News today from Perth hat tip to Chris Gillham – Perth weather: Why the Bureau of Meteorology dropped more than a century of rainfall figures 3Jul18 Facts are Perth region rain changed to a lower rain regime about 1975 – over 40 years ago. Of course it makes sense to view Perth region rain against post 1975 records because that is the rain regime Perth is experiencing. Anybody is still free to quote the older higher rain numbers pre 1975. The WA Govt can still bleat on about “our drying climate” as their assorted Water Depts do. Of course there are regions of Australia where the opposite has happened and rain has increased. About a decade ago the WA Ag. Dept used to advise farmers to use 30 or 35 year rain averages to avoid having unrealistic rain expectations – made sense. The WA Govt views on their rain history have oozed east to scaremonger eastern States water policies – on for example the needless introduction of several seawater desal plants at a total cost of many $Billions. More later on this. Just in May the WA Govt Water Corporation stopped publishing Perth dams rain numbers.
The article is about only one station; to be really rational they would need to adopt post 1975 averages for a region. Did you ever hear back from BoM re those huge data gaps in that group of Perth dams rain stations?
Got this response today to my – how old – complaint re Perth dam catchments rain recording. I tried the 2 links at the end and got “server not found messages” – If anybody connects at either link –
As a Support Rep to view this Incident Ticket via the iSupport Support Rep interface click on isupport/Rep/Incident/Default.aspx?ID=337622
For customers to view this Incident Ticket via the iSupport Support End User Interface click on isupport/user/Incident/View/337622
please let me know what info is there.
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Subject: [I7CD68196A] NEW – REF2018-158-6. – Complaint re Perth dam catchments shoddy rain recording [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
From: isupportnotification@bom.gov.au
Date: Thu, July 12, 2018 12:57 pm
To: sanur2007 -dah-dah- warwickhughes.com
Priority: Normal
Options: View Full Header | View Printable Version | Download this as a file | View Message details | View as plain text
iSUPPORT HELPDESK SYSTEM INCIDENT/REQUEST NOTIFICATION MESSAGE
This is an automated message informing you that a support request from Warwick Hughes has been received via email and has been automatically logged by iSupport as a Incident I7CD68196A with a Priority listed as Medium and has been assigned to [CSS – Support Input] Queue
The Incident description has been documented as follows:
.
Dear BoM,
How is this complaint going?
Your reference number in relation to your email is REF2018-158-6.
Major rainfall data gaps Perth dam catchments
Dear BoM,
Can you please explain why the following stations have such incomplete
rain data.
Are the BoM planning to bring these data up to date? When do you expect
this will be done?
Is the BoM planning to improve future coverage and data collection for
Perth dam catchments?
Mundaring Weir 9031 – last data April 2016
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/wData/wdata?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_stn_num=009031&p_startYear=
Victoria Dam 9216 no totals for 2014-2015 partial data 2016 & no total
2017 no data Jan or Apr-Jul 2018
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/wData/wdata?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_stn_num=009216&p_startYear=
Churchman Brook 9010 – 2017 missing Feb, Mar, Apr, Jun, Nov, Dec. – nil
for 2018
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/wData/wdata?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_stn_num=009010&p_startYear=
Wungong Dam 9044 – no total for 2014 – nothing after March 2018
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/wData/wdata?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_stn_num=009044&p_startYear=
Serpentine Main Dam 9115 – missed Jul 2015 – no data after May 2016
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/wData/wdata?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_stn_num=009115&p_startYear=
Many thanks in anticipation,
yours sincerely,
Warwick Hughes 0417 929 802
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New email from BoM today closing my complaint.
iSUPPORT HELPDESK SYSTEM INCIDENT NOTIFICATION MESSAGE
This is an automated message informing you that support request I7CD68196A for customer Warwick Hughes has been closed.
INCIDENT DETAILS
Ticket Number: I7CD68196A
Date/Time opened: 12/07/2018 12:57:08 PM
ISSUE DESCRIPTION
REF2018-158-6. – Complaint re Perth dam catchments shoddy rain recording
ISSUE RESOLUTION
notification only.
Assignee: Nidhi Rekhi
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I still get a “Server Not Found” message (using Firefox) when I try to open these links. If any body gets to read the BoM messages at the above link – please copy and paste here. A reader in France also got the “Server not found on Safari and on Chrome for both links.”
Even my Internet Explorer comes up with – “This page can’t be displayed” for these two BoM links below.
As a Support Rep to view this Incident Ticket via the iSupport Support Rep interface click on isupport/Rep/Incident/Default.aspx?ID=337622
For customers to view this Incident Ticket via the iSupport Support End User Interface click on isupport/user/Incident/View/337622
I think a clue here when i click the “try it now” button is that the site is not public. You may need to be either a logged in “REP” or a “USER” to get access.
www.isupport.com/
That the BoM send you a dead end address like that without any other clues is a hint that they don’t know or care how their own system works or if you can work with it.
Seems Nidhi is not an employee of BOM but has been outsourced see here au.linkedin.com/in/nidhi-rekhi-45898324 . It seems she has her own company. Maybe she could be contacted directly. However, she probably has no idea about the data collection of BOM.
Another 2 days pass – no BoM reply to my emails asking for a BoM response I can read. We live in weird times.
Missing monthly rain totals is a common recent problem in the Perth area, not just at dams, data from 100 years ago is much better in this respect, see the validation plots in my recent analysis of Perth rainfall back to 1876:
diymetanalysis.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/example-07-perth-wa-rainfall/
Your comments appreciated thanks. I noticed a decade ago that post ~2000 rain data was more gappy than 19th or 20th century data.
I posted a few examples
Deterioration in BoM rainfall data quality this decade 19Oct2008
www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=178
sorry those links are now dud but you can easy bring the monthly data up in CDO
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=085021
and
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=083033
It is a problem right through the network except modern AWS stations such as at airports are better. So whenever building a rain history for a rural town say there is almost always some patching to do from sites maybe 30km away.