you know it, the data for this station has missing data between 12/92 and 12/99 inclusive. So I reckon it’s the old FORREST AERO station (WMO 9464600, .au ID 11004), with the new Australian bulletin updates tacked on (hence starting in 2000) So.. do I split off the 2000-present data to a new station with the new number, or accept that whoever joined them (Dave?) looked into it and decided it would be OK? The BOM website says they’re 800m apart.[…]”
The rotten data at BoM had started long ago: pjmedia.com/blog/climategates-harry_read_me-txt-we-all-really-should/?singlepage=true
Point 5 Quality of Data … joannenova.com.au/2014/02/get-headlines-how-to-find-a-heatwave-in-five-easy-steps/
The son of NNTHS has ears. It has gone blue! Hava a look at the daily minimum anomaly map today…This is hilarious. 9.2 degrees C colder than the record minimum.
Another one bites the dust. I always watch for the weather for Balgo, due to it’s proximity to Lake Gregory, particularly rainfall, but now it appears to have closed since Jan2. Nearest others are quite some distance away.
To clarify that was 9.2 C below the Feb record. If it is biting the dust I wonder how many others are faulty with similar problems. Perhaps Australia’s record high temp year should be dismissed like it was recorded in a beer crate.
Yes siliggy – an amazing 9.2° below the previous record low minimum for February.
I suppose it is a weekend and staff will jump on it tomorrow.
But it does raise the issue – what about less obvious errors.
Dr Jennifer is on to them too: jennifermarohasy.com/2014/01/bureau-confirms-calculating-australias-average-temperature-involves-some-hocus-pocus/
This confirms it all, check out what sites BoM refers people to: jennifermarohasy.com/2014/01/bureau-confirms-calculating-australias-average-temperature-involves-some-hocus-pocus/?cp=4#comment-551595
Unbelievable!
Tom, I’ve been to Balgo. An aboriginal mission run by nuns. I doubt they are too bothered about recording weather data.
The recording instruments are usually automatic, but Balgo is central between Halls Creek, Giles and Rabbit Flat. A lot of people live and work in that area which is also rich in minerals like gold and Uranium. Two large gold mines operate within a hundred km. Several other large communities are nearby, such as Bililuna and Mulan, and Lake Gregory is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Australia. A rainfall record for the Sturt Creek catchment is important, but not there any more it seems.
Picture of the Balgo Stevenson Screen, undated.
old.marssociety.org.au/jnt/jnt-db/images/BOM_Balgo_Hills.jpg
OT. PNAS carries a Very early warning of next El Niño.
Radio news this morning carried this prediction of more doom and gloom for Ozzie farmers. This time it’s the spectre of a return to El Niño in late 2014 with a 75% likelihood.
But a quick look at the authorship, which includes one H. J. Schellnhuber, might suggest that the 75% figure could be more than just the odd bit rubbery?
Saw on Landline that the SOI has been positive for a while and that it has recently been increasing to allow a prediction of 75% chance of above average rain for the next six months. Pity they also do not show the PDO. Warwick might like to comment on that.
I maybe wrong but I think Prof (Stewart?) Franks wrote a paper about SOI and PDO and if SOI is positive by some margin (indicating a La Nina) and PDO is positive the Australian East Coast (NSW & Qld) will get more rain and possibly floods in the next six months.
So far the summer has been relatively dry but lots of rain can come at the end of summer and into Autumn.
Schellnhuber is on par with Steffen -political operators with no understanding about how to assess weather and climate.
The PDO –
jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
is still negative –
jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
the SOI has been wandering between zero and plus 10 for a year. Currently the 30 day average is just over 10.
www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/
The next El Nino must be one of the most talked about future arrivals in the history of history.
BoM yesterday are calling it neutral through Autumn.
www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Warwick,
People who know the geography of the outback can ascribe a location name to many of the bullseyes.
If area weighting has been done correctly, this outcome would not be possible except maybe under rare stats circumstances.
That is, the presence of bullseyes around sampled points is direct evidence of a problem with the calculations.
Pity all my former Peko colleagues who did cutting edge geostatistics are unable to help now for various good reasons, like being RIP. We sent Terry Quinlan and Neil Crosby to Fontainebleu for months at a time to learn from the leaders like Journel. We hosted French and USA bright lights whose names dominate the geostatistics literature. We learned the strengths and weaknesses of kriging, interpolation extrapolation, propagation of error, etc. We tested it on actual mines. At Ranger One, the differences between pre mining and post mining estimates of both tonnes of ore and contained uranium agreed to better than 5%. They have to. There are vast $ involved.
Then we get amateurs like Cowtan and Way kriging the Arctic T record, breaking numerous rules, to give a paper now venerated by the warmists and actually being used as revised input data to GCMs. We have the BEST exercise where Russell Rhoade at least tried to do a good job of kriging, but was hampered by overall failures of assumptions of the reconstruction architecture being too smart by half.
It is crazy. Where did hard, strict science go after we retired?
The BoM says on their site that these maps are generated automatically and mostly unchecked, so mistakes can be expected.
That’s fine for maps about yesterday. But the BoM should be using the monthly and annual ones as means of checking and fixing their data.
The “bullseyes” on these maps, where ANNUAL temperature anamolies differ by 2-3 degrees for places only a couple of hundred kilometers apart, are clearly not credible where there are no huge mountain ranges or other sharp divisions of climatic zones. They are warning bells that should be followed up, not just left lying around for years to undermine the credibility of the whole product.
The main anomaly in SW NT is coming from one point that had no data before 2002.
If their estimate (or whatever they use) was wrong for the reference period then the anomaly would also be incorrect.