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.
===============================================================
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
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Steve Mosher. Yes it was properly calibrated. That thermometer was made by the most eminent instrument maker of that time and Tench was fully trained in the maintenance of the gauge.
Friends:
I am skeptical that ‘Climate Ace’ is human. The posts of ‘Climate Ace’ on this thread are typical of a badly written bot.
Responding to bots is pointless and triggers them to respond with asinine nonsense which disrupts rational discussion.
Richard
“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.”
Not tedious at all, since I make no assumptions. I could happily toss around speculations and factoids about light population compared to present levels, enormous modern regrowth areas with the concentration of agriculture, the half century of rain deficit which followed the Fed drought, in spite of flood events and periods of relief. I could talk about nearly all the individual months in my region setting their records for heat and drought in remote decades. (The heat records have been pulled; the rainfall records stand.) Yes, those hot and dry first decades of the twentieth century! Who knew when we had our triple header floods in the 1890s? Who knew the soaking of 1950 would change the game? Who in the parched thirties envisaged the big wets and big storms of the 1970s (with the odd drought chucked in, just because it’s Oz).
I’d have to discuss that with a true skeptic, who sees the contradictions and uncertainties, and the near futility of building future speculations on such confusion and complexity. But some use the word “skeptic” as a reverse psychology stunt, in the way the GetUp Left uses the word “free market solution” to describe a certain erosive tax. In the Age of McTernan you can do anything with words…but should you?
I have been following the climate change story for four years. I am just an amateur, but I like mysteries. I wrote this recently on another site, but after reading through the comments here, it seems that this would be a good place to ask my questions…After looking through some of the current graphs, I noticed a connection in one that matched with a thought that I had been repetitively posting for a bit. The thought was in looking at the Escalator graph {some other graphs also show this} , that the graph really shows two events within it’s boundaries of 1970 to 2012. Skeptical Science shows their answer to the Escalator as a single line always rising. While that is correct from a ‘start to end’ single line on the graph, their answer misses the detail of what actually happens. The warming on this graph occurs between 1970 and 1998. From 1998 to the present this graph goes sideways with maybe a small +or-. This was a point that none of the regular warmists could answer. I finally saw a revised line for the graph that removed several natural forcings to show the co2 on its own. The revised line was explaining why you can’t look at the graph as a two step proposition. Temperatures were also slightly shifted in comparison to other graphs. The net effect was to switch a part of the heat rise from 1970/98 into the 1998/2012 time frame, 0.22C of the rise. Maybe they stretched the high and low a bit to enhance the message. Anyway, while I was mulling this over I happened to come across the Multivariate ENSO Index. This graph explains why the “ramp leading up to the plateau” view of the Escalator is correct. The ENSO graph starts in 1950. Up until 1977, the trend is to the cool side, La Nina is dominant. There is a strong El Nino in 73/74, though. In 1977 the El Nino takes control and reigns for 21 years from 1977 to 1998. 1998 the marking spot of the change. The 4 biggest El Nino spikes on this 62 year chart occur in that 21 year window of time. Finally, a strong La Nina hits in 1998. The next El Nino in 2002 is a weaker system. As it starts to fade at the end of 2004, the Sumatra tsunami hits. A large plume off of the Indian Ocean is shot into the Pacific. While at the same time the main thrust of Indian Ocean movement from the tsunami heads SSW into Antarctica. This restarts the weak El Nino for two more years, till 2006. Since then La Nina is acting like it did in the 50s, 60s, and mid 70s. Since then temperatures continue to move sideways. Wouldn’t it be right to say that the 21 years of El Nino+ is a main component of the current heat signature. How long would it take for the oceans to dissipate that extra heat load? All of the El Ninos since 2000 have been weaker events. Is the 21 years of enhanced El Ninos a cycle? With the weaker spikes in the El Nino is it about to crash early into another La Nina in the near future? Is this a potential sign of a Maunder Minimum? …..At the last, may I point out that around 1790, the Dalton Minimum was just starting. Interesting that Napoleon was probably done in by the Dalton Minimum.
tobyglyn asks what all time records were claimed to be broken. These claims were not made by me, but by the Australian Bureau of Meterology.
These claimed new records include:
The highest national average temperature ever recorded on January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees and
The longest period of consecutive days (9) with the national average temperature above 39 degrees.
There were other less important things claimed such as the highest temperature ever recorded in Hobart (A state capital just as Sydney is).
The point of my comment was not to agree with these claims, but to suggest that the Right Honorable Mr. Craig Kelly should address the actual claims and should not have wasted his time disproving something that was not claimed.
Bruce Friesen says: January 14, 2013 at 10:39 am
….. my Australian/English dictionary, …… nong: a simpleton or fool
Perhaps the above was apt in this case Bruce, but that definition comes over a little more harshly than my intended usage of the word, and my experience of its usage; ie, generally light-hearted criticism directed at someone who has said or done something rather silly or missed something obvious. (as per the urban dictionary definition below):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nong
nong: in Australian slang, nong is used as a pretty mild and/or endearing insult. a bit of a twit, or idiot. nothing too mean or horrid is meant by calling someone a nong.
Climate Ace says: January 14, 2013 at 9:36 pm
I am skeptical about your credibility given your propensity to make things up
============================
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
I quote you, and I do not make the quote up. Now, show us what you know about ocean chemistry and explain this assertion.
goldminor:
re your post at January 15, 2013 at 2:20 am.
There was a thread about the ‘SkS escalator’ on WUWT. I suggest you search WUWT for it (I could link to it but think you may benefit from other things you find using the Search facility at top-right on the WUWT home page).
In that thread SkS representatives initially defended the ‘escalator’ graph but upon their arguments being demolished they fell back on claiming it was a “joke”. (Yes, they really did! Take a look.)
The “two step proposition” has been explained in detail on WUWT by Bob Tisdale. Again, I think you would find it useful to do a search.
And deleting assumed “natural” effects of assumed magnitudes from the data to “reveal” the “CO2 effect” comes under the heading of,
If you torture the data enough it will confess what you want it to.
I hope this helps.
Richard
Dorothea Mackellar OBE (1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968) – Wrote this while in England (and homesick) at age 19 :
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
The fires are worse for the same reason that the Colorado fires were last year, too much undergrowth for fuel thanks to the Greenfreaks.
It has been a bit warm- much cooler now though (here in Perth) – today the MSM (Channel 7) were trying to push that if last night’s minimum had been just 0.6c more it would have been a hotter minimum on that day in January since 193sumthin (probably 39) – all very meaningful as I am sure you will all agree 😉
Interesting that Observatory Hill recorded the highest temperatures across all those in the Sydney basin last week. It was similar on New Year day 2006 when the city (44.2C) and airport (45+C) reached slightly higher than the normally hotter western suburbs. Is Urban Heat Island effect being correctly accounted for ? Adding UHI onto the 1790 figure the temperature recorded by Tench might have been even higher (or more correctly last week cooler)? Best thing about this story is it comes from a conservative politician – Craig Kelly. Those who say there is no difference between Australian conservatives and ‘progressives’ on global warming policy, please take note.
Congratulations Mr Kelly, strawman of the year….so far.
@ur momisugly nick [kermode]..
congratulations.. most worthless, pointless, post of the year, so far
until your next post ,
Some people seem to believe that the entire continent of Australia is burning / melting. It is not. We are having a very mild summer in North Queensland, and the rains are very late (looks like this week they may break). I am told by many who have lived here for decades that this causes the rest of Australia to get very hot, as the cooling winds from the rains are not generated. Sounds pretty simple and believable to me.
As for the article, I am very pleased that a politician from Australia is willing to get up and be heard on this matter. The CO2 fear-mongering Labor party have lost several state election by landslides. I believe they will also lose this year’s federal election, and we can put this nonsense behind us. Very recent political history here has proved to me that the state/federal government should continue (as some are arguing it should be abandoned), as it acts as an effective buffer to extreme and unpopular governments such as we have now.
For people mentioning the lack of “dead fauna” as being a measure for comparison… did Sydney Cove/Elizabeth Farm/Rose Hill of old have more or less sources for fresh water compared to today.
When did Sydney have its first swimming pools and fountains? Where there many large sandstone dug/laid chlorinated pools made by convict labour? Because on many a hot day, I have seen all types of birds swoop in to pools (non salt water) all over Sydney to get a swig of fresh water. Not sure they had that convenience back then. Hence the high mortality rate.
Jer0me says:
January 15, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Some people seem to believe that the entire continent of Australia is burning / melting. It is not. We are having a very mild summer in North Queensland, and the rains are very late (looks like this week they may break). I am told by many who have lived here for decades that this causes the rest of Australia to get very hot, as the cooling winds from the rains are not generated. Sounds pretty simple and believable to me.
As for the article, I am very pleased that a politician from Australia is willing to get up and be heard on this matter. The CO2 fear-mongering Labor party have lost several state election by landslides. I believe they will also lose this year’s federal election, and we can put this nonsense behind us. Very recent political history here has proved to me that the state/federal government should continue (as some are arguing it should be abandoned), as it acts as an effective buffer to extreme and unpopular governments such as we have now.
Kelly’s Party’s Party Platform includes:
(1) Acceptance of AGW
(2) A target of reducing CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020.
(3) Spending $10 billion of taxpayer’s money to do so.
(4) Achieving 60% of their target through soil carbon sequestration at a cost that farmers say is impossible and scientists say won’t happen.
If you like that sort of hypocritical stuff from Kelly and his polly colleagues, you can have him.
mpainter
I did not raise the term ‘acidification’. You did. Stop implying that I did.
You owe us an explanation for why you used this term.
mosomoso
Not tedious at all, since I make no assumptions.
Excellent. We are agreed that the magnitude of the consequences of past weather events in Australia are not directly comparable with the magnitude of the consequences of current weather events in Australia.
Which reminds me that we now have had had around 150 houses burned at a time when heat temperature records are being set. Fortunately, most of the humans in the firefronts had horseless carriages or the results might have been much, much worse.
MeWhoElse says: January 15, 2013 at 7:05 pm
For people mentioning the lack of “dead fauna” as being a measure for comparison… did Sydney Cove/Elizabeth Farm/Rose Hill of old have more or less sources for fresh water compared to today.
……. Because on many a hot day, I have seen all types of birds swoop in to pools (non salt water) all over Sydney to get a swig of fresh water. Not sure they had that convenience back then. Hence the high mortality rate.
Very true and an interesting point.
But the main topic of this discussion is whether or not this is unusually hot for Sydney, and therefore an indication of sudden (relatively speaking) anthropogenic warming.
Records and eyewitness accounts would indicate that Sydney indeed endured similarly hot spells prior to the advent of the possibility of any major anthropogenic effects on the climate.
Now, were they exactly the same conditions as seen recently? Who can tell? But they are very likely close enough that it brings into question any attempt to promote recent events as a harbinger of CAGW. If events like this now occur every year or two for the next 10 years I would probably start to worry.
But, as of this point, it is just another weather event, similar to ones which have occurred infrequently over the few hundred years of recording we have.
On the other hand, Climate Ace, the conditions of 1851 and 1939, just as examples, may have been far worse. You don’t know. I don’t know. Houses have often been destroyed at times when heat temperature records are set. Last summer, in my part of Oz, was the coolest I have experienced in my 63 years. This means very little, if anything. Fire conditions here were far worse nineteen years ago, in a previous heatwave. This gives no guarantee that the coming February will not be bad for fires. Last weekend being our first serious heatwave in nine years, I’d quite forgotten how handy an electric fan can be. Will next summer bake me, and ruin my bamboo shoots again? You don’t know, and I don’t know.
In my region, every month except August set its highest heat record between 1910 and 1919. August was hottest in 1946. Drought records tell a similar, though not identical, story. Should I therefore assume that the coming February will not be the hottest since records began, here on the midcoast of NSW? Should I assume it will be cooler than last February, based on a “trend” I’ve cooked up? Never! I simply don’t know. And you don’t know.
The entire northern hemisphere, except for a few patches, is experiencing a rigorous winter, all sorts of records are being broken, though many stand – especially those records set in the coldwave of Eastern Europe, 2012. Does this mean there is a new Ice Age coming? People who predict a new Dalton or Maunder are not much different to those who promote CAGW. They don’t know, but they have invested too much personal vanity or prestige in their pronouncements to back down. But they don’t know. And you don’t know. You don’t have a clue.
Just enjoy this warmish patch of the Holocene. It’s not great, but it’s about as great as it gets.
mosomoso
If it is individual temperature records you are fussing about, world heat records are outstripping world cold records by a very large margin indeed.
Climate Ace, says: January 15, 2013 at 7:20 pm
I did not raise the term ‘acidification’. You did. Stop implying that I did.
You owe us an explanation for why you used this term.
==========================
mpainter says: Again I quote you:
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
Again, please explain your statement, Climate Ace, so that we here at WUWT can see how much you really do know, and then you can add a feather to your cap: Ocean Chemistry Ace
MeWhoElse
Your point on watering points is interesting like-for-like comparisons would be extremely difficult.
The Tank Stream, the main source of water for the infant colony in Sydney, is now entirely underground. The local forest type is endangered and Sydney’s avifauna has also changed significantly.
The experiment of Sydney is one-off and not replicable, if for no other reason but the extinctions in the Sydney Basin.
The event described by Tench is no ordinary heatwave. It is high summer heat combined with dry north westerlies. Basically, it is late winter/spring wind pattern combined with summer scorching, so there is no relief, not even right on the beach. It occurred around 1980 and again around 2000 in my lifetime. While there were some domestic animal deaths around here in 2000, none of the countless parrots, bats etc were dropping dead as described by Tench in the 1790s. Is that because of alternative water sources? Or was the First Fleeters’ event of even greater severity? I don’t know, and I can take comfort in knowing that the ignorance is general.
These foul north westerly events, like all weather disasters, have their own personalities and duration. None is replicable, much is forgotten. Try hard enough, and you can explain the old ones away and endow the more recent one with “climate exceptionalism”. If one were to occur again in the near future, it would, of course, be fitted right into a CAGW script. But even the present Northern Hemisphere coldwave is being fitted to that script. Really!
By the way, imagine me “fussing” about new temp records? Or worrying that more heat records than cold records might be broken? If sea levels and temps are trending up since the middle of the nineteenth century, you won’t catch me complaining. I quite liked the slight cool-down and extra moisture in the seventies…but I wouldn’t enjoy watching glaciers eat my village. Let’s just hope we don’t get some major vulcanism around the same time as the temp drops for other reasons. Brrr. Pass the lignite, quick.
From the figures posted here and at JoNova’s site it would appear Sydney has been cooling.
Here’s the full Sydney Observatory Hill story in a chart.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Observatory_Hill_Full_Adjustments.png
The red line is the original raw data from BoM.
The blue line is the data after the adjustments made by Simon Torok in 1996.
The black line is the adjustments made, the amount and when.
The chart on the right shows the type of adjustment and the reason.
The photo shows the actual site today with it’s obvious UHI effect.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Observatory_Hill.png
the circle surrounding the area is a highway emerging from a tunnel under the site.
Similar adjustments have been applied to the total Australian temperature record.
mpainter
Please explain why you used the term ‘ocean acidification’.