My letter emailed to The Australian 19 Dec 2005, their article on news.com.au below

Dear Editor and Leigh Dayton,
First, your "Nation bakes in hottest year" article on page 7 of Dec 17-18, The Weekend Australian and on news.com.au has a serious misprint where you refer to 1996 being the all time hottest year as in, "..Michel Jarraud said 2005 was set to be the second-warmest year on record, behind 1996."
and;
[Although 1996 has a slight edge on 2005, Dr Coughlan said it was like a horse race that was too close to call.
That was because 1996 was "souped up" by extra heat from that year's El Nino, while 2005 ran on its own merits.
"It's the Makybe Diva of climatology," Dr Coughlan said.]

All these references to 1996 are wrong and should be 1998.  Surely you have written enough on climate issues that you should have known that 1998 was a standout hot year due to the El Nino.
To a more substantive issue now.
It is ironic that Dr Coughlan is speaking up now but it was a different story in 1990 when Dr Coughlan and two other  BoM co-authors wrote up a study of Australian city temperature data [Coughlan et al, 1990, "Trends in Australian Temperature Records" ] Paper at;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/bom.htm
pointing out the magnitude of urban heat island (UHI)  component in Australian city data and concluded as follows;
"Estimates of the trends in the annual average daily mean temperature also indicated warming at most of the non-urban sites except Brisbane Airport. The strongest warming over the periods examined was 0.26 C decade~1 Mean temperatures at Brisbane Airport cooled by approximately 0.03 C decade 1. Trends in urban-rural differences were all positive.
These estimates are greater than those of the trends this century, reported by Jones et al. (1989), in annual mean Southern Hemisphere air temperature, over both land and sea, and sea surface temperature, which have all shown rises of approximately 0.06 C decade 1."
The Jones et al 1986 compilations of global warming trends used all the Australian capital cities data where Dr Coughlan and his co-authors established strong UHI contamination yet failed in the early 1990's to stand up for their taxpayer funded findings and put in a journal "Comment" on the obviously flawed Jones et al global trends.
Trends that are now in 2005 still badly affected by the UHI warming but are now touted by Dr Coughlan.
One might say that if 2005 has to be related to a race horse as Dr Coughlan does, then indeed "Fine Cotton" is alive and well.

Lastly, take a look at the coloured BoM map of contoured trends.  Over 90% of the orange area of highest warming are from regions of Australia largely devoid of people and I would suggest devoid of meaningful long term temperature data too.  Note how the orange contour skips around Alice Springs, Giles and the longer term data in SA.
What a disgraceful example of BoM propaganda, a "dodgy brothers" of a map.
What utter balderdash for The Australian to publish.
Let's hope your future articles pay more attention to justifiable science Leigh,
Best wishes,
Warwick Hughes

>>>>>>>>>>>..
News.com.au 
Nation bakes in hottest year
From:
By Leigh Dayton

December 17, 2005
 

AUSTRALIANS have sweltered through the hottest year on record, as the global temperature continues a warming trend begun in the 19th century.
According to the World Meteorological Organisation's statement on the status of the global climate - released yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland - about 97 per cent of Australia experienced above average temperatures this year.

In April, temperatures across the continent were 2.6C above average.

"It was as if summer didn't stop," said climatologist Michael Coughlan of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre in Melbourne. "It was not until we got into June that things turned around and we got some good rain across central Australia."

Planet-wide, June and October were the hottest months ever recorded.

The heat coincided with continuing long-term drought in parts of the Greater Horn of Africa. Drought also affected much of western Europe during July, August and September, and from January to May almost half of Australia received rainfall in the lowest 10 per cent of recorded totals.

The heat and drought came in a year also marked by record hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, exceptionally heavy rain, snow and flooding in the US's southwest, and the wettest year ever in Canada.

Geneva-based WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said 2005 was set to be the second-warmest year on record, behind 1996.

"It could well be that this ranking could be modified but we are very confident that it will end up in the four warmest years," he claimed.

As of yesterday, the 2005 global temperature had risen an average 0.48C over the 1961-90 annual average surface temperature, the benchmark for climate change measurements.

Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6C and 0.7C. And the 1990s have emerged as the warmest decade since 1861, when reliable temperature recording began.

Although 1996 has a slight edge on 2005, Dr Coughlan said it was like a horse race that was too close to call.

That was because 1996 was "souped up" by extra heat from that year's El Nino, while 2005 ran on its own merits.

"It's the Makybe Diva of climatology," Dr Coughlan said.

According to Australian National University climate change expert Will Steffen, this year's record temperatures are in stark contrast to temperatures over the millennia.

"The last time the Earth was this warm was about 5000 to 6000 years ago, and the planet has been on a very slow cooling trend since then, until the very recent surge in temperature," Professor Steffen said.

He added that observational data, circumstantial evidence and climate theory suggested that the rising temperatures were a result of increased atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, generated by burning fossil fuels for energy.

"It's a no-brainer if you're a scientist that if you put more of these (gases) in the atmosphere you're going to warm the surface," said Professor Steffen, predicting global warming would soar unless greenhouse emissions were cut.

"The future is notoriously hard to predict," he said. "But, climatically speaking, we are probably in for a rather wild ride."