by David Mason-Jones
Come November and December this year (2021) it will be exactly 150 years since a scientific expedition made meticulous observations of water temperatures along the Great Barrier Reef.
On the voyage from Sydney to Cape Sidmouth in far north Queensland scientists took hourly sea surface temperatures between 6:00am and 6:00pm every day ‘of the warm current setting south along the east coast of Australia’ now known as East Australian Current. The measurements commenced out to sea from Port Stevens, north of Sydney, and continued to near the tip of Cape York. They did the same on the return trip 2-weeks later.
Headed by government astronomers from Melbourne and Sydney, the voyage was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria to observe a total eclipse of the sun predicted for the 12th December, 1871. With other scientists the party travelled aboard the steamer Governor Blackall out of Sydney on 27 November 1871.. Consequently, the measurements were not just a matter of idle curiosity by passing mariners, they were the subject of formal scientific research and followed the same protocol and used the same thermometer for every observation.
Published in 1877 by Henry Chamberlain Russell, the 1871 data is the earliest consistently collected sea surface temperature dataset around the Australian coast.
Russell’s data established a baseline against which current sea surface temperatures can be compared. The comparison renders Null the commonly accepted hypothesis of rising sea surface temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef.
If the sea surface temperature of the Great Barrier Reef has been trending upwards – and if this trend could be characterised as ‘rapid’ – then a 150-year comparison should be sufficient to confirm it. The problem is that it establishes no such thing. When compared with today’s readings, it shows no upward trend.
The main finding of the recent research Report will come as anathema to multiple research bodies. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and organisations like CSIRO, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, WWF and the Climate Council have consistently claimed survival of the Reef is imperilled by rising sea levels and sea surface temperatures.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority states that, ‘sea surface temperatures in the Australian region have warmed by around 1°C since 1910, with the Great Barrier Reef warming by 0.8°C in the same period.’
The main findings of the research were:
Firstly, compared at the same times of the year (November and December), there is no difference in average sea surface temperature over the last 150 years. That is a long time and it shows that temperatures are homeostatic, that is, self-regulating.
Secondly, during the warmest time of the year (from December to March) the monsoonal water cycle acts a self-regulating heat pump that maintains average sea surface temperature between 29 and 30degC. If the water entering the Reef Lagoon cannot warm, neither can the North Queensland or East Australian Currents. There is no evidence that the process has broken-down or is likely to do so in the future.
Operation of the heat pump closely regulates sea surface temperature between 27degC and 29degC but less than 30degC for up to five months and more than 20degC during winter (July to September). Low water temperature in winter sets the southern limit for Reef ecosystems, not high water temperatures in summer, which rarely (and only briefly) exceed 31degC.
Scientist, Dr. Bill Johnston, located the 1877 paper when undertaking research in The National Library on H.C. Russell’s contribution to meteorology in Australia. The former New South Wales senior research scientist has collated the 1871 data analysed it meticulously and correlated the temperature readings with the latitude at which they were taken. This is vital because the warm East Australian Current slowly cools as it flows south from the tropics, eventually into the Tasman Sea.
The 1871 observations were used to baseline recent data derived from 27 Australian Institute of Marine science (AIMS) data loggers from Thursday Island in the north to Boult Reef in the south. Both datasets were robust, comparable and fit for the purpose of examining time-evolution of sea surface temperature. AIMS data for equivalent times and latitudes were not significantly different to data measured in November/December 1871. It is shocking that this vital piece of scientific evidence is not featured more prominently in all the Reef research of recent years.
The result of this analysis surely dismantles the assertion that sea surface temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef are rising and rising rapidly.
The results have now been published in full detail on an Australian website BoMwatch – a site devoted to keeping an eye on Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. The dataset with calculations is provided separately as a supplement to the report on the Bomwatch website.
Dr. Johnston’s detailed Report can be accessed at http://www.bomwatch.com.au . The full Report with tables of data is at http://www.bomwatch.com.au/bureau-of-meterology/trends-in-sea-surface-temperature-at-townsville-great-barrier-reef/ The researcher and publisher at BoMwatch want to make this a completely open field for science investigation.
In his final conclusion, Dr. Johnston states, ‘No difference was found between temperatures measured at Port Stephens and Cape Sidmouth by astronomers from Melbourne and Sydney using bucket samples in November and December 1871 and data sampled at those times from 27 AIMS datasets spanning from Thursday Island, in the north to Boult Reef in the south. Alarming claims that the East Australian Current has warmed due to global warming are therefore without foundation.’
Reference: Lomb, Nick (2016) Australian solar eclipse expeditions: the voyage to Cape York in 1871. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 79-95.
David Mason-Jones is a freelance journalist of many years’ experience. www.journalist.com.au.
Dr Bill Johnston is a former NSW Department of Natural Resources senior research scientist and former weather observer.
Sounds extreme as far as nothing is concerned.
While the results fit my own predilections, I would feel more confident in Dr. Johnson’s analysis and results IF they were reviewed or analyzed by an expert statistician – such at Ross McKitrick..
Given their past behavior, the Bureau of Meteorology will go full GISS, and adjust the 1871 temperatures down.
I can hear the Alarmists now. They were astronomer’s not climate scientists trained by Dr. Michael Mann.
I wonder if Professor Peter Ridd knows about this type of report? His life was made miserable by contrary statements, apparently without any merit. Go get them!
What are the odds that the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC won’t mention it at all? Or the climatists at James Cook University? Or the BoM?
Too many people have their careers invested in the doomsday cult. Facts don’t matter any more, unless they fit into the story.
BRAVO!
What I wonder, is why did it take to now to do this great retrieve of ‘old’ but ‘quality’ data. Methinks because more than just inconvenient for warmunists. Surely GBR researchers should have been up to snuff on all the past literature.
They we’re not. So claimed rather than actual experts. JCU, this is on you.
Great… Science strikes back!
Don’t count you’re chickens yet. BOM hasn’t homogenized the historical data yet. That’s when the true scale of the GBR catastrophe will become apparent and undeniable.
Another historical record succeeds in refuting the absurd claims of catastrophic rising of sea temperatures! Congratulations for adding to the total weight of evidence refuting these exaggerated claims.
This story gives me cause to wonder what other archived data is out there on tropical ocean surface temperature dating back a century or more. Surely the British, French and Dutch navies were curious about tropical water temperature when the were exploring tropical waters the era of expanding empires.
How could there be claims of “Global” temperature rise for the past 170 years without reliable tropical and Southern Ocean data sets?
I expect you are aware of the studies referred to in this CBC article and would like your perspsective https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/oceans-climate-change-1.6154156
I wonder if anyone has looked for the Aust Navy’s bathythermograph record that were recorded for sonar performance purposes.
If these were kept by Defence, there would be thousands of readings from a lot of different areas over many years.
Looking at the above image of the “S.S. Governor Blackall,” I note that even then they had wind power backed up by fossil fuels.
Man, the Clime Syndicate is losing control of the Clime Numbers Racket these days! They’ve threatened dissenters, gatekept the climate journals, had editors fired, terminated careers of questioning scientists …for over 40yrs, all the while, first praying it would eventually warm up, but after their CO2 temperature Control Knob wound up predicting Catastrophic Anthropo Global Warming that was 300% higher than observations despite CO2 emmissions galloping faster, they resorted to crafting their own Ts.
Horror of horrors, we had slipped into The Dreaded 18yr Pause without warning. How could the Clime Family stand the pressure! They grabbed at the straw of an El Niño in 2015 that temporarily gave relief, but in a year serious La Niña conditions popped up in a cooling sea and a six year cooling trend ensued. That was the limit!
James Hansen (Father of Cat. Anthropo Global Warming and inventor of the Temp jiggering industry) head held high stated that 30yr cooling period can’t be ruled out. His protegé Gavin Schmidt shrugged and admitted the models are running a way too hot, something must be done. So, it seems the best that can be offered is a maximum of double the 0.6C of the last150 years by 2100. The show has been cancelled but Syndicate is trying not to notice.
Back Of Envelope:
Water at 31 Celsius, assuming unity emissivity, will be radiating 485 Watts/square metre
El Sol is typically assumed (as by solar panel makers/users) to shine at 1,000 Watts and for 12 hours per day.
Thus, on average, the sun inputs 500 Watts and the water outputs 485 Watts
Near as makes no odds, is that why open water never goes above the temperature it does?
Even if there was validity to the basic theory of Green House Gases, the wavelengths they (re) radiate at, ‘see’ or regard all liquid water surfaces a perfect mirrors – the green house re-radiated energy cannot enter and or be absorbed by the water. The 2nd Law also prevents is happening.
So unless Sol is burning hotter/stronger or there are fewer clouds (water, smoke, dust, volcano-smut) in the sky – the temperature of open sea/ocean water here in Earth is going precisely nowhere.
Yet the theory of Green House Warming requires more water in the atmosphere, not only to create the extra warming but also the extra extremely extreme and unpecentetnedended extreme floods.
While creating fewer clouds that would dim/darken the sun.
How does that happen?
Somebody has really rather badly, completely, totally & utterly, Lost The Plot
and as this BoE calc shows, the very authority that they appeal to in order to create the GHGE, (Jozef Stefan) contradicts them
Too damn right, it really is Worse Than We (or anybody) Thought
I understand that the early in 1900s British Scientific Expedition by sea sailing around the coastline of Australia created high water marks on rocks at various locations and those marks remain accurate, no significant rise at high tide over the past 120 years.
No doubt scholars have reviewed historical ships logs secured in storage at Greenwich UK to obtain weather data etc?
I don’t understand according to a well meaning young black woman I was told the the Great Barrie reef was gone, at least the what her sources told her. She had bought the left’s cool-aid 100%.
BIll Johnston’s report is well worth looking at, and very comprehensive. He has gone to a lot of effort to analyze the Great Barrier Reef instrumental temperature data so that he can put the “new” older data into context.
Peter Ridd
But but, leather buckets! But but, bigger ships! etc etc etc
They will adjust this data away too if they get to hear of it.
But but but, models say it’s getting more acidic!
Good job, Bill, for finding this data but more importantly, for understanding its value. One has to wonder how much more treasure like this is moldering in various marine archives around the world. Those brave early explorers collected data everywhere they went, well aware that it would be of value to those who followed them.
Wonderful…A WUWT writer has found another cherry to pick. But seriously, why relay on an older, and therefore most likely less reliable dataset?