Weather News - Longer November heatwave 130 years ago

[The Mayos]

Just saw this story on Weatherzone for anyone who is interested in reading it.

 

http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/longer-november-heatwave-130-years-ago/13156

 

And more news of the Friday storm in this area  -  I read in todays local paper "The Manly Daily" that some houses in Bayview and Church Point were without power from the time of the storm on Friday until  Sunday afternoon due to the huge amount of damage done to the power infrastructure.

 

Spare a thought for those people in the storm damage area with huge damage to their homes with only a month and a day to Christmas.

 

Judy

[Blair Trewin]

A lot of the pre-1910 data, as discussed ad nauseum, is not comparable to current standards because of different instrument shelters (or lack thereof), and Gunnedah is worse than most. I'm pretty disappointed that Weatherzone is making a big deal of this.

 

Blair

---

From: The Mayos [mailto:sup...@iinet.net.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 November 2009 3:01 PM
To: Austpacwx
Subject: [austpacwx] Weather News - Longer November heatwave 130 years ago

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "austpacwx" group.
To post to this group, send email to aust...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to austpacwx+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/austpacwx?hl=en.

[Andrew Miskelly]

Hi Blair,

Perhaps some constructive remarks in Brett's direction might be in order.

From what I can see the November 1878 data (from 055023) is included
and complete in both the BoM's daily and monthly historical products and
the quality flags provided with the former give no indication that the
data is suspect. Is this something that should be addressed in light of
your comments below?

Regards,
Andrew

Blair Trewin wrote:
> A lot of the pre-1910 data, as discussed ad nauseum, is not comparable
> to current standards because of different instrument shelters (or lack
> thereof), and Gunnedah is worse than most. I'm pretty disappointed
> that Weatherzone is making a big deal of this.
>
> Blair
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* The Mayos [mailto:sup...@iinet.net.au]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 24 November 2009 3:01 PM
> *To:* Austpacwx
> *Subject:* [austpacwx] Weather News - Longer November heatwave 130

[Blair Trewin]

In general all pre-1910 Australian temperature data, especially maximum temperatures, should be treated with extreme caution because of non-standardisation of instrument shelters. It runs the range from 'useful for just about everything except climate change analyses' (e.g. Melbourne) to 'not much use for any purpose other than determining that day X was hotter/colder than day Y in the same year'. Pre-1882 Gunnedah is at the latter end of the scale; somewhat unusually, the mins also look highly suspect (too low - there is a monthly mean of -5.0 one July), which makes me think the instruments may have been on or close to the ground.

I'll raise the labelling question with those responsible for the website; an addition to the "About" file looks called for.

A lot of the real shockers aren't terribly visible because their daily data haven't been digitised, but Gunnedah and the early Deniliquin are two which have been.

I've also posted a comment on the Weatherzone discussion thread.

Blair