BOM disappears rainfall data, "no trend" becomes "downtrend"

Anthony, you asked:
REPLY: The central question is: Why do rainfall records need to be adjusted at all? -Anthony.
Possibly because the government and the greens who helped get them into power want the Murray River to flow more than it ever has in the past. They are putting the farmers and food production as a low priority. Most countries are planning for 40 years ahead and food requirements. Not Queensland, we are selling out to the greens and AGW warmists.
In Griffith, Yoogali Hall was nowhere near large enough to hold the more than 7000 angry farmers and residents who turned up for yesterday’s public consultation about the scaling back of water rights.
While some cried, children as young as five held up signs saying “Keep my family on the farm”, while others wore animal costumes to protest against the plans by the authority. It has proposed an average basin-wide water cut of 27 to 37 per cent – even higher in some regions – which would return between 3000 and 4000 gigalitres of water to the stressed river.

Sure, an intelligent person could see the flaws in this, but this was made for politicians.

I don’t see that these small changes 2008 versus 2010 are significant in terms of trends, although they do seem to be very strange. Has anyone asked for an explanation from the BOM?
Whatever, there seems to be plenty of evidence that there is nothing unusual in periods of severe drought in the Murray-Darling basin, and also wide volatility.
For instance, how about this first photo: “Dry river bed of the Murray River at Myall near Kerang, Victoria, 1914. During the Federation drought it stopped flowing for about 6 months.” Or, secondly, upstream at Mildura, camels crossing. Nowadays of course, this is the realm of houseboats, and deaths in boating and water sports reportedly exceed those on the roads in the region.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4018/5079020859_ef8d51b35e_b.jpg
And, on a more romantic but highly relevant note, check out this magnificent poem of 1904 by Dorothea MacKellar, describing horrible drought, a decade before those photos
http://www.lancescoular.com/my-country-by-dorothea-mackellar.html
I also feel that the following anomaly graph (13 October 2010) from the BOM is perhaps an easier-to-see portrayal, showing the BOM/CSIRO preferred 11-year smoothing.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/5084763699_59bb331d8b.jpg
Incidentally, I’m currently making a complaint of bias in the ABC’s “The Science Show” (21 Aug 2010) using in part the info above.
Also, will be doing something concerning the recent proposals by the Murray Darling Basin Authority, to make, massive cuts to water allocations to farmers. (There is uproar)
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/10/15/3039023.htm?site=rural&microsite=murraydarling&section=latest

Tim F says:
October 15, 2010 at 5:00 am
“Analysts at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have some explaining to do.”
So have they been asked to comment? What did they say? Where is their reply?
Tim F – The point here is that if the BOM makes these adjustments without explanation hoping that no one will notice (except that someone almost always does), then the trust factor will move accordingly. When you drill the BOM for explanation they come up with something along the lines of done in the interests of producing high quality data. It’s a complete joke, so why try and defend the fools only to become one in the process ?
What I find so ammusing here is that the Murray is now experiencing floods following another rain event yeasterday. The Hume Weir is now expected to overflow next week and there is now a risk of major flooding downstream if we have further rain as all the upstream catchments are at capacity. Not to mention all the unseasonal snow and cold weather that accompanied…. (Is somone upstairs trying to send a message ?)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/16/3040181.htm
Recently, a link between the Indian Ocean dipole and rain in SE Australia was discovered, and the cause between the past decade of MIA drought was resolved. Now with La Nina cranked up at full throttle and the Indian Ocean dipole finally in the negative phase we can expect more of the same for months to come. Of course the recent big rains in this area of Australia have come at a very inconvenient time for our left wing political parties trying to basically legislate farmers off this land to allow water to flow out to sea.
My advise to the BOM – Please act very quickly to remove all this rain in your database records via your high quality homoginisation process – before somone notices !
🙂

You might have overstated your claim. The Mark I eyeball would seem to indicate no trend for both data sets. However, there does seem to be more interannual variability in the latter part of the record. I notice that nobody did a trend analysis on the two data sets. Run one and give us the results. Are they statistically significant?

MikeA says “major catchments are less than half-full and may never fill. ”
What major catchments are you talking about? Hume is currently at 88% with much more water to come down (in April it was 15%), Burrinjuck is full, Blowering almost full, Burrendong is full, Eildon (near empty for the last couple of years) was 60+ when I looked before the most recent storms. In short the Murray-Darling basin is awash. Any more rain will mean major floods.
If you look at the major flood records, they happen on a roughly 17-20 year cycle which happen to coincide with big La Nina years. That’s going back to 1853 using historical documents as the BoM doesn’t provide figures before 1900.

I have annual rainfall figures for Kyneton in the Murray Darling Basin dating back to 1874. I do not detect any real trend.

MikeA says:
October 15, 2010 at 11:28 pm
I like conspiracy theories; however since I live on the edge of the catchment I have to face reality. Annual rainfall means squat, you need rainfall at the right time for crops and catchments and in the right places. Falling water tables, rising salt and environmental degradation (think dust) plague the catchment.
One of the advantages of falling water tables (due to drought) is that rising salt is less of an issue. Salinisation (dryland salinity) requires rising water tables. Most land degradation issues in the Murray Darling Basin are due to past land management issues such as extensive land clearance and over grazing by sheep and cattle during drought of deep rooted perennial native grasses. Clearing of low quality marginal country is still occuring in Queensland exacerbating problems in the basin.

We know Jim Hansen has his thumb on the temperature scale at NASA GISS.
The question is: who has unfurled the umbrella over the rain gauges at BOM?

There’s that interesting statement from the IPCC, paraphrased: “Observational data do not conform to model results. Therefore either the data are wrong or the models are wrong. We tend to believe the former.”
When a body is governed by such a belief, it is natural to be suspicious when its analysts come around a couple of years later saying, “We have a adjusted in an improved process, and now it matches the models better.” To be trustworthy, there needs to be a clear and honest explanation of the new process. By “honest,” I mean a discussion of the pros and cons of the old as well as the pros and cons of the old. Otherwise, it is not science; it is politics.

Mods: isn’t there a way to add commenter self-editing or a preview stage for comments so we can catch or fix problems like the run-on link in my above comment? Anyway, please fix for me. Thx
REPLY: Fixed, but no preview available from wordpress.com I’ve asked many times -Anthony