WUWT Commenter “Boy on a Bike” was inspired by Willis article on Darwin (See: The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero) to have a look at stations in his part of the world, he didn’t have to look far. He’s found what we’ve been saying for years on WUWT. Just have a look in our Weather Stations Category. One notable example, Lampasas, TX
He writes:
UPDATE: The writer has misidentified the lighthouse shown in the photos below. it is actually Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, not Cape Naturaliste. Not being familiar with Australian lighthouses, I did not catch this right away. But I have verified that it is Cape Leeuwin in Google Earth. The siting issue of the weather station at Cape Leeuwin remains a concern. I’ll add the temperature record at Cape Leeuwin as soon as I can locate it. UPDATE: Graphs have been posted in comments – Anthony
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Australian weather records – how much can we trust them?
After reading a few articles on weather stations in the
US and
Australia over the last year or so, I decided to do a random check on one station in WA [Western Australia] to see what the records looked like.
I chose Cape Naturaliste, as I have visited it several times, and the lighthouse has been there for around a century. I guessed that the weather station would be at the lighthouse – and I was right.
One glance at the annual mean maximum temp from around 1900 to today would convince most people that we are all about to fry. However, I decided to have a look for photos of the site to check out the location of the weather station.
The weather station is located between the two buildings on the far right – and it is about a foot from an asphalt road. Note that the asphalt is a dark black colour – the colour of fresh tar.
Here’s a side on view.
If memory serves me correctly, when I visited this place back in the 1980s, this was a gravel road – not tarmac.
If the weather station has not been relocated since 1901, what impact would moving from a gravel road to tarmac have on temperature readings? Undoubtedly, it would skew them upwards. The key question is when the tarmac was laid – or relaid – and what impact this has had on the temperature record.
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My trend values for the ‘pristine coastal sites’ were calculated by
1. Obtaining the historical monthly max/min data for all stations from the BOM (Price $40)
2. Writing some software to amalgamate the provided annual max/min values along with the average for each station.
3. The trend is then calculated for 1910-2008 (for these stations) with a simple linear regression function I obtained from the web.
All of the sites mentioned appear to show a slight decline in temperature to 1950 followed by a steeper rise from 1950 – 2000 approx. What this means I dont know.
I would have to disagree that Cape Naturaliste is not affected by urbanisation. I originally thought it was Busselton that is near the Cape but on closer inspection it is the town of Eagle Bay which I had thought was a holiday house encampment.
Eagle Bay is quite close to the lighthouse area, and there has also been substantial clearing of the original bush in the same area. I would classify the Cape Naturaliste station as a definite candidate for urbanisation/land clearing effects.
Why is this story still posted? It should have been removed when it was proven false. Is this site becoming a Gore presentation? Please move on.
Don’t get me wrong. I think that this blog is the best source of info on the web but, when you’re wrong you’re wrong. Just admit it and move on.
Chris Gillham,
I have had a look at the data on the WAClimate site and it appears to be taken from the BOM High Quality dataset. I personally would not touch this dataset with a bargepole. Most of the ‘long term’ sites in this set are in fact splice-ups of data taken from a number of local stations to give the fraudulent appearance of a long term site. There are also ‘homogenisations’ to each stations record of unknown provenance (BOM say they provide information on this, but dont)
Cape Naturaliste is however a genuine long term site. However the homogenizations, or adjustments, are extraordinary in my opinion.
Compare for example the minimum temp graph for Cape Naturaliste in the Historical Database with the HQ dataset graph. The historical database graph has a trend of 0.5 degrees/century, the HQ version a trend of 2.0 degrees/century.
For the maximum temps, the historical database has a trend of 1.84 degrees/century, the HQ dataset graph has a trend of 1.0 degrees/century.
For you guys who wants to measure temperarture;
The Maxim (Dallas) 18B20 is nice.
You get temperature in Celsius on the wire.
I buildt the interface here ;
http://martybugs.net/electronics/tempsensor/hardware.cgi
I downloaded C Software here;
http://martybugs.net/electronics/tempsensor/software.cgi
, and its working. Now measuring 8 temperature zones in my house on a single wire (pluss ground)
Unfortunately the GooglEarth street view does not identify the weather station at Cape Naturaliste. According to the Australian Bureau on Metereology the site is at:
Station Details ID: 009519 Name: CAPE NATURALISTE
Lat: -33.54 Lon: 115.02 Height: 109.0 m
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60701/IDW60701.94600.shtml
Looking at GoogleEarth you see the lighthouse far north, three houses to the north, and the station would appear to be in a small area of bitumen not covered by street view. There is not much of a ckleared area as the bush comes right up to the bitumen. Street view pictures in the area give you a good idea of the vegetation in the area.
Having said that the Long/Lat locations for the Aussie weather stations are very rough guides… the Leeuwin long lat coords puts it out to sea… so the previous post about the Naturaliste location is speculation.
Bulldust if you check “stations.txt” it give the lat / longs to 4 decimal places.
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/stations.txt
Almost tempted to go photograph a few of them … thanks for the link. I am off to Andorra next week, however, maybe I can snap one or two in the hills.
Did you know that BoM measure the air pressure at Darwin on the first floor in an airconditioned office? They then apply a correction to it to get the “real” atmospheric pressure. Wouldn’t you think it would make more sense to measure the real atmospheric pressure instead? They reckon it is near enough to the real thing anyway. If that is their attitude to accurate data collection, is it any wonder there are so many question marks over the rest of their datasets?
The mention in an earlier post about minimum and maximum and mean temperatures leads me to wonder whether mean or maximums are the right temperatures to use to monitor change.
Obviously maximums occur during the heating phase of solar radiation incoming. Minimums occur during the cooling phase as thermal radiation is outgoing.
Given the greenhouse effect is basically that of containing heat, any changes in it’s effectiveness should be directly indicated on it’s ability to maintain a certain degree of warmth.
Apart from being a direct indicator, minimum temperatures are inherently likely to be subject to far less influence of outside factors that can cause both short and long term changes.
Any thoughts?
Make up your minds which damn lighthouse it is to start off with you idiots. How hard can it be???