Guest essay by Dr. Jennifer Marohasy
The hubris of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is on full display with its most recent remodelling of the historic temperature record for Darwin. The Bureau has further dramatically increased the rate of global warming at Darwin by further artificially lowering historic temperatures.
This begins by shortening the historical temperature record so that it begins just after the very hot years of the Federation drought. Then by changing the daily values: that is changing the observed measured temperatures to something else.
For example, on 1st January 1910 the maximum temperature recorded at the Darwin post office was 34.2 degrees Celsius.
A few years ago, the Bureau changed this to 33.8 degrees Celsius, cooling the recorded temperature by 0.4 degrees. In its most recent re-revision of Darwin’s climate history the temperature on this day has been further reduced, and is now just 32.8.
Environmental reporter for the Australian newspaper, Graham Lloyd, asked the Bureau why it had made such changes earlier in the week. A spokesperson is quoted in The Weekend Australian as follows:
“For the case of Darwin, a downward adjustment to older records is applied to account for differences between the older sites and the current site, and difference¬s between older thermometers and the current automated sensor.
“In other words, the adjustments estimate what historical temperatures would look like if they were recorded with today’s equipment at the current site.”
Yet this is a version of exactly the same reason given by the Bureau just six years ago for reducing the temperature on 1 January 1910 by ‘only’ 0.4 degrees.
Neither the equipment, nor the site has changed since ACORN-SAT Version 1 was published in 2012.
Yet another 1 degree has been shaven from the historical temperature record!
To be clear, the weather station has been at the airport since February 1941, and an automatic weather station was installed on 1 October 1990. A Stevenson screen was first installed at the post office site in 1894, and has always been used at the airport site.
So, why was the temperature dropped down by a further one degree for 1 January 1910 in the most recent revision – undertaken just a few months ago? There is no logical or reasonable explanation.
Apparently, at the Bureau, the future is certain and the past can be continually changed – history can be continually revised.
When the daily values are added-up, and compared between versions as annual mean maximum temperatures we see the magnitude of the change – and its effect on temperature trends.
The warming trend of 1.3 degrees C per 100 years in ACORN V1 has been changed to 1.8 degrees C per 100 years in Version 2. The annual average maximum temperature for 1942, as one example, has been reduced by 0.5 degrees.
In the maximum temperature record as actually measured at Darwin from 1895 to the present — and taking into consideration the move from the airport to the post office –- there is no warming trend in the Darwin temperature record. This is consistent with other locations in northern Australia with long high-quality records, for example Richmond in north western Queensland.
What the Bureau has done to the historical temperature record for Darwin is indefensible. The Bureau has artificially shortened and cooled Darwin’s climate history to make it consistent with the theory of human-caused global warming.
Published originally on Dr. Jennifer Marohasy’s website, republished here at her suggestion.
Willis Eschenbach has covered the issues with the Darwin climate station in the past here and here at WUWT. Worth a read.
The fact that they get away with this is very worrying and of course this all gets jumbled up with the other homogenised data and the world is agog with a tainted view of reality.
The BoM spokesperson – “In other words, the adjustments estimate what historical temperatures would look like if they were recorded with today’s equipment at the current site.”
“Estimate”????
Who, what, why and how????
Much of northern Australia has been getting wetter over the last 100 or so years, which is why there is so little warming in Darwin. Wetter years are demonstrably cooler, as one would expect. This wetter trend is ignored and the flat temperature trend changed because the creative types at the BOM can’t imagine a reason why Darwin’s temperature wouldn’t warm in conformity with government policy.
I’m more convinced than ever that there is something very fishy happening at the BOM. Just more religious dogma posing as science.
Acorn 1 was supposed to be”world’s best practice” in 2012 but now this has changed in just a few years? Welcome to the ADJUSTOCENE and that means that it will never end.
IOW it’s a never ending story and OZ wastes endless billions $ for a guaranteed ZERO return while China, India etc laugh all the way to their banks. Unbelievable but true.
Here’s OZ rainfall anomaly since 1900, note much wetter after 1970.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=8
Here’s NT and Darwin is the Capital city of NT. Note again that rainfall is much higher after 1970.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=nt&season=0112&ave_yr=8
I just read the two mentioned ‘Darwin posts’ by Willis Eschenbach. I can recommend everyone to read them too:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/20/darwin-zero-before-and-after/
The evolution forced upon the Darwin record to make it conform to the AGW narrative is nothing short of abominable!
Anthony,
Thanks so much for re-posting this. I’m enjoying reading the comments … and as always learning from them. BTW, I was born in Darwin.
Cheers, Jen
Thank you for keeping the spot light on the Darwin “adjustments”
When you correct for an error when you do not know the nature or degree of the error you are not ‘correcting ‘ at all. Rather you are creating another form of the error.
In this case, there is a clear ‘habit ‘ of producing errors which favor their outlook that you can claim it is not an error at all, but deliberate intent.
The Trump Administration should announce that our EPA scientists can no longer use any temperature data that includes Australian data because of the malfeasance in their record. Embarrass them.
Trump ought to have Happer’s group investigate these changes made to the temperature record by BOM. Here’s a good opportunity to shine the light on these temperature manipulations.
And alarmists wonder why skeptics complain about the legitimacy of the surface temperature record. This kind of “cooling the past and warming the present” is going on all over the world on a continuing basis. NOAA and NASA have disappeared the significance of the El Nino year of 1998, and turned it into a cool, also-ran, rather than the second-hottest year in the 21st century, right behind 2016, which was 0.1C (statistically a tie) warmer than 1998 (according to UAH). And they did this right in front of our eyes, just like this BOM manipulation is taking place right in front of our eyes.
We should just go with TMax charts and forget all this homoginization. After all, if we want to measure Global Warming, what better way is there than using the maximum temperature of the day and comparing it to the maximum temperature of a day in 2019.
In the Tmax case, the maximum temperatures of the day in the 1930’s would show to be warmer than the maximum temperatures today. In other words, no unprecedented heating of the atmosphere today. No CAGW.
Instead, we get Hockey Sticks.
Sorry Tom the Bureau of Misinformation is an Aussie problem. It is pure bull sh*t sure. But Aussie bs.
Best we try and take care of it here in Oz.
It was kind of a “tongue-in-cheek” suggestion, Bill.
I bet an inquiry from Happer to the BOM would get their attention, though, even though he has no power over them. 🙂
“In other words, the adjustments estimate what historical temperatures would look like if they were recorded with today’s equipment at the current site.” ??
How could they possibly know that ?
Handwavium, of course.
I thought it was Delorean
Who is responsible for review and formal approval of such changes? How do they justify and document altering the already altered data? One degree is statistically significant.
‘The Bureau has further dramatically increased the rate of global warming at Darwin’
Wut? GLOBAL warming at Darwin. You can have warming at Darwin. You can have global warming. But you can’t have global warming at Darwin.
Any professional engineer knows that there is no such thing as “adjusted data.” The data is what was read off the instrument.
Any changes to this data produce something new, called “Fiction.”
This is only one of the reasons I always put quotes around “Climate Scientists…”
You say “fiction”, they say “rigorous analysis”. All same-same.
Darwin, soon to become a Chinese stronghold after the corrupt incompetent Aussie government handed Darwin port to a Chinese state company. A useful spy post to watch the USA military assets based there.
From the article: “So, why was the temperature dropped down by a further one degree for 1 January 1910 in the most recent revision – undertaken just a few months ago? There is no logical or reasonable explanation.”
I think there is a logical explanation for it. I think this is another attempt to promote the CAGW narrative by manipulating the temperature record in a certain way to make it look like the temperatures are steadily getting hotter and hotter.
These CAGW lies are costing humanity trillions of wasted dollars. Perhaps there will be some criminal liability in the future for these data manipulators. One can only hope.
Small ACORNs grow into mighty HOAX
Yes, that’s what it is : a mighty HOAX
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=darwin+australia+temperature
They’re actually wrecking their own case.
Ultimately, they key argument won’t be about past temperature increases; it’ll be about the ACCELERATION (the second derivative). Yes, cooling the past increases the apparent warming (the first derivative) but will ultimately decrease the acceleration (the second derivative). In just a few years, their adjustments of the past will make it look like the warming is slowing down.
They may be counting on everyone implementing the Paris accords, so they can take credit for the slowdown. Unfortunately for them, that ain’t happenin’; CO2 continues to rise very fast.
No wonder they’re screaming like mad that we have to act now. As they like to say, “If we don’t act in the next five years it’ll be a catastrophe.” Problem is, five years from now, the “catastrophe” will be the falsification of their predictions.
So,…did they calibrate their instruments in the old days. You know freezes at 0 , boils at 100? Just asking, but really. I think they did.
They’re going to run out of ammo soon. You can only distort the data so much before it gets ridiculous. They aren’t going to gain any converts when everyone with half a brain knows they are doing this, so what’s the point. No one trusts the MSM anymore. No one trusts the government ‘scientists’ anymore. Less and less people believe their bs so they’ve pulled out the stops. In the US Trump is going to run as us vs. the socialists. I’m not a huge Trump fan but I sure as hell will be voting for him because I would never vote for Mao, Stalin or Hitler. We’re lucky they’re all dead or they’d be running for the Dem nomination in 2020. Theyll have to settle for whoever ends up the farthest on the left without offending the low IQ special snowflake groups.
Prior to WWII, there were VERY few climate station in the southern hemisphere (SH), especially Africa and South America. They were mainly concerned with rainfall, not temperature, and temperature was not regularly taken. Reliable temperature data of the southern oceans were almost non-existent, and no data for Antarctica.
So modern climate science extrapolates northern hemisphere temperature readings southward. (They admit such.) The argument is that temperature does not vary much across a broad region. The SH is a very large region. Given that the SH receives solar insolation differently from the NH (more ocean), this method of guessing SH temperature prior to WWII is subject to all types of “theoretical” manipulations.
My thoughts that they would be cooling modern temperatures not reducing previous temperatures as the Urban Heat Island gets more substantive….seems off.
Remember, it’s a federal and New South Wales (NSW) election year. NSW in March, Federal in May. Liberals (Conservatives) are going to be thrashed and will assume power.
In most Australian news feeds, the Sydney Morning Herald for instance, are publishing many articles, daily, that show we are destroying the planet by burning coal. Cyclone Oma, was hyped to be a “monster” Cat 3 to strike the east coast and Brisbane to be hit for the first time in 30 years. DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! And then fizzed out and downgraded to Cat 1 before landfall!
BoM data fiddling, again? Well, it is an election year after all and it HAS to be shown we are past tipping point.
And now the Chinese are going to stop buying Aussie coal!
Interesting few months ahead for Australia.
The Labor party (Democrat?) will assume power at both state and federal levels is what I meant to say.
It’s the same old dishonest tactic to make the temperature appear to rise continuously. They cannot raise the current temps as everyone knows them, but nobody knows the temps from 100 or 50 years ago, if they were measured acurately at all.
I love Darwin and I believe it has always been “bloody hot”.
“In other news from the world of science, members of the Royal Society adjusted dozens of Tycho Brahe’s observations, ‘to make them look like they had been recorded with modern instruments,’ and also rewrote portions of De Nova et Nullius Aevi Memoria Prius Visa Stella ‘to get rid of the hard parts.'”
“The members of The Society then retired to their club, where they pantsed the busboys and burnt first editions of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and assorted short works by Galileo. in the fireplace”