Australia has recently experienced a hot summer leading to calls of “global warming did”, but its actually been cooler than the time when the first convicts arrived in Australia back in 1790
Guest post by Craig Kelly MP
It’s been a scorcher. With the mercury soaring to 42.3 C in Sydney last week and the city in meltdown, the papers screamed, “This is climate change. It is here. It is real.” Even the taxpayer funded Climate Commission could not hide their excitement declaring, “it was hotter than before” and that “climate change” was responsible for the “unprecedented” extreme heat Sydneysiders were experiencing.
And with the satellites unable to detect any global warming for the last 16 years, and the IPCC computer modelled predictions failing to come to fruition, Labor Government ministers were quick to exploit the situation to claim the “extreme heat” was evidence of why the Carbon Tax was needed to “do the right thing by our children”. Yet they failed to detail how, when, or by how much (even to the nearest 0.0001 °C) that the Carbon Tax would change the temperature.
But I wonder if any of these people actually knew that Sydney’s so-called ‘record hot day’ on Tuesday 8th Jan this year, that had them screaming “Global Warming”, was actually COOLER than the weather experienced by the convicts of the First Fleet in Sydney way back in the summer of 1790/91 ?
For while the mercury peaked at 42.3 C last Tuesday at Observatory Hill in Sydney – more than 222 years ago at 1.00pm on the 27th Dec 1790 (measured at a location just stones-throw from Observatory Hill) the mercury hit 108.5 F (42.5 C) before peaking at 109 F (42.8 C) at 2.20pm.
The extreme heat of Sydney’s summer of 1790/91 is detailed by Watkins Tench (1758 –1833) in his book ‘A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson’ published in 1793. (Available to download from the internet for free, here).
Watkins Tench was British marine officer whom accompanied 88 male and 20 female convicts on the First Fleet ship the Charlotte which arrived in Botany Bay 20th January 1788. Watkins then stayed in Sydney until December 1791 when we sailed home to Britain and later went on to fight in the Napoleonic Wars where after a naval battle he was taken prisoner by the French and imprisoned on a ship in Brest Harbor.
Of Sydney’s weather of 27th December 1790, when the mercury hit 42.8 C (109 F), half a degree Celsius higher than last Tuesday, Tench wrote; “it felt like the blast of a heated oven”. But the extreme heat wasn’t restricted to the 27th Dec 1790. The following day the temperature again surpassed the old 100 Fahrenheit mark, hitting 40.3C (104.5 F) at 12.30pm.
And later that same summer, in February 1791, the temperature in Sydney was recorded at 42.2 C (108 F). Tench commented;
“But even this heat [of 27th Dec 1790] was judged to be far exceeded in the latter end of the following February, when the north-west wind again set in, and blew with great violence for three days. At Sydney, it [the temperature] fell short by one degree of what I have just recorded [109F]: but at Rose Hill, [modern day Parramatta] it was allowed, by every person, to surpass all that they had before felt, either there, or in any other part of the world. Unluckily they had no thermometer to ascertain its precise height.”
Tench also speculated on the cause of the extreme heat of the summer of 1790/91, and he didn’t blame global warming, coal mining, or failure to pay homage to a pagan god. Tench deduced;
“Were I asked the cause of this intolerable heat, I should not hesitate to pronounce, that it was occasioned by the wind blowing over immense deserts, which, I doubt not, exist in a north-west direction from Port Jackson, and not from fires kindled by the natives.”
Now global warming devotees may be sceptical of Tench’s records. After all, scepticism is a healthy thing. They may even seek to deny Tench’s measurements and have them purged from our history, sent down a memory hole – as the global warming texts & prophesies deem it heresy for it to have been warmer in Sydney way back in summer of 1790/91 than it is in the ‘unprecedented’ extreme heat of Sydney’s ‘globally warmed’ summer of 2012/13.
However, Tench’s meteorological recordings were undertaken following strict scientific procedure using a “large thermometer” made by Ramsden, England’s leading scientific instrument maker of the day. Tench also left a message for those that might seek to question the accuracy of the records;
“This remark I feel necessary, as there were methods used by some persons in the colony, both for estimating the degree of heat, and for ascertaining the cause of its production, which I deem equally unfair and unphilosophical. The thermometer, whence my observations were constantly made, was hung in the open air, in a southern aspect, never reached by the rays of the sun, at the distance of several feet above the ground.”
It also worth noting that in 1790, Sydney (population 1,715) was still surrounded by mostly natural bushland, where modern day Observatory Hill in Sydney (population 4,627,000) is now surrounded by the concrete, steel and glass of a modern city, not to mention the tens of thousands of air-conditioners pumping out hot air into the surrounding streets, nor the 160,000 cars & trucks that cross the Sydney Harbor Bridge daily and pass within 100 meters of Observatory Hill.
Further, the contemporaneous notes of the day concur with the empirical measurements. Lieutenant-Governor David Collins (1756-1810), in his book ‘An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales’ published in 1798 also commented on the incredible effect of the extreme heat of 1790/91 summer on the local wildlife:
“Fresh water was indeed everywhere very scarce, most of the streams or runs about the cove being dried up. At Rose Hill [Parammatta], the heat on the tenth and eleventh of the month, on which days at Sydney the thermometer stood in the shade at 105°F [40.6°C], was so excessive (being much increased by the fires in the adjoining woods), that immense numbers of the large fox bat were seen hanging at the boughs of trees, and dropping into the water… during the excessive heat many dropped dead while on the wing… In several parts of the harbour the ground was covered with different sorts of small birds, some dead, and others gasping for water.”
Tench also recorded the effects of the extreme heat of Feb 1791;
“An immense flight of bats, driven before the wind, covered all the trees around the settlement, whence they every moment dropped dead, or in a dying state, unable longer to endure the burning state of the atmosphere. Nor did the perroquettes, [parrots] though tropical birds, bear it better; the ground was strewed with them in the same condition as the bats.”
And even Governor Arthur Philip noted the effects of the extreme heat of the summer of 1790/91;
“from the numbers [of dead bats] that fell into the brook at Rose Hill [Parramatta], the water was tainted for several days, and it was supposed that more than twenty thousand of them were seen within the space of one mile.”
Yet 222 years later, reports of the mass death of birds and bats are more like to come from those sliced & diced by industrial steel wind turbines, than the heat.
Finally, Watkins Tench concluded on ‘climate change’ in Sydney back in 1790’s;
“My other remarks on the climate [of Sydney] will be short; it is changeable beyond any other I ever heard of”
Fortunately for the convicts and settlers of the new colony, Governor Arthur Philip and later Governors didn’t believe they could change that with a new tax.
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Addendum from Anthony: Readers may also find my investigation into the thermometer at Observatory hill interesting: Sydney’s historic weather station: 150 meters makes all the difference.
Note also the current placement of the BoM weather station at Observatory Hill is surrounded by heat sinks. Here are my photos from June 2010.
Click for a larger image
Note how the BoM thermometer shelter is completely surrounded by urban heat sinks and wind breaks.
A 1972 study by meteorologists Rosea Kemp and John Armstrong found that since 1918 Sydney’s average annual maximum temperature, as recorded at the new site, was 0.7 degrees warmer than the average at the old site. Winter averages were up 1.6 degrees.
The old thermometer shelter at the observatory is the pyramid shaped slatted object at the left side of this photo:
It was more exposed to the breezes of the bay than the current location.
UPDATE: Reader kalsel3294 notes support for drought and high temperatures from 1789-1796 in the peer reviewed literature:
A quick search found this research regarding the South Asian monsoon noting the great drought in India of 1790 to 1796, noting also how the reduction in rainfall in 1789 preceded by a year droughts in “Australia, Mexico, the Atlantic Islands and southern Africa” A High-Resolution Millennial Record of the South Asian Monsoon …
http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/LGT00-3.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
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You have it backwards. The whole is not an example of the part, but the part is an example of the whole. For example:
Climate is not weather. true
A scientist is not Leif. true
Leif is not a scientist. false.
Weather is not climate. false
Rest assured that an Australian Liberal government, having announced massive expenditures for climate policy, will be easily able to divert those funds into any old thing, or simply not spend them at all. Didn’t Germany use enviro-euros to revert to coal power? They used the excuse of the nuke accidents in Japan to justify nice new infrastructure to exploit all those yummy new coal-field discoveries. The BoA coal plant near Cologne is a lignite burner, but a bloody efficient one. With the “carbon price” in the toilet, why not? Good luck to Merkel: she talks internationalist and green, but acts for Germany. She’s an adult. When can we have a few adults to run Oz?
The Libs may not have their own John McTernan, but they can still spin. You see, two can play the game of announcing massive expenditures with no intention of proceeding. Of course, Labor, having taken the economy to the pub, now has little choice but to announce and shelve.
Brent Walker asked,
“Was it an El-Nino causing the heat wave of late 1790 and early 1791? People seem to forget that snow was seem at ground level in Tasmania in January 1788 as the first fleet sailed up to Sydney.”
I have recorded the mountain snowfall in my part of New Zealand (the Lower North Island) since 1980. The only Januaries to have a visible snowfall in them were 1998 and 1999 during that period. This was at the time of the Grand El Nino. The only other time it came close to doing this was on Dec 30th 1982 during another Grand El Nino. In some locations El Nino’s bring heat and dry, whilst others cop wind, rain and sometimes snow when they don’t want it! Tasmania is at its most northen point the same latitude as me.
Conicidentally the spring/summer of 1998/99 was the fourth hottest on record for T-Max since records began in 1928. The hottest in order are 1934/35, 1937/38, and 1974/75.
I find the Right Honorable Mr. Craig Kelly’s article slightly odd. Of course 42.3 degrees C was not the hottest ever recorded in Sydney nor as far as I know was it claimed to be. Lieutenant Watkin Tench’s two books on conditions in New South Wales in the early days of British settlement are a valuable record. His temperature measurements are important and I have not previously seen any dispute about their accuracy.
But the Right Honorable gentleman would be better addressing the several all time records that were actually claimed to have been broken rather than disproving a claim that was not made.
Using the Sydney Observatory records, there were more days over 35C in Sydney from 1921-1950 than from 1981-2010. But I’m sure the new ACORN temperatures have been adjusted to take account of them.
There was a huge volcanic event that created huge clouds of steam when magma touched water in a crater in hawaii in 1790, these clouds travelled at 100mph, maybe this created the heat wave of 1790/91, see how easy it is to cherry pick your facts, I prefer a holistic view, NASA have been monitoring climate and weather since they decided to go to space, they had no other agenda other than understanding whats going on, they have mass amounts of data to refect their budget!
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Rest assured that an Australian Liberal government, having announced massive expenditures for climate policy, will be easily able to divert those funds into any old thing, or simply not spend them at all.
Such cynicism.
Kelly’s Party will spend the $10 billion, make no mistake about it. Part of it will be unemployment benefits rebadged as a Green Corps planting trees on public land even if there is not enough suitable public land to do it.
Part of will go to a rural pork barrel fund to grease the National Party constituents by way of soil carbon sequestration payments about which the science is far from settled. And part will go to their big business generator mates who want to retire outdated power plants and be paid by taxpayers to do it.
The biofuel subsidy for wheat farming constituents (those who haven’t been burned out in the 500,000 or so hectares* already burned out this fire season) and cane farming constituents will continue, and will be badged as AGW Action rather than as a Rural Rorts for YeeHa Mates Program.
None will be systemic market-based instruments even though they are a free market Party.
*I haven’t seen a breakdown between farming and non-farming land burnt so far. Over a hundred fires still going with over a dozen out of control, the new normal? so the final tally will be interesting to see.
Here is something else those arguing that adaptation is cheaper than prevention had better add to the costs of adaptation ledger. Nice pic of what AGW is going to do to railway lines.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queenslands-heatwave-sees-concerns-for-western-rail-lines-as-temperatures-soar/story-e6freoof-1226553147443
REPLY: No, WEATHER PATTERNS (like a blocking high creating a heat wave) do that. AGW’s 0.7C rise over the last century does not. – Anthony
To anybody out there in fairy land who do not believe what the NSW RFS have to go through to please the green mob when planing a hazard burn it takes years and and huge amount of dollers before you can burn any bush, ask one of the chiefs they will tell you,, http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/
Relax. Chill. Abbott has to have a climate policy like he has to have an arts policy – for the luvvies, as well as for Turnbull and the doctors’ wives. While Turnbull is likely to be Minister for Goldman Sachs, even he can’t waste money like Labor.
I’m not suggesting Abbott and his ministry will be wonderful, or that they won’t waste dough or go a-pork-barrelling. They just won’t be Labor, or the GetUp Left. That’s a great start.
Climate Ace says: January 14, 2013 at 6:23 pm
I prefer the term ‘changes to ocean chemistry’ because the term ‘acidification’ is a term that BAU boosters love to hate.
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Acidification is the term used in all the studies on the matter. Strange that you should be reluctant to use it. Perhaps you find it too embarrassing to speak of “acidification of the oceans”. Very well, call it what you like. By your statement “possible collapse of the Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods” do you mean the hyped-up claim that the shells of the pterapods will dissolve?
Climate Ace says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Here is something else those arguing that adaptation is cheaper than prevention had better add to the costs of adaptation ledger. Nice pic of what AGW is going to do to railway lines.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queenslands-heatwave-sees-concerns-for-western-rail-lines-as-temperatures-soar/story-e6freoof-1226553147443
REPLY: No, WEATHER PATTERNS (like a blocking high creating a heat wave) do that. AGW’s 0.7C rise over the last century does not. – Anthony
Sure, sure. We all know about blocking highs and the IOD at perversely just the wrong setting when we also happen to be getting a late monsoon. As you rightly point out, that sort of stuff happens. As does the record-breaking temperatures and related damage to infrastructure, by direct heat and farm incomes by way of bushfire devastation.
But that is not the argument that AGW adaptationists make. Their point is that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. (Lord Moncton has argued this very case while he was taking time out from his Birther activities). I was reminding the adaptationists that they need to incorporate higher railway maintenance costs in their adapation ledger. While the adaptationists are at, it they can incorporate some of the recent (and ongoing) fire damage associated with the record high temperatures as well.
REPLY: Sure, why not? You could blame it on pixies too. – Anthony
mpainter
I am skeptical about your use of the term ‘acidification of the oceans’.
For believers in climate exceptionalism, as applied to Australia and evidenced by the latest heatwave, February, Victoria, 1851 should knock most of the stuffing out of that belief. But here’s more, relating to actual loss of life:
Australia’s most lethal natural disaster, the Victorian heatwave of 1938-1939, killed 438 people. On top of that, there were the Black Friday bushfires of January 13, 1939, which destroyed nearly 5 million acres, and affected three quarters of the state. Almost as lethal was the Big Heat of 1895-1896. which killed 437, and 47 in Bourke alone. Cyclone Mahina in 1899 is estimated to have killed 401 people. Our next most lethal natural disaster was another heatwave – 246 perished in 1906-1907. After that comes a list of cyclones and heatwaves, all occurring long ago, with the exception of the Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people.
We live in a dangerous place called Australia. Black Thursday in 1851 – which killed a million sheep but not too many humans, may well be history’s most severe known inferno – and the horror El Nino of the early 1790s should have convinced us all of that. But the New Man at Year Zero is only interested in saying words like “unprecedented”, not meaning them. The hive mind will not allow more than a grudging and superficial peep into the past. The present exists, but only for spin purposes. The future is, of course, a model.
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Relax. Chill. Abbott has to have a climate policy like he has to have an arts policy – for the luvvies, as well as for Turnbull and the doctors’ wives. While Turnbull is likely to be Minister for Goldman Sachs, even he can’t waste money like Labor.
Whlle you are so persuasive that I am skeptical about the integrity of Kelly’s Climate Policy.
Skeptical is good, a real start.
Climate Ace,
How about that! Something that you and I agree on! That the hype about the acidification of the oceans is a cause for skepticism.
But Climate Ace, you never claimed to be an expert in chemistry, did you? or minerology.
So you can’t tell us about “changes to ocean chemistry” because they are beyond you.
Another would-be scientist from global-warmer land.
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:38 pm
For believers in climate exceptionalism, as applied to Australia and evidenced by the latest heatwave, February, Victoria, 1851 should knock most of the stuffing out of that belief. But here’s more, relating to actual loss of life:
Australia’s most lethal natural disaster, the Victorian heatwave of 1938-1939, killed 438 people. On top of that, there were the Black Friday bushfires of January 13, 1939, which destroyed nearly 5 million acres, and affected three quarters of the state. Almost as lethal was the Big Heat of 1895-1896. which killed 437, and 47 in Bourke alone. Cyclone Mahina in 1899 is estimated to have killed 401 people. Our next most lethal natural disaster was another heatwave – 246 perished in 1906-1907. After that comes a list of cyclones and heatwaves, all occurring long ago, with the exception of the Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people.
We live in a dangerous place called Australia. Black Thursday in 1851 – which killed a million sheep but not too many humans, may well be history’s most severe known inferno – and the horror El Nino of the early 1790s should have convinced us all of that. But the New Man at Year Zero is only interested in saying words like “unprecedented”, not meaning them. The hive mind will not allow more than a grudging and superficial peep into the past. The present exists, but only for spin purposes. The future is, of course, a model.
I am skeptical about comparing pre- and post- airconditioning figures uncritically. You do know what I mean.
Nor should fire history be used without due reference to the differential in resources and capabilities for fire fighting available in various decades and centuries. People trying to escape bushfires on foot or by horse-back simply did not have the same capacity to escape as those with horseless carriages. Nor did they have access, by way of modern communications, to the latest in satellite-based fire warning systems. Nor is the vegetation like-for-like: another false assumption. The forested proportion of Victoria has declined considerably since at least some of the events you stipulate. Much of it has been turned to grassland. While grassland fires can be fast, hot and deadly, they are not a patch on your proper eucalypt crown fire. Not only have the forests been much reduced, they have also been much fragmented and separated by such fire-inhibiting infrastucture as six lane highways. Nor should you assume that there have been a comparable number of sheep available to be burnt to death for comparative climate study purposes. In fact the sheep population has varied by very large numbers inded.
I know all that sort of stuff is tiresome and tedious but you will appreciate that we skeptical AGW supporters do have to keep reminding BAU boosters to stick to the straight and narrow of thinking skeptically.
mpainter says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Climate Ace,
How about that! Something that you and I agree on! That the hype about the acidification of the oceans is a cause for skepticism.
I am skeptical about your credibility given your propensity to make things up.
Steve says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 pm
“…the Right Honorable gentleman would be better addressing the several all time records that were actually claimed to have been broken rather than disproving a claim that was not made.”
What “several all time records” would they be then?
Anthony
REPLY: Sure, why not? You could blame it on pixies too. – Anthony
I could but I am skeptical about pixies. I leave belief in pixies and diatomaceous metereorites to BAU boosters.
Craig Kelly is not doing anyone any favours by trying to gloss over the record heat Australia recently had – from reading his article he wrote it for political purposes. Maybe someone will let him know that Australia is not just Sydney. That Australia did have a record heat event where the average for the entire continent was above 39C for seven days straight. That’s never happened before in all the records going back a century. Despite all the advances in fire fighting and communication, It caused hundreds of fires and the loss of a huge amount of property, flora and fauna – domestic and wild.
It will undoubtedly happen again – with no thanks to the Craig Kellys of the world. Welcome to the new normal.
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20130109.shtml
a basic climate pattern in centralAustralia.
drought->drought->lots of rain over a 2 year period-> flooding->stuff grows like crazy,-> gets warm, -> stuff dries off,-> lots of big bushfires everywhere -> eventually back to droughts
ITS A NATURAL CYCLE OF EVENTS !!!
Always has been, always will be, its a harsh country.
LazyTeenager says:January 14, 2013 at 1:07 pm
“…..However record Sydney temperatures are not a crux for global warming. …. … the whole of the Australian continent is affected by record temperatures ….. And the frequency of such events is even more important over time if trends are to be assessed….”
Waddyaknow, Lazy. Pretty much the point every commentator in here is making, (while noting that they did not have an Australia wide network of weather stations then, and putting in more thermometers in hotter places continually since then does NOT provide convincing evidence of a rinsing average…).
40 houses now gone and the Coonabarabran fire is still out fo control.