Disgraceful conduct from the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology, BOM, is alleged and documented. This article is short, but most of its links are quite long because they are thorough. Please persevere, there are many hidden gems in this article. Use it as a reference library if you wish.
Please digest a 2006 email from Dr David Jones, Senior Climatologist at BOM to Prof Phil Jones, University of East Anglia. Also at Climategate #0601.txt .
… “ Fortunately in Australia our sceptics are rather scientifically incompetent. It is also easier for us in that we have a policy of providing any complainer with every single station observation when they question our data (this usually snows them) and the Australian data is in pretty good order anyway. Truth be know (sic), climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Recent polls show that Australians now rate climate change as a greater threat than world terrorism.”
From the start, BOM were unwilling to exist outside their own cocoon of beliefs.
For me, Here is when it all began. Prof Phil Jones to my geologist colleague Warwick Hughes, early 1990s, about his Australian BOM observations – “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
Almost all of many BOM criticisms by Australians have essentially the same starting point, the “raw” daily Tmax and Tmin historic temperature observations available to the public from the BOM web site Climate Data Online, CDO. Photos of some original observation sheets for Melbourne 1859 and 1860 are here. Note the frequent corrections in pen and ink. A broad question is why such raw data are seldom used for analysis.
BOM QUOTE. “Yes—the Bureau provides the public with raw, unadjusted temperature data for each station or site in the national climate database, as well as adjusted temperature data for 112 locations across Australia…. …. The Bureau does not alter or delete the original temperature data measured at individual stations.”
Are the “raw” data really raw? Examples of manipulation are here. (Please pardon my typo dates of JULY 2014 and JULY 2015 in the first figure. They should be1914 and1915.)
There are more claims of BOM adjusting data. “In December 2009 the BoM warmed the RAW mean minimum and maximum temperatures by about half a degree from the temperatures that had previously been recorded on the BOM website database for August 2009.”
Then there is metrication, because the originals were in Fahrenheit, when now we use Celsius. BOM temperatures went metric on 1st September 1972. Fahrenheit degrees were converted to Celsius. This introduces an error when there are too few significant figures carried.
Another cause to doubt these BOM temperatures comes from two different and differing compilations. First, the Commonwealth of Australia Yearbooks for 1953 and 1954; second, a CSIR (before CSIRO) compilation of earlier temperatures printed in 1933.
The examples so far raise “uncertainty”. This observer was uncertain between 81.7 and 81.8 ⁰F. The BOM is uncertain if a change in December 2009 was natural or man-made. Uncertainty comes from changes of instruments and locations. There is parallax uncertainty when reading an LIG thermometer, etc etc.
An estimate of the total measurement uncertainty of all of the BOM historic temperature data is absent, but needed. The classic reference for uncertainty is from the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, BIPM in France, under Guide to Uncertainty in Measurement, GUM. BOM has stated its compliance with GUM. Importantly, GUM has no provision for the use of statistics with data that are guesses, as much BOM work like ACORN-SAT is alleged to be.
BOM has its uncertainty methods in Report ITR 716 of March 2022 quoted in reply to my 2018 question “If a person seeks to know the separation of two daily temperatures in degrees C that allows a confident claim that the two temperatures are different statistically, by how much would the two values be separated?” Getting this answer was like pulling teeth out. The answer was a non-answer because of a BOM rider that “This is not an estimate of the uncertainty of the ACORN-SAT’s temperature measurement in the field” – which is what was requested.
This cascade of often uncalculated uncertainties has caused production of adjusted temperature sets, although almost all were derived from the originals. BOM started in public with a “High Quality” set, then added 6 versions of Australian Climate Observation Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature, ACORN-SAT.
ACORN-SAT uses time series plots of temperature versus time and/or customary statistics to detect break points, some of which have plausible causes in metadata, others being “statistical” without a known cause. Usually, there is no known way to determine the magnitude of an adjustment. Recourse is made to inferred adjustments from the patterns of other stations, nearby to distant.
Note: There is an exception. To the author’s knowledge, the only type of adjustment free from subjective guesswork is found here on Bomwatch.com blog. It is based on water, like rain or lawn sprinkler maintenance, cooling weather station sites by evaporation. An outcome of this method by colleague Dr Bill Johnston is that few if any corrected Australian stations show any significant warming over many decades to now.
A typical conventional time series plot follows, showing Melbourne.
The number in the box before ”x” is the trend in ⁰C/year for maximum (blue) minimum (tan) temperatures. Visually, Tmax might have a break point at about 2010. There was a station change in year 2014, so it is accepted that some type of adjustment is warranted but how much adjustment? Author’s note: I do not endorse the linear least squares procedure for analysis of these time series graphs. I show it here because it is in widespread use by others.
In this case, comparisons with numerous stations show Melbourne as the odd man out and by how much. (Good luck with inferring a magnitude for adjustment from nearby stations).
This graph suggests that Tmax has increased at 0.7 ⁰C per century and Tmin at 1.53 ⁰C per century since 1856. These are not the numbers used for calculation of Australia’s national global warming. Adjusted ACORN-SAT numbers are used. The result is that the official claim is that Australia has warmed by 1.51 +/- 0.23 ⁰C in the last 134 years. This is claimed to be wrong. The better, unadjusted estimate is less than 1 ⁰C over that time.
Adjustments and cherry picking are used to create stories from this CDO data. Natural events like heatwaves are claimed to be becoming “catastrophic”. Two heatwave offenders, authors of a highly-cited paper are Lisa Alexander and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick. Australian scientist Joelle Gergis as seen by Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit blog is another part of this trio of young female scientists whose work often shows emotion and cherry picking, for example using 1950 or so as a start date for analysis.
Numerous Australian citizens and scientists have objected to the stories because they are not based on solid science. BOM has chosen the anti-science technique of ignoring dissenting articles. Many have been linked here. My apologies are extended to any authors who are not linked, by my error, but who know they should be on the list of dissidents.
The consequences of poor science by BOM include Australian political adoption of “Net zero Carbon” (whatever that means) leading to a loss of electrical generation from cheap and reliable hydrocarbon combustion. The Australian economy is suffering as other countries such as the US are distancing themselves from this poor science.
BOM should at least attempt to face and answer the many criticisms in this article. The BOM silence is deafening. Why do they decline to answer even a single slip-up???
My best answer is a quote from the movie “Dr Strangelove”. The full movie title is “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. You are invited to drop the final “b” for relevance.
Air Force General Turgidson is in the Pentagon War Room with President Muffley just before a wayward nuclear bomb from an SAC B-52 is likely to trigger the Doomsday Machine and end Life on Earth.
Turgidson: The duty officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he had issued the go code and he said, “Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them, otherwise we will be totally destroyed by red retaliation. My boys will give you the best kind of start, fourteen hundred megatons worth, and you sure as hell won’t stop them now. So let’s get going. There’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.” Then he hung up. We’re still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
Muffley: There’s nothing to figure out General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: Well, I’d like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: (anger rising) General Turgidson, when you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring.
Turgidson: Well, I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up, sir.
Australia’s Problem Child, The BOM.
By Geoff Sherrington.
Scientist, Melbourne, Australia.
Disgraceful conduct from the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology, BOM, is alleged and documented. This article is short, but most of its links are quite long because they are thorough. Please persevere, there are many hidden gems in this article. Use it as a reference library if you wish.
Please digest a 2006 email from Dr David Jones, Senior Climatologist at BOM to Prof Phil Jones, University of East Anglia. Also at Climategate #0601.txt .
… “ Fortunately in Australia our sceptics are rather scientifically incompetent. It is also easier for us in that we have a policy of providing any complainer with every single station observation when they question our data (this usually snows them) and the Australian data is in pretty good order anyway. Truth be know (sic), climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Recent polls show that Australians now rate climate change as a greater threat than world terrorism.”
From the start, BOM were unwilling to exist outside their own cocoon of beliefs.
For me, Here is when it all began. Prof Phil Jones to my geologist colleague Warwick Hughes, early 1990s, about his Australian BOM observations – “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
Almost all of many BOM criticisms by Australians have essentially the same starting point, the “raw” daily Tmax and Tmin historic temperature observations available to the public from the BOM web site Climate Data Online, CDO. Photos of some original observation sheets for Melbourne 1859 and 1860 are here. Note the frequent corrections in pen and ink. A broad question is why such raw data are seldom used for analysis.
BOM QUOTE. “Yes—the Bureau provides the public with raw, unadjusted temperature data for each station or site in the national climate database, as well as adjusted temperature data for 112 locations across Australia….
…. The Bureau does not alter or delete the original temperature data measured at individual stations.”
Are the “raw” data really raw? Examples of manipulation are here. (Please pardon my typo dates of JULY 2014 and JULY 2015 in the first figure. They should be1914 and1915.)
There are more claims of BOM adjusting data. “In December 2009 the BoM warmed the RAW mean minimum and maximum temperatures by about half a degree from the temperatures that had previously been recorded on the BOM website database for August 2009.”
Then there is metrication, because the originals were in Fahrenheit, when now we use Celsius. BOM temperatures went metric on 1st September 1972. Fahrenheit degrees were converted to Celsius. This introduces an error when there are too few significant figures carried.
Another cause to doubt these BOM temperatures comes from two different and differing compilations. First, the Commonwealth of Australia Yearbooks for 1953 and 1954; second, a CSIR (before CSIRO) compilation of earlier temperatures printed in 1933.
There have been changes of instruments over the decades. At first, put simply, there were Liquid-In-Glass thermometers, LIG, in large Stevenson screens. LIG have measurement uncertainty errors of their own. Later, the screens became small and smaller, the agreement between screens was studied and again here, claiming a false 0.5 ⁰C warming; the thermometers became electronic with possibly different response times to changes.
The examples so far raise “uncertainty”. This observer was uncertain between 81.7 and 81.8 ⁰F. The BOM is uncertain if a change in December 2009 was natural or man-made. Uncertainty comes from changes of instruments and locations. There is parallax uncertainty when reading an LIG thermometer, etc etc.
An estimate of the total measurement uncertainty of all of the BOM historic temperature data is absent, but needed. The classic reference for uncertainty is from the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, BIPM in France, under Guide to Uncertainty in Measurement, GUM. BOM has stated its compliance with GUM. Importantly, GUM has no provision for the use of statistics with data that are guesses, as much BOM work like ACORN-SAT is alleged to be.
BOM has its uncertainty methods in Report ITR 716 of March 2022 quoted in reply to my 2018 question “If a person seeks to know the separation of two daily temperatures in degrees C that allows a confident claim that the two temperatures are different statistically, by how much would the two values be separated?” Getting this answer was like pulling teeth out. The answer was a non-answer because of a BOM rider that “This is not an estimate of the uncertainty of the ACORN-SAT’s temperature measurement in the field” – which is what was requested.
This cascade of often uncalculated uncertainties has caused production of adjusted temperature sets, although almost all were derived from the originals. BOM started in public with a “High Quality” set, then added 6 versions of Australian Climate Observation Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature, ACORN-SAT.
ACORN-SAT uses time series plots of temperature versus time and/or customary statistics to detect break points, some of which have plausible causes in metadata, others being “statistical” without a known cause. Usually, there is no known way to determine the magnitude of an adjustment. Recourse is made to inferred adjustments from the patterns of other stations, nearby to distant.
Note: There is an exception. To the author’s knowledge, the only type of adjustment free from subjective guesswork is found here on Bomwatch.com blog. It is based on water, like rain or lawn sprinkler maintenance, cooling weather station sites by evaporation. An outcome of this method by colleague Dr Bill Johnston is that few if any corrected Australian stations show any significant warming over many decades to now.
A typical conventional time series plot follows, showing Melbourne.
The number in the box before ”x” is the trend in ⁰C/year for maximum (blue) minimum (tan) temperatures. Visually, Tmax might have a break point at about 2010. There was a station change in year 2014, so it is accepted that some type of adjustment is warranted but how much adjustment? Author’s note: I do not endorse the linear least squares procedure for analysis of these time series graphs. I show it here because it is in widespread use by others.
In this case, comparisons with numerous stations show Melbourne as the odd man out and by how much. (Good luck with inferring a magnitude for adjustment from nearby stations).
This graph suggests that Tmax has increased at 0.7 ⁰C per century and Tmin at 1.53 ⁰C per century since 1856. These are not the numbers used for calculation of Australia’s national global warming. Adjusted ACORN-SAT numbers are used. The result is that the official claim is that Australia has warmed by 1.51 +/- 0.23 ⁰C in the last 134 years. This is claimed to be wrong. The better, unadjusted estimate is less than 1 ⁰C over that time.
Adjustments and cherry picking are used to create stories from this CDO data. Natural events like heatwaves are claimed to be becoming “catastrophic”. Two heatwave offenders, authors of a highly-cited paper are Lisa Alexander and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick. Australian scientist Joelle Gergis as seen by Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit blog is another part of this trio of young female scientists whose work often shows emotion and cherry picking, for example using 1950 or so as a start date for analysis.
Numerous Australian citizens and scientists have objected to the stories because they are not based on solid science. BOM has chosen the anti-science technique of ignoring dissenting articles. Many have been linked here. My apologies are extended to any authors who are not linked, by my error, but who know they should be on the list of dissidents.
The consequences of poor science by BOM include Australian political adoption of “Net zero Carbon” (whatever that means) leading to a loss of electrical generation from cheap and reliable hydrocarbon combustion. The Australian economy is suffering as other countries such as the US are distancing themselves from this poor science.
BOM should at least attempt to face and answer the many criticisms in this article. The BOM silence is deafening. Why do they decline to answer even a single slip-up???
My best answer is a quote from the movie “Dr Strangelove”. The full movie title is “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. You are invited to drop the final “b” for relevance.
Air Force General Turgidson is in the Pentagon War Room with President Muffley just before a wayward nuclear bomb from an SAC B-52 is likely to trigger the Doomsday Machine and end Life on Earth.
Turgidson: The duty officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he had issued the go code and he said, “Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them, otherwise we will be totally destroyed by red retaliation. My boys will give you the best kind of start, fourteen hundred megatons worth, and you sure as hell won’t stop them now. So let’s get going. There’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.” Then he hung up. We’re still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
Muffley: There’s nothing to figure out General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: Well, I’d like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: (anger rising) General Turgidson, when you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring.
Turgidson: Well, I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up, sir.
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