There’s quite a row developing after a scathing article in the Australian, some news clips follow. h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
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The [Australian] Bureau of Meteorology has been accused of manipulating historic temperature records to fit a predetermined view of global warming. Researcher Jennifer Marohasy claims the adjusted records resemble “propaganda” rather than science. Dr Marohasy has analysed the raw data from dozens of locations across Australia and matched it against the new data used by BOM showing that temperatures were progressively warming. In many cases, Dr Marohasy said, temperature trends had changed from slight cooling to dramatic warming over 100 years. –Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 23 August 2014
The escalating row goes to heart of the climate change debate — in particular, whether computer models are better than real data and whether temperature records are being manipulated in a bid to make each year hotter than the last. Marohasy’s research has put her in dispute with BoM over a paper she published with John Abbot at Central Queensland University in the journal Atmospheric Research concerning the best data to use for rainfall forecasting. BoM challenged the findings of the Marohasy-Abbot paper, but the international journal rejected the BoM rebuttal, which had been prepared by some of the bureau’s top scientists. This has led to an escalating dispute over the way in which Australia’s historical temperature records are “improved” through homogenisation, which is proving more difficult to resolve. –Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 23 August 2014
When I first sent Graham Lloyd some examples of the remodeling of the temperature series I think he may have been somewhat skeptical. I know he on-forwarded this information to the Bureau for comment, including three charts showing the homogenization of the minimum temperature series for Amberley. Mr Lloyd is the Environment Editor for The Australian newspaper and he may have been concerned I got the numbers wrong. He sought comment and clarification from the Bureau. I understand that by way of response to Mr Lloyd, the Bureau has not disputed these calculations. What the Bureau has done, however, is try and justify the changes. In particular, for Amberley the Bureau is claiming to Mr Lloyd that there is very little available documentation for Amberley before 1990 and that information before this time may be “classified”: as in top secret. —Jennifer Marohasy, 23 August 2014
Congratulations to The Australian again for taking the hard road and reporting controversial, hot, documented problems, that few in the Australian media dare to investigate.
How accurate are our national climate datasets when some adjustments turn entire long stable records from cooling trends to warming ones (or visa versa)? Do the headlines of “hottest ever record” (reported to a tenth of a degree) mean much if thermometer data sometimes needs to be dramatically changed 60 years after being recorded?
One of the most extreme examples is a thermometer station in Amberley, Queensland where a cooling trend in minima of 1C per century has been homogenized and become a warming trend of 2.5C per century. This is a station at an airforce base that has no recorded move since 1941, nor had a change in instrumentation. It is a well-maintained site near a perimeter fence, yet the homogenisation process produces a remarkable transformation of the original records, and rather begs the question of how accurately we know Australian trends at all when the thermometers are seemingly so bad at recording the real temperature of an area. Ken Stewart was the first to notice this anomaly and many others when he compared the raw data to the new, adjusted ACORN data set. Jennifer Marohasy picked it up, and investigated it and 30 or so other stations. In Rutherglen in Victoria, a cooling trend of -0.35C became a warming trend of +1.73C. She raised her concerns (repeatedly) with Minister Greg Hunt.
Now the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to try to explain the large adjustments. Australians may finally gain a better understanding of what “record” temperatures mean, and the certainty ascribed to national trends. There is both a feature and a news piece today in The Weekend Australian. – Jo Nova The heat is on. Bureau of Meteorology ‘altering climate figures’ — The Australian
I’ll believe in global warming only when climatologists can predict the past with reasonable accuracy.
The BOM used to do the weather, now it does politics.
Haha . . yes, I’ve always been amused at the false equivalence warmist argument comparing cancer cures and climate.
Many years ago here in Oz, we had a case involving Dr. William McBride. He was a well respected, almost legendary and liked professional who carried out some research on thalidomide, If I recall.
He even attended to my wife with a relatively simple and effective pregnancy fix issue.
Anyway, he fudged the data on that research, and even though his conclusion turned out to be correct, he was unceremoniously struck off.
Climate scientists™ won’t be struck off because they are allowed to make mistakes, doncha know.
There is a vast difference between medical science accountability and Climate science™ accountability.
Anthony Zeeman says:
August 23, 2014 at 7:09 pm
“I’ll believe in global warming only when climatologists can predict the past with reasonable accuracy.”
I will make it easy for them just back date the ice-core CO2 record some 8-10 Centuries and there it is! Do I get a grant for that?
Yes, The BoM were called in to ‘validate’ the New Zealand official position if I recall.
I hadn’t thought of this before, but wouldn’t Australia and New Zealand potentially make up a large proportion of southern hemisphere land temperature record?
I’m not sure how much data comes out of Africa or the South American continent, but there isn’t very much land in the southern hemisphere.
Yup we had the same prob in NZ http://www.climaterealists.org.nz/node/435
The department NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) was hard to pin down though and the debate featured poorly in the press.
This appears to be endemic world wide.
So who wants AGW to succeed more than anything and has the cash to buy the right people and organisations? The UN of course! who operate at central governmental levels and the UN sponsored organisation, ICLEI who operate at the local government level.
More at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Cheers
Roger
jennifermarohasy says:
August 23, 2014 at 5:14 pm
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Perhaps, it was a dingo. They are known to eat almost anything!
As has been mentioned by others earlier, it’s all about a step change in about 1980, a change of about 2 degree. Prior to then, and subsequently, the temperature tracks are virtually identical.
What it, the step change appears to indicate that there was an instrument change at that time and either the old instruments were reading 2 degree high, or the new instruments are reading 2 degree low.
Either way I can’t accept that the instruments can be so wrong. They should be calibrated prior to installation. What “homogenisation” seems to suggest is that they are calibrated after installation against instruments installed at other sites remote from the location.
How do they know which ones should be adjusted?
The idea that it might be the blind leading the blind comes to mind.
Thanks be to Jennifer Marohasy and Joanne Nova as well as the Australian Newspaper and not forgetting Andrew Bolt. Corruption is omni-present. Wherever you want to look. But truth will prevail because the people are sick of the power people lining their pockets for the sake of the ‘good of the people.’
Mark Addinall says:
August 23, 2014 at 9:42 am
If anyone cares to remember I did that analysis some four years ago. Back when the raw data could still be had over the web. Data has gone. I never thought that BoM would be so crooked as to cook data and then delete the real stuff. The images are still here.
http://www.addinall.net/climate/ausclimate/100yrural/
Mark, I’ve checked some of the sites you’ve documented in your paper. Take Southern Cross for example. The chart you document is still available on the BoM site. See:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=012074&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
I’m checking the rest. However, the site is very hard to negotiate and data seems to be inconsistently presented across locations.
Thought you’d like to know.
Mark Addinall says:
August 23, 2014 at 9:42 am
If anyone cares to remember I did that analysis some four years ago. Back when the raw data could still be had over the web. Data has gone. I never thought that BoM would be so crooked as to cook data and then delete the real stuff. The images are still here.
http://www.addinall.net/climate/ausclimate/100yrural/
Cheers.
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YUP I noticed when I had sent links with charts and thought I had saved the pages,
seems Id saved page links only..and when I went back to look..?
theyd been tidied/ filed /hidden..and what was there had been formatted in a non available to the avg pc user program of some kind. excuse when I ueried it was they didnt have the space to keep the data as was online ffs!
that was? 2009!!!
They are not the only ones at it, they ALL do. Bunch of fraudsters.
<– clears throat…
Ahem. Remember…this is all about moving money. It's important to remember that from time to time, as we become increasingly astonished that politicians can't seem to see the facts that are staring them in the face.
Facts that interfere with the ability to move and control money will be denied to the bitter end, and perhaps beyond 🙂
Jim
How did the Alarmist community come up with the word “Homogenizing” to describe their torture of the raw data that does not support their grants? One can only imagine the conference room in East Anglia where these dishonest folks cooked up the idea.
ozspeaksup says:
August 24, 2014 at 3:12 am
YUP I noticed when I had sent links with charts and thought I had saved the pages,
seems Id saved page links only..and when I went back to look..?
theyd been tidied/ filed /hidden..and what was there had been formatted in a non available to the avg pc user program of some kind. excuse when I ueried it was they didnt have the space to keep the data as was online ffs!
that was? 2009!!!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I don’t understand what you are saying.
The charts in Mark Addinall’s analysis are still available on the BoM site. And they still look the same as those copied by Mark in his paper.
Yep. They’re harder to find perhaps, but they are still there.
jennifermarohasy says:
August 23, 2014 at 5:14 pm
Rutherglen and Amberley were chosen by me as first examples for Graham Lloyd (the journalist) because there is no site change for the entire history of the record… but large adjustments never-the-less. The Bureau is now saying there must have been a site change at both place, there is just no supporting meta-data… the dog ate the meta-data!
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Why is it that adjustments are allowed without data to back them up. No meta-data, no adjustments we’ll use the raw data thanks.
I’ll bet you haven’t realised that the speed of light is actually 195,000 miles per sec because it was adjusted two years ago. No, as it happens the meta-data explaining that adjustment has disappeared, but honest it’s really true.
NO META-DATA, NO ADJUSTMENTS.
All research that has used adjusted data without the reason for those adjustments being available and validated is invalid – no arguments. We’re talking science here not opinion.
SteveT
Spatial data homogenization, so-called, comes across as a dubious technique at best.
Any valid interpolation method should reproduce the actual measured data at the specfic sites where it was acquired.
Actually I think the scamsters have been nailed in Australia this is really HUGE mark the date and the story. Prosecutions could follow.
REASON Australian government now an official anti-warming (AGW) scam organization LOL
Just how ‘lucky’ can you get all necessary adjustment put past temperatures up form what they actual measured at, which by further luck help support the views of those doing the ‘adjustments’
But I wish stop using airports has a guide to temperature in a wider area , as they often and for good reason , poorly represent that area. The do the job they where designed to , provide information for use in flight movements in and out of the airport . There used for other things not because their ‘good’ but because they exist .
Quid custodiet ipsos custodies?
This comes as no surprise. It was driven by the need to please Australia’s Rudd/Gillard Labor governments that insisted dangerous human-caused global warming was a fact, and that an emissions trading scheme was necessary, and when that failed to happen, a carbon tax was necessary.
The BoM has been fudging the data, just as New Zealand’s NIWA was caught out doing the same, as exposed by the ‘Kiwigate’ scandal, for which the scientist responsible for the data fudging was sacked and the adjusted temperature data disowned by the New Zealand government.
The BoM seems to think it knows better the temperatures of the past, than the actual people who recorded the temperature data going back decades. BoM decided the past was cooler than the actual temperature data reflected. After all, BoM needed to show a warming temperature trend. So what better way to do it when warming is not evident in the real world observational data … create the warming trend.
If cavalier adjustments of data to fit a contrived narrative were made in finance or a host of other fields, the perpetrators would be put in jail by the authorities. In “climate science,” however, it’s the authorities themselves who are perpetrating the fraud.