![[010035+-+Cunderin+BoM.jpg]](https://i0.wp.com/1.bp.blogspot.com/_bcz86_ZAoBw/S6XDyqNr3eI/AAAAAAAAAFI/0T2KWJPlci4/s1600/010035%2B-%2BCunderin%2BBoM.jpg?resize=520%2C391&quality=83)
Above: The Cunderdin Australian Climate Reference Network station, a BoM official photo. Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/map/stations/010035.shtml
There’s an effort to the surfacestations.org project underway in Australia to have a look at the quality of siting of stations, see here.
They write:
We have now looked at 18 separate stations (out of a total of 103), in three separate categories. So far, not one of these stations meets the criteria of being “away from large urban centres” and the CRN quality standards of NOAA/NCDC in terms of siting.
Unless there is a dramatic improvement in the remaining 85 stations, we would be well justified in asking the questions: “Just how reliable is the RCS network data and how valid are any conclusions that are drawn from them”?
h/t to Andrew Bolt in Is this how to measure our warming?
Along these lines, there’s a new paper out related to station siting, but it is in French. I could use Google translate, but it tends to do a poor job of technical papers. It is 14 pages long, with a lot of white space. Any volunteers? Leave a comment if you can. – Anthony
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It appears to be just to the left of the double window, separated from the building by a few feet and elevated to almost the roof line. Hard to spot in the picture. I suspect that a more carefully taken picture would show that the station is not as poorly sited as it appears to be in this photo.
A quick look at several of the other Australian sites shows them to be remarkably well situated.
What is a FLIR?
Oh, that wouldn’t be the station lying on it’s side on the wood pile would it?
I am at a loss to explain this photograph. I have been to Cunderdin many times. There is a small enthusiasts’ airport there and, to the best of my knowledge, that is where the weather station is located. I think it might be an idea to correspond with the Australian BOM and point out that this photograph is an error.
Jan Pompe (19:30:20) :
suricat (18:49:36) :
“Yep, if the shot is bad always blame the camera man!:)”
Blame? What’s better than a shot with a view from the weather station?
/quote
In this instance, a shot ‘of’ the weather station.:)
Best regards, suricat.
At least the person checking it does not have to worry about Polar Bears and -40 when he goes to check the readings!
My guess is that it is just behind the Wheely Bin next to the fence, top right of the picture!
Sorry guys, I think you may have been set up. The actual weather station is at the airport and latest weather info can be seen at http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60801/IDW60801.95625.shtml – note the latitude and longitude given there as opposed to the one in your photograph (lat. -31.62 compared to 31.649/long. 117.22 compared to 117.233). I suspect that your photo may be the old site at the post office but the picture of the house next door does not fit my memory. I have looked at some of the other photographs at the BOM Australian Reference Climate Stations, having investigated the site in detail some time ago, and some of the other photographs do not seem right at all. Everyone should make sure that the BOM RCS site has not been hacked, perhaps in order to discredit those not adhering to the global warming othodoxy.
Fair assumptions in judging where the station may be found:
1) Photog was probably on the correct side of the fence therefore anything on the house-side of the fence can be ruled out.
2) Photog probably centered the wx station in photo +- 1/8 frame (certainly within +- 1/4 frame)
Therefore I would choose, as several others have, the vicinity of the woodpile … and it looks like there might be a horizontal support for a couple instruments what looks like to the right and above the wheelbarrow.
.
.
Dave N (18:16:43) :
Dave, My point about the Willis Island station is that it is isolated from everything and should give a clear indication of warming … or not as it turns out. I’d like to see the “experts” try to “adjust” Willis Island data on the basis of surrounding stations !
If you go to Andrew Bolt’s post (link in the WUWT post above) you see three examples of Australian temp monitoring sites, one of which is the picture above in this WUWT post.
In the other two pics of sites in Andrew Bolt’s post, you can see what an Australian temp monitoring enclosure/pole look like. See how tall it is?
I cannot see anything with that height and shape in the station 010035 photo above in the WUWT post.
Where the heck is it?
John
Us Aussies are enterprising people. The owner of that property in the photo took the Stevenson Screen and turned it into a letterbox. 🙂
It’s the marker with EN on it. Just in front of the rubble of building material, and corrugated fence. I must admit I cheated by going to the rcs-audit site.
It’s a digital thermometer, with large display, right out in plain sight. You can see the reading at the time of the picture. It says
010
035
No units mentioned, so I’ll hazard these are the 24 hour lows and highs in degrees C.
Pretty low tech, considering that the display is hand-operated. Some bloke moseys along once a day, selects numbers (which are obviously kept in one of the green sheds) and changes the sign.
Is it one of the bricks on the lower left?
Is it hidden beneath the bushes or plants next to the fence where the two white poles are?
pat (16:52:22),
Thank you for that Quadrant link:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/end-phase-of-the-climate-wars
The money quote:
When a Nobel laureate who was forced out of his position admits the truth in a sincere mea culpa, the alarmist crowd can either admit that he’s telling the truth — which destroys their CO2=CAGW hypothesis — or they can disown Jones, and complain that he’s lying about the fatally weak temperature/CO2 connection.
Either way, their CO2 conjecture is untenable.
Let’s inject a bit of local knowledge and some fairness.
The main airport criticism seems to be the official images showing the best view. They are mainly taken with a quite wide angle lens, which makes the distance recede and distant features look small. But, who is to say what the correct focal length of lens should be? To fit in some of the scenes with a 55mm lens, close to eye magnification (that’s in film camera terms for a 35 mm film camera), the photographer wuld at times have to be standing on or near the airstrip. Special protocols are required for people moving around airports and standing on the runway is not customary. So, I defend the BoM to a degree on the selection of photos. Part of the effect is unavoidable.
Next, as to grass. The interior of Australia has a lot of desert where there is a struggle to grow lawn grass and plenty of places with little natural grass, especially after it’s been graded ot trampled. Regeneration is slow. It is not surprising that some sites fail to meet the top criterion of a grassed surrounding. To meet it, one would have to plant and water the grass and this is probably not the best way to measure temperature and humidity.
Airports again. Darwin has been discussed. Here I am critical. When the Darwin strip was constructed and upgraded in the 1930-40 period, the biggest types of aircraft were like the C-47 or DC3 or Dakota or whatever you might want to call it. These leave a far smaller and lower heat plume on taxi than does a Jumbo or A380. It is possible that measurements of heat plumes have been made for the Darwin location, but I would be surprised if they were not detected. The primary purpose of the station is, after all, assistance to aviation. It can be quite tricky landing a big aircraft at Darwin where there can be sharp temperature inversions close enough to the ground to cause a sudden change in lift as the wing passes through. My criticism is that the automation of climate stations with telemetry gear was not accompanied by the establishment of a new network in the late 1980s, with locations chosen to avoid plausible urban and other disruptive effects. Perhaps the country did not have the money for it. We set up a tower at Jabiru when we built the original small town in the early 1970s. That’s 250 km East of Darwin, so quite remote.
Onto heat islands, there are several score of FLIR (brand) IR cameras on Australian aircraft already. It is technically possible to do a number of grid surveys of suspected UHI locations, calibrate and map them. The cost would be high – that’s a possible reason, but I suspect it’s an application low on the priority list as well. Maybe one day it will be done.
Cunderdin WA has a weather station at the airport since 1996 replacing the town one of 1950 vintage. The new one is 4.5 km north of the old and there is not much habitation or grass between the two. I have no idea where the BoM photo came from or what it means.
I’m happy to answer questions on Australia because I travelled over most of it it my career, lived in 12 different locations since marriage, did airborne surveys and ground geochemistry, used Landsat imagery, did mapping and a host of other activities that could avoid people speculating too much.
On the right side there is a light green thing (more tall than wide: maybe a dog house??) and behind that is a white thing. The upper left corner of the white thing is in the foreground of something attached to the house. There is a green symbol-laden round thing there – somewhat like a big round temperature display such as I have on the side of a shed. That could be a bimetallic thermometer. I’ll guess that the “weather station” is the white box-like affair attached to the side of the house. The top of this box attachment to the house seems to have a strange roof outline. This whole thing looks suspicious, as though all the readings are taken from inside the house.
Send my prize to . . .
Could the station be the pile of rubble that is in the picture? It stopped giving data and now it’s toast…
although there are rumors above in the comments that the actual station is at the airport.
@ur momisugly Zoltan Beldi (16:55:44) and Raredog (20:24:44)
Lol, good catch – and it’s not even April Fool’s Day yet 😀
Cundardin Airfield Almos automatic weather station is located at -31.6219, 117.2217; or 31°37’19″S, 117°13’18″E for the decimally challenged. Try Google Earth.
I believe it is behind the fence and small tree, attached to the building.
Just to the right of the smaller green trashcan?
This is the correct station, not the one at the airport.
Here is current data from it, it is listed by the ID number in the picture, its Status is “open” and the latest available data is from 31 December 2009.
First on the short list of “Nearest Alternative Sites” is Cunderdin Airfield, ID number 010286.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
Here is the page titled “Cunderdin, Western Australia: March 2010 Daily Weather Observations.”
It states under the tables:
Therefore the station pictured IS PRESUMABLY NOT IN USE for temperature data. However the official record for Cunderdin on this page is kludged together from two sources, I have no idea right now when they stopped using 010035 temp data, and as seen on the page I linked to above they are still recording data from 010035, it is still open, with the last available from the end of 2009. I have no idea when they stopped using 010035 temp data in that Cunderdin official record.
Thus there are now other questions brought about than if that is the right Cunderdin weather station, which it is. One I would like answered is when they shifted to that airfield for that “combined” official record and what that did to the temperature records. Is Cunderdin really Cunderdin when they tallied everything up?
Re Google Earth in Australia
One of our boys works for a large pastoral company here. Finding some of the places he’s worked at on GE suggests you could get lost pretty easily using that source.
I put this on “tips” but it seems to fit here pretty well – snip if not
“The BOM & CSIRO report–it’s what they don’t say that matters”
“Ken Stewart has scanned the trend maps at BOM (Bureau of Meteorology), and his point is spot on. As soon as I saw the neat joint 6 page advertising pamphlet for the climate-theory-that’s-backed-by-bankers, I wondered what happened to the first 60 years of last century, and Ken found it. Did the BOM forget they have hundreds of datapoints from back then? Did they forget to use their own website, where you can pick-a-trend, any-trend, and choose the one with err…more convenient results? Or is the case that their collective mission is not necessarily to provide Australians with the most complete and appropriate information available, but to provide them with what the bureaucracy needs them to know? (And what they need to know apparently is the carefully censored version of the truth that will keep government ministers happy–let me tax them more; keep department heads smiling–let the climate cash cow continue, and last but not least, help staff “feel good”–I’m sure I’m helping the environment?)”
Read more about what was left out here
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/the-bom-csiro-report-its-what-they-dont-say-that-matters/
Ok there is a problem here. Most people like myslef seem to have assumed that this weather station at Cunderdin (010035), which is part of the CRN, is for temperature, it is not, it only measures cloud cover for the CRN. The closest station which measures temperature as part of the CRN is Kellerberrin (010073).