It is time to get Australian Bureau of Meteorology station histories out of archives – we need to see how good BoM metadata is

The best reference I know to BoM station diaries is the 45 page summary by Simon Torok for his 1996 PhD thesis – “The development of a high quality historical temperature data base for Australia”
This can be downloaded in full in several parts at –
minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/39449

However the Appendix A1 containing the 45 page summary of all station diaries he accessed can be downloaded as an 8MB pdf at – p38/46 Rutherglen station histories – I note their is no entry for Amberley and the entry for Rutherglen is brief.
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I saw these diaries in the BoM library at Lonsdale Street, Melbourne in the early 1990’s – a series of maybe foolscap ledgers. I assumed they were put into Commonwealth archives – National Archives of Australia.
If anybody can locate them – please let me know.

7 thoughts on “It is time to get Australian Bureau of Meteorology station histories out of archives – we need to see how good BoM metadata is”

  1. Thanks Warwick, Have been looking for some information on Gayndah. It seems that there was no move at the PO site from 1898 to 2009 when it was closed but there was six years of overlap (2003-2009) with the airport (2km away) which showed a small additional UHI at the PO.
    Is Gayndah in the ACORN set? If not it should be.

  2. Yes cementafriend – Gayndah is included in ACORN SAT –
    you can download max and min daily ACORN data here – check the Data and Network TAB –
    reg.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/
    A station catalogue is downloadable there –
    reg.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Data-and-network
    you can download raw max and min monthly data here at this CDO page (Climate Data Online) –
    www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/
    daily data is very time consuming to obtain at CDO so I post for download the “raw” daily max & min files in Excel97 for Gayndah and Gayndah AP – 6MB – data from 1893 only complete to 2006 but you can copy & paste the extra years from the CDO site if you wish.
    www.warwickhughes.com/agri14/gayndah_daily_t.xls

    Ken Stewart must have looked at Gayndah –
    kenskingdom.wordpress.com/?s=Gayndah
    I am sure he will discuss that if you ask him at his blog.
    I am happy to discuss with you later on.

  3. Thanks, Warwick I have in the past downloaded the monthly max. and min. temps for Gayndah PO & AP and did some statistics. That is where I found that the PO max.& mins were higher than the AP by 0.2C. I also had downloaded monthly rainfall at the PO and some daily temps for a few interesting years. I have now downloaded your Excel file. I see a few days of missing data and will need to fill in those holes.
    My previous look at the monthly data for the PO showed a few jumps which I thought were UHI changes (eg bitumenising the road, new buildings, maybe air conditioning etc) or instrument changes. The Torok information shows there has been no site changes.

  4. Warwick and all, The best search at the National Archives website is to use the word “meteorological” rather than “meteorology” in the advanced search window.

    There is a series B5311 held in North Melbourne, “Volumes of meteorological observation station information” . This has 1800 folios in 3 volumes. This has station information from 1856 to 1930. There is also a series B5312 which indexes B5311. This series is open access, meaning there are no restrictions on access to these records. Later records are probably available at the BOM library.

    cementafriend, There is also a series B6501 with 63m of Meterorological observations! It might be informative to look directly at these records. For Gaydnah there are records for every year from 1887 to 1959. The control symbol numbers are 39039/1887 to 39039/1959. This series is listed for access as “Not Yet Examined”. This means that nobody has recently asked to access them and you need to apply to have these examined and checked against the Act before you can exam them.

  5. In this press article yesterday – (just Google the headline)
    Bureau of Meteorology defended over temperature records by climate scientists
    GRAHAM LLOYD, The Australian, September 02, 2014
    The BoM is quoted as saying about Rutherglen – “The site records indicate that at least one site move took place between 1958 and 1975. It is likely but not confirmed that this move took place in 1966. The site records also indicate that the weather station was substantially upgraded around the time of the 1974 break in the temperature record.”
    Yet this flies in the face of the summary of the station diary by Dr Simon Torok – see above – where after 1949 the only entry is for May 1975 and is summarised by ST as “Good site, no changes”.
    The BoM must produce what information they are relying on for their contrary view – these issues will not go away.

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