BoM Australia, Climate indicators, Water

Long-term Climate Variability in Australia

7 Comments

I discovered this historic BoM (1999) flyer while searching for a hard copy of a 1992 paper on the 1970’s Pacific Climate Shift. Read how the BoM attributes – El Nino – thousands of years of ice ages and warm periods – solar cycles – volcanic eruptions – oceans and currents – sea-ice extent – greenhouse and on the back page urbanisation and land use changes get a nod. Page one – two – three – four.
I found on my HDD this front page of Kerr R.A. 1992. Unmasking a shifty climate system. Science 255: 1508–1510. – if anybody has a pdf please pass on. Three of the time-series charts in BoM 1999 – temperature – rainfall and cloud cover all show evidence of a shift in the 1970’s.
I sourced updated data for the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from NOAA and made this monthly PDO chart 1854 to current. Positive periods tend to be dry and negative wet.
We should recall the Qld DPI very useful rainfall maps that I blogged on in March 2018. They have more versions now.

7 thoughts on “Long-term Climate Variability in Australia”

  2. Yes I have seen that useful BoM page portraying our rain history.
    Thanks for the heads up for readers Matthew.
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    I will add that I found on the www text of the full 1992 Kerr paper but it looks as if it has been OCR’d from the 3 columns format of the original paper and hence is somewhat too much of a jumble for me to edit into a clean copy. Still looking for a pdf.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    If anybody has a good OCR setup and wanted to produce text from the 1999 BoM flyer – please do and I can post that which will make it more likely to be picked up by Mr google.

  4. Wazz, back in 2011 I down loaded a PDF called Multi-decadal climate variability Flood and Drought -New South Wales by (Prof) Stewart W Franks University of Newcastle Australia.
    I should put it on my website site but not too sure how do do it and also pressed for time with looking at downsizing homes.
    I could email it to you but I do not have your email address.
    Franks was pretty accurate with predictions. Do not know what happened to him but obviously BOM took no notice

  5. Thanks cement – I emailed you a bit over 24 hours ago. Good luck with your downsizing – we are in early stages moving too.
    Sun 6.10pm – I emailed you again today from a different address and also left a reply at your “Interesting Music” blog.
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    Added 12.50pm Monday 2Mar. Some additional comments re the 1999 BoM flyer.
    [1] No mention Indian Ocean dipole.
    [2] Interesting note near bottom of page 4 re Reference Climate Stations – helped by Mr(or Mrs) Google I have found a few stray BoM pages that still mention Reference Climate Stations.
    The RCS network is still mentioned in this BoM glossary – “A climatological station, the data of which are intended for the purpose of determining climatic trends. This requires long periods (not less than thirty years) of homogeneous records, where human-influenced environmental changes have been and/or are expected to remain at a minimum. Ideally the records should be of sufficient length to enable the identification of secular [over time] changes of climate.”
    On left side the first 2 links are dead but the 3rd opens the RCS stations list. There are 3 links in top right – the 1st is dead – the second takes you to ACORN material – the 3rd takes you to a map of ACORN stations.
    [3] As time allows I intend to checkout the RCS sites that were discarded when the ACORN list was built. Here are the first few for WA, NT, SA with comments re max t.
    7176 NEWMAN AERO still current, started in 1997
    9193 ROTTNEST ISLAND still current, started in 1992
    10592 LAKE GRACE POST OFFICE died 1Sep2012
    14508 GOVE AIRPORT continuous from 1986 still current
    14932 TINDAL RAAF “The request generated a server error”
    24580 STRATHALBYN RACECOURSE continuous from 1997 still current

  6. Warwick, I looked in all my email folders but did not sight your email. Please try again with a subject heading like wazz.
    Flat out today painting the garage. More rain today 522.8mm for the Feb (double the average)., following 178.3 for Jan. Feb. alone beats the driest year of 519mm for 1902 . SOI has been in negative for a fair time -it must go into the positive (and more rain) soon.

  7. Interesting Broken Hill never made either Reference Climate Station list. Middle of nowhere – long record – what could be unloved?

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