Now I suppose we are stuck for evah with these insane year after year, after year, after year, after year errors by the ignorant BoM for evah.
On the other hand maybe it is just by chance true that the hottest night-time temperature anomaly across all Australia – just so happened to be at the same outback airstrip in the Northern Territory every year from 2002 to 2007 incl. Yair that makes sense – must make sense to the idiot BoM.
The ABC reports here and here – Jo Nova reports on an expose of massively corrupted BoM data.
I hear that some Liberal Party members are resigning.
When next election comes one way to protest this ongoing shift to the left is to vote ALA.
Terrific graphic Warwick.
Anyone with an ounce of statistical nous should be able to see that these annual temperature departures are rubbish. There is no way the same spot can be 3 degrees warmer than average year after year when a couple of hundred miles in any direction there is no such trend.
The blink graphs are great for pointing up other anomalies too. There is a similar though not quite as pronounced warm spot in the southeast corner of the Northern Territory, and in several years the two spots stare out at you like two eyes in the middle of the continent. There is also an obvious cool error inland from Cooktown every year.
And Hunt is boasting that he suppressed an investigation of this? Blind Freddie can see it’s wrong, and who knows how many other parts of BoM work these errors are stuffing up. If they can’t even get the observations right, how can they possibly expect to make useful climate projections on any timescale?
Warwick. Good find. I see there are three “hot spot”
stations in central Australia in those three graphs that light up year after year. How curious.
What about chanel 9 telling every day that: ”the real temperature is every day warmer by 3-5C, than what it feels?! Who is the ”human thermometer” to tell; ”how many degrees feels like, Tim Flannery, David Karoly?! Different suburbs temp fluctuates by a degree or more, BUT: -”suggesting that ALWAYS feels colder, than what they officially say it is => you better believe what it feels, than what comes from the weather bureau and channel 9!!! OR: get yourself a thermometer and report when they are lying! P.s. anecdotal evidences say: in Germany they are already producing thermometers, engraved / calibrated to show one degree warmer than what actually is! SO: compare your new thermometer with an old one, before start believing in your own eyes and new thermometer!
Jen Marohasy has emailed the following – pasted here in full because it is not yet at Online Opinion.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Keeping You in the Loop
There were reports in the news last week that Environment Minister Greg Hunt intervened to prevent a proper investigation of methodologies used by the Bureau of Meteorology to adjust historic temperature data. I was up early this morning finishing off an article about this for e-journal On Line Opinion, which will hopefully be published today. It follows…
“For the true believer, it is too awful to even consider that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology could be exaggerating global warming by adjusting figures. This doesn’t mean though, that it’s not true. In fact, under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a panel of eminent statisticians was formed to investigate these claims detailed in The Australian newspaper in August and September 2014. The panel did acknowledge in its first report that the Bureau homogenized the temperature data: that it adjusted figures. The same report also concluded that it was unclear whether these adjustments resulted in an overall increase or decrease in the warming trend. No conclusions could be drawn because the panel did not work through a single example of homogenization, not even for Rutherglen. Rutherglen is of course in north eastern Victoria, an agricultural research station with a continuous minimum temperature record unaffected by equipment changes or documented site-moves, but where the Bureau nevertheless adjusted the temperatures. This had the effect of turning a temperature time series without a statistically significant trend, into global warming of almost 2 degrees per Century.
According to media reports last week, a thorough investigation of the Bureau’s methodology was prevented because of intervention by Environment Minister Greg Hunt. He apparently argued in Cabinet that the credibility of the institution was paramount. That it is important the public have trust in the Bureau’s data and forecasts, so the public know to heed warning of bushfires and cyclones.
This is the type of plea repeatedly made by the Catholic Church hierarchy to prevent the truth about paedophilia, lest the congregation lose faith in the church.
Contrast this approach with that by poet and playwright Henrik Ibsen who went so far as to suggest ‘the minority is always right’ in an attempt to have his audience examine the realities of 18th Century morality. Specifically, Ibsen wanted us to consider that sometimes the individual who stands alone is making a valid point which is difficult to accept because every culture has its received wisdoms: those beliefs that cannot be questioned, until they are proven in time to have been wrong. British biologist, and contemporary of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley was trying to make a similar point when he wrote, “I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.”
Mr Hunt defends the Bureau because they have a critical role to play in providing the Australian community with reliable weather forecasts. This is indeed one of their core responsibilities. They would, however, be better able to perform this function, if they used proper techniques for quality control of temperature data, and the best available techniques for forecasting rainfall [1]. Of concern, there has been no improvement in their seasonal rainfall forecasts for two decades because they use general circulation models [2]. These are primarily tools for demonstrating global warming, with dubious, if any skill, at actually forecasting weather or climate.
Consider for example, the Millennium drought and the flooding rains that followed in 2010. Back in 2007, and 2008, David Jones, then and still the Manager of Climate Monitoring and Prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology, wrote that climate change was so rampant in Australia, “We don’t need meteorological data to see it” [3], and that the drought, caused by climate change, was a sign of the “hot and dry future” that we all collectively faced [4]. Then the drought broke, as usual in Australia, with flooding rains. But the Bureau was incapable of forecasting an exceptionally wet summer, because such an event was contrary to how senior management at the Bureau perceived our climate future. So, despite warning signs evident in sea surface temperature patterns across the Pacific through 2010, Brisbane’s Wivenhoe dam, a dam originally built for flood mitigation, was allowed to fill through the spring of 2010, and kept full in advance of the torrential rains in January 2011. The resulting catastrophic flooding of Brisbane is now recognized as a “dam release flood”, and the subject of a class action lawsuit by Brisbane residents against the Queensland government.
Indeed despite an increasing investment in super computers, there is ample evidence that ideology is trumping rational decision making at the Bureau on key issues that really matter, like the prediction of drought and flood cycles. Because a majority of journalists and politicians desperately want to believe that the Bureau knows best, they turn away from the truth, and ignore the facts.
News Ltd journalist Anthony Sharwood got it completely wrong in his weekend article defending the Bureau’s homogenization of the temperature record [5]. I tried to explain to him on the phone last Thursday, how the Bureau don’t actually do what they say when they homogenize temperature time series for places like Rutherglen. Mr Sharwood kept coming back to the issue of ‘motivations’. He kept asking me why on earth the Bureau would want to mislead the Australian public. I should have kept with the methodology, but I suggested he read what David Jones had to say in the Climategate emails. Instead of considering the content of the emails that I mentioned, however, Sharwood wrote in his article that, “Climategate was blown out of proportion”, and “independent investigations cleared the researchers of any form of wrongdoing”.
Nevertheless, the content of the Climategate emails includes quite a lot about homogenization, and the scientists’ motivations. For example, there is an email thread in which Phil Jones (University of East Anglia) and Tom Wigley (University of Adelaide) discuss the need to get rid of a blip in global temperatures around 1940-1944. Specifically Wigley suggested they reduce ocean temperatures by an arbitrary 0.15 degree Celsius. These are exactly the types of arbitrary adjustments made throughout the historical temperature record for Australia: adjustments made independently of any of the purported acceptable reasons for making adjustments, including site moves, and equipment changes.
Sharwood incorrectly wrote in his article that: “Most weather stations have moved to cooler areas (i.e. areas away from the urban hear island effect). So if scientists are trying to make the data reflect warmer temperatures, they’re even dumber than the sceptics think.” In fact, many (not most) weather stations have moved from post offices to airports, which have hotter, not cooler, day time temperatures. Furthermore, the urban heat island creeps into the official temperature record for Australia, not because of site moves, but because the temperature record at places like Cape Otway lighthouse is adjusted to make it similar to the record in built-up areas like Melbourne, which are clearly affected by the urban heat island [6].
I know this sounds absurd. It is absurd, and it is also true. Indeed, a core problem with the methodology that the Bureau uses is its reliance on “comparative sites” to make adjustments to data at other places. I detail the Cape Otway lighthouse example in a recent paper published in the journal Atmospheric Research, volume 166, page 145 [6].
It is so obvious that there is an urgent need for a proper, thorough and independent review of operations at the Bureau. But it would appear our politicians and many mainstream media are set against the idea. Evidently they are too conventional in their thinking to consider that such an important Australian institution could now be ruled by ideology.
References/Links
1. Marohasy, J. 2014. Letter to Simon Birmingham, Re: Corruption of the official temperature record, and increasing unreliability of official seasonal rainfall forecasts.
jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Birmingham_2014_08_12.pdf
2. Abbot, J. and Marohasy J. 2014. Input selection and optimisation for monthly rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks. Atmospheric Research, 138, 166-178. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809513003141
3. Jones, D. 2007. Email to Phil Jones, Re: African stations used in HadCRU global data set. www.ecowho.com/foia.php
4. Jones, D. 2008. Our hot, dry future, The Sydney Morning Herald. www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/our-hot-dry-future-20081005-4udg.html
5. Sharwood, A. 2015. Why are they messing with the data? www.news.com.au/technology/environment/the-cyclone-tracy-of-ideological-battles-does-the-weather-bureau-tweak-data-or-is-our-government-paranoid/story-fnjwvztl-1227545670243?sv=a58a1574c4a196289acf208f11fc2d2b
6. Marohasy, J. and Abbot, J. 2015. Assessing the quality of eight different maximum temperature time series as inputs when using artificial neural networks to forecast monthly rainfall at Cape Otway, Australia. Atmospheric Research, 166, 141-149. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809515002124
Ends.
Mistakenly posted this on next article:
There’s a point, when it pointless for a politicians to try to stop the tide of public opinion and what they need is a guide who can help them understand that public opinion.
Or to put it more simply, irrespective of whether Turnbull likes the way the public mood is dragging him, he’d do better with a guide who is attuned to the public.
Here is the animation extended to 2014 –
Mr Hunt defends the Bureau because they are charged with the responsibility of turning a temperature time series without a statistically significant trend, into global warming of almost 2 degrees per Century for the IPCC/UN. Mr. Hunt and Malcolm Turnbull are a part of the Global Green Blob Menace of CAGW/Global Warming/Climate Change Alarmism.
So Environment Minister Greg Hunt ‘killed’ the excellent idea from Tony Abbott’s department for a Bureau of Meteorology review
and
The Adani coal project in Queensland has been put in limbo by the Federal Court because the Environment Minister did not adequately consider the effect of the project on a skink and a snake.
Does anybody know where the Adani approvals process stands now?
Going nowhere it looks like to me.